"Jews are not enemies of the Church" by Catholic Prof. John Lamont

Why the Jews Are Not the Enemies of the Church

(Excerpts) from a March 6, 2014 essay by 

BY DR. JOHN LAMONT

Homiletic and Pastoral Review (Catholic priests' journal)

http://www.hprweb.com/2014/03/why-the-jews-are-not-the-enemies-of-the-church/

With replies by Michael Hoffman

author of Judaism Discovered and Judaism's Strange Gods

Lamont's more egregious claims are in boldface, Hoffman's replies are in  blue:

Lamont: The reason why Rabbinic Jews are not enemies of the Church can be put briefly. Such Jews do not seek to...prevent non-Jewish Christians from exercising their faith. They only refuse to become Christians themselves, which does not suffice to make them “enemies” of the Church....

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Hoffman: Notice his qualification: non-Jewish Christians are not prevented. Apparently he doesn't object to interdiction of "Jewish Christians."

Moreover, Christian missionary evangelism to Judaic persons in the Israeli state is banned and the Talmud requires the destruction of the New Testament. Judaic groups across the spectrum from Right to Left oppose the Kingship of Christ in the United States and Europe and are principal forces in the dilution and emasculation of Christianity into a toothless simulacra and an adjunct of Zionism.

In Ashkenazi Judaism Rabbi Moses Maimonides is the chief authority on halacha (law). Maimonides rules that where it is politic to do so and the Jews will not get the blame, then Christians are to be killed whenever possible. Maimonides states that Christianity constitutes idol worship (worship of Jesus of Nazareth as God). According to the Noahide laws of the Talmud, the penalty for idol worship is death.

Orthodox Judaism is implacably opposed to true Christianity. Judaism’s hateful, ritual curse on Christians, which has echoed perpetually down the corridors of time since at least the days of Rabbi Gamaliel, continues in our time. The unrelenting hostility which Orthodox Judaism harbors for western civilization, which it ritually curses as malkhut zadon can be discovered in the Birkat Ha’Minim synagogue invocation as documented in Revisionist History newsletter no. 70, "The Rabbinic Curse on Christians."

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Lamont: St. Paul’s statement in 1 Thess 2:14-16: “For you, brothers, have become imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you suffer the same things from your compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and persecuted us; they do not please God, and are opposed to everyone, trying to prevent us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved, thus constantly filling up the measure of their sins. But the wrath of God has finally begun to come upon them.” Ennemond argues that since this passage describes the Jews as adversaries of all men, it follows that they are adversaries of the Church.

...These passages cannot, however, be understood as applying to all Jews. The term “adversary,” that is used by St. Paul, is applied to the Jews who sought to prevent the first Christians from preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. It is this attempt to prevent the preaching of the Gospel that constitutes the Jews as “enemies” of all men in St. Paul’s eyes since they are trying to prevent the message of salvation from reaching the rest of the human race. Since Rabbinic Jews make no effort to prevent the preaching of the Gospel to Gentiles, and the founders of Rabbinic Judaism lived some time after the death of Christ, these condemnations cannot be applied to them.

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Hoffman: notice that St. Paul does not limit himself solely to the charge of preventing Christians from preaching the Gospel. He also states that the Jews "killed both the Lord Jesus, and the prophets.” 

Dr. Lamont repeats his nonsense about rabbinic Jews making no effort to prevent the preaching of the Gospel. I have video footage of Christian missionaries harassed and their headquarters burned in the Israeli state.I suggest that Lamont travel to Tel Aviv, stand on a street corner there with a large crucifix in his hand, preach the true Gospel, declare Jesus the true Messiah of the Jews, and see what happens. 

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Lamont: This is why there are very few references to Christ and Christianity in the Talmud, and those references that exist are brief and inaccurate. They are scurrilous and abusive, but they make no reference to Christ’s claims to divinity or messianic status

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Hoffman: Here the author displays abysmal ignorance. The Talmud says Christ worshipped a brick and led all of Israel astray; does the Messiah do that? It also states that he lusted after a serving girl, that he was conceived when His whorish Mother Mary was menstruating during an adulterous tryst.  The Talmud also states that Our Lord is in hell boiling in hot excrement. It states that Jesus got what he deserved when He was killed.

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The claim that Rabbinic Jews work to deny the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is, therefore, misleading. They deny it themselves, and seek to prevent Jews from accepting it...

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Hoffman: Of course on this basis alone this makes them enemies of Christ and His Church. Denying that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the Son of God is the New Testament's definition of an Antichrist. Preventing millions of Jewish souls from receiving Christ is Satanic.

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Additional falsehoods peddled by John Lamont:

 As for the claim that it is a new religion, the first point to be made is that much of the Talmud is not really religious in character at all, but is essentially a code of civil law that covers such things as inheritances, commercial transactions, and criminal law. This code is justified by the claim that it was all received by Moses from God on Mount Sinai. However, it is really a legal code devised by rabbis to provide a basis for the Jewish community after the destruction of the Jewish state. It is a good legal code by the standards of the 2nd to 5th centuries, when it was devised. For example, it differs from the Roman law, which was codified over the same period, in that it allows no role to torture in juridical processes—a form of investigation that Roman law made compulsory. As a legal code, the Talmud is largely a new development; but, it is not an intrinsically religious development. In religious matters, as noted above, the Talmud is an attempt to preserve the beliefs and practices of the scribes and Pharisees (this statement is true and it constitutes  an indictment of the Talmud - Hoffman) of the latter part of the Second Temple era (the era from 530 B.C. to 70 A.D., when the second Jewish Temple was in existence). It contains some inaccuracies and expansions of these beliefs and practices, but not enough to constitute Rabbinic Judaism as a new religion

It should be mentioned that Kabbalah is popular among Rabbinic Jews, which is a form of Gnosticism, which is not compatible with monotheism. It can thus rightly be described as a new religion that differs from the belief of Jews prior to the time of Christ. It is, however, a medieval development that is not part of Rabbinic Judaism as such. 

Readers may wish to consult Dr. Lamont's article in its entirety rather than Hoffman's excerpts alone:

http://www.hprweb.com/2014/03/why-the-jews-are-not-the-enemies-of-the-church/

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For further research:

The author indulges in drivel and outrageous disinformation which readers of Michael Hoffman's books Judaism Discovered and Judaism's Strange Gods can easily refute. Hoffman's blog, “The Truth About the Talmud" also contains important information in easily accessible form. The book The Talmud Tested by Prof. Alexander McCaul of Kings College London, is a landmark in Christian apologetics and demonstrates incontrovertibly that "rabbinic Judaism" (the Judaism of the Pharisees which is Orthodox Judaism today) is not the religion of the Old Testament.

Furthermore, in Revisionist History Newsletter no. 70 Hoffman offers the latest documentation of the heretofore largely unknown extent of the Judaic-Islamic alliance in the early Middle Ages, and the fact that Orthodox Judaism does not regard Islam as negatively as it does the religion of Jesus Christ.

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