Tag Archives: Christianity

Obama Visit: Dialogue at an Imaginary State Dinner Hosted by President Mahmoud Abbas

OBAMA: Mr. President, did you know that you Palestinians are descended from Jews?

ABBAS: No, Mr. President. I had not heard that.

OBAMA: Oh yes. After the Arab Conquest, many Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated.

ABBAS: I am not a racist. I don’t mind hearing that.

OBAMA: Good. I have sothing else to say, Mr. President. The story of the Jewish exile from Judea after the Destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D. was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. They portrayed that event as a divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

ABBAS: And what about our exile, Mr. President?

President Obama’s answer has not been recorded.

Source: Shlomo Sand, “The Invention of the Jewish People”

European Culture — Greek-Roman or Christian?

Beda M. Stadler, professor at the University of Bern, has something to say on this question in the weekly Die Weltwoche.

“Let us measure Christian culture against reality, the material goods it has created and, perhaps as Europe’s most important cultural asset, by the accumulation of scientific findings. After the Assyrian dawn of mankind the high cultures of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans followed, each of these cultures attaining a higher level of cultural achievement.

“And what came then? A cultural void that lasted a thousand years. The Christians were masters in copying from previous cultures. Even today the odd temple frieze beautifies an ugly church façade. Compared with the cultures that preceded them, the first thousand years of Christianity were a disaster that only ended with the Enlightenment.

“So-called Christian cultural assets emerged only thanks to the new secular values, based on science and philosophy, which still define our lives today. Europe’s guiding culture, therefore, continues to rely on the values of the early Occident, such as Greek philosophy and Roman law, rather than Judaism and Christianity.”

The fourth video in the Internment series has been posted at YouTube.