Hate Mail

"You're an atheist when it comes to other religions, you don't believe in Zeus or Odin." 

Geesh!  Will you guys get some new lines?  Those are rattier and more frayed than the pea trellis I left up all winter.  Two years back.  

You know something, kid, Christianity not only worships the God of Jews, its central figure was born, lived and died a Jew. When the Romans crucified him, they aren't said to have put a sign over him saying "Jesus of Nazareth King of the Christians" they put one over him saying he was "King of the Jews".   That's what the INRI thing on so many pictures of The Crucifixion is an acronym, it means "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum."  And they might have gotten that right.  I doubt the Roman soldiers given such a job would have been likely to know Hebrew or, perhaps even Greek. 

If you asked Jesus, Peter, John, etc. they'd have all said they were Jews.   Peter, the first Pope was a Jew who I doubt ever would have thought himself otherwise.  I wonder what the other early Popes in the lists, like Pope St. Evaristus who was said to have been the son of Jews ever thought of himself as anything else.   

The History of Josephus tells us about James, the brother of Jesus, one of the named heads, perhaps the head of the earliest community in Jerusalem who is depicted as a Jew who had access to The Temple.  I know the passage in Josephus has been criticized as inauthentic but if that's the case then it's even stronger evidence in my contention because whoever put it there, after Josephus and out of presumably Christian motives depicted James, than who there could have been no higher authority on what the earliest Jesus movement was about, as a Jew. 

Catholics, almost all Christians, worship a Jew as the second person of the Trinity and Catholics should never be allowed to forget that the first Pope, perhaps one or more of the earliest Popes, were Jews who certainly considered themselves as such. And that is confirmed in the dispute Peter and James had with Paul described in Acts. 

Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God, I'd go so far as to include any monotheistic religion and, maybe, even some of those that are officially polytheistic.  For me, the breaking point isn't in counting,  it's in how closely they advocate following the teachings of Jesus. The ones where he said to treat the least among you well, to (at least try hard) to love your enemies and pray for them, to at least be working on that.   After that, the name and the number doesn't matter to me. 

The doctrine of the Trinity was developed in response to a heretical movement that claimed there were two Gods, it was an attempt to not set up three Gods, it was an attempt to philosophically reset the count at one.  I know it's too hard for atheists to get but, really, it was hashed out a long, long time ago.  And believing in that wasn't on the list of ways to get to heaven as set out in the Gospels.  Jesus never even mentioned that you had to think that way.