Page 180 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg
P. 180
The Track of the Jew through the Ages
Do not be tempted by Greek wisdom,
Which bears no fruit, only blooms at the most,
And their content? "The universe not created,
There from the very beginning, enveloped in myths",
Listen greedily to their words. You return
With prattle in your mouth, your heart empty,
unsatisfied,
So I look for songs on the street of God,
And have avoided the token of false wisdom. 379
The Jew cannot work with myths and symbols, and if he
adopts them it becomes the driest magic (see the Zohar, the
Kabbalah), that is why Christ and his teaching of the heavenly
kingdom that is "within us" is repugnant to him, here he feels the
strongest assault on his being.
How the Talmud speaks about Jesus we have seen, but it is
important to emphasise that even Jewish writers who do not think
in a strictly Talmudic manner do not have different views on this
point.
Of course one does not always meet hatred, in any case not
a prominent one, but always a complete lack of understanding with
regard to the personality of Jesus.
They all take the standpoint that Christ is not at all the
bringer of a new morality but has only taken over the doctrines of
380
the great Sanhedrin, namely HillePs, of its leaders; the differences
between him and the Pharisees are later malevolent stories, etc. All
the reserves of Jewish scholarship are mustered to this goal.
Some examples from the vast literature. Rabbi Josef
Eschelbacher thinks: "As for the doctrine of God, so also for the
precepts of justice, morality, and the love of one's neighbour the
basic source of Christianity was and has remained the Old
379
Divan [des Castiliers Abu 7 Hassan Juda Ha-levi], tr. A. Geiger [Breslau, 1851].
[Judah Halevi (1 075-1 141) was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher.]
380
[The Sanhedrin was the supreme court or "council" of ancient Israel. Hillel the
Elder (ca. 110 B.C.-A.D.10) was an important Jewish religious leader whose
descendants traditionally served as heads (Nasi) of the Sanhedrin.]
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