Did Jesus accept the Jewish god?

By M.S.N. Menon

No, but this has remained a well-kept secret to this day! Jesus, an advocate of ahimsa, could never have accepted the violence and cruelty of Yahweh, the god of the Jews. He ridiculed the idea of punishing god.

Karen Armstrong, in her book The History of God, says of the Jewish god: “This is a brutal, partial and murderous god, a god of war. He has little compassion for anyone but the Jews. He is simply a tribal deity.”

Had it not been for St. Paul, it is said, the Christian community would have remained a mere Jewish sect. But Paul, an eminent Greek scholar, was above to propagate the Christian faith in the Greek and Roman empires.

The Christians could not explain their religion to the Romans, for Christianity was neither a religion in the Roman sense nor a philosophy. Now wonder, there were few takers for Christianity in Rome except the slaves. The Roman aristocracy spurned it. The Roman emperors suppressed it.

But violence was natural to the people of the region. They had a saying: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!” Jesus rejected it.

Even the Greek gods were sanguinary and violent and often deceitful, jealous, vindictive and dissolute. But the Jewish god was the most notorious among gods of violence and cruelty. Even Baal, the Cannanite god, was a shade less cruel.

To the Romans, Christianity was a barbarous creed. They saw Yahweh as a ferocious, primitive deity, who interfered in human affairs in an irrational manner.

There is the story of one Marcion (100 AD-165AD), who set up a rival church in Rome. He collected a huge following. He asked: how could a good god create a world manifestly full of evil and pain? Marcion was appalled by the history of Yahweh and his cruelty.

What is more, Jesus had revealed that another god existed. He had not been mentioned in Jewish scriptures. The other god—the god of Jesus—was simply gentle and good, merciful and forgiving.

People wanted to turn away from the world of Yahweh and the Old Testament to the world of Jesus, but this was denied by the church.

The popularity of Marcion showed that had touched upon a common anxiety. At one time, it seemed as if he was going to found a new church.

The people of Rome did not know what to make of the Jewish god. Indeed, most people in the Greeco-Roman empire found this Biblical deity unworthy of worship.

Thus, again in 170 AD, the Pagan philosopher Celsus condemned the concept of “chosen people” and the proprietorial way in which the Christians saw their god. He tells them that god is universal—i.e. god is of all men.

By the 2ndc AD, some cultured Pagans were able to adapt Yahweh to the Greeco-Roman ideals. Thus Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD), who had perhaps his education in Athens, created a “quite” god.

Then, how did Yahweh survive in Christianity? Because Constantine, the Roman emperor, got himself converted to Christianity (he believed that Yahweh was responsible for his victory in a war) and made Christianity the religion of the Roman empire. With that all opposition died down. Under the Holy Roman Empire, criticism of Christianity became felony. It could even invite the punishment of death.

Not this alone. In the face of the Islamic onslaught on the Christian world from the 6th c onwards, the Christians were forced to close ranks. With that Europe truly entered the Dark Ages. I am reminded here of a similar experience in India. In the face of the Islamic onslaught, says Nehru, India withdrew into a shell. For nearly a thousand years, both Europe and Indian remained in the Dark Age.

A thousand years lapsed before Christians began to talk again of the atrocities of the purgatory and hell, presided over by Yahweh (Jehovah).

After the Age of Reason and the Renaissance, religion was almost out of fashion. But it came back to Europe because political tyrants were in need of the unscrupulous priests.

Throughout the Christian world, there is a quiet revolution taking place—a revolution that seeks to marginalise the Jewish god—and to place Jesus and his doctrines at the centre of Christian life. This is welcome. Then what becomes of the Ten Commandments? “They are mere lumber,” says George Bernard Shaw.

Karen Armstrong says even atheism is better than having the Jewish god. “A god who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd,” she says. She goes on: “A god who interferes with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant…An atheism that rejects such a god is amply justified,” she says.

The New Age movement in America rejects the Jewish god. It believes, like Adi Shankara, in Monism—in a god without form. The problem is: the Christian faith has to be lived. But can the rampant consumerist society of the West live the Christian life? This is the crux of the Christian predicament.