The fundamental, underlying motif of Jewish racism is an unwarranted assumption of Jewish superiority.

The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront
Tony Martin
The Majority Press, 1993; Black Classic Press, 2022

I recently wrote an article on the very controversial The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews: The Jewish Role in the Enslavement of Africans, which was published in 1991 without authorial attribution by the Nation of Islam. That book was a fusillade against the American Jewish community inasmuch as it drew attention to the outsized role that the Jews played in the African Atlantic slave trade. The Jews mounted a ferocious—and largely successful—effort to marginalize the book by characterizing it as antisemitic “pseudo-scholarship.” Indeed, some thirty years later, here is a typical refrain about how the work has been dismissed:

Mainstream scholars have on the whole rejected [The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews]. In addition to the study by Faber cited above, refutations have been published by Davis, the Yale professor mentioned above, and Ralph Austen, an emeritus professor of African history at the University of Chicago. Winthrop D. Jordan, a history professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specialized in slavery, wrote that the book employed shoddy scholarly methods and cherry-picked information, ignoring evidence that modified or countered its pre-ordained conclusion. Henry Louis Gates, director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University called the Nation of Islam’s book “one of the most sophisticated instances of hate literature yet compiled,” and charged that it “massively misrepresents the historical record.”

For my part as a lay historian, I am relatively well-read in the American Civil War, the antebellum South, and American slavery. Like most Americans of my generation, I share their disdain for the institution of slavery. While the history of African chattel slavery in the Americas is as loathsome as it is dehumanizing, the concept of slavery itself is a historically and economically complex practice. Its ubiquity and complexity, however, do not excuse its horror. If there is a maxim that we must live by, it should be that we never subject someone to something that we would not wish to abide by. And, at least for me in applying the Golden Rule, I can think of nothing worse than being subjected to slavery.

To be sure, I am sure that my visceral reaction to slavery is influenced by the historical epoch into which I was born—i.e., we live in an age that elevates maximal individual autonomy to the highest human good and therefore a systematic restraint of individual autonomy (slavery) must be seen, under that principle, as the lowest form of human institutions. In any event, I have studied chattel slavery enough to know it was a terrible and debasing economic and political structure. And even if I take issues with how the United States cured itself of chattel slavery (and I do)—and even if I take a more nuanced view of the war between the states (and I do)—and even if I abhor what the United States has become after it abolished slavery (which I do as well)—none of that flavors my opinion of chattel slavery itself.

Despite the modern historic gloss, Europeans neither invented slavery nor were its chief practitioners. Slavery has existed for as long as the stronger group prevailed over the weaker group, which is another way to say that slavery has existed since man was ejected from the Garden. That said, European involvement in the systematic practice of African slavery will forever be a mark of odium for us. That we constructed a multi-generational regime of chattel slavery tied to race is something for which we continue to pay a moral price—and increasingly, a  price in crime and unending programs for uplifting the ancestors of slaves. It is something, pardon the pun, we own as a people and as a civilization. And there is an irony then—in this essay and the subject matter that it covers—that the Jews have self-deputized themselves as our moral lights to remind us of the horrors of what we, as a people, did. True enough, even though I don’t have a lineal ancestor in the United States before the twentieth century, I own it on behalf of my European people. That the Jews, however, should be our ethical guide in this matter is something altogether different and patently objectionable.

So, I approach the topic as neither an apologist for European slaving nor as someone naïve enough to believe that there is something congenital about us in terms of European slaving. It is a lamentable chapter in European history, but it is merely a chapter. All it says of us is that some of us were capable of inflicting collective and unjustified harm on others—and, at least in that, we are no different than any other group of people. The very doctrine of original sin, which posits that human beings (individually and collectively) have damaged moral compasses is validated when something like slavery is analyzed. Only morally damaged people could justify its perpetuation. I, therefore, own the history of my people like anyone else. All we can do—whether we are discussing the failures in our own lives or the collective failures of our people—is repent and resolve to do better. The study of history then is more than the collection of isolated facts but rather an opportunity for the Christian to be exposed to examples—both good and bad—to use them as a means by which personal growth and moral improvement are undertaken. And our failures, which are bound together in humanity’s congenital and spiritual failures, do not make me love my people any less. Like family, they are mine, warts, and all.

I had multiple reasons to read The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. It was an intersection of two of my historical interests: the Jews and the institution of slavery. In my study of the Jews, which has included both positive and negative portrayals, and in my study of slavery, I found The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews to be both scholarly and persuasive. The thesis of the work is quite simple: the Jews, from the very beginning of the discovery of the New World, were dominant and instrumental in the Atlantic slave trade. They had no qualms about it or the dehumanization of Africans that accompanied it. The Jews were more involved with slaving, slave-trafficking, and slaveholding, at least on a proportionate basis, than non-Jews. Simply put, the point of the book is to highlight this outsized Jewish role in African slaving. As one might imagine, this enormous role is something that modern Jews would like to remain obscured and hidden. Unlike most guilt-ridden Euro-Americans, the Jews refuse to acknowledge their collective role in slavery. Not only do they not want to apologize for it, but they also evidently wish to deny it. It is the height of historical hypocrisy for the Jews to abuse others for the same moral failings that they enacted with enthusiasm. This is a type of gaslighting of the worst kind.

While the book has its blind spots, I marvel at the publication strategy of the Nation of Islam in three ways. First, it is bereft of authorship—it was merely written by the “Historical Department” of the Nation of Islam. This stratagem prevented the Jews and their minions from attacking the author(s) or his/their relative credentials as opposed to the work itself. In an alternate history, the author or authors, would have been the story—and we would remember this entire episode as the ultimate beatdown of “N” who dared to synthesize all the material that substantiates the outsized role of the Jews in enslaving and continuing the enslavement of Africans.

Second, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is based upon, almost exclusively, the citation and use of past Jewish scholarship (albeit of an older vintage). This is where knowledge of the history of history, as it were, comes in handy. There was a time—before 1960—in which chattel slavery and its dehumanization of Africans was not as acutely detested as it is today. Today, we are horrified by chattel slavery and modern scholarship reflects that axiomatic moral gloss. What this means is that older scholarship—before the age of today’s moral grandstanding—could discuss the phenomenon of chattel slavery in a relatively dispassionate way. In this earlier milieu of slavery’s historiography, the accurate recounting of the role that the Jews—or anyone else—played in it did not subject them to special scorn—it was what it was. Earlier Jewish scholarship, which is always interested in Jewish history, simply laid out what the Jews did regarding slaving and slaveholding. If anything, prior Jewish scholars were impressed by the ability of the Jews to dominate something commercial like the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Moreover, slaveholding itself was a sign of wealth and having “arrived”—that the Jews owned slaves everywhere was a sign of their “arriving” and “arriving” splendidly in the New World. Little did they know that this economic and ethnic pride would later become such a historical liability for future generations of Jews. By relying on this older Jewish scholarship, the authors of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews managed to get a more unvarnished account of Jewish involvement, and they insulated themselves from relying upon “antisemitic” sources—indeed, no one can sensibly argue that Jewish historians from the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries were antisemitic.

Third, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews makes no grand claims regarding the role of the Jews: it merely lays out the various ways in which the Jews were involved and dominated, at least at different periods, the importation and trading of slaves. It does not, for example, claim a special Jewish propensity for slave-trading nor does it assign a special Jewish moral disability for slave-trading either. In other words, it is not a work that makes a special claim of Jewish moral or genetic inferiority concerning their slaving—it simply was what it was. Rather, the whole of the work is a historical recitation of a particular people’s significant role in a commercial venture and system that we all take for granted now is odious. And, at least from a disinterested perspective, this is something that historians do all the time: they make their living, at least today, by splicing and reviewing historical phenomena from various angles and perspectives. Had any historian presented the special role that, for example, the Portuguese, the Spanish, or the Italians played in the African Atlantic slave trade, no one would have cared. Indeed, today, the more specialized the perspective, the more it is valued—so a dissertation, for example, of the role that Austrian candlemakers played in the trans-Atlantic slave trade is sure to have a ready audience (albeit specialized) and ready approval. Such scholarship would be deemed to be another contribution to the overall historical mix of our collective understanding of slavery. The only issue here is that the Nation of Islam had the temerity to focus upon the Jews, which is unforgivable under current conditions.

The Nation of Islam wanted to publish this work presumably for three reasons. First, it adds to the scholarship of slavery, which is something that all Black nationalists wish to see expanded. Second, they probably wanted to expose the fact that the Jews’ role in African Atlantic slavery has been “airbrushed” by subsequent Jewish historians who now know that such involvement is as toxic as it is unhelpful to current Jewish historiographies. When I say “airbrushing,” I mean that the Jews, as a historical group, have been written out of the narrative of slaving peoples. The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews then forces the Jews to account for both the reality of Jewish slaveholding and the airbrushing of Jewish slaveholding—even in dismissing it. Third, the Nation of Islam represents that portion of the Black nationalist spectrum that is hostile to Jewish involvement generally in Black liberation—they have an agenda to weaken the bonds of a partnership that they see as ultimately negative. The Nation of Islam sees the Jews as instrumentalizing Blacks for whatever the Jewish agenda is—and, for that reason alone, they published The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews to “wake up” Black America to the idea that the Jews are not—and never have been—the friends of Blacks. Thus the Nation of Islam drew upon a strain of Black thought that sees Jews for who they are—patronizing “friends” who do nothing for Blacks, and, worse, “friends” who harm.

While I can understand why the Jews would denounce the third prong (seeking to decouple Jews and Blacks as groups) as “anti-Semitic,” they studiously ignore the reality that the Jewish doctoring of the role of the Jews in slavery is as real as the role of the Jews in slavery itself. And that airbrushing is a much larger indictment of Jewry than their copious involvement in the slaving business hundreds of years ago. The airbrushing demonstrates control over the allowable narrative—really a manipulation of history itself—that bespeaks a concerted application of power to bend reality in a way that benefits and empowers the Jews. The hysterical hostility to The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews thus has more to do with what the Jews are doing now as opposed to what dead Jews did hundreds of years ago. Thus, the whole affair is about Jewish power dynamics today—not Jewish historical sins of yesterday.

Although contemporary Jews have succeeded in branding the work as “antisemitic,” the work itself is no screed or cauldron of conspiratorial thinking about the Jews. By refusing to connect the historical dots—that is, to connect why the Jews were so heavily invested in slaving—the authors remain above the socio-political fray of “antisemitic” theorizing. In that sense, the book is scholarly and not polemical. Little did it matter, however; the Jews were successful in deeming it “anti-Semitic” anyway for the mere fact that the authors had pointed out something that the Jews wished to remain obscured. The reality is that the current Jewish ethos and mantle of victimology cannot tolerate the aspersion (even if true) of the systemic Jewish victimizing of another group. The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews represented, at least to Jewish groups, an existential threat to the continued assertions of Jewish moral superiority, which itself is axiomatically tied to Jewish suffering and Jewish victimhood. For these reasons, dragging out the Jewish role in African slaving into the light of day had to be quashed with alacrity and heavy-handedness. The judiciously cultivated rapport between Jewish leadership over the African American community was at stake: if a sizable contingent of Blacks understood the vast role that the Jews played in their ancestors’ capture and enslavement, the edifice of Jewish-led control might collapse.

No one can threaten, as it were, the carefully concocted historical narrative of two sojourning peoples (Blacks and Jews) constantly being victimized by Euro-Americans. No, the Jews cannot be lumped in with the victimizers, or, worse still, identified as chief victimizers themselves. The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews then was a double-blow to Jewish “groupthink” sensibilities: it subjected the Jews to collective shame, and it jeopardized their control over African Americans as agents against Euro-American gentiles. Thus, the work had to be smashed and put on the same social plane as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Every time and in every sentence that The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews was mentioned, the phrases, “anti-Semitic” and “pseudo-scholarship” must accompany it so that the work is morally and historically “deemed” discredited. Following the vociferous and manic campaign against The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, no academician would be allowed to use it as if it were serious scholarship. While the Jews could not stop it from being handed out by the Nation of Islam in Harlem or Chicago, they wanted to ensure that it was never assigned to college students studying the African slave trade. If one professor dared to assign it—and remained adamant in continuing to assign it—he would have to be destroyed.

*        *        *

As I have written much recently about race in the aftermath of “Black Lives Matter” and the lawlessness that followed the death of George Floyd, it was refreshing to read something so different from what I had been reading. “Afrocentrism” is not one of my favored topics, but I enjoyed reading something written from an Afrocentric perspective. I have an admittedly strange relationship with my understanding of Black America. I love it and loathe it all the same. I see Black criminality and dysfunction everywhere, yet I cannot help but love Black America from a distance. I deeply respect those voices in Black America that attempt to reorient Black revival and the Black community through the actions of Blacks alone. As someone who has only recently come to terms with my “Whiteness,” as it were, I now appreciate that what certain Black leaders say about self-reliance and self-determination as an intra-Black affair has equal applicability to Whites and White self-reliance and White self-determination. In the increasingly racially polarized world that we live in in the United States, it was nonetheless energizing to read the perspective of “race” from the mind of a strong Black man after spending so much time reading race from the perspective of strong, White men who are seeking to chart a course for White America. Ironically enough, both types of men are despised.

The late Anthony Martin (1942–2013) was a professor at Wellesley College from 1973 until 2007. And we know anything of Tony Martin because he became that faculty member who dared to assign The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews to his undergraduate students—his odyssey in the wilderness at the hands of a concerted and vile attempt by the Jews to silence and obliterate him is recounted in vivid detail in his short work, The Jewish Onslaught. Martin was a tenured member of the faculty in the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley, and he was a Marcus Garvey scholar. For the uninitiated, that Professor Martin was a scholar in the work of Marcus Garvey should be taken as a sign that Martin was someone who placed himself on the spectrum of Black nationalism that generally believes that Black liberation must come exclusively from within the Black community and with as little involvement of non-Black people and institutions as possible. Marcus Garvey was, to say the very least, a strong Black leader who had no use for White involvement in Black liberation. From the beginning of Black political engagement in the United States (and elsewhere), two threads within the Black world emerged—a conciliating wing that wishes to engage and incorporate seemingly sympathetic Whites into the fight for broader rights for Blacks (the “integrationist wing”) led by leaders such as Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, and the current leadership of Black civil rights organizations like the NAACP. On the other side, Blacks have more strident leaders who stressed self-reliance and self-empowerment (perhaps we could call them the “separatist” wing) and were led by people like Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan.

The tension between the wings has led to recriminations of “Uncle Tom” (the separatist critique of the integrationist) and Black racism (the integrationist critique of the separatist wing). Indeed, President Trump himself was an acid test for the two wings—I suspect that the separatist wing enjoyed praising him on occasion simply to tweak the integrationist wing who viewed him as the devil incarnate, and that distinction is why Black separatists pay next-to-no homage to the Democratic Party while the Black integrationists spend all their energies being “good” Democrats. Black separatists will never be Republicans, but they are useful to Republicans by pointing out the folly of Democratic policies and aims. It is for this reason that Democrats struggle with how to treat Black separatists—they hate them but cannot be too hard on them lest they alienate Black integrationists. Both wings are realities of the Black experience in the United States, and to understand, at least from afar, the dynamics of Black political engagement is to appreciate this tension.

For my part, ironically perhaps, I have always appreciated the Black separatist wing—one of the books that moved me greatly in my late teens was the autobiography of Malcolm X. While I reject aspects of extreme Black nationalism and the lore that Whites (my people) are somehow congenitally evil, I find something more authentic and genuine regarding the advocacy of Black separatists. In any event, I don’t begrudge them their instinct that Black communities ought to be Black—why would I?  I also have always been impressed by good rhetorical skills and no matter what he says, I find Louis Farrakhan, as a speaker and rhetorician, to be incredibly talented. Obviously, I don’t agree with much of what Farrakhan has to say but that disagreement cannot obscure that Farrakhan is one of the most dynamic speakers of his age. If only we had someone like him on our side.

I concur with Black separatists generally on three fronts: first, every community must stand on its own two feet—dependence upon “do-gooders” or worse, a pluralistic state, from the outside only emasculates the necessary work of self-reliance that is necessary for community autonomy. Second, I agree with Black separatists that race is a real and durable concept; ergo, the cult of diversity is not a communitarian strength but a sickness within a broader society. But more to the discrete point, I agree with Black separatists that Blacks—and only Blacks—can fix whatever it is that ails the Black community. And thus, the best way to support Black America is to leave them alone. Coincidentally, I see the same principle at work for White America. Our problems have become magnified and horrendous in the United States. As much as Black separatists argue for autonomous Black communities free from White (or any other) influence, I say three cheers—I’d like the same for my people. Third, Black separatists, unlike their integrationist brethren who are more liberal in policy and outlook, tend to be more noticeably patriarchal in orientation. Not only then does the solution for Blacks come from within, but they see it coming through Black men. As a White man who appreciates that feminism and matriarchy are social cancers, I appreciate the Black separatist insistence on the importance of men as the responsible parties and leaders for their communities. In this, I agree wholeheartedly.

It is important to see Martin within the wing of Black separatist thought because of his very stubborn reaction to the enormous pressure placed upon him demonstrated an intellectual life dedicated to the principle that Blacks should not be told what to do—or think—by non-Black men or institutions. For Martin, equality and respect were things that had deep meaning and purpose. For my part, I don’t think Martin picked The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews for the edification of his students because he was a disciple of Marcus Garvey. Rather, I think it was because he was so obstinate in the face of Jewish pressure to make him capitulate. Stated simply, they picked on the wrong Black man to intimidate.

It’s hard to believe in the present day, but yes, it’s true, there are still a lot of Christians out there in the world.  According to some estimates, they number around 2.4 billion or about 30% of humanity.  In terms of sheer numbers, the US technically has the most: about 245 million, representing around 75% of the country—although many of these undoubtedly are so weakly religious (“Christmas and Easter Christians”) that they would barely pass any theological litmus test.  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.

Obviously, there is a huge variety in specific beliefs among these millions of Christians. The World Christian Encyclopedia infamously notes that, globally, there are some 33,000 “distinct denominations” of the Church, including 242 Catholic, 9,000 Protestant, and over 22,000 “independent.”  We can only imagine the variation in beliefs among these groups—and of course, only one (at most!) can be right.  I’d hate to pick the wrong one!  (Do I hear, “Going to hell,” anyone?)

But presumably they all must share at least a few core beliefs, simply in order to call themselves Christian.  We can guess what these might be: (1) there exists a personal, moral God who loves us; (2) believers will prosper in the afterlife and non-believers will suffer; and (3) Jesus is the son of God and humanity’s redeemer and personal savior.  Likely there are others—the Bible (or at least part of it) is the word of God, the Gospels (whichever ones we include) record Jesus’ life and teachings, and so on—but I will set these aside for now).  Here I will focus on “the Man”: Jesus of Nazareth (or is it Jesus of Bethlehem?  Those darn Gospel writers can’t seem to keep their story straight.

First, I should note that there is a high likelihood that no such man ever existed.  We can say this with confidence because there is no—literally, zero—contemporaneous evidence for his existence, either as a miracle-working Son of God, or even as a rather ordinary rabbi.  We can understand the latter case—most ordinary rabbis from 2,000 years ago are lost to history—but not the former.  If Jesus was anything close to the miracle-worker that the Bible describes, there would be a mountain of testifying evidence: documents, carvings, engravings, letters, etc.  And these would exist from his followers, his skeptics, his critics, and the Romans who ruled the region.  There would be a vast and well-documented account of a man who walked on water, raised the dead, healed with a touch, calmed storms, and fed thousands with “five loaves of bread and two fish.”  These testimonies would all date to the time of his alleged ministry, roughly, 27 to 30 AD.  And yet, from that time period, we have… nothing.

In fact, nothing even close.  In fact, nothing for literally decades.  According to conventional dating, the earliest reference of any kind is in the letters of Paul, the earliest of which—Galatians and First Thessalonians—date to around 50 AD, two full decades after our man got crucified.  The rest of Paul’s letters, intermixed with a few fraudulent ones attributed to him, appear between 50 and 70 AD, by which time (a) Paul had died, and (b) the Jews were defeated in Jerusalem by the Romans, and their temple destroyed.

Only then did some other Jews—presumably followers of Paul—decide to write about Jesus’ life and sayings in their “gospels.”  The gospel writers are formally anonymous; we know nothing about who they are, their motives, or the circumstances.  The names attached (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) mean nothing; it would be like saying “Bob’s Novel” or “Joe’s Cookbook.”  But based on textual evidence, scholars can roughly date the Gospel of Mark to around the year 70; Matthew and Luke to 85; and John to 95.  We can only imagine how much veracity they contain, given that they claim to quote Jesus precisely and cite details of his life, 40, 50, or 60 or more years after his death.  The obvious answer is: not much!

The likeliest conclusion to this mess is that the Jew Paul and the anonymous Jewish gospel writers made it all up: that there was no miracle-working Son of God, no virgin birth, and no resurrection.  They did so, not for fame or money, but because they believed that promulgating a pro-Jewish, anti-Roman theology would aid the Jewish cause.  (Pro-Jewish, because the Christians are to worship the Jewish God, the Jewish rabbi Jesus, and the Jewish ‘virgin’ Mary; anti-Roman, because “the worldly powers” of Rome are a manifestation of Satan and must be defeated.[1])  And in the end, it did.  Judeo-Christianity flourished, ideologically defeated Rome, and then took up residence in Rome itself.  “Without doubt, Rome has been conquered,” as Nietzsche said.[2]

But to the point:  Although there is no direct evidence for either a miracle-Jesus or a rabbi-Jesus, I suspect that some such man by that description did live, and die, in Judea.  And the reason is simply this: Since Paul and friends claimed something as true—a miracle-Jesus—that certainly did not exist, and that they knew did not exist, they were liars.  Whether they were ‘noble’ liars or malicious liars, I will leave to another time.  But liars they were.  And any lie works best with a kernel of truth.  Therefore, I consider it likely that an ordinary mortal, the rabbi Jesus, did live, likely did agitate on behalf of the oppressed Jews, and likely did get himself crucified—end of story.

So let’s assume that a mortal Jesus did exist.  What, then, do we know about him?  Virtually nothing for certain.  Apart from a few tidbits from Paul, literally everything that we think we know about him comes from the highly-dubious four Gospels; there simply is no other source.  And in the Gospels, we find a striking claim: Jesus was a Jew.

“Wait a minute!” says the Christian, with alarm.  “Jesus can’t be a Jew!  He’s the original Christian—the ur-Christian, we might say.  He can’t possibly be a Jew!”  Indeed—many Christians, both in the past and today, have attempted to argue that Jesus was a non-Jew, a Gentile, even an Aryan.  They seemingly cannot bear the thought that their beloved Savior might be a Jew, and that therefore they must worship a Jew.  And yet, all the evidence says he was.

In fact, the evidence suggests that Jesus was a double-Jew: ethnically and religiously.[3]  Let’s first see what it says in the Gospels themselves (which Christians must believe!).

Start with his mother, the “virgin” Mary; she clearly was a Jewess.  Mary was a blood relative of Elizabeth, of the tribe of Levi (Luke 1:5, 1:36).  When Jesus was born, she, along with Joseph, “performed everything according to the [Jewish] law of the Lord” (Luke 2:39).  And she and Joseph attended Passover services in Jerusalem “every year” (Luke 2:41).  Since Mary was a Jew, this alone makes Jesus a Jew (on the orthodox reading) because Jewishness is matrilineal, being passed along by the mother; if you are born of a Jewess, you are a Jew.

What about Jesus’ father?  Let’s set aside the nonsense about God being his father, which is nothing more than regurgitated Homeric mythology about demi-gods on Earth.  Joseph was of the “House of David,” as Luke (1:27) informs us.  And as noted above, Joseph rigorously followed Jewish law and attended Passover annually.  He was clearly an observant Jew, and (presumably) the biological father of Jesus.

Paul obviously thought Jesus was a Jew.  In the early Galatians (4:4) he says that Jesus was “born under the [Jewish] law,” and in Romans (9:5), he declares his own Jewishness (“my kinsmen by race…are Israelites”), adding that “of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.”

Likewise, the Gospel writers clearly viewed their Savior as a Jew.  Jesus is repeatedly called ‘rabbi’.[4]  He was circumcised (Luke 2:21) and celebrated Passover (John 2:13).  The Gospel of Matthew opens with these words: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.”  Even the non-gospel Hebrews remarks that “it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah” (7:14).  Jesus regularly attended the local synagogue (Luke 4:16).  He himself told the people that he came “to fulfill the [Jewish] law and the [Jewish] prophets” (Matt 5:17).  And of course, everyone thought of him as “king of the Jews” (Matt 2:2; John 19:3).

It could hardly be clearer: both by genetic heritage and according to his evident beliefs and practices, Jesus was a Jew.  He was a biological Jew—surely embodying all those wonderful Jewish phenotypical characteristics—and he was a religious Jew.

The few Christians willing to engage with this issue and to defend a non-Jewish Jesus typically offer one of two responses.  First, “Jesus was from Galilee, and Galilee was a Gentile stronghold.”  But this is a persistent myth, propagated by those averse to the notion of a Jewish Jesus.  Over 100 years ago, E. W. Masterson wrote of a “Jewish Galilee,” one that was “hemmed in on all sides by hostile [Gentile] neighbors”.[5]  More recently, we now have such works as The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (2002) by Mark Chancey, who acknowledges the stubborn idea but notes “how little data there is to support such a claim [of a Gentile Galilee].”  Archeological evidence from Nazareth is scarce, but what we do have shows “evidence for Jewish inhabitants at several sites, [but] very little evidence for Gentiles.”  Of the major, nearby town of Sepphoris, evidence of Gentiles is “extremely limited” during Jesus’ life; by contrast, says Chancey, there is “ample evidence” of Jews there at that time.  In sum, while not denying that some Gentiles lived there, evidence for them is “practically invisible”; and as a confirmation, Chancey notes that Gentiles “are not prominent in literary discussions of Galilee either”.[6]

Despite all this, some on the dissident-right, such as Internet bad-boy Andrew Anglin, who, despite his trenchant and humorous critiques of Jews, periodically displays his (apparently sincere) Christianity, occasionally railing against those who dare assert that Jesus was a Jew.  Nick Fuentes dodges the question when put to him, saying “Jesus fulfills the law” and that the Jews “who remain” held on to “old sacrifices and old ways of doing things,” ultimately becoming “Talmudic Jews.”  Obviously Jesus had no chance to become a Talmudic Jew, given that the Jerusalem Talmud was not written until the 300s (in Galilee!) and the Babylonian Talmud not until the year 500.  Thus, despite the evidence, both men cling to their myth of a Gentile Jesus even as they (rightly) condemn Jewish domination and corruption in present-day society.

The second defense one occasionally sees is both contorted and confused:  that the teachings of the Old Testament represent “true” religion and that the Hebrews deviated from this true path, degenerating into a rabbinical and ultimately Talmudic Judaism.  But Jesus, they say, adhered to the true, original teachings, to the Law and the prophets—later to be called “Christianity”—thus putting him into conflict with the fallen and erroneous Jews.  This essentially admits that Jesus was an ethnic Jew, but that, implicitly, it is irrelevant.  Furthermore, it overlooks the fact that the Talmud, and later documents like the Shulchan Aruch, are elaborations on Old Testament teachings, not deviations from it.[7]  But the main point is that simply because Jesus (the Jew) had (alleged) conflicts with other elite Jews, this does not mean that he wasn’t an ethnic Jew, and it doesn’t mean that he adhered to any “true” religion distinct from Judaism.

The Consequences

The implications of this short exposé are devastating for Christians and Christianity.  Given the total lack of corroborating evidence, we can say with certainty that the miracle-man Jesus did not exist; therefore, Christianity is a farce and the Gospels are at least half fiction.   If they contain even a shred of truth, then Jesus was an ordinary Jew whose life mission was to validate Old Testament prophecies and “fulfill the Law,” thus saving his fellow Jews from the evil Romans.  In this case, Christians need to admit that they are worshipping a long-dead ordinary Jew who has no ability whatsoever to “save their souls.”  Finally, in the case that there was no Jesus character at all, then Paul and the Gospel Jews are flat-out liars and need to be viewed with total contempt.

Any way we look at it, it’s bad news for Christians.  Under any plausible scenario, they have been duped into believing in a long-dead Jewish rabbi and his fake sayings—all constructed, years after the fact, by a handful of Jews interested in undermining the hated Romans, and indeed all Gentiles.

“But what would we do without Jesus?” cry the believers.  How about this: Build your life and your worldview around basic, universal, and age-old ethical ideals; defend and protect the Earth, which sustains all life; defend human dignity against corrupters, liars, and deceivers; work toward a transparent, human-scale society; spend time with your children and grandchildren; and celebrate the accomplishments of human creativity and the human spirit without yielding to Judaic nonsense.

Just for starters.

Thomas Dalton, PhD, has authored or edited several books and articles on politics and history, with a special focus on National Socialism.  His latest works include Classic Essays on the Jewish Question, The Steep Climb, and a new translation of For My Legionnaires.  He has also recently published the definitive critique Unmasking Anne Frank, and a new edition of political cartoons, Pan-Judah!  All these books are available at www.clemensandblair.com, and at his personal website www.thomasdaltonphd.com.

[1] Yes, there are two or three references to “render unto Caesar” and “pay your taxes” and “love thy enemy”, but these few are far outnumbered, numerically and in theological importance, by rebellious and anti-Roman passages.

[2] On the Genealogy of Morals I.16.

[3] Recall that these are two distinct categories: one can be ethnically (genetically) Jewish yet not adhere to Judaism, or one can be a non-Jewish (Gentile) follower of the Jewish religion.

[4] Mark 9:5, 11:21, 14:45; Matt 26:25; John 1:38, 1:49; 3:2.

[5] “Galilee in the time of Christ,” Biblical World 32(6).

[6] Such as by Josephus.

[7] For a good assessment of both the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch, see E. Bischoff, The Book of the Shulchan Aruch (2023; Clemens & Blair).