I. 37. Page 110

Brown’s compares of the accusation that the Christian Scriptures is a book of hate to the anti-Semitic accusation that the Talmud is a book of immorality. This analogy is outrageous. No one who revered the Talmud ever read it as a license to be immoral, but many people who are still considered authorities on the Christian Scriptures read it as a license to hate Jews.

There is another relevant question that must be asked here. The entire purpose of communication is to transport ideas from the mind of the communicator to his intended audience. The words the communicator uses are not the end-goal of the act of communicating. The words are just a means to reach the end-goal. The ultimate purpose of any communication is the ideas that the target audience walks away with. With this information in front of us, we can appreciate why any wise communicator will evaluate the world-view of his or her audience before deciding which words to use to get the message across. If you are speaking to a crowd that is deeply imbued with the principles of the essential equality of all people and the extreme value of human life and you tell them that the Jews are the children of the devil, you could perhaps expect them to reinterpret your words according to the principles that they hold dear (even that is a stretch). But if you are speaking to an audience that never heard of these principles, and you teach them that the Jews are the children of the devil, what message do you expect them to hear?

Now the Christian scriptures are in essence a communication from the first Christian teachers to Christians in all generations. Did the authors of these books have any inkling as to how their words would be understood in future generations? Did these authors have any idea how the mind-set of their intended audience will influence the way their words are understood? If they did, then they were partners to the murderous activities of the Church. If they were myopic, simpleminded people who could not foresee how their words would be understood by the very audience that they were addressing, then how can anyone attach significance and value to their words?

Brown quotes Jesus as saying “love your enemies”. Where does Jesus say anything positive about his own enemies? Where does Jesus acknowledge the moral responsibility to question his authority? After all, if he wasn’t who he claimed he was (which he wasn’t) then obeying him is the most grievous sin against God. Together with the false prophets of history, Jesus could not recognize the simple truth that God desires an honest heart.

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal