Claiming Originality – Excerpt from Supplement

IV. 25. Page 216

In this section Brown takes a page out of Jesus’ book, and besmirches Judaism and her teachers.

When Jesus presented his moral teachings to his audience, it was not enough for him to encourage his followers to aim for a higher moral standard. It was important for him to claim that his teaching was original, and that the teachers who preceded him failed to understand some basic moral insights. By doing so, Matthew’s Jesus set the stage for the subsequent teaching of John’s Jesus that the Jews are children of the devil. Eventually, the European people came to believe that the Jewish people are so intimately connected with evil that they fail to appreciate some of the most basic principles of morality.

Brown too is not satisfied to present Jesus’ moral teachings. He finds the need to paint a fictitious…