An agnostic raised as a Christian asked:

“So what is Christianity? .... It seems that it is a cult based on Judaism which is based on a game of Chinese whispers. “

I chafe at opinions like this for more than one reason. First, our "game of whispers" would be a terrible disappointment at any party. Texts of the Torah found at Qumran that are 2400 years old are identical to the ones we use today. There were some variant forms of the Torah found there too, a few scrolls, these were kept respectfully but separately from the standard Text, as they contained God's names, but were clearly not used for study purposes or for prayer. Linguistic analyses of the Texts at Qumran show that they were clearly copies of scrolls far older. In other words the Torah has come down to us virtually unchanged since we do not know exactly when, perhaps indeed since the time it was given to us.

The primary reason that I chafe at this type of contention is that the failings of Christianity get dumped on us. The pagans who tried to be more Jewish than the Jews failed. It's not our problem or fault.

The hard, physical, historical proof is that this did not happen with the Torah. It was very lovingly, and very carefully preserved word for word, generation after generation.

S/he said: “The 2 earliest bibles, housed at the British Museum, contain books which do not appear in the current version of the new testament. Also missing from the current version of the new testament are the Gospels of Thomas and Mary, also the writings of Judas and Pontius Pilate.

I am not a student of the New Testament, but I will tell you some things that I do know about the translation to Greek and then to Latin.

To make matters very simple, Hebrew, though used today as a spoken language, and there were many considered opinions not to use Hebrew as the official language of Israel for this very reason, BTW; is not an ordinary language. Hebrew is a meditative technique. The stories in the Torah are constructed in such as way that they begin at a person's base line of consciousness and bring the reader higher and higher in consciousness until the Torah becomes one pronunciation of the Divine Name. Obviously this is wholly untranslatable. In other words, other than the original Hebrew version what is thought of as "The Old Testament" by Gentiles is not the same book we study at all. Neither can studying it in any language other than Hebrew affect the mind and Soul as learning it in Hebrew can. I cannot elaborate any further.

S/he said: “The genealogy of christ is tracked back to Abraham, who was a Jew and was also the father of Islam. "

The beginning of the New Testament with the lineage was intended to prove to the readers that Yeshu was the Messiah. Learned Jews didn't go for the bait. Only the ignorant were impressed by the all-too-obvious attempt at establishing credentials.

Avraham is not properly a "Jew". He was called the first Hebrew. The first person who is called Israel was Avraham's grandson Ya'akov. Ya'akov's son, Yehuda is progenitor of the largest remaining tribe of the People of Israel. From his name comes the Hebrew word Yehudi, meaning Jew, from this the etymological development to Jude, Juive, Jew, etc. If you call someone from the tribe of Menashe Yehudi he will rightfully say to you: "I am not a Yehudi. I am Menashi." Same would properly go for the members of other tribes. A person from the tribe of Dan (like the Ethiopians) are Dani, not Yehudi.

Christianity began as a tolerated Jewish cult, considered problematic and peculiar, but they were not put outside the pale until they betrayed us. The Christians were not excommunicated because they believed in Yeshu being the Messiah, contrary to popular belief. They were excommunicated because during the Roman seizure of Jerusalem the Christians removed the church to Pella, in modern Jordan, leaving their brethren to be attacked by the Romans. They also provided information about the Jewish people to our enemies that made us easier prey. For their generalized treachery they were excommunicated. Christianity started out as a Jewish cult. Their errant faith eroded their ability to keep the most basic tenet - loyalty to the Jewish People - and they were formally excommunicated. We utterly disavow them since.

This is true for the Christian texts. You must not assume a similar changing of the Texts on the Jews' part. Archeological evidence proves that we remained loyal to our Text and did not revise it.

S/he said: So, the Bible, which all Christianity is based on, is a book of stories which have been embellished through generations, written down and altered by scribes and then copied and changed by editors and publishers who add or subtract what they like. It seems that Christians have put their faith into a book which is about as truthful in it's content as the stories told down at the pub on a Saturday night. “

Speak for thee, not for we.

I was given a translation assignment recently by a magazine. Deceptively easy, I found the project quite difficult actually. It was a short, humorous piece written in simple Hebrew. The difficulty was that I was told to write a verbatim translation. However, as the piece was a humorous piece that involved a scene between two Moroccan Jewish families writing the piece verbatim would have been impossible. American English, and certainly British English, is completely unequipped to reflect the nuances of Israeli Moroccan Jewish humor. I wanted some of the ethnic flavor of the humor to remain in the translation. I managed to translate the piece, but it took quite a bit of thought. I'm telling you this so that you will understand how completely impossible it is for Torah to have ever been translated and understood by foreign peoples.

There are two problems with Christianity. The first begins with the founder. Yeshu wanted to do away with all impurity in the world. This is not a Jewish "take" on the world. We know that while goodness is the basis of all civilization it is insipid. Evil is far more creative, powerful and downright fun than good is. Jews know that evil, just like good, is created by God and is subsumed under the power of God. There is nothing in creation that is not God or that can usurp God's power. Satan is an angel in God's service, not an enemy of God. The thrust of Judaism is for each individual to harness the "evil" in himself or herself for the service of God, in that way the good in a person is empowered and enlivened with the strength, vigor, creativity and fun of evil.We know that if a person attempts to destroy evil it will return with a vengeance. The history of Christianity, fraught with every cruelty and perversion, proves this is true. The behavior of the Christian clergy proves this is true. Supposedly striving to be only good they have committed the grossest evils. A balanced Soul, then, is a person who has harnessed his or her evil inclination to serve God, not the one who tries to destroy it, which is impossible in any event because it is God who creates the evil inclination to serve God. How shall we destroy it?

The second problem is with the Christians themselves: Christians will begin to grow into spiritual honesty and maturity when they can admit the fact that they arrogated a religion that was not theirs and then, seeing that they had bitten off a spiritual bite they couldn't chew, attempted to distort the teachings into something they could spiritually handle and failed. When I see Christians trying to improve on Judaism, and of course badmouthing and trying to superseded Judaism, my reaction is always: Get a spiritual life.

I am sorry, but I have to be frank: Christianity is untenable and based on a very shaky foundation. It will never get you where you want to go spiritually because it is founded on theft, misunderstanding, translation of the untranslatable and baseless hatred for the People who hold the true faith and won't let go no matter what you do to us or say about us.