If asked whether Jesus was a Jew, the only response a Christian may offer consists of one word, and a sole syllable: ‘Yes’. Just as no serious theologian or historian would dispute that Jesus did indeed exist on earth, equally, they would not suggest that he was born into any other nation than the Jewish one. Nor would any Catholic familiar with the most basic teachings and practices of our Church argue otherwise.
Various branches of Christianity are never short of things to fiercely contest, but whether or not Jesus was a Jewish man, as well as being fully God, is not up for question. Aside from fringe heresies, 20th-century totalitarianism made the biggest attempt to distort this and many other truths. Heinrich Himmler, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, referred to the early Christians as the forerunners of ‘Bolshevik, Jewish scum’. Adolf Hitler regarded the faith as a ‘symptom of decay’ and wrote in Mein Kampf that the Mosaic Law is ‘nothing else than the doctrine of the preservation of the Jewish race’. The Third Reich even launched the pseudo-Protestant ‘Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life’, in an attempt to ‘de-Judaise’ Christianity. This dismal organisation went so far as to distribute editions of the Bible which fully censored the Old Testament and the detailing of Jesus’s Davidic descent.
