THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Every time someone sends me quotes from the Old Testament I am reminded of the fact that the Temple Priests, the Scribes and Pharisees and the lawyers (the only profession He ever specifically denounced) knew those scriptures upside down. They knew them in Greek. They knew them in Hebrew. They could recite them backwards.

The greatest theologian outside of Heaven Itself is Satan.

Jesus went out among the people and said those total experts on the Old Testament did not UNDERSTAND what they knew by heart.

I am told the Jews are saved. What Jesus Himself said was:

"I am the way, the truth and the life. No man goes to the Father but by me."

Did He say this to Buddhists because they did not know the Old Testament?

No. He said it to Jews.

In fact the first people to accept Christ, according to Matthew, did not know anything about the Old Testment. They were the Magi, which means that they were clergymen of Zoroastrianism.

And Jesus said over and over and over and over that He, not the Old Testament, was the Way.

But all the churches tell me that Jesus is a kind of asterisk at the end of the Old Testament.

The Reconstruction Church says, "The Old Testament is seventy percent of the Bible." And then they call themselves Christians, though Christ's words are nothing more than the words of the lowliest prophet, or the words of the snake in Eden, in their arithmetic.

They say that Jesus spoke in Old Testament terms.

No joke? Why on earth would Jesus speak in Old Testament terms when He was in Israel?

Maybe, just maybe, because He was in Israel?

I can't understand why there is not a church that requires that you learn Aramaic if you are to be saved.

Jesus spoke Aramaic.

Now why on earth did he speak Aramaic instead of Hindi or Persian?

I would say that Jesus spoke Aramaic for the same reason He spoke in Old Testament terms. Nobody around Him would understand Him had he spoken Persian or Coptic.

But if you can only be a Christian if you speak in terms of the Old Testament, why can you be a Christian without speaking Aramaic? Why isn't Aramaic essential to salvation?

Jehovists would reply that the idea that one has to speak Aramaic for salvation is silly. He has the right to say that to me.

On one condition:

That condition is that every time you spout the Old Testament at me, I have the right to say that the idea that one has to speak Old Testament for salvation is silly.