The Relationship between Judaism and Christianity

Judaism must be studied separately--there would still be Judaism if there were no Christianity.  But there would not be any Christianity without Judaism, one cannot study Christianity without also studying Judaism and, in particular, Judaism in the few centuries before and during the lives of Jesus and the Apostles. While not all Jews believed in the same messianic message, apocalyptic messianism was very popular among some of the Pharisees, the Essenes and the common people.  Apocalypse means unveiling.  Jewish Apocalyptic writers used images of cataclysmic proportions to describe the end of days.   The Christian Book of Revelation, The Apocalypse of John, shows the influence Jewish apocalyptic literature.  The messiah described as the Son of Man, a term used by Jesus to describe himself, is first found in the Prophecy of Daniel  7:13-14.  Daniel  Chapters 7 to 12 date from 2nd century BCE at the time of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid emperor, Antiochus Epiphanies, about 160 BCE. The other aspect of Apocalyptic literature is that is psuedopigraphal (falsely attributed to someone) and/or apocryphal (not accepted into the canon of Scripture.  While most scholars believe Daniel 7 - 12 is psuedipigraphal (Daniel probably did not write any of the prophecy attributed to him), it is included in the canon of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The style of Daniel's prophecy is very similar to other apocalyptic prophesies written during the same period--The Book of Enoch (2nd century), The Book of Jubilees (anonymous, 105 BCE) and The Testimony of the Twelve Patriarchs.  The influence of Enoch on John's Apocalypse is unmistakable. Early Christians into the 2nd century CE believed Enoch was Scripture, notably among them, Justin Martyr. References to Enoch are found in 2 Peter 2:4-5 and Jude 6 and 14 (14, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones, see Enoch 40:1).

The mythology of Genesis 6:1-4 is the puzzling account about the Sons of God who lusted after the daughters of men, so they took them as wives and had children by them, children who became a race of giants, Nephilim.  No one knows what was the intent of this ancient legend, but the Jews of Jesus' time and the early Christian church (2 Peter and Jude) were convinced that the Sons of God were fallen angels who lusted after and then married women.  Enoch's prophecy was the full account of their fall, their influence on humans and their final judgment.  Of course, the story is preposterous to the intelligent reader.  The Apostle Paul, a highly educated man, would not have believed such a story. But those were the kinds of things people believed two thousand years ago.

Enoch's prophecy is also clear that hell is a place of burning fire where the fallen angels (Gen. 6:1-5) will burn in a place where there are columns of fire.  The fallen angels became demons who taught people how to sin and commit all manner of evil.  Sexual lust is depicted as the greatest of all evils as it was the temptation that led the angels of rebel against God.

Of course there are many other Jewish influences on Christianity.  Apocalyptic literature is only one. Jesus was a Jew who advocated adherence to the Laws of Moses.  He stated that he was sent to the people of Israel.  In Mark's account the gospel of Jesus was very clear--repent for the kingdom of God is soon to appear.  The early Christian church was Jewish, comprised of the more Pharisaic persuasion of Judaism. They accepted Jesus as the Messiah, he would return in their lifetimes to establish the restored Kingdom of David.  While they accepted Jesus they also believed the Jewish faith should continue with the temple in Jerusalem as the focal point of worship and atonement for sin.  They did not recognize Jesus' death as a sacrificial atonement for sin, but a necessary step for resurrection and restoration.

Cathedral in the Sky

I chose Cathedral in the Sky is a metaphor, an elaborate and ostentatious edifice constructed over centuries by many generations that represents the composition of the Hebrew Scriptures and Judaism with the New Testament and Christianity.  While cathedrals in all of their beauty, intricacy and grandeur are real structures to be admired, the Judeo-Christian religion, while intricate, involved and grand, is, non-the-less, false, an illusion because it is not what it claims to be and leads people to believe what it not true.

Of course, not everything is false. Myth is often built upon the scaffold of historic events.  The nation of Israel had a history, many things written about Israel actually occurred.  But many oral legends, many of them pure myth, were presented as historical facts.

Cathedral in the Sky is the title of the book I have been working on for two years (beginning in the fall of 2012). The blog will reveal some of the work without quoting any chapters.  The central thesis will show that neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the New Testament can be relied upon as inerrant or infallible.  The documents in both were written by deeply religious persons in times when life was explained in terms of a supernatural world of gods, angels and demons. Many of them (perhaps even most of them) were sincere, they believed they were speaking in behalf of God.  The spiritual claims of one generation were pass on to the next.  Jesus and his apostles inherited a tradition and a law they were convinced came from God.  The apostles and the early church added Jesus as the Messiah, then Jesus, God in the flesh. The early church assembled the New Testament and passed that onto us.

All the Jewish writers of the Hebrew histories, the prophets, the priests, the scribes, the Jewish sages, Jesus, the Apostles, the early church fathers, the commentators, theologians, historians, kings and emperors have all inherited what they passed on to us--adding, subtracting, editing, refining into theology, handing to us an interpretation of reality that entirely false, while some moral platitudes are valuable but only because they express human wisdom.  It is an amazing and elaborate illusion, authenticated only by its antiquity, the sheer number of its followers and the fear to question its authority.

However, The Cathedral in the Sky is not real, it has no foundation.  It exists only in the collective imaginations of people.  It is a Cathedral in the Sky whose foundation continues to fall away while people in vain continue to build it. It is part of our history and always will be.  It is part of our evolution as human beings.