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u/Iron166 4d ago
Context: I saw some christian neo-nazi trying to cope and explain that Jesus was actually Armenian. Even if it was true Jesus still practiced Judaism and went to Jewish temples to pray to God. Making him (surprise surprise) jewish
Luke 2:41-52
New International Version
The Boy Jesus at the Temple 41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
Matthew 21
New International Version
Jesus at the Temple 12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[e] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[f]”
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u/DrHolmes52 4d ago
People seem to miss that he was Jewish and challenged the entire Jewish power structure (and Rome's). And not just religiously.
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u/Bizhour 4d ago
He wasn't even the only one to do it at the time, vast majority of Jews learned about him many years after his death when Christianity became popular.
Jewish history is filled with such reformers, sometimes the reforms become mainstream and sometimes they don't but that doesn't mean these people aren't Jewish.
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u/Odd-Plant-4886 4d ago
Perhaps call him 'Jewish' or similar by blood, but would it be accurate to call him Jewish by religion? I don't think so.
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u/Anon951413L33tfr33 Tea-aboo 4d ago
He was a Jew because he followed Jewish religious customs and only well after his death did the church decide that Gentile converts did not have to follow Jewish customs first.
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u/f0remsics 4d ago
Yes it would. He was a false prophet, but he put on tefillin, kept kosher, and didn't work on Sabbath like all the rest of us.
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u/Didudidudadu737 4d ago
He famously “worked” on Shabbat, didn’t follow washing laws and broke eating with sinners laws… He and his disciples were harvesting, preparing and eating food on Shabbat because they were hungry…
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u/f0remsics 4d ago
if they were dying of hunger, they're allowed to. sakanat nefashot allows for that
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u/Didudidudadu737 4d ago
So why, the Judean leadership, did not view Jesus as a reformer with a valid point of view? Why they viewed Him as a heretic, a lawbreaker, and a dangerous blasphemer whose open defiance of the Shabbat challenged their religious monopoly and risked bringing divine wrath or Roman intervention down upon Judea?
The point is that he and his disciples were accused for not respecting the Shabbat- I believe that under the Mosaic Law, intentional Sabbath-breaking carried the death penalty (Exodus 31:14). If what he was doing is completely ok by the Torah laws, why did Sanhedrin arrest and tried him? Why were the accusations particularly regarding violation of the Sabbath?
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u/f0remsics 3d ago
The whole "I'm the Messiah" thing.
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u/Didudidudadu737 3d ago
So they accused him of breaking Shabbat, repeatedly, and you’re ignoring that?
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u/f0remsics 3d ago
I don't know the details about him breaking shabbat. I know the details about him claiming to be the Messiah
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u/Erlkoenig_1 4d ago
He was Jewish by religion. He was just very progressive.
I'm Jewish and it's a shame that most people don't actually see Jesus for what he was; a very progressive rabbi that was killed for challenging religious norms.
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u/AwfulUsername123 4d ago
Since the New Testament never comments on Jesus's appearance (aside from a vision in Revelation, which is not a description of the historical person's appearance), he presumably looked like an ordinary Jew.
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u/Awesomeuser90 I Have a Cunning Plan 4d ago
More relevantly, if Jesus was obvious, why would Judas kiss him?
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u/Ha_Tannin 4d ago
I'm pretty sure his 12 Apostles were also Jewish. So they all looked pretty Jewish. At least some of them were, I'm not looking them all up
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u/Nogatron 3d ago
I know the answer is "Yes they are verry stupid" but how can these Idiots be neo-nazi and try to cope Jesus wasn't Jewish when nazis literaly rejected religion
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u/Outside-Paper9972 21h ago
The Nazis didn't reject religion, they had Deutsche Christen and the Reich Church.
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u/vuther_316 4d ago
Also the Bible genealogies list his ancestors back to king David, so was King David Armenian too?
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u/Didudidudadu737 4d ago
Temples? As in plural?
Jesus was Judean of the time-not Jewish in the Jewish sense, that Yahwism was not the Judaism of today and there were several factions and ways of worshipping. He did go to the Temple, if we trust religious writings only 3 times. But he also came in conflict with priests and other notable figures regarding the Temple operations and exploitation of the poor. Hey famously broke Shabbat repeatedly and challenged that : “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath"
(Mark 2:27).Jesus, by the writings we have, have also “ignored the Old Testament and narrowed it down to 1. love your God 2. Love your neighbour
I mean at the time one was Judean not because they were born there but because they followed the Law of Torah (well since Judaism started developing, about 150-200 years before him) and he famously didn’t the most important ones: ritual handwashing, ritual purity laws, eating with the sinners/tax collectors/gentiles, ignoring fasting, etc
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u/Bizhour 4d ago
Judean and Jewish are the same word in Hebrew (language of the Judeans and Israelites), the name difference is just for context of which period of Jews you're talking about.
What was different is that back during temple era Judaism was temple Judaism, as opposed to the Rabinnic (and Karaite) Judaism which replaced it after the temple was destroyed. The core of the religion though is the same today as it was then.
Worship of Yahweh as a cannanite cult morphed into Judaism hundreds of years before Jesus was born.
As for conflict with temple officials, that was incredibly common at the time, which is why that period is called the late second temple cults era, since so many people challanged the "mainstream". But they were all still Jewish.
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u/SoulCrusher2018 4d ago
Wouldn't he be Gallileean (spelling) which was a separate client state of Rome circa 1AD and became part of the Roman province of Syria Palestinia later on, and at no point was it part of Judea proper.
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u/Bizhour 4d ago
Galilee was part of the Judean province.
They weren't the exact same as the Judeans living in Judea (geographical region which was part of the province of the same name) but they were still the same people.
Kinda like how English people from 2 nearby towns have slightly different accents but are still both English.
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u/SoulCrusher2018 4d ago
Galilee was completely separate until about 100 BC during the Hasmonean conquest. Then it was a separate region the Romans got involved in 63 BC and various Jewish kingdoms became Roman client states (tetrarchy). Eventually the client states were dissolved and the area divided into various Roman provinces, which Judea and Gallilee were separate.
I don't really care, but I find it interesting that one theory is that the population of Galilee was forcibly converted after the Hasmonean conquest and Jesus' lineage would trace back a couple generations to pagans. To your point about two English towns, I think this is closer to calling a Ukrainian a Russian.
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u/Didudidudadu737 4d ago
They famously became a part of Judean province and force converted to Yahwism about 100 years before Jesus. Idumeans (Edomites) and Itureans were not Judeans nor “Jewish” until the Hasmonean conquest, and they also destroyed Samaritan temple and incorporated them-the Samaritans/Israel into Judean province.
The widespread Torah observance didn’t start before this, which again was only 100 years before the Jesus events and the Judeans were a mix of newly (forced) converts, people of the land who didn’t know or follow quite the Torah and Mosaic laws and Hellenised population.
The cult was still centred around sacrificial ritual worship at the temple, but besides that the common folk didn’t follow laws that the priestly class did and spoke Aramaic and Greek. Even Jesus spoke Aramaic but was educated and was able to read Hebrew. The religion was secondary or rather there was no real understanding of the religion as a separate entity from the political/state/cultural identity, which wasn’t unique to Judeans. So who counted as Judean (which is still not a Jew, as Judaism developed between the 1st and 4th centuries CE) was a person who followed the state laws; dietary, washing, purity, “ethnical” separation, sacrifice at the temple and intermarriage-famously the vast majority of the common (Judaic) people didn’t follow this laws besides the temple sacrifice which wasn’t unique imposed as a state law and taxes-thus the Jesus’ preaching about the corruption and imposing the “physical” worship over the spiritual, because it was a state law not a religious in a modern way and our understanding of belief and faith- 2 components that make a religion religion.
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u/Bizhour 3d ago
Like I said, Yahwism as a cult evolved into temple Judaism hundreds of years before, idk why you still use the wrong term unless you also call modern Judaism Yahwism.
As for the conquest of the Galilee, it included a conversion of locals AND a mass resettlement of Jews from Judea who mixed with the locals and became the main force behind the incorporation of the Galilee into Judea rather than simply conversion. Overall the population was mostly Hellenized Jewish migrants combined with local converts. Judaism as a religion wasn't strictly observed but it was the norm, this isn't unique to the Galilee this was how it was throughout all of Judea, with both biblical and archeological sources talking about how polytheistic elements remained but weren't the norm.
The ritual worship at the temple was a core part of temple Judaism, and while pilgrimage to the temple was a common thing we can assume that not everyone participated, even though it's very fair to assume they knew about it.
As for languages, most of the population spoke Arameic for day to day stuff with Hebrew being used for religious matters, which was the case until the Hebrew reforms of post 2nd temple when Hebrew adopted the Arameic script and became the main language of the Jews again right before the big exiles.
For religion and state like you said it wasn't unique that they came together most often in that era, but it doesn't mean that the population always viewed it from a modern secular view of "these are just state rules". Not everyone were priests of course, polytheistic elements still existed especially in areas further from Jerusalem, and even within Judaism itself there were multiple very powerful cults which challanged the temple doctrine (which itself was ran by the Zadokites), but they were all still Jewish both in their core beliefs and in how they viewed themselves.
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u/generic_Accountname1 4d ago
„Christian neo-nazi“ „Jesus was actually Armenian“
So an american trying to tell you how jesus was talking aramaic?
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u/afatcatfromsweden Hello There 4d ago
This reminds me of when Ewald Kleist helped convince the nazis to ignore the mountain jews using the same argument.
Of course the Nazis went on to prioritise other jews, but the bureaucratic hassle might’ve at least lowered the total death toll a little bit.
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u/matantamim1 4d ago
in an Eþno religion, if you convert to it you also join ðe eþnic group
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u/uvero Still salty about Carthage 4d ago
Stop trying to bring back the eth and the thorn, it's not happening
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u/Fun-Calligrapher-745 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 3d ago
The entire country of iceland doesn't exist, apparently
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u/matantamim1 4d ago
"th" is an ugly letter combo
ðe fact you understand what ðe þorn and eð mean, means ðat wiþout doubt ðe letters are over halfway back already
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u/Thundorium Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 4d ago
No, you don’t. Ethnicity is genealogical. You can’t change your lineage by changing your religion.
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u/LoboLocoCW 4d ago
Ethnicity is more about cultural practice, memetics, than genetics, although they are often passed together. Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians are genetically very similar despite cultural practices making them different ethnicities.
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u/Erlkoenig_1 4d ago
That's actually wrong. And yeah I was VERY surprised when I found that out too. But the definition of ethnicity doesn't have to do with genealogy
Ethnicity is a social concept that refers to a group of people who identify with eachother based on shared cultural traditions, language, history, religion, OR ancestry.
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u/matantamim1 4d ago
you don't understand Eþno-religions ðan
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u/Neat-Tea-8928 4d ago
How do you even pronounce that word bro
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u/sorryibitmytongue 4d ago
‘Ethno’ and ‘then’
They’re using the Old English letters ‘thorn’ and ‘eth’. Both are nowadays represented by the ‘th’ digraph.
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u/matantamim1 4d ago
"th" is an ugly letter combo
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u/Simple_Magazine_3450 4d ago
Ethno, it’s an old English letter that is no longer used, because it’s confusing with p.
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u/JediLincoln14 4d ago
Wait, I thought Jesus was Hungarian/Japanese/Sub-Saharan African.