by Steven Shamrak

Not long ago, a non-Jewish friend of mine asked me to view the movie “Passion of Christ” and send him my comments, from a Jewish prospective. While I was watching the movie, I was amazed by enormous disrespect toward not only Jewish traditions, but for the writings of the Christian Bible as well. Mel Gibson’s “director’s creativity” had brought to my mind words like falsification, forgery, distortion and contempt.

While writing the comments for my friend, I took out the book of the New Testament, just to make sure that I was not mistaken about the inaccuracies that I had noticed in the movie. In the process of this review, I stumbled upon John:13 which proves that throughout the history of Christianity, Judas, and as result all Jews, have been suffering the false accusation of treason:

18. I know so well each one of you I chose… “One who eats supper with me will betray me, and this will soon come true. I tell you this now so that when it happens, you will believe in me.” (Why would they need additional proof, in order to believe in him?)

21. “I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.” (Several times in the Christian Bible Jesus predicted his demise!)

26. “It is the one to whom I honour by giving the bread when I dipped in the sauce.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon…

27. Then Jesus told him, “Hurry — do it now” (He had chosen the most trusted of his disciples to perform this daunting task and commanded Judas to go to the Temple authorities immediately.)

28. None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant. (Another reason why Jesus had chosen Judas)

29. Some thought that since Judas was their treasure (the most trusted member), Jesus was telling him to go and pay for the food or give some money to the poor. (None of them had understood their teacher’s plan of self-fulfilling prophecy!)

At the same time it was Peter who denounced his teacher three times. Little wonder, that after he later became the first Christian Pope, he needed to find a scapegoat so that people would not scrutinize his own actions!

Thus, this chapter supports the ideas expressed in the recently published Gospels according to Judah, which the Church excluded from the New Testament, along with the gospels of Thomas and hundreds of other writings. Many questions come to mind: Do most Christians actually read and study their own Bible? If they do, why have they been fostering the hatred of Jews for centuries; a hatred which is based on a false accusation against one out of twelve Jewish disciples against their Jewish teacher.