Jewish Almanac: "Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a Jew a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew.
Pope-About-Town
Israelites."
So, what the hell does modern Judaism have to do with Palestine?
"Evidently the concept of a common Judeo-Christian tradition has more
to do with post 1945 politics and a certain amount of 'public
relations' than it does with historical and Biblical reality."
The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition
The following article from New Dawn Magazine No.23 Feb-March 1994.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4803.htm
Accordingly, the authoritative 1980 Jewish Almanac says, "Strictly
speaking it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a Jew or to call
a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew."
A writer for The Dearborn Independent, published in Michigan back in
1922, summarised the problem thus: "The pulpit has also the mission of
liberating the Church from the error that Judah and Israel are
synonymous. The reading of the Scriptures which confuse the tribe of
Judah with Israel, and which interpret every mention of Israel as
signifying the Jews, is at the root of more than one-half the
confusion and division traceable in Christian doctrinal statements."
The few New Testament 'proof texts' utilised by Christian Zionists and
secular proponents of the modern Judeo-Christian myth are the product
of poor translation. Messianic Jewish writer Malcolm Lowe in his paper
"Who Are the Ioudaioi?" concludes, like Robert and Mary Coote, that
the Greek word "Ioudaioi" in the New Testament should be translated as
"Judeans", rather than the more usual "Jews". The Israeli scholar
David Stern also came to the same conclusion when translating the
Jewish New Testament.
The Judean historian Josephus wrote: "What I would now explain is
this, that
the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by
succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of
Moses .
. ."
While the Pharisees recognized the laws of Moses, they also claimed
that
there was a great body of oral tradition which was of at least equal
authority with the written Law - and many claimed that the Tradition
was of
greater authority. By their tradition, they undertook to explain and
elaborate upon the Law. This was the "Tradition of the Elders", to
which the
name of Talmud was later given. It had its beginning in Babylon,
during the
Babylon captivity of the people of Judah, where it developed in the
form of
the commentaries of various rabbis, undertaking to explain and apply
the
Law. This was the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.
This Judaism was very different from the religion of the ancient
Israelites.
The late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United
States, expressed this conclusively when he said: "The return from
Babylon,
and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of Hebrewism,
and
the beginning of Judaism."
The Talmud, more than any other literature, so defined Judaism that
Rabbi
Ben Zion Bokser admitted, "Judaism is not the religion of the Bible."
(Judaism and the Christian Predicament, 1966, p.159) It is the Talmud
that
guides the life and spirit of the Jewish people.