Who is a Christian? Who is a Jew?

Who is a Christian?

Determining who is a Christian is a somewhat daunting task. Liturgical Christians, such as the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Copts, would say a Christian is a baptized person, or at least someone actively seeking baptism. Non-liturgical Christians, like Baptists or Anabaptists, would say becoming a Christian is merely a matter of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour. Anyone who proclaims with their mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believes in their heart that He is risen from the dead, is a Christian. 

Since the act of baptism is understood to deliver the grace to believe in Christ, a Christian is defined by by belief, and to a certain extent, or for certain groups, by baptism. "Right belief" (aka orthodoxy) is paramount, and the extent of right belief is not limited to the deity of Christ. It also includes proper understanding of the Trinity. So, even though Mormons agree that Jesus Christ is God, Mormons are not considered Christians because Mormons insist that the Trinity is made up of three SEPARATE persons, while Christianity teaches the Trinity is made up of three DISTINCT persons. 

The difference between "separate" and "distinct" is important. Each member of a family is separate from every other member. Even conjoined (aka Siamese) twins each have separate body parts that only one of the two twins control. Distinct, on the other hand, is like the facets of a diamond: each facet is distinct, but all the facets together are aspects of the same diamond.

In a similar (but not identical) way, the One Divine Nature is completely owned by each of the Three Persons, each Person of the Godhead owning the one Divine Nature completely unto Himself, the Godhead is not shared. Yet there is only one Godhead. It is not clear how this works, Christians are just required to believe that it does. In this sense, understanding the Trinity is similar in some aspects to understanding quantum mechanics or gravity - we don't know how it works, we just know that it does.

Who is a Jew?

If defining a Christian is hard, now let's try defining who is a Jew. Being Jewish is neither a matter of belief nor a matter of praxis. Christians have a hard time wrapping their heads around this:

It is important to note that being a Jew has nothing to do with what you believe or what you do. A person born to non-Jewish parents who has not undergone the formal process of conversion but who believes everything that Orthodox Jews believe and observes every law and custom of Judaism is still a non-Jew, even in the eyes of the most liberal movements of Judaism, and a person born to a Jewish mother who is an atheist and never practices the Jewish religion is still a Jew, even in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox. In this sense, Judaism is more like a nationality than like other religions, and being Jewish is like a citizenship.

Unfortunately, being Jewish is not identifiably genetic either: 

Genetic markers cannot determine Jewish descent: 

It becomes overwhelmingly clear that although Jews maintained detectable vertical genetic continuity along generations of socio-religious-cultural relationship, also intensive horizontal genetic relations were maintained both between Jewish communities and with the gentile surrounding. Thus, in spite of considerable consanguinity, there is no Jewish genotype to identify. 

And since it is not genetically identifiable, being Jewish is most assuredly not a tribal or national identity: 

The refusal of the [Israeli] Supreme Court to accept the plea of 21 citizens [most of them well-known veterans of movements of civil rights], to recognize them as belonging to an Israeli nation […] is another expression of the failure of the civil struggle for the image of Israel. Sixty-five years after its establishment the authorities do not recognize an Israeli nation, disconnected of a religious definition or ethnic belonging. […] 

In their decision, the judges deny the existence of an Israeli nation, and assert that it has not been proven that an Israeli nationality disconnected of a religious definition or ethnic belonging exists...  

...Judge Haim Cohen responded: “the definition must be given by every single Jew for himself. If a person says of himself that he is a Jew, for me he is a Jew. This is his autonomy and nobody can decide for him or instead of him whether he is a Jew or not. There is no need in definitions.”  

Now, it is clearly the case that many (but not all) Jews have distinct DNA links to historical groups. The Cohen priesthood lineage, for example, is interesting:

The results of the analysis of the Y chromosome markers of the Cohanim and non-Cohanim were indeed significant. A particular marker, (YAP-) was detected in 98.5 percent of the Cohanim, and in a significantly lower percentage of non-Cohanim (emphasis added).

FURTHER CONFIRMATION

In a second study, Dr. Skorecki and associates gathered more DNA samples and expanded their selection of Y chromosome markers. Solidifying their hypothesis of the Cohens' common ancestor, they found that a particular array of six chromosomal markers was found in 97 of the 106 Cohens tested.

But, notice, the DNA linkage is not perfect. There are a significant number of gentile men who bear the Cohen gene, yet are not identified by anyone as being Jewish. There are Jewish men who claim to be descended from the ancient priestly caste, they are even recognized as being related to that caste, yet  they have no DNA marker to indicate that they actually are. Genetic tests may show that two-fifths of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from four women, but that means three-fifths are not. And it says nothing at all about Mizhraic, Sephardic, Ethiopian, or Cochin Jews, the last two of which trace their own lines via patrilineal descent, not matrilineal descent. 

Insofar as anyone can genetically link back to ancient populations, the group with the BEST claim to that connection are the Lebanese, who are over 90% genetically identical to the ancient Canaanites, the original indigenous population.

Despite this, Israel still uses genetic testing to determine if someone is Jewish.

In February of this year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, reported that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the peak religious authority in the country, had been requesting DNA tests to confirm Jewishness before issuing some marriage licenses.

But, this farcical "genetic Judaism" is no more or less reliable than the claim to be genetically a Viking: 

Vikings as a group don't exist anymore.

However, they have descendants all over Europe and the Scandinavian countries.

In many Scandinavian countries, many people dedicate their lives to living like the Vikings did long ago. 

There are Viking villages in Norway and Sweden where people recreate the Viking way of life.

So, we have the odd situation wherein there seems to be no clear definition of what constitutes being Jewish, nor any authority who can clarify it. There are merely a lot of people who recreate what they understand to be the ancient Jewish way of life, and on that basis, claim to be Jewish.

But there is not even any real agreement on what constitutes that way of life. For instance, Jews who accept the Talmud as authoritative will necessarily follow the teachings of one or more of the rabbis whose commentary makes up the Talmud. Such Jews will insist that anyone born of a Jewish mother is Jewish, regardless of belief, because that's what they read in the Talmud. Of course, this opens the question: which Talmud? For there are actually two versions, and no clear way to determine which is authoritative: the Babylonian Talmud or the Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud? 

The differences are significant. For instance, the Jerusalem Talmud says, "“Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world." while the Babylonian Talmud says, ""Whoever destroys a soul from Israel, the Scripture considers it as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life from Israel, the Scripture considers it as if he saved an entire world." One version of the Talmud says saving anyone's life is like saving the whole world, the other says that only the saving of a Jewish life is like saving the whole world. Which one is authoritative?

And once we ask which Talmud is authoritative, we must first ask if either Talmud should be accepted as authoritative at all. For instance, Karaite Jews reject the Talmud, the authority of rabbis and they also reject the idea of matrilineal descent. For Karaites, whose chief authority is the Torah, and who hold rabbinic commentary in no special esteem, the patrilineal descent determines whether you are Jewish. That is, if you are born of a Jewish father, you are Jewish. For the Karaites, how Jewish your mother is does not enter into it. And, increasingly, Reform Judaism sees the matter the same way. In fact, 25% of Israeli Jews say patrilineal descent is enough. “Reform Judaism accepts a child… as Jewish without a formal conversion if he attends a Jewish school and follows a course of study leading to confirmation.”

But, as indicated above, the problem does not just concern an individual's belief system, it also concerns his actions. Jews cannot define Judaism according to action for a very simple reason. From Abraham through the destruction of the First Temple, Jews always performed ritual liturgical sacrifice. But the Temple was destroyed in 586 BC, rebuilt in 516 BC, then destroyed for the second time in 70 AD and never rebuilt. 

As a result, because they do not have a Temple, Jews have not performed sacrifice for nearly two millennia. Synagogues were only created after the destruction of the First Temple, probably around the 3rd or 4th century BC. The rabbinical system probably started around the 2nd century AD, after the destruction of the Second Temple. Neither Abraham, nor Isaac nor Jacob, nor any of their progeny up through the 4th century BC had ever heard of a rabbi or a synagogue. The synagogue-rabbi system was invented out of whole cloth in order to deal with the loss of the First Temple and the exile to Babylon. This system has persisted for nearly two millennia because of the loss of the Second Temple in the 1st century (70 AD), but only for Jews who came from the Babylonian Exile. Jews who departed Israel prior to that event, such as the Ethiopian and Cochin Jewish communities, and who therefore never lived in Babylon, do not recognize rabbis. The Ethiopians do not use synagogues, Cochin Jewish use of the synagogue was very late, no more than 400 years old. 

But even if we were to grant an older provenance to these fabricated social structures, the problems do not end. For instance, it is quite clear the original rabbinic system from the 2nd century AD had no place for women rabbis, no place for homosexual activity, no place for atheism at all. But the modern rabbi-synagogue permutations accept all of these things. The ancient Hebrew faith insisted on the mikveh and circumcision, but modern Reform Judaism does not. The loss of liturgical sacrifice and Temple worship, the addition of rabbis, synagogues, women rabbis, homosexual activity and atheism, the discarding of the mikveh and circumcision, all attest to a single fact: clearly, no Jew today does what any of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob's sons did for the first millennium of Hebrew faith. 

And if we grant all of this, it gets worse still. If we restrict our understanding of who is Jewish just to the religious elements listed in the previous paragraphs, even the Jewish faith is disappearing. Religious Jews, both in Israel and the US, are increasingly abandoning their faith, with more than half of children in Orthodox families simply walking away. 

94 percent say a person is Jewish even if they work on Shabbat, 89 percent say a Jew can be strongly critical of Israel, and 68 percent say Jews don’t have to believe in God, but an astonishing 34 percent say a person is still Jewish even if they decide to believe in Jesus as the messiah.

In fact, for most Jews, their relationships with their pets matter more than their relationship with God:

Religion is not central to the lives of most U.S. Jews. Even Jews by religion are much less likely than Christian adults to consider religion to be very important in their lives (28% vs. 57%). And among Jews as a whole, far more report that they find meaning in spending time with their families or friends, engaging with arts and literature, being outdoors, and pursuing their education or careers than find meaning in their religious faith. Twice as many Jewish Americans say they derive a great deal of meaning and fulfillment from spending time with pets as say the same about their religion.

So, being Jewish has nothing to do with anything specifically Jewish. Being liberal is sufficient to "be Jewish":

For the non-Orthodox, though, the top slots went to remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice and equality, and being intellectually curious. These last two, especially, identify Judaism with liberal values of intellectual independence and commitment to social justice. 

 Consequently, the number of irreligious Jews is growing:

While the Orthodox appear to be proportionally growing, Pew found even more Jews becoming more secular and unaffiliated. “Jews of no religion” — Pew’s term for people who identify as Jews and do things they see as Jewish but do not identify with the religious parts — in 2020 made up 27 percent of all U.S. Jews, up from 22 percent in 2013.

LARPing as Culture

So, given that Judaism is not based on belief, Judaism is not based on activity, Judaism is not based on genetics, and Judaism is not based on a genetically demonstrable tribal membership... what does it mean to claim that one is Jewish? It's not clear that the claim means anything at all. 

It would seem today's Jews are primarily made up of 21st century socialists who like to LARP as a group of ancient monotheists. Some people dress up and LARP being Civil War soldiers, others LARP being Vikings. Today's "Jews" like to LARP as ancient monotheists. But they only LARP the pieces of monotheism they like, and they leave the rest out. As we have seen, most "Jews" substitute medieval commentary (rabbinical Talmudic commentary) for the mess and fuss of animal sacrifice on a bloody altar. Modern "Jews" replace rabbis with women. They replace belief in God with national socialism or atheism. They replace circumcision with... well... nothingness. Action, belief, genetics - every bit turns out to be unnecessary to modern Judaism. Since at least the invention of Reform and Conservative Judaism in the late 1800s, there has been literally nothing left to distinguish a Jew from a non-Jew except an arbitrary, unprovable claim. 

In this sense, modern Judaism is not very different from Gerald Gardner's 1950's pretended "revival" of Wicca. Gardner famously invented artificial liturgy and rituals to justify his lifestyle, then attributed his ritualistic inventions to an ancient religious system (Wicca) of which he had no knowledge and to which he had no real connection. A similar dynamic seems to constitute modern Judaism. Instead of a 1950's Gardner, the "Jews" have two ancient Gardner prototypes: one group inventing both the rabbi-Talmud system in the first century or so after Christ's death, and the synagogue system in the century or so preceding Christ's birth, while a other groups invented Torah-based non-Talmudic systems like the Karaites, around 500-700 AD, or the Ethiopian Jews who may have originated anywhere from the time of Moses to somewhere in the first century AD, but who trace their Jewish lineage by the Torah-approved patrilineal descent, not by the rabbi-inspired Talmudic matrilineal descent. 

And this multiple splintering left no central authority, no group or person who can definitively determine who is or is not a Jew. There is no universally agreed upon test for who is or is not a Jew. Distinguishing a "Jew" from a "gentile" is apparently like distinguishing pornography from art: we are supposed to know it when we see it. This is, perhaps, why so many Jews support the transgender movement and the LGBTQ+ system - it is similarly self-referential LARPing by people who desperately want an identity that will allow them to distinguish themselves from the rest of the world. 

The irony is that, due to this complete lack of coherence, a Jew can actually profess the Shahada without fear of being cast out from "his" extremely ill-defined group. As Rambam points out, Jews who recite the Shahada, the Muslim testimony of faith, are still Jews. The Shahadah is but a meaningless phrase used by a religion (Islam) that is not considered by the Jews to be idolatrous. In comparison, most Jews tend to agree that belief in Christ is idolatrous, and therefore prohibited.

But there's nothing in particular in the Islamic profession of faith that violates Jewish faith. As one Jew stated, "Personally, I am quite happy to say the shahadah in full sincerity but in the belief that prophet Muhammad was a gentile prophet and that Judaism and İslam can coexist as two approaches to the same truth. At the core, our religion is the same and I have no issue with İslamic claims to that effect."

Rabbi Fayyumi, who influenced Maimonedes, held a very positive opinion of the Koran:

"He analyzes the words of the Koran carefully, to such an extent that in the second chapter of his book he finds mystical meaning in the Shahada (the Muslim declaration of faith). 

A substantial part of the sixth chapter of Fayyumi’s book is dedicated to analysis and interpretation of the Koran. He concludes from this analysis that Islam is not directed to the Jewish people; rather, it is intended to provide religion and faith to the nations. Its purpose is not to abolish the Torah―just the opposite: the Koran confirms the obligation of the Jewish people to keep the Torah. At the same time, Fayyumi asserts that the Koran teaches that there are additional revelations to other nations, revelations that obligate them to their own religious systems."

Once a Jew recites the Shahadah in Arabic, his Muslim cousins will leave him alone. Islam isn't interested in a biological cleansing, Muslims just want theological agreement. Like the Protestants, such agreement can come through a simple statement.

Given these facts, it is hard not to conclude that modern Judaism is no more Jewish than modern Scandinavians living in a Viking village are Vikings. But to state this fact aloud brings only opprobrium. Like the man who hates being told that he cannot be a woman, no matter what dress he wears, the modern Jew hates being told he can recite the Shahadah. The fact that his own Hebraic self-identification system is too incoherent to render him "special" before the nations is a discovery too wrenching to be countenanced.

The little voice that nags at him, that tells him he is not actually special or specially protected by God, is silenced with fighter jets, tanks and the welcome hatred of another "special group" chosen by Allah. "If Islam hates us." the modern Jew reasons, "we must truly be special. Our suffering has special meaning. Our victimhood shows our superiority."

And so, in the final analysis, both the Jews and the Muslims take on the Christian motto of the innocent, suffering victim, albeit sans Christ. The final irony is, because they will not say the Shahadah, Jews must live a life of Christian suffering. And thus do they bring salvation to the nations, as they imitate the crucified Christ in their protestations, even if not in their violent response to the supremely violent hatred their Islamic cousins have for them.

TLDR

Could someone please tell me who a Jew is?

• It isn't theological belief. You can be an atheist and be a Jew.
• It isn't belief in rabbis, synagogues or the Talmud. Ethiopian Jews don't accept any of those things.
• It isn't matrilineal descent. Ethiopian and Cochin Jews trace their own lines via patrilineal descent, not matrilineal descent. Matrilineal descent is a post-Christian invention.
• It isn't circumcision. Reform Jews don't require circumcision in order to be a Reform Jew. Muslims require circumcision of both men and women. Does that mean Muslims are actually Jews? Or are Muslims more Jewish than Reform Jews?
• It isn't DNA. There is no DNA test that distinguishes a Jew from a non-Jew.
• None of the "Jews" in the last 2000 years have offered sacrifice in the Temple.
• No "Jew" in the last 2000 years does or believes any of the things Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did and believed.
• There is no correspondence between modern "Jewish" belief or practice vs pre-Christian Jewish belief and practice.

If there is no way to really define who a Jew is, then "anti-Semitism" is a shibboleth.

Jews and Abortion

Jews predominate in America's abortion industry. The determination of whether a doctor will provide abortion can be predicted based on the doctor's religious views:

• 40.2 percent of Jewish doctors say yes, compared with
• 1.2 percent of Evangelical Protestants
• 9 percent of Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox
• 10.1 percent of Non-Evangelical Protestants
• 20 percent of Hindus
• 26.5 percent of doctors who said they had no religious affiliation

To determine how many abortionists each religious group would generate, we need to know what percentage of all doctors hold the various religious views represented above:

Religious Affiliation of Physicians Compared with the U.S. Population

Affiliation	Physicians, % (N)	U.S. Population,*% (N)	P (χ2)
Protestant	38.8 (427)	54.7 (800)	.00
Catholic	21.7 (244)	26.7 (370)	.01
Jewish	14.1 (181)	1.9 (26)	.00
None†	10.6 (117)	13.3 (198)	.06
Hindu	5.3 (53)	0.2 (1)	.00
Muslim	2.7 (33)	0.5 (5)	.00
Orthodox	2.2 (22)	0.5 (7)	.00
Mormon	1.7 (17)	0.4 (6)	.00
Buddhist	1.2 (13)	0.2 (3)	.01
Other	1.8 (18)	1.6 (21)	.70
Total	100 (1125)	100 (1437)

Now, we take those numbers and multiply across to see how many abortionists each religious faith would produce. As you can see from the table below, if we had 100 doctors in front of us, only 16 of those doctors would be willing to perform an abortion at all.

Religion	% of all doctors	% willing to abort children	abortionists/100
Jewish	14.1	40.2	5.7
Protestant	38.8	11.3 (1.2+10.1)	4.4
R. Catholic/EO	23.9 (21.7+2.2)	9	2.2
Hindu	5.3	20	1.1
No religion	10.6	26.5	2.8
Muslim	2.7	no data	-
Mormon	1.7	no data	-
Buddhist	1.2	no data	-
Other	1.8	no data	-
TOTAL	100		16

Of those 100 doctors, about 14 of them would be Jewish. Of those 14 Jewish doctors, between 5 and 6 of them would be willing to perform abortions. Roughly 39 of the doctors would be Protestant, between 4 and 5 of them would be willing to perform abortions. 24 would label themselves Catholic, but only 2 of them would murder a child in the womb. 

Jews only make up 2% of the population, but of the 16 abortionists produced in our cozy little group of 100 doctors, roughly 35% of the abortionists would be Jewish.

On the other hand, Protestants make up 55% of the population, but supply just 27% of the abortionists. Catholics and Eastern Orthodox together make up roughly 27% of the population but only make up 13% of the abortionists. 

TLDR: Christians are 80% of the population, and supply 40% of the abortionists. Jews are 2% of the population and supply 35% of the abortionists. Their 2% of the population supplies nearly as many abortionists as the Christian 80%.

So, let's stop pretending there is such a thing as "Judeo-Christian" morality. "Judeo-Christian morality" is a chimera, a fantasy, a unicorn, it is a Protestant idea that is less than two centuries old. There is no such thing. It doesn't exist. 

Update:

Israeli Jews also have no problem with involuntarily sterilizing minority populations they don't like. 52% of Israeli Jews see African migrants as a cancer on their nation, and Israel was involuntarily sterilizing Ethiopian Jews for years.

Now, this is what Israeli Jews do to their fellow Jews who happen to be the wrong color skin. What do you think they might do to the non-Jews that live among them?

Columbus Discovered America

It is possible that Africans discovered South America before Columbus. It is certain the Viking discovered North America before Columbus. But only Columbus truly discovered the New World.

None of the Vikings, none of the Africans, not a single person prior to Columbus, successfully incorporated the knowledge of the Americas into the culture from which they came.

If you stumble over a chair in the dark, you haven't discovered a chair. You just figured out a new way to stub your toe.

Columbus stumbled over the chair in the dark, figured out that it was a chair, communicated to the rest of the world that chairs existed, and then incorporated into his own culture a new culture that used chairs as a matter of course. Columbus discovered the New World. Everyone else just stubbed their toes in the dark.

Best Evidence for Historical Jesus

 This is a very good answer

Matthew Hogan

Author has 333 answers and 1.1M answer viewsUpdated Aug 5

Probably the best single-piece of evidence is the work of the Roman Emperor Julian, aka Julian the Apostate (b. 330 C.E. -- d. 363 C.E.) and the logical inferences one can derive from his argumentation.

Flavius Claudius Iulianus (aka “Julian the Apostate”), reigned 361–363 C.E.[A.D.]

While there is a lot of other very very good multiple sets of evidence and sources and logical deductions for the life of a religious figure Jesus of Nazareth circa 30 C.E., Julian may have put forth the best single go-to item of evidence for there having been an actual historic Jesus of Nazareth.

Here’s why.

Julian as Emperor rejected the newly dominant religion of Christianity and fiercely sought to discredit and to reverse its influence. So he wrote and/or commissioned in his own name an entire treatise rather savagely disparaging Christianity and its founder Jesus, with intent to discredit the religion, using the extant historic record from the first century to his time.

But in doing so he never disputed Jesus’ historical existence and even somewhat separately offered to prove it.

Julian wrote a book (Contra Galileos) which is not challenged as to its authenticity though it only survives in quotings and copies of major portions of it by Christian adversaries, as well as smaller fragments.

In the book, he ridicules Christian believers and the alleged miracles, divine status, and wisdom of Jesus that are claimed for him by Christians. But there is no assertion or even hint made by Julian that Jesus the individual never was.

Why is that important & powerful evidence?

SLIGHT EDIT: Because he was a lot closer in time to the time of Jesus than today, living before the barbarian ravagings of Rome and the final collapse of the western empire, and he had access to and power over all the still extant rumors, hard record-keeping, and broad literature of the Roman Empire in which Jesus was said to have lived and die under, including all the earlier texts often cited separately and together by all sides of the debate on Jesus’ existence today. And he had every motive to use any evidence or even credible speculation he could find that was or had been going around in the few centuries during and after Jesus’ alleged lifetime, and which would throw doubt on the real existence of a Jesus of Nazareth.

All he had to do, if non-existence of the man was indeed the case, was to assert the absence of likely official records or accounts or reports about Jesus. Or just cite the presence of significant contemporary arguments, “buzz’ and primary reports questioning Jesus’s existence, or even pass along viable credible rumors. Such steps would fire a powerful solid direct arrow of doubt at the new religion whose discrediting was a major, even central, issue for him.

And he had the resources to do that effort. He was, after all, the Emperor of a still-unified Roman Empire which had not yet seen the heavy destructions of later centuries. He had access to imperial documentation, archives, great ancient libraries and so forth.

But when addressing and challenging his own Christian contemporaries, he ridicules Jesus as a charlatan and as someone of little greatness or worth or note, but he doesn’t even remotely question Jesus’ factual existence.

At one point, this ancient Roman anti-Christian researcher-writer even offers to independently prove the opposite: that Jesus was real:

Even Jesus, who was proclaimed among you, was one of Caesar's subjects. And if you do not believe me I will prove it a little later, or rather let me simply assert it now. However, you admit that with his father and mother he registered his name in the governorship of Cyrenius.

….

Further, he ridicules Jesus and Paul for being insignificant, and rather dishonest, preachers, and Julian then explicitly employs and endorses the process of critically reviewing and assessing contemporary documentary evidence specifically in order to ascertain the status and impact of Jesus and early followers. That indicates he was conscious of, and favorable towards, using methods of contemporary document research in disputes about Jesus. And that is precisely what modern skeptics argue as the vital methodology to use for analysis today —though with less documentation available to today’s disputants.

But when doing this method, Julian doesn’t at all conclude or contend from it that Jesus or Paul was fictional: he merely says the two were just fools from the backwater misleading other ignorant lower-class fools and of course— as he expresses further down below in the spirit of 4th century patriarchy — those gullible womenfolk.

Yet Jesus, who won over the least worthy of you, has been known by name for but little more than three hundred years: and during his lifetime he accomplished nothing worth hearing of, unless anyone thinks that to heal crooked and blind men and to exorcise those who were possessed by evil demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany can be classed as a mighty achievement.

Julian thus argues that Jesus and Paul were obscure and of very low impact, and not likely to have created much of a buzz in their day. But he does not contend even slightly that they were imaginary.

As for purity of life you do not know whether he so much as mentioned it; but you [Christians of Julian’s era] emulate the rages and the bitterness of the Jews [towards idols], overturning temples and altars, in the same fashion as yourselves. But these are rather your own doings; for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands.

Julian thus argues here that they (Jesus and Paul) were actual independent people distinct even from their own movement and who may have spoken differently from their followers.

In short, they were real people. The movement didn’t invent them or their original ideas. They had agency, as it is termed today.

Julian: The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius. But if you can show me that one of these men is mentioned by the well-known writers of that time, – these events happened in the reign of Tiberius or Claudius, – then you may consider that I speak falsely about all matters.

Notice here that to discredit Jesus and Paul, he is again not questioning they existed (“these events happened” not “were alleged to have happened”}. And it clearly would have been to his advantage to make such an argument if it had any credible legs to stand on from the Roman documentation available to an emperor or even just by general logic.)

Instead, in terms of Jesus (and Paul’s) presence in history, Julian is just arguing that they were no big deal and wouldn’t rate, didn’t rate, and shouldn’t have rated any contemporary first-century chatter.

The fact that he confidently challenges his rival Christians regarding the literature of Jesus’ time suggests a solid broad familiarity with the documentation about Jesus from Jesus’ day. And Julian had far more primary literature and records available to him then than we do now. Someone would not make such a dare unless he’d done heavy homework in the documentation and literature of Jesus’ time.

Julian’s work is therefore a hostile, informed, ancient authority supporting the argument that a mere lack of very much immediate contemporary biographical evidence - a big obsessional point made by modern “skeptics”/”mythicists” - is not likely to be proof of non-existence.

Rather it is just strong proof or evidence of the relative obscurity of the historic Jesus (and Paul) in their original time.

Now, there are elsewhere in the fuller record of history, outside and before Julian, heaps and piles of corroborating primary and secondary evidence over time and/or supportive logic about the existence of a historical figure named Jesus (see some other Quora answers on this, for starters).

But perhaps the “best evidence”, meaning evidence found conveniently in one place, may simply be that the guy who had:

a) full access to the best independent primary record evidence of and argumentation about Jesus, and

b) full access to the same ancient sources that are kicked around in modern day debate (with far more material and information still extant in his day), and

c) every motivation to use against Christianity and its founder(s) whatever facts and arguments he could find in all that,

nevertheless he — the very capable and very anti-Christian Emperor Julian — never once, as far as we can tell, brought up the question of whether the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth existed at all.

Further, he even somewhat offers at one point to independently prove that Jesus DID exist historically, and in a specific personal legal status as a subject of Caesar.

Julian’s work is one-stop shopping for the entire historical Jesus evidence debate. His commentary and analysis is from someone who had access to far far more primary and contemporary reams of data and stacks of argumentation than we have today.

And who had the motive to use any and all credible negative arguments he could find there about Jesus of Nazareth.

If anyone would have had knowledge of any coherent total or partial usable or valid evidence, or even valid speculation, of Jesus of Nazareth’s historical non-existence in the ancient Roman world, and would have the overriding interest and broad resources to broadcast that fact loud and clear in a published work, it would have been Emperor Julian.

But he never went there.

When Jews Helped Kill Christians

The status of Jews in the Roman Empire:

The Theodosian Code shows us that those immunities which had been granted to the Jews by the pagan  emperors, and which had made them a privileged class dwelling within the Roman world, were continued by the Christian emperors.5 At the opening of the fourth century Jews were classed as Roman citizens and enjoyed all the advantages of civic status. They were in every economic stratum of the empire; many were rich, many were poor. Some were merchants, others artisans, and still others farmers. They had their own cult organizations called synagogues. If any Jew did not belong to such an organization he had to pay the Roman government poll tax and sacrifice to the Roman gods. Only a Jew within the synagogal organizations could escape these munera (civic duties).... The main Jewish privilege was that Jews could not be forced to perform any task which violated their religious convictions. This meant that they were exempt from the crushing burden of the decurionate, that responsibility for the collection of imperial taxes which was gradually impoverishing the middle class of the Roman world. And Jews were neither compelled to celebrate state worship nor forced to attend pagan temples

The Jewish Chronicle notes this about the Muslim invasion of Spain:

"Within a century of the death of Mohammad, in 632, Muslim armies had conquered almost the whole of the world where Jews lived, from Spain eastward across North Africa and the Middle East as far as the eastern frontier of Iran and beyond. Almost all the Jews in the world were now ruled by Islam. This new situation transformed Jewish existence. Their fortunes changed in legal, demographic, social, religious, political, geographical, economic, linguistic and cultural terms - all for the better."

The Times of Israel notes this about the Holodomor, Stalin's starvation of the Ukraine:

In 2009, Ukraine’s security service released a document naming those who it alleged to have been responsible for the Holodomor. Most of the names on the list were Jewish.

Christians in Israel claim attacks by Jews go unpunished:

 Christians in the Holy Land say they’re under attack as Israeli-Palestinian violence soars

Church officials and Christian leaders in Israel blame a minority of Jewish extremists for the attacks. They say Israel’s far-right government has fostered a culture of impunity.

Why Zionism Requires Dead Jews

 In the Muslim-Israeli conflict, both sides want a war of annihilation, but not for the reason you think.

Israel was created based on the existence of a mountain of Jewish corpses. The rational for the secular state of Israel has ALWAYS been that it will provide sanctuary for the world's Jews, providing a place of protection against the ceaseless persecution Jews face. From Israel's point of view, the worst possible thing the world could do is to STOP persecuting Jews. If no one paid any attention to Jews, if there was no persecution, Israel would not need to exist. It would have no purpose. Jews could live anywhere, they wouldn't have to live in Israel. And let's face it, most people don't really want to live in a desert. It's not like the Middle East has a lot of creature comforts. So, Israel is necessarily the Al Sharpton of nations. It REQUIRES persecution in order to justify its position on the political stage. If there is no persecution, then Tawana Brawley-like persecution must be manufactured. If Hamas and Hezbollah did not exist, Israel's government would have to create it, or Israel's politicians would not get paid. Other nations, like the US, are fine with this set-up, because every money transfer is an opportunity for graft. As long as someone is getting "aid" from another country, that country's politicians get paid. War in the Middle East is a win-win for everyone involved. The Tree of Israel must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of dead Jews. In his heart, every Zionist knows this is true. And this isn't the first time this has happened. As Solzhenitzyn noted, this is a constant in Jewish history:

Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, spent much of his life in Soviet prison camps, enduring persecution when he wrote about his experiences. He is currently in frail health, but in an interview given last month he said that Russia must come to terms with the Stalinist and revolutionary genocides - and that its Jewish population should be as offended at their own role in the purges as they are at the Soviet power that also persecuted them. "My book was directed to empathise with the thoughts, feelings and the psychology of the Jews - their spiritual component," he said. "I have never made general conclusions about a people. I will always differentiate between layers of Jews. One layer rushed headfirst to the revolution. Another, to the contrary, was trying to stand back. The Jewish subject for a long time was considered prohibited. Zhabotinsky [a Jewish writer] once said that the best service our Russian friends give to us is never to speak aloud about us."

Solzhenitsyn also noted:

“We cannot state that all Jews are Bolsheviks. But – without Jews there would never have been Bolshevism. For a Jew nothing is more insulting than the truth. The blood-maddened Jewish terrorists had murdered 66,000,000 in Russia from 1918 – 1957.” 

This is why Netanyahu deliberately funded Hamas

The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace. "There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground."

This is why Israel's response to the Hamas attack was non-existent for several hours:

According to US intelligence, Hamas was surprised by the slowness of the Israeli security forces's response to the offensive by its armed commandos.

Just as the demand for racists far exceeds the supply, the demand for anti-Semites is insatiable. It may be worthwhile to note that for years, Netanyahu actually funded Hamas. And after all of that funding, isn't it amazing that Egyptian, US and Israeli intelligence all warned the Netanyahu government about an impending Hamas attack, yet not only was nothing done, the Israeli military didn't respond for several hours? Israel needs persecution, conflict, and most of all, dead Jews. It cannot long survive without them.

Every politician in the world wants his cut of the graft that this principle creates. There's a reason Kamala Harris' daughter raises money for Hamas while Kamala herself campaigns to send US taxpayer money to Israel.

That's why Trump's "no war" policies were literally considered criminal in international circles. By not encouraging war, by not participating in military action, Trump stole income from thousands of politicians world-wide and from the corporations that profit from conflict. Trump MUST go to jail for this unconscionable crime against humanity, humanity being defined as "those who profit from international money transfers."

Israel needs dead Jews. The world's politicians and corporations need war.

Who can deny them what they need?

Palestine or Israel?

 We know from Herodotus the term "Palestine" first appeared in the 5th century BC in his history. 

In the early 2nd century AD, the term "Syria Palaestina" (literally, "Palestinian Syria") was given to the Roman province of Judaea around the time the Romans crushed the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD. By 390 AD, during the Byzantine period, the imperial province of Syria Palaestina was then reorganized into Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda and Palaestina Salutaris. The Muslims continued to use those names for the regions through the Ottoman Empire and its demise. 

The idea that this area should be called "Israel" is a post-WW II conceit. It has not been called that for over 2000 years, as this graphic from a 1947 issue of National Geographic shows:

So, the idea that the area should be called "Israel" instead of "Palestine" is very much like the Protestant idea that Protestant theology can be traced all the way back to Christ's time - it's absurd on its face, but that doesn't keep people from trying to defend it and promote it.

As for Judaism somehow being unique, there is no evidence of that. Hinduism is older than Judaism and can lay claim to being BETTER and more obviously chosen by God precisely because they prospered.  Zoroastrianism is older than Judaism and much more deeply persecuted than the Jews ever were, so if persecution is the standard, then Zoroastrianism wins. Parsis can also be viewed as a distinct tribe.

Judaism isn't unique, it's prosaic. In fact, it isn't even properly Judaism anymore. Temple sacrifice was wiped out two millennia ago. The rabbi-synagogue system is essentially a new religion pasted into history under the old name, but with no real connection to any of the original faith system. There is no way to look at Reform, Conservative, Orthodox or even Haredi or Karaite and claim that they are practicing a theology anything like Isaac's sons practiced.

As for "tribe", there is literally no way to differentiate a Jew from a non-Jew. There are no distinct genetic markers, no real indications of a tribe, no physical test that differentiates a non-Jew from a Jew. One could make the tribal claim for Hindus as easily as one can for Jews. In terms of belief, the claims for what constitutes Judaism are so wide and varied that there is essentially no common ground left. It's all a chimera, a fantasy.

It's like saying a visit to the Germany pavilion at Epcot Center, Disneyland is identical to being a German living in Munich. At this point, Judaism is nothing but absurd play-acting. Judaism is just a bunch of modern leftists LARPing as ancient monotheists, and doing a piss-poor job of it.

Update:
We should also keep in mind that our idea of what constitutes Israel is not the same as the Jewish idea of what constitutes Israel. 

Similarly, we should remember that just as the Koran requires the Muslims to commit genocide against the Jews, the Torah requires the Jews to commit genocide as well:

"...listen to this lecture by Rabbi Eliyahu Kin, delivered in 2009, on the question: “Why must Jews destroy Amalek?” Let me summarize it for you. The Amalekites deserved their fate because they opposed the will of God. The will of God is good, and opposing the will of God is evil. So exterminating Amalek is good, while saving just one Amalekite, as Saul did, is evil. In fact, since God is good, exterminating Amalek is the expression of his goodness. And since “the best way to love what Hashem (God) loves is to hate what Hashem hates,” hating Amalek is loving God. The reason why the Amalekites hate the Jews is not because the Jews want to exterminate them. “What bothers Amalek is that the Jew believes in mussar, morality, ethics, being good, being nice.” The Amalekites are also evil because they oppose the Torah — in which God orders them to be exterminated. Ultimately, Rabbi Kin summarizes, “we are cruel to Amalek because we need to be. Because that is exactly what they would do to us if they had the chance.” Why? Because Amalek “is a concentration of hatred.” And Jews must hate hatred — except the hatred of God for Amalek, which they must love as an expression of God’s love. "

How Zionists Collaborated With Nazis

Even the Jews know it is true.

Haaretz reports:

"The Zionist Activists Who Collaborated With Nazis, and Were Executed by Jewish Partisans

The Betar movement has ignored a melancholy chapter of its history that occurred in the Vilna ghetto during the Holocaust: the execution by Jews of other Jews who collaborated with the Nazis"

A JStor paper

The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941 (Klaus Polkehn)

Middle East Monitor

Israel’s state archive exposes Zionist efforts to enlist Nazis against Britain (June 22, 2023)

Efforts by Zionist militias to recruit Nazi Germany in the fight against the British Mandate authorities in Palestine have been revealed in newly-released transcripts in the Israel State Archive. The documents, which were released to the public last month, include information on what Haaretz has called the “dark chapter” of Zionist militias’ ties with Nazi Germany. Reporting on the revelations, the Israeli newspaper uncovered shocking details which not only debunk the Zionist propaganda that Palestinians had cooperated with Nazi Germany, but also confirm that some of the founders of Israel believed that it was essential for Zionists to do so.

England's Labour Party Leader

Livingstone said: “I simply said, back in 1933 Hitler’s government signed a deal with the Zionist movement, which would mean that Germany’s Jewish community were moved to what is now Israel.

Livingstone is referring to the Haavarah Agreement. Everything Livingstone claims is verifiable fact. Every bit of it happened. Read Hannah Arendt. 

“When the Zionist movement asked the Nazi Government, would they stop the rabbis doing their sermons in Yiddish and make them do it in Hebrew, he [Hitler] agreed to that. He also passed a law that said only the Zionist flag and the Swastika were the only flags that could be flown in Germany. The SS set up training camps so that German Jews who were going to go there could be trained to cope with a very different sort of country when they got there,” Livingstone claimed.

Testimony of Holocaust Survivors

Here we publish  extracts from Holocaust survivors who oppose historical and recent Israeli policies, in some cases connecting them with those of the Nazis.

“I think Israel is a fascist state today. What else would you call it?" ~‘Holocaust survivor Rene Lichtman “Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. We’ve got to fight back.”’ 24/1/24

The Times of Israel

On quest to clear Kasztner, historian ‘shocked’ to prove Nazi collaboration. By JENNI FRAZER (15 November 2016)

Paul Bogdanor has set out the case against the Hungarian Jew who negotiated with Eichmann, an affair that sparked a deadly scandal in Israel, though that wasn’t his original plan. But for British Jewish historian Paul Bogdanor, his ambition to find material defending the controversial wartime Zionist leader, Rudolf Kasztner, was cruelly thwarted.

Bogdanor was “extremely shocked” to find that everything pointed towards Kasztner’s having been “a collaborator” with the Nazis, and a “betrayer of the Zionist movement and the Jewish people.”

Zionism and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

In his latest book, Francis R. Nicosia returns to and explores in greater detail one of the major topics of his important earlier book, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985): the complex and sometimes symbiotic relationship between German Zionists and the National Socialists...Both Zionists and antisemites rejected the liberal Enlightenment ideal of full Jewish assimilation in their host societies as free and equal citizens, but they did so for very different reasons. However, their differing motives and mutual hostility to each other did not prevent Nazis and Zionists from temporarily collaborating to achieve their respective ends.

Most of Nicosia's thoroughly researched book is devoted to examining how German Zionists tried to gain Nazi cooperation in the Zionist project and how the Nazis tried to use the Zionist movement to achieve their primary aim of creating a judenrein German Reich

...On the basis of copious research in more than two dozen German, Israeli, British, and North American archives, Nicosia confirms the current historical consensus that the Nazis had no plan for systematic genocide before 1941... a scrupulous work of history, not politics, and Nicosia makes no references to the present, except to point out the irony that while anti-Zionism or criticism of the state of Israel in Europe or the United States today is often equated with antisemitism (or viewed as motivated by antisemitism), before 1933 antisemites were more likely to support Zionist aims than to oppose them. 

 Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Lenni Brenner (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983)

...It takes only a small step to move from this kind of thinking to Haganah agent Feivel Polkes’ spying in 1937 for Adolf Eichmann, in the hope of getting the Nazis to further “the realisation of Zionism.”

For the major Zionist organization, the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine overwhelmed all other considerations, including the rescue of Europe’s Jews. After Kristallnacht (November 1938), when the British government proposed that thousands of Jewish children be brought to Great Britain from the continent, David Ben- Gurion told a meeting of Labor Zionists:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative, (p. 149)

In 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being slaughtered, the US Congress finally got around to proposing a rescue commission. Rabbi Stephen Wise, one of American Zionism’s most important spokesmen, “came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it did not mention Palestine.” (p. 242) 

Brenner’s final chapter is about the Stern Gang, a terrorist group that splintered from Begin’s Irgun. In 1941, while still considering themselves part of the Irgun, the Sternists sent a proposal of alliance to the Nazis. “The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich,” the Stern document read, “offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.” It adds that “the NMO [Irgun] is closely related to the totalitarian movements of Europe in its ideology and structure.” (pp. 267-268)

... Yitzhak Shamir, one of the Stern Gang’s leaders, recently served as Israel’s prime minister. Begin honored Stern by putting his portrait on a postage stamp.

Germany’s Never-Ending Guilt Trip

Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the future government of Israel and the official representative of the Zionist Organization (ZO), entered a contractual transactional relationship from 1933 to 1939. In 1952 the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the State of Israel, on behalf of all Jews, signed an agreement that paved the way for Germany’s unconditional support for Israel. No suggestion is being made here that Nazi Germany and the FRG are the same; the FRG assumed responsibilities for the crimes of the Holocaust.

However, both contractual transactional relationships between both countries from 1933 to the present have initiated policies and programs that contributed significantly to the deterioration of German Jewish living conditions in Germany, the transfer of thousands of German Jewish citizens and their assets out of Germany to colonize Palestine, the establishment of Israel in historic Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the allocation of a significant portion of German reparation money for the benefit of Israel instead of the victims of the Holocaust, the strengthening of the Israeli economy and industrial base, and providing Israel with German military technology and equipment to wage wars in the region.

In this article, I will examine and analyze the special, often secret, relationship between Germany and the Zionist mechanization to colonize Palestine, the establishment of Israel in 1948, and the arming of the state with modern weapon platforms that can carry and deliver nuclear weapons. This secret relationship is in clear violation of German law, made possible by creating a universal guilt feeling among Germans for the crime of the Holocaust, and associated with a deliberate lack of public debate and accountability.

If Jews were willing to support FDR, even though they KNEW he was allowing Jews to be murdered, why would their attitude towards the Nazis have been any different?

This deliberate inattention was a stunning confirmation of the low value that the democracies placed on Jewish lives in Nazi-occupied Europe. Both newspapers, though owned by Jews, took their cues from the Roosevelt administration, which deliberately downplayed the announcement of Hitler’s Final Solution by handing it to Rabbi Wise rather than an administration official. For the duration of the war, the government, believing that “rescue through victory” was the only reasonable policy, tried to head off public agitation for special efforts to rescue European Jewry. And for the duration of the war, both newspapers cooperated by burying details of the Holocaust.

Wise, sometimes called the “King of the Jews” because of his leadership of an incredible array of Jewish organizations and umbrella groups, might have been expected to press for rescue efforts and for lifting immigration restrictions on Jewish refugees. But Wise had a close personal relationship with the president (whom he called “boss”) and never attained the independence of judgment to recognize that his hero, despite public expressions of friendship for Jews in general, was acquiescing in the murder of the European Jews. Only a popular grassroots campaign, bypassing the official Jewish leadership, might have overcome the administration’s hostility and the indifference of the mainstream media.