1 comment

1. Hi-ya! says:

   November 16, 2025 at 10:25 pm

   “letter to diognetus”

    

    

   this is a generally regarded Christian document of unknown location and authorship. My translation has it placed , due to its themes and the way it approaches those themes as being between 120-200 or the late 2nd century. It’s not a solid case against all Christian over accommodating Jews but I had nothing better to do while reading so there you go

    

    

    

   The Follies of Judaism

   3. Next, I expect what you most want to hear about is our Christian unwillingness to accept the faith of the Jews. Admittedly, since they will have no truck with this sort of religion I have just been describing, Jews may fairly claim to be devotees of the one true God, and to acknowledge Him as their Sovereign. Nevertheless, in so far as. they do Him service with rites similar to those of the heathen, they are in error. For if the Greeks must stand convicted of absurdity by the offerings they make to senseless and dumb idols, the Jews ought to realize that it shows equal absurdity, and no true piety, to conceive of God Himself as in want of such things. The Maker of heaven and earth and all therein, the Supplier of our every need, could never Himself be in any need of the very things which are actually His own gifts to the self-styled givers. Indeed, so long as they believe themselves to be filling their sacrificial duty to Him by means of blood and fat and

   burnt-offerings, and fancy they are doing Him honour by such rites, I cannot see that there is anything to choose between them and the men who lavish similar attentions on deaf and dumb idols. One party, it seems, makes its offerings to creatures which cannot partake of the gifts, aud the other to One who needs none of them.

   4. As for their scrupulousness about meats, and their superstitions about the sabbath, and their much-vaunted circumcision, and their pretentious festivals and new-moon-observances – all of them too nonsensical to be worth discussing – I hardly think you need instruction from me. For how can it be anything but impious to accept some of the things which God has created for our use and assert their creation to have been commendable, but to reject others as being needless and good-for-nothing? And what can there be but profanity in the slanderous charge that God objects to a good deed being done on a sabbath day? And surely, when they boast that a bodily mutilation is evidence of their inclusion among the elect, as though it gave them some special claim on God’s love, what does this deserve but to be laughed out of court? As for the minute way they scrutinize the moon and stars” for the purpose of ritually commemorating months and days, and chop up the divinely appointed cycle of the seasons to suit their own fancies, pronouncing some to be times for feasting and others for mourning – could anyone pretend that this indicates true reverence, and not simply a deranged intellect?

   I imagine you have heard enough now to see how right the Christians are in repudiating the folly and delusion common to these two cults, as well as the fussy practices of which the Jews are so proud.

   At the same time, however, you must never expect to learn the inward mystery of their own religion from merely human lips.

   1

   1

   • kolokol

   Reply