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Among modern Christians, it is often assumed without much critical reflection that “Jesus was a Jew”. This position, indeed, is very frequently asserted emphatically by scholars, pedagogues and pastors—presumably often intended to reverse or apologise for the Church’s historical attitude towards the “perfidious Jews” (a term which continued to appear in the official texts of Roman Catholic liturgies until the mid-20^th century.) Yet was Jesus really a Jew at all? This article looks at the question objectively, endeavouring to evaluate the evidence which is available. It is not the intention of the author to arrive at anything like a definitive or conclusive answer, but merely to indicate the ambiguities surrounding this complex issue.

Galilea versus Judea

The Gospels clearly and specifically identify Christ as Galilean (Mt 4:18-22; Mk 1:16-20, Lk 4:16-30, etc.). So strong was this identification that even in the 4^th century, the Roman emperor, Julian the Philosopher, wrote a polemical work against Christianity with the title Contra Galilaeos (‘Against the Galileans’). The region of Galilea lies well to the north of Jerusalem (at least a week’s journey in the 1^st century), with large portions of it in what is now Lebanon and occupied Syria. Shortly before His death, He predicted to His apostles, who were also Galileans, “After I have been raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you to Galilee and meet you there” (Mt 26:32).

There is incontrovertible evidence within the Gospels that the Jews during the time of Christ considered the Galileans to be non-Jews (goyim) and that they viewed them as inferiors and outsiders. Galilee itself is referred to in the Old Testament (Is 9:1) and the New (Matt 4: 15) as ‘Galilee of the Nations’ (or ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’). The Hebrew word found in Isaiah, rendered as ‘nations’ or ‘gentiles,’ is גויים (goyim), a term which served then (as it does now) as a derogatory appellation for non-Jews, emphasising cultural and ethnic alterity.

At one point in the Gospel, when Nicodemus, described as a leader among the Jews and a secret believer in Christ, defends the right of Jesus to a fair hearing and trial, the Jews reply to him: “Are you also from Galilee? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee” (Jn 7:52). Clearly, the Jews knew Nicodemus and his origins well, so the question of whether he was also from Galilee can only be understood as derisory.

We see an instance in which certain Jews accuse Christ of being a Samaritan, another group, who, though also monotheistic, were similarly regarded as goyim. Whether this was a genuine mistake or an intended insult, the comment manifests the fact the Jesus was identified as a non-Jew by the Jews themselves.

An objective reading of the Gospels (particularly that of John) show that Jesus is consistently framed in the dynamic of the narration as an outsider to the Jews. In John 5:15-18, one reads: The man [who had been cured of blindness] departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed. And so the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, “My Father keeps on working, and so I work”. Because of this the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, thus making himself equal with God.

Consistently throughout the Gospels, Christ, along with His Galilean apostles, are shown from differing from the Jews in many customs and observances. They mixed freely with the Samaritans, travelling through their villages and teaching them (Jn 4:4-42); but the Gospels state explicitly that “Jews do not mix with Samaritans” (Jn 4:9). Moreover, Jesus and his original disciples are reproached by the Jews on multiple occasions for their non-observances of Jewish customs regarding the Sabbath and washing of hands, etc.

So was Jesus really Jewish at all? The answer to this question depends upon how the term ‘Jewish’ is defined. At least as far as the authors of the Gospels were concerned, the Jews were a quite separate group of people to Christ and his original band of followers, and generally hostile towards them. Christ and His followers indeed believed in one, supreme God. But most of the goyim, who included Samaritans and Galileans, also believed in one Supreme God. For that matter, most educated Romans and Greeks had adopted a position that, ultimately, there was ultimately One Supreme Deity (the Platonic ‘Form of the Good’), the so-called “philosophical monotheism” expressed so beautifully by Plutarch:

But God is, we must declare; and is with reference to no time, but with reference to the eternal, the immovable, timeless, and indeclinable; that which there is nothing before nor after, nor more, nor past, nor older nor younger, but He being One with the one ‘Now,’ hath filled up the ‘Ever;’ and that which really is, alone is with reference to Him; neither born, nor about to be, nor growing, nor to have an end. In this way, therefore, ought we, when worshipping, to salute Him, and to address Him, or even, truly, as some of the ancients did, ‘Thou art One!’1

And it is highly significant that it was a Roman centurion (St. Longinus, according to tradition) who, upon witnessing Christ’s heroism in the face of the crucifixion, declared, “Truly, this man is a Son of God” (Mt 27:54).

The so-called goyim (including the Galileans), like almost all civilized cultures, believed in a system of ethical dealings congruent with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would want them do to you,” which included, naturally, prohibitions of murder, theft, violence, etc., and also imperatives or exhortations to mutual charity, justice, and mercy—in short, the “essence of the law and the prophets” (Mt 7:12). Certainly, Jesus was ‘Jewish’ if the definition of Jewishness to extended to the point of simply believing in one God and teaching a system of ethics broadly congruent with this. But if the definition of Jewishness is to be broadened so far, then all Muslims, Christians, and, indeed, most philosophical Greeks and Romans, would have to be classed as ‘Jewish’—a position which is more than patently absurd.

What Language(s) did Jesus Speak?

In the ancient Mediterranean world, the ability to speak several languages was commonplace. Countless languages and dialects were in circulation, but the lingua franca, at the time of Christ, was Greek. Hence it is that all of the New Testament texts were originally written in Greek.

Did Jesus Himself speak Greek? Many contemporary scholars assume a negative answer to this question, but the evidence that He did is well-nigh overwhelming. He conversed with Pontius Pilate and Roman soldiers. The version of the Scripture he cites are all from the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament. He spent his childhood in Roman Egypt, (Mt 2:13–23) where the standard language, and especially the language of education and business, was Greek.

It is true that occasionally in the New Testament, specific words which Christ spoke are cited in Aramaic (e.g. Mk 5:41 & 14:36). But if this was the norm rather than the exception for him, why then would the Evangelists feel it necessary to cite and quote specific instances in the manner in which they do?

Is there a Conflict Between the Christian and Jewish Weltanschauungen?

This is an undeniably complex and, at present, sensitive question. While it is not readily answered, it is useful to reflect deeply upon it. Certain writers have portrayed or imaged Christ as simply a continuation or extension of a typically Judaic world-view and system of values. This position is exemplified in the early writings of Julius Evola:

The spread of Semitic influences in the Graeco-Roman, and later Nordic, world [was] largely due to Christianity. [….] The spirit of Israel, which had already instilled a collective sense of ‘guilt’ and ‘atonement’, became more prominent after the defeat and enslavement of the ‘chosen people.’[….] These forces, which acted in early Christianity, destroyed the European spirit.2

From this perspective, Christianity is generally portrayed as a ‘slave morality’, advocating conformism, collectivism, legalism, and surrender. Yet, the present author would argue, an examination of the actual life and teachings of Christ reveal the very opposite to be the case.

Such a position, i.e. that Christianity is not a ‘slave morality’ at all but its diametrical antithesis, was expressed by Richard Wagner, who also cites the ‘otherness’ of Christ, as a Galilean, to the Jews.

It is more than doubtful if Jesus himself was of Jewish extraction, since the dwellers of Galilee were despised by the Jews on express account of their impure origin, we may leave this point [……] to the historian. For us, it is sufficient to derive the ruin of the Christian religion from its drawing upon Judaism.3

Houston Steward Chamberlain likewise described Christianity, in its true and original form, as “a negation of Judaism,” and characterised the mission of Christ, who “transformed Judaism into its antithesis,” as:

To plant the flag of idealism on this ancient consecrated seat of the most obstinate materialism! To transform, as if by magic, the God of vengeance and war into a God of love and peace.4

Conclusion

It is the hope of the author that this short exploration of this question will offer the reader new and thought-provoking material for reflection and further reading. Whether or not one accepts the Christian faith and Christ as the perfect expression and incarnation of the eternal Logos, he must be acknowledged as an immense force, perhaps the greatest force of all, in the formation of our Western culture. At this point in history, the question of who Christ really has arguably never been more important and more critical for determining the future of humanity—and especially in recapturing of the inner Divinity of our nature, in and through which all that is good, noble, strong and free, exemplified par excellence in the person of Christ, subsists.

These ancient stories of curses by holy men, in which the punishment is to become a wolf-man or a werewolf—literally vir-wolf—illuminate a very interesting theme within the Christian scriptures.

Whereas the men entrusted by Christ to govern his Church are given the name of bishop, which can also be translated as shepherd—those who herd the sheep, the flock of the Lord—the evildoers, by implication the threats to the sheep, are wolves. Throughout the Scriptures, wolves are metaphors for the enemies of God’s people.

Ezekiel writes: Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. (Ezek 22:27) And Christ, near the end of his ministry, tells his disciples: Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves… (Matt 10:16).

Yet as modern people we are often inclined to interpret stories of werewolves, when recounted in the lives of the Saints, through metaphorical lenses. The secular world has its own peculiar use of wolves for analogical purposes, particularly in the idea of a “lone wolf”, usually invoked to refer to isolated and potentially dangerous young white men who have taken against the liberal order.

Just as Scripture uses these images as metaphor, so too, we assume, do these ancient stories. Yet reports of lycanthropy are too widespread across both time and culture to dismiss so easily. In Constantinople 1542 AD werewolves became such a plague that Solyman II, called “the Magnificent”, personally led his Janissaries in skirmishes against them throughout the streets of the city “killing” at least 150 of these unnatural beasts.

Early 16th century France suffered similarly from a flood of cases, inducing the inquisition to step in. Maitre Jean Boin, OP., S.T.D., Prior of the Dominican convent at Poligny and Inquisitor General for Besancon provided over the trial of Pierre Burgot who confessed to striking a deal with three black robbed horsemen to save the lives of his sheep during an intense thunder and hail storm in which he agreed to acknowledge the chief horseman as lord and master, on his knees before the demon rider, renouncing God, Our Lady, the Saints and his baptism. Kissing the demon’s black hand his sheep were saved but his entrance into a desecrated life had only just begun. Years later a certain Michel Verdun would invite him to a secret sabbat wizards in the woods near Chateau Charlou where he was stripped naked and anointed with an ointment he experienced the transformation into a wolf-like creature. After this Pierre and Michel slaughtered many innocents including women and children. Many further trials have been left to us in the history books.

Throughout the mediaeval and early modern period monks, bishops and learned men discussed the nature of the werewolf and how to incorporate it within theological and philosophical frameworks. An old Poenitentiale Ecclesiarum Germaniae contains the following:

Hast thou believed what some were once wont to hold, namely that those who are commonly called Parcae can effect what they are often supposed to effect, namely that when a man is born they can direct and achieve his destiny, and moreover by a magic spell when-soever certain men will they are able to transform themselves into wolves, and such a one of this kind is called (teutonica) Werewulff, or else they transform themselves into an other animal shape as they list. If thou hast believed that Man made in God’s Image and Likeness can be essentially changed into another species or form by any power save that of Almighty God alone, thou must fast therefor ten days on bread and water.

A similar text is found in a Penitential of Bartholomew Iscanus, Bishop of Exeter, who died 1184. William of Auvergne a 13th century Bishop of Paris and an expert on the occult who coined the term “natural magic” wrote extensively of werewolfism in De Universo (pars. II, iii, cap 13) in which he discusses it as a species of demonic possession. Jean Bodin, one time Carmelite friar, jurist, professor of law and political theorist, made significant time in his intensely busy life to study particular cases of lycanthropy. In book II, c. VI of De La Demonomanie des Sorciers he opines, citing St Thomas Aquinas and others as authorities, that Demons can really and materially transform the body of a man into that of an animal.

To this very day, reliable witnesses recount strange occurrences involving wolf-men, and the bizarre testimonies of preternatural phenomena surrounding cursed land, such as Skinwalker Ranch in Uinta Basin, Utah, include tales of unnatural wolves. The particularly interesting thing about Skinwalker Ranch is what has been described as the “hitchhiker effect”: visitors to the ranch who engage in investigation often bring unwanted visitors back with them to their hometowns—all of which could easily be explained by hysteria and other psychological phenomena were it not for the fact that these “hitchhikers” are also experienced by individuals who know nothing of investigations at the ranch and merely come into contact with those who have visited.

A particularly striking set of testimonies involves people, sometimes children, who after spending time with investigators begin to notice themselves being watched from outside their homes by silent, standing wolf-men, whose sinister presence would have been interpreted as a curse in more theologically vibrant times.

The ancient religions, from Egypt to Babylon to that of the Hebrews, understood spiritual beings manifested as combinations of humanoid form and animal features. Though always terrifying, a certain sublimity accompanied these mysterious angelic beings whenever they were understood as intermediaries or messengers of transcendent light. But terror comes in different flavours, and with some of these beings neither glory nor the sublime reveals itself, but rather an existential dread, as though one were in the presence of a fracture in the order of reality itself. It is this latter perception which invariably follows stories of unnaturally large wolves and wolf-men.

Throughout history, men like Nebuchadnezzar, through their own fault, or others through accident of birth or circumstance, find themselves plagued by these spiritual parasites which bind themselves to the subtle bodies of men, obscuring their nature and their hearts. However, what can afflict men can also afflict greater corporate bodies, such as nations. One reading, by Diego Hernan Rossello, of Hobbes’s Leviathan (where the idea of homo homini lupus est—man is a wolf to man—appears) argues that seventeenth-century scholars were concerned with real lycanthropy, a melancholic syndrome that could transform humans into animals, and that Hobbes’ invocation of the wolf is rather less metaphorical than the modern interpretation might suggest. After all, who is less harmonious with the body politic than the howling, unhappy man, unable or unwilling to participate in the smooth running of the state?

We cannot be sure what kind of disordered gods enslaved the men who lived in the ancient near East but we do know that the great baptism that the region underwent in the early centuries of the first millennium was so effective, and its Demons so well exorcised that the land became home to some of the greatest spiritual centres and theological schools of the early church. The school of Nissibis in the culturally Mesopotamian area of modern-day Turkey, and the great school of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, a handful of miles from modern day Baghdad, are two examples of the widespread rich theological and philosophical culture of the newly Christianising West and central-south Asia. The darkness had been lifted and light was illuminating the hearts of an ancient and sophisticated civilisation. Unfortunately, the casting out of the evil spirits is not always the end of the story, as Christ tells us:

And when an unclean spirit is gone out of a man he walketh through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith: I will return into my house from whence I came out. And coming he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goeth, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is made worse than the first. So shall it be also to this wicked generation. (Matt 12:43-45)

Before the seeds planted could reach their full maturity, the armies of the “light of Islam” salted the spiritual earth and brought about an emptying of the house of the East. This vacuum did not go unnoticed: the spirits returned and the devouring wolves took possession of the deserts. Following in the footsteps of the cult of Lykaean Zeus of which Plato speaks in the Republic, book VIII, when Socrates tells us that:

…anyone who tastes the one piece of human innards that’s chopped up with those of other sacrificial victims must inevitably become a wolf. Haven’t you heard that story?

Ever since predation of the weak and the young became the law of the sand, lupine spirits took possession of the men of these foreign lands forming them in their own likeness. In the stomach-turning practice of the Bacha Bazi for instance we see an exact representation of the lupine predation described by Strato:

By night, on pleasure bent, my dinner o’er,

Like to a wolf, I came before the door

Of Aristocidus, and then I saw

His lamb-like son, and unto him I swore

To give him many gifts, and plighted troth

To him with kisses twain; now am I loath

Do vine-bred fancey were indeed the growth.

Now these tribesmen have come to our shores and Britain has entered her great passion. They’ve come devouring children and women, they’ve come as a flood, wolves among sheep. The rape genocide of Britain would be bad enough where it not for the fact that our elite class have also become wolves. Plato also warned about this as his dialogue continues:

Then doesn’t the same happen with a leader of the people who dominates a docile mob and doesn’t restrain himself from spilling kindred blood? He brings someone to trial on false charges and murders him (as tyrants so often do), and, by thus blotting out a human life, his impious tongue and lips taste kindred citizen blood. He banishes some, kills others, and drops hints to the people about the cancellation of debts and the redistribution of land. And because of these things, isn’t a man like that inevitably fated either to be killed by his enemies or to be transformed from a man into a wolf by becoming a tyrant? (Republic, Book VIII)

Since parliament gave license to the killing of unborn children, millions of little ones have been slaughtered, devoured by the wolves of our New World. Unlike the blood lust of war here we are confronted by the taste of “kindred citizen blood” and the emergence of tyranny. Surrounded by enemies without and within, the tribes of this island are scattered and demoralised, desperately in need of shepherds. What great shepherds we have had in the past; just as sometimes the spiritual wolves manifest in physical phenomena, so too have the bishops wielded their spiritual sword on the physical plain taking up arms to defend Christian women and children.

One thinks of the illustrious Saint-Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg, who oversaw the protection of his city against the repeated attacks of the Magyars leading the defence with bravery and honour. Likewise, Saint Heahmund, ninth century Bishop of Sherborne, a warrior who died fighting alongside the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred I of Wessex and the future King Alfred the Great defending these hallowed lands against the Danes. Carrying a sword to defend his flock, the church recognised him as a martyr.

But you, bishops of this modern world, are you all hired hands? (let the reader understand). Are you all bought and paid for by the enemy? Or is there any among you who stand for your flock as the children of Europe who are being devoured by foreign wolves?

My purpose here is not to demonise wolves, I believe them to be extraordinary, noble creatures. Many Saints forged friendships with wolves. Saint Francis and Saint Ruan who had such an affinity that—ironically in the context of this piece—while in Brittany he was accused of being a wolf in disguise! When Saint Edmund of East Anglia was brutally murdered by the Danes in 869AD it was a wolf who discovered his severed head and protected it from scavengers. When the party searching for the Saint discovered the wolf it was holding the head between its paws, crying out “Hic, hic, hic…” and they marvelled and praised God and honoured the wolf.

The lupine spiritual creatures we are dealing with in this piece are instead the manifestation of the fallen face of wolf-nature, the wolf as lost in the wilderness and whose condition is exacerbated by man’s priestly abdication. The learned Jesuit Cornelius a Lapide, wrote that the evening wolves are demons who “prowl abroad in the dark hours, and urge man to every kind of lust and murder, and to other infinite crimes”. So intimate is this association of the wolf with evil that in early English the word Wolf is used interchangeably with the devil—the wolf of hell.

The ancient constitutions of the West already lay out what must be done to Wolf Men. One early Norman law proclaimed that for certain heinous crimes (no doubt rape genocide would be included), a man is to be declared wargus esto—become a wolf, homo sacer—and is to be hunted and slain by those who love peace and goodness. The laws laid down by Saint Edward the Confessor continued this line of thought:

Concerning Those Who Flee the Peace of the Church… And if thereafter he shall be found and can be taken, let him be delivered to the king, or let him defend his head [i.e. save his life]; for from the day of his outlawry he shall bear a wolf’s head, which is called among the English wluesheued. And this sentence is common to all outlaws.

Stand up Shepherds of God and protect the sheep for it is not the spirit of the age you answer to but to the Consuming Fire. Fear Him who has a store house of millstones for those who allow the little ones to stumble. Protect us from the tyrannical wolves in power who lust for the blood of the weak, protect us from the wolf invaders who are devouring our children, take up the sword that the Lord has given you and bring peace back to this hallowed land.