Affirmations

Judaism and Christianity have long been seen as personally mutually exclusive — you can’t be both. Some are claiming this as a mutual affiliation but are not being accepted into the mainstream of either major world religion. But in a very real historic/anthropological sense neither one would exist without the other.

Devout Jews claim that their lineage back to Abraham of Ur of the Chaldees — as depicted in the Biblical Book of Genesis  — gives them their genealogical heritage to the first historic figure who developed a relationship with the One True God of the Universe — the Self-Existent One — the Great I Am, and that this is the only real connection to God in the world. Conventional Christians claim, on the other hand, that they have a spiritual genealogy through their belief in and acceptance of Jesus the Nazorean Jew of the line of David as their Savior and the One True Son of God — a personal connection that trumps and invalidates all other claims, genealogical or otherwise. Augustine of Hippo, as a pre-Reformation Doctor of the Catholic Church, wrote in his City of God, a founding work of Christian Doctrine, that the stories that follow the Children of Abraham in the Historical Books of the Old Testament — or the Torah, as Jews know it — are pure metaphor as prefigure for the Universal (Catholic) Church which is the true spiritual Israel.

And yet Jesus spoke as if he were just a  Savior and catalyst of the Plan that included the fulfillment of all the Torah and the Prophets had foretold. He came “.. to find that which was lost…” — “seeking only the lost sheep of the  House of Israel.” I explain in my book The Hidden Kingdom how I believe he was referring to what we know as the Lost Tribes of Israel and how this specific mission morphed into seeking “all who would” in general.

But here I just want to point out that — historically speaking — if there had not been an Abraham there would not have been a Jesus — as Christians believe that the coming of the Savior/Messiah as Abraham’s progeny — through whom “the whole world will become blessed”  — was a reward for Abraham believing what God told him — which he alone heard — and for his living his life as if what he had been told was more important than anything else in his human experience. And if there had not been a Christianity the Jews most certainly  would have ceased to exist as a people. I say this because — although Christian factions have persecuted and marginalized Jews since the time of the destruction of the Temple in the first and second Centuries by the Romans — it was strategically placed truly faithful Christian men and women throughout these eons who have risen up at  critical moments to take dangerous political positions and took actions filled with personal risk to make sure that those with malicious intent did not assimilate or obliterate our older brothers from the face of the earth. Many believe — for example — that if it weren’t for the moves that the Southern Baptist President Harry Truman took against the advice of virtually all his advisers and supporters — and even his wife — there would not be a nation of Israel today.

Although we have continued and still continue to try invalidate each other, we cannot help but be each others affirmation.