The essay Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s Anti-Missionary Assertions has brought about a discussion as to whether Jesus not only inspired violence (even two millennia later) but was violent Himself.
What we will conclude in demonstrating, quite lucidly, is 1) that Jesus was not violent and 2) that unbelievers reach tragically sad depths of desperation as they will cling to utterly anything, anything at all which they tell themselves will justify their unbelief.
Part of the issue pertaining to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan is a particular, and peculiar, statement in his book “The Real Messiah? A Jewish Response to Missionaries.” This book is of very poor quality and is meant to teach Rabbinic Jews how to argue with Christians.
The specific issue was what is typical within that book: taking texts out of context to make pretexts for prooftexts. Here is the text and statement at issue (p. 74, 1985 ed.):
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructed his followers (Matthew 5:43) “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you.”
This might have been a fine lesson if Jesus himself lived up to it. But when it came to his own enemies, Jesus declared (Luke 19:27), “Take my enemies, who would not have me rule over them, bring them here, and kill them before me.”
This sentiment was repeated by Gerald Sigal (of Jews for Judaism) when he wrote,
He who advocates…killing enemies (Luke 19:27) cannot be called a ruler of peace
This is a perfect example of just how important it is to check the citations. The text they are referring to in Luke 19:27 begins in v.11 with this statement, “While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable.” It is a man in the parable that said, “Take my enemies…bring them here, and kill them before me.” Jesus said it, but they were not his words.
Gerald Sigal’s reference to “ruler of peace” harkens back to Isaiah 9:6 which mentions the ruler, or prince of peace (see The Isaiah 9 Controversy).
This claim of his denotes an epic failure. The Jewish claim that the Messiah is to be the ruler / prince of peace does not envisage, as it were, that the Messiah shows up making a V sign with his fingers, wearing John Lennon spectacles and states, “Peace maaaaaaaaan! Can’t we all just get along?”
Nay, rather a generalized Jewish view of the Messiah’s role is that the Messiah would first vanquish Israel’s enemies and only then rule peacefully. The manner via which the Messiah brings about peace is not peaceful (see Jewish Messianic Concepts).
This brought about a counterargument from a supporter of the violent Jesus view who attempted to support the premise that Jesus wanted His followers to commit murder for Him.
The counter-arguer interprets the parable as follows:
A man came from a distant country (Heaven) to have himself appointed king, his subjects rejected him (the Jews including Peter etc,..) he was made king (crucified) and returned home (back to Heaven)?
He followed up by asking, the right and logical question:
Isn’t JC referring to himself in the “parable”?
That is the key question, because if the “parable” is a parable, which it is, then counter-arguer’s interpretation may not be correct as it may not have a one to one correspondence to Jesus Himself. The counter-arguer also posed the following right and logical question,
What exactly did he mean? To not kill them?
Thus, these are the two key questions, to which we shall come. However, along the way the counter-arguer threw in some info with which we ought to deal.
The key question, in response to him, was:
Do you believe that Jesus actually commanded His disciples to commit murder, for Him and in His name, but they just ignored Him?