B. U. G. S.

The Catholic Church has long used the term “Orthodox” as the title of the Eastern Church. At the same time it insisted that only Rome was Orthodox. The Catholic Church uses the term the Episcopal Church to describe the established faith in England.

But the term “Episcopal” has only one meaning: a church ruled by bishops. Rome does not recognize Anglican bishops as bishops: “all the surplices on earth cannot make an Episcopal minister into a priest.”

Rome refers to Jews as Jews. Yet they also declare that they, not the Jews, are the real inheritors of the Old Testament. One of the two horns on every bishop’s hat represents the Old Testament, that HE is true inheritor of Moses.

It seems obvious that the six million people in the Roman Empire who called themselves “Jews” were overwhelmingly Hellenic Jews. Before Jesus, a group of seventy-something scholars wrote THEIR Old Testament, but it was NOT a translation. It was declared THE CANON.

The Hellenic Jewish historian Josephus of whom a lot of us have heard would have gone ballistic if he heard Luther declare that only writings in Hebrew were the real Old Testament. That would be like telling a religious Catholic that only the Episcopal Church has real bishops.

As Christianity grew, the Hellenic Jews disappeared from history. There are two possible explanations of this. Either the giant Hellenic Jewish community accepted Christ, the Greek word for Messiah, as THEIR Messiah, or the Roman Empire killed six million Jews.

Either the Hellenic Jews became Christian or, for once, the Holocaust Deniers were successful.

That latter is worth thinking about. Looking at the tens of billions of dollars the last Holocaust brought in, this newly discovered Roman one could be a bonanza.

But, like Orthodox and Episcopalian, “Jews” is just a convenient title. The Jews are no more THE Jews than the Pope using the term Orthodox makes HIS orthodoxy invalid.

This is no quibble. Remember that the State of Israel and all the tens of billions of dollars and American blood shed for it rests on the undisputed claim that Israel belongs to JEWS, and that what we call Jews are actually the only Chosen People.

No, this is definitely NOT a quibble.

This “quibble” would have been of terrific importance to Luther and Calvin. In their time the people who called themselves “Jews” were the ones historically used Hebrew. In fact, the Early Church would have specifically denied that the group which did NOT accept Jesus — the GREEK version of Joshua — as their Messiah, were still Jews at all.

There were a number of attempts to remove the entire Old Testament from Holy Scriptures in the new church. But the new church hung solidly to its claim to be the ONLY inheritors of what was once called Judaism.

By the time of Luther “Jews” were called Jews. So Luther removed the entire middle of Bible from his canon because of this mistake in terminology. The Fundamentalist branch of Christianity insists that America fight and die for Israel because they do not know about this “quibble.”

Because of their ovine ignorance of history, our so-called “Christians” do not know that, in the eyes of early Christians, Judaism was a religion waiting for the coming of the Messiah. In the eyes of the early church, Jews CEASED to EXIST — Paul says that specifically.

If this is a quibble Krakatoa was a light tremor.