A Pastoral Response To “Jesus the Jew”

Recently, Dr. Thomas Dalton published an article on the Occidental Observer entitled “Jesus the Jew.” Predictably, he is not a Christian and he expresses his opinion in a fashion that is typical of anti-Christians on the Dissident Right. Which is to say that he is animated more by a dislike for Christianity and Christians more than any concern for the truth. Today I’d like to explore the substance of what he says, then respond to it as best as I can.

The Article

Demographics

First, regarding demographics of Christianity globally, I am not certain what exactly he is getting at. After giving an estimation regarding total population and deriding the theological prowess of the average American, he says this: “The next three largest Christian populations are hardly an honor roll (Brazil, Mexico, and Russia), and the countries that, percentage-wise, are the most Christian, are mostly laughable: East Timor, Armenia, New Guinea, Haiti, and Paraguay, among the Top Ten.” Why is one “hardly an honor roll” and the other “laughable?” Are White countries like Russia and Armenia to be derided for their Christian faith? And if these White countries share the same faith with Hispanic, Black, and Asian countries, shouldn’t that be impressive?

The notion that “brown people believe this, so it is silly” is an absurd one – if in fact that is what Dr. Dalton is getting at. If a Black man says to a White man that a triangle has three sides, do we then reject geometry as nonsense? If a jew says that the sun is too bright to stare at without eye protection, do we burn our retinas out of contempt for the jew? It seems to me that Christianity, spread initially by colonization and missionary efforts, must be pretty darn special to the countries which remained Christian even after foreign pressure was taken off. Seriously, no one is telling Haiti or Paraguay to stay Christian, it is not enforced on them by any ruler and nor is food aid reserved only for Christians. Say what you will about the quality of the Christian life these people are living, or whether they are consistent with the teachings of our Lord, their continued adherence to it demonstrates that Christianity is a properly basic belief set. One does not need to be Thomas Aquinas to understand that Christ died for our sins and rose for our justification, and nor does having a low IQ prevent someone from grasping the basic truth that God loves us and wants us to live forever.

Core Tenets

Dr. Dalton then gives a more or less adequate summary of core Christian beliefs which most, if not all, denominations can agree upon. I would have preferred he merely copied and pasted the Apostles’ Creed and mentioned the Trinity, but we can overlook his less-than-studious approach. After all, he immediately bungles the importance of Bethlehem and Nazareth as applied to Christ’s title. We shouldn’t expect him to be a scholar on these matters, let alone for him to actually study Scripture or argue in good faith. Dr. Dalton is a nonbeliever, and nonbelievers do as they do.

Historicity of Christ

Dr. Dalton leans heavily into the notion that Jesus Christ is a nonexistent figure. His evidence for this is a supposed lack of evidence for the existence of Christ entirely. I’ll get to his justifications for this position in a moment, but let’s make something very clear first. The core of his argument is that a “lack of evidence” means Christ did not exist; does this apply to anything else? If we look upon an ancient building with no historical attestation, do we deny that someone built it? Clearly not, as buildings do not just pop into existence. The entire edifice of Christianity, built upon the Person of Christ Himself, stands as evidence for His existence.

It is absurd to imagine that a tiny, persecuted sect grew to what it is today, enduring countless early attacks and arguments pitted against it, and for so long no enemy of Christ (that I’m aware of) ever argued that He did not exist. The jewish authorities did not argue that the Apostles made up Jesus; instead, with the Toledot Yeshu, they developed a long-standing tradition that He was a mischling sorcerer. This is also the position taken in the Babylonian Talmud, which was in development during Christ’s ministry. Gentiles opponents throughout the Roman Empire did not rely on a non-existence argument either. Porphyry and Celsus maintained that Jesus was a magician and conman, Crescens argued that Christians were atheists (that is, deniers of the Roman pantheon), and Lucian mocked believers. Later, emperor Julian would say that Christians worship a “jewish corpse,” while Fronto and Hierocles would claim that Christ was no more than an executed criminal. I fail to see any ancient scholar who said “Jesus did not exist;” if any did argue this (as perhaps one or two did), I should expect to see plenty of pagan sources saying so.

Now, there is plenty of positive evidence that Jesus Christ exists, but Dr. Dalton follows that familiar, well-developed skeptic’s argument: “nuh-uh.” If you mention the Gospels as eyewitness accounts, he says “they were written too late for that!” If you mention St. Paul’s writings, he says “they were also written too late for that!” How late is too late? Forty or fifty years according to his estimation – and twenty for St. Paul’s letters. For a moment let us entertain the idea that the New Testament was written between 50-95 A.D. What does this establish? Nothing less than there was a Church, a very small movement at first, which could have been squashed easily by jewish authorities if it were provably false. If Jesus never existed, they merely had to proclaim it far and wide, and all the Apostles would have been laughed out of every town they visited. No one did this, leaving the authors of Scripture to write as they did. Of course, in theory you could try to make people believe a lie or myth, but most often that requires state authority – and both Roman and jewish authorities used the state to persecute Christianity, not promote it.

We have the writings of St. Paul. According to Dr. Dalton’s historical methods, there is no reason to believe that St. Paul exists; there is no “contemporary” evidence that St. Paul existed, and the writings we have may have been ghost-written entirely. Any reference to St. Paul from the New Testament must clearly be too late for us to believe that he existed, if Dr. Dalton is to be believed about Jesus – yet Dr. Dalton uncritically accepts that St. Paul was a real man. Isn’t that an inconsistent hermeneutic to employ – to say that Jesus didn’t exist, but for the same reasons that Jesus didn’t exist, St. Paul did? How silly! Either both of them existed or neither did – pick one please, doctor.

And by all means, Dr. Dalton may very well opine that St. Paul existed because of eyewitness testimony, followers of St. Paul who wrote as well. Clement of Rome, Papias, Polycarp and Barnabas are all reliable sources for his existence. But these men also learned from the other Apostles, verified the authorship of the Gospels, and thus agreed with this veritable cloud of eyewitness that Jesus Christ indeed existed, live, died, and rose from the dead. They knew the guys who walked with Christ, making them the eyewitnesses to the eyewitnesses.

“Jewish Conspiracy”

But no matter how much evidence there is for the existence of Jesus and the validity of the Gospels, Dr. Dalton will not be swayed by these because he is attempting to build upon the “jewish conspiracy” narrative so common in White Nationalist circles today. He wants to claim, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that St. Paul made up Christianity as a “pro-Jewish, anti-Roman theology” that “would aid the Jewish cause.” Consider! He wants you, dear reader, to disregard all evidence that Jesus existed, from the Gospels to the Epistles to Josephus to Suetonius to the Apostolic Fathers; at the same time, he wants you to believe something completely made up, whole cloth, with no historical attestation. His entire justification? Jewish this, jewish that, jews exist therefore it’s a jewish plot.

There is no evidence that a bunch of jews got together and said “let’s invent Christianity to subvert Rome and all Gentiles.” There is no account of St. Paul guzzling Manischewitz and laughing with his buddies about how they’re going to trick the Goyim yet again. What Dr. Dalton is providing here is a just-so story to shoo away the facts; I believe he does this because he believes that if he didn’t, his dislike of jews would be threatened and he would rather continue disliking them. Well Dr. Dalton, if you’re reading this, hear me out: it’s OK to be a Pro-White Christian that doesn’t like jews very much. It’s OK to be a Christian and reject the idea that the jews are the chosen people. I know, I’m one of them.

And if Dr. Dalton denies this, and says that he is being 100% intellectually honest and he can prove that Christianity is just a jewish plot, well then. I invite him to present his hard evidence. I want contemporary accounts of jewish thinkers making up Christianity in the first century A.D. I want names, people, faces, and explicit admissions that they are subverting the Gentiles in this way out of bad, dishonest motives. If he says he doesn’t need proof along these lines, then I’ll take that as an admission that he has none, making his argument completely without warrant for belief.

Jesus Was A Jew

So now we enter the part of Dr. Dalton’s article where he makes the slam-dunk argument that the Bible means what it says about our Lord. To be clear, he doesn’t believe a word of what the Bible has to say about Jesus, holding it to be “regurgitated Homeric mythology,” but he does accurately quote Bible verses that say our Lord Jesus was ethnically from the tribe of Judah – which I believe and have no issues admitting. As an aside, can we admit how ironic it is that Dr. Dalton says we should “set aside the nonsense about God being his father,” but then cooks up the absurd notion that a bunch of devout jews borrowed from Homer the Gentile author to invent Jesus?

But I digress. Yes, in His human nature our Lord Jesus Christ hails from the tribe of Judah and is descended from the line of David. He lived as an observant child of Judah, then began His ministry after His Baptism at the Jordan, died for my sins and rose again on the third day. Yep, no problems there. Does this mean I have to worship jews? No, I have to worship the God of the Bible. Does this mean I have to become a jew myself, observing the Law of Moses? Do I have to go get circumcised, start swinging sin chickens, etc.? No, the books of Romans and Galatians address all that. Do I have to believe that jews are the master race by divine right, as the dispensationalists do? Of course not – and no theologian before Scofield was arguing anything even close to that. So then, Christ’s ethnicity according to His human nature is of no consequence to me; what matters is that He saved my soul, and I owe Him my entire life.

I accept the Gospel on account of the overwhelming evidence for it, and I reject your position, Dr. Dalton, for having absolutely no evidence whatsoever. You can reject the evidence for Jesus all you want, but you must admit that your “jewish conspiracy” idea has no basis in reality. It is made up, therefore I reject it and continue on as a believer.

Dalton’s Five Commandments and a Pastoral response

Now Dr. Dalton is a clever man. He understands that if he is going to claim that Jesus doesn’t exist and Christianity is a jewish plot, then he must give a positive replacement if his ideas are to be taken seriously. Nature and man both detest a vacuum after all, it’s got to be filled with something. I present his replacement ideology point by point:

1. “How about this: Build your life and your worldview around basic, universal, and age-old ethical ideals”

Response: I already do, it’s called the Ten Commandments. Which are found in the Bible. Go ahead, find one of the Ten Commandments that is not basic, universal, age-old and ethical.

2. “Defend and protect the Earth, which sustains all life”

Response: I am not certain whether this means Dr. Dalton would have us be political bedfellows with Greta Thunberg or the Unabomber. Regardless, while I like trees and vegetables and tobacco and coffee as much as the next guy, environmentalism is a shoddy replacement for Biblical morality. Recycling does not make you a good person, it just makes you feel like a good person. No thank you.

3. “Defend human dignity against corrupters, liars, and deceivers”

Response: Defend human dignity? I do not know Dr. Dalton’s religion (if he is religious at all), but he has not advocated for one here, leading me to conclude that he is fine with other people being the same. Given that atheists by and large “lean left,” I hardly think following his program will give me or anyone else dignity. Do you know what does though? Christianity, which speaks of common human dignity by being made in the Image of God, something lost in the Fall but recovered in the Atonement, making every Christian of great value in the eyes of our Lord. If Dr. Dalton’s worldview is materialist, then by definition my worldview, being Christian, bestows more dignity upon humanity than his. As for corrupters, liars and deceivers, I would ask which religion tells me to not corrupt anyone or anything, to not bear false witness, and to not be a deceiver – in case he doesn’t know, the answer is Christianity.

4. “Work toward a transparent, human-scale society; spend time with your children and grandchildren”

Response: The Bible already tells me to do this by telling me to be honest and to provide for my family. Only Dr. Dalton dislikes the idea of God telling me to do so, and would rather I do it because he said so. I cannot stress this enough, the man is telling you that he is a moral authority here, albeit one that has no ability to actually enforce his morality.

5. “Celebrate the accomplishments of human creativity and the human spirit without yielding to Judaic nonsense”

Response: Please tell me this is not some pitch for World Church of the Creator. The creativity movement was a laughing stock and Ben Klassen was a jew. I’m not falling for that judaic nonsense. But if he wants me to celebrate human achievement or something, what about being a Christian prevents that? On the flip side, on what moral basis would Dr. Dalton do the opposite – condemning human misbehavior?

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, Dr. Dalton’s Five Commandments feel more like a hand-waving “do the right thing, no big deal” assuming that we Christians only believe in Jesus because He makes us moral. He seems to hold that we require Christ’s teaching as some sort of crutch, and we would not know our right hand from our left without Him. To be frank, he has a point, as we truly would be lost morally without Jesus…and Dr. Dalton could learn a thing or two about Christ’s teachings, because his proposed replacements are sorely lacking.

Christians do benefit from Christ’s teachings, but we also desire to do right to please the One who saved us and provides us eternal life. What is Dr. Dalton offering that’s any better than what Jesus offers? Again: Jesus offers me a perfect immortality at the Resurrection – am I really supposed to give that up in favor of nothing? Is Dr. Dalton really expecting me to trade the Beatific Vision for a temporary smugness gained by disbelieving “jewish fables?”

Perish the thought, especially since there’s no contemporary evidence that Dr. Thomas Dalton even exists.