The Question that Breaks Judaism (Tract 10)

In this episode, we embark on a controversial and thought-provoking journey into religious theology, focusing almost exclusively on Judaism. Host Malcolm begins with a fundamental question: 'Why were the Jews God's chosen people?' This query leads to an extensive exploration of Jewish theology, identity, and the broader implications for both ancient and modern Judaism. The discussion delves into the historical practices of Judaism, including proselytization, matrilineal descent, and circumcision, comparing them to contemporary interpretations and practices. Malcolm also scrutinizes the noahide laws, Kabbalism, and the concept of divine favor, ultimately questioning the reasons behind Jewish exceptionalism. This episode is a comprehensive examination aimed at challenging and reframing conventional understandings of Judaism within a broader religious context.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today we're going to do another one of our track series where we do deep dives into religion that are very, very offensive.

And for the first time we're going to have one that's almost exclusively focused on Judaism. Oh. This is track 10. The question that breaks Judaism. There is one question I started to innocently ponder that led me down a rabbit hole, which began to unravel Jewish theology, identity, and even raised the question of whether modern Judaism should be thought of as the less radical deviation from ancient Judaism when contrasted with Christianity.

The question, the question that breaks Judaism is Why the Jews? Why were the Jews, of all people, singled out by God as his chosen people? Oh, right. Yeah.

Simone Colins: Yeah, they gave her

Malcolm Collins: child. Yes. Why? This is gonna get very offensive, and it's the type of information I hesitate to release if it could be used by antisemites.

However, I think theologically it is a conversation we need to have in the [00:01:00] same way previous tracks have had to uncomfortably point out where modern Christianity does not align with what is actually in the Bible. We will be doing the same with modern Judaism today. And I would note here for people who want to be like, Oh, this is, you know, antisemitic or something like that.

I did nine full tracks. Absolutely railing and ragging on modern Christian traditions and where I don't think they align with the Bible. I do one on Judaism. No, you don't get a be. I'm just trying to do as honest a dive as I can on these various subject matters. And I hope you can see that as I go through this and go over the data.

But this data shocked me to my core. So we're going to be arguing that ancestral Judaism was not an ethno religion. The concept of matrilineal Jewish identity is a non biblical. In fact, pre Christ, Judaism actively and aggressively proselytized and even forced the mass conversion of conquered peoples at times.

As evidenced by both biblical sources. Roman historical accounts and [00:02:00] the Jewish historian Josephus and even Roman law, which we'll see. The Noahide movement lacks solid biblical backing and is essentially a theological construct with minimal scriptural foundation. The biblical passages that Jews cite to argue against modifying God's covenant with man, which they use to deny Christianity as the more faithful offshoot of ancient Judaism, do not actually communicate what they claim.

And this one is pretty in the extreme, which we'll get to. Even the way circumcision is practiced today may be incorrect, or I'm going to say is probably incorrect. What? Compared with Egyptian practices contemporary with the writing of the Old Testament, which we have a reason to believe the Jewish tradition may have been influenced by at the time of Christ, Judaism was a highly diverse tradition and the Christian branch was not unique in its differences.

The quote unquote true Judaism that modern Jews claim to be descended from would have been just [00:03:00] one of many religious systems based on the Old Testament and was as different from the average theological understanding as Christianity was at the time. Original Christianity and Technopuritanism are much closer to the belief system of the average Jew at the time of Christ than modern Judaism.

And, if Judaism started as a religion that actively proselytized and became an ethno religion after the Christian branch of the Jewish tradition gained widespread adoption, this makes the entire modern Jewish tradition appear as a reaction to the success of a version with an arguably greater divine mandate.

Of course, we will be addressing the arguments against every one of these points, as I have discussed my positions with a few rabbis to gather the strongest counter arguments I could find. And, finally, we are going to go over a clever and unique Textual theological argument that fixes every one of the problems I raised throughout this entire video.

We will also discuss How Christians have to reconcile with the fact that demographically speaking right now [00:04:00] the Jews very obviously have God's favor and will likely be the dominant world power within the next century. So I'm going to start all of this was the framing of, you know, when I first was growing up and I was, you know, an atheist growing up, really raised an atheist.

I always saw Judaism versus Christianity as being like no competition. Like Judaism was just obviously the more logical religion it had. More claims to antiquity which I no longer, I'm gonna argue it may not. It, it was basically in my mind, like, deism plus. Christianity added a bunch of weird stuff that I didn't really get.

Like, transferring sins onto an innocent person seemed really off to me. The idea of Jesus as being literally God's child on Earth. I was like, why do we need to, like, it's a whole other theological element I have to believe other than God. And it, it felt very like just no contest. I was like, well, if I, if I could have been born in the Jewish tradition, that's the way I would [00:05:00] have gone.

Now I'm not going to be a reformed Jew or something lame like that, but that's where I would have gone. After digging really deeply into it, especially with this tract I am now quite glad that I don't have to defend the Jewish position because I now have come to believe that textually speaking and, and, and in the eyes of history is actually a slightly harder position to argue for.

I say all this believing still that Jews have a divine mandate that they are still following a covenant that God gave them. But there has been a, another covenant since then. And so they're not like inactive rebellion to God. But yeah. So thoughts before I dig in.

Simone Colins: I want to hear your arguments here.

This is intriguing, if a little intimidating.

Malcolm Collins: I will start this tract by saying this is not a path of logic I wanted to try down, but one that became evident as I began to examine what I thought was an innocuous question, like pulling a single thread only to watch the entire sweater unravel. Why were the Jews, of all people, singled out by God as his [00:06:00] chosen people?

This is a theological question that not just Jews need a good answer for, but one Christians and Muslims also need to address. Yet it is ignored by these traditions. There are two broad categories of possible answers. There was something phenotypically, genetically, or otherwise tied to the nature of the early Jewish people that led to God favoring them.

Or two, the Jewish people were set apart by their belief system and not by anything tied to their biology. Rabbinic scholars almost universally lean towards the second answer, early Jews had a more accurate conception of God, which led to them being rewarded as God's chosen people.

I would note t