Christianity & Judaism 
Religions 
Encountered a Setback
Orbiting between Paganism & Greek Philosophy 
(First Episode)
اليهودية والمسيحية أديان مرتدة ! أديان بين الوثنية والفلسفة اليونانية . الحلقة الأولى.
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Written by: Izapilla Penijamin 
Translated by: Ni'ma Sharaf 

In the space of the three years of Jesus' mission, the Christian faith has not been rendered by him a full-fledged religion, for he was soon snatched by God from the circle of his students. Apart from the rare swift raids he used to launch on the Jews' temples to admonish and broadcast his message in public, he kept out of sight roaming and preaching across mountains, deserts, green fields and woodlands.

With the sudden departure of Jesus, the official version of the undefiled Bible perished, and as a result afflictions have befallen the Greek and Roman civilisations in effect to their arrogance, insolence and idolatry-practice. In the meantime almost all emperors and statesmen strived laboriously to efface the little available from Jesus tuition, headed by St. Augustine who substituted the Message of Heaven by the Greek philosophy.

How had this happened?

St. Augustine holds an indisputable status among the Christian doctrines and denominations which unanimously recognise how influential he was in inflicting change on the Christian dogmas and beliefs.

Encyclopaedia Britannica states under the entry of Augustine: 

“Intellectually, Augustine represents the most vital adaptation of the ancient Platonic tradition with Christian ideas that ever occurred in the Latin Christian world. He is the medium that horrifically relayed the outcomes of this fusion between religion and Greek philosophy to the two worldwide communities of Christians: the Medieval Roman Catholic and the Protestant Reformation in the Renaissance.” 

This burdensome legacy continued up to date, keeping pace with every chapter and epoch of Christianity until it became prevalent and rampant. Douglas T. Holden reports on this situation: “the Christian theology has immersed in the Greek philosophy to such an extent that it had generated approaches to religion which consist of nine parts of the Greek thought versus one part of the Christian.”

This was not symptomatic of Christianity alone. Earlier on, Judaism pioneered the trend, embracing Pagan Hellenistic tradition from the third century BC up to the fifth century AD so widely that it defined the terms for much later Hebrew tradition. Discourse analysis to the diction of both religions will reveal a highly critical and peculiar matter: 

1. Judaism influenced by Hellenism
2. Hellenism adapted to Christianity 
3. Christianity influenced by Hellenism
4. Christian philosophy

To start with, 'Judaism influenced by Pagan Hellenism' is a term under which the pristine teachings of Hebrew religion, brought by Prophet Moses and nursed by his custodian and successor, Joshua, were clouded. Three bloody wars ignited to safeguard the pristine religion, led by Joshua against Zipporah, the Deviant hence the Apostates from Judaism. In Joshua wake, the remainder of Jews turned against his children banishing them and immediately initiating a prolonged process of change substituting the Hebrew religion by Pagan Hellenistic legacy and adopting among other things the star of Remphan , a Pagan logo, nowadays the premier Jewish symbol. This is certified by the Hebrew Monotheist literature which infiltrated the Torah in general and the Book of Judges in particular:

“And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of YAHWEH, died, being a son of a hundred and ten years. (9) .... (10) .... and another generation arose after them who had not known YAHWEH, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel. 11 And the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of YAHWEH, and served the Baals. (12) .... And they went after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves to them, and angered YAHWEH. (13) Yea, they forsook YAHWEH, and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.” (The Judges, 2: 8-11)

A testimony from the Torah itself that Moses religion has perished and been supplanted by the fiction of those who retraced after him, the apostates. They plainly adopted every corrupt vile belief from the philosophy of the Egyptians, Canaanites and Babylonians. Correspondingly, Jason, the chief Rabbi of the Jewish community established a Greek institution in Jerusalem 175 BC to disseminate and circulate Homer philosophy. In the second half of the second century, the Holy Book was submitted in a Hellenistic mode incorporating the Apocrypha Books: Book of Judith and Book of Tobit, as well as the sexually motivating Greek myths, which are dispersed primarily in the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). The Jewish philosophers came up with a synthesis combining the Greek thought, Jewish religion and Holy Bible altogether.

Probably the most prominent scholar who impacted the new form of Judaism is Philo Judaeus of the first century BC who embraced the teachings of Plato, Pythagoras and the Stoic. The Jewish Professor Max Dimont comments in this respect: “if the Jewish scholars were satiated with Platonism, Aristotelian logic, Euclid science, this means that a whole new outlook to the Torah has initiated, and that they let the Greek logical analysis flow copiously at the expense of the Jewish Revelation.”

In spite of the distortion and change made by Augustine in the Holy Book, Popes / bishops in the early Christian church gave him the title of saint the scribe of Revelation, ascribed to him supernatural powers, narrations and sayings. In other words, they raised him aloft though knowing about his intellectual aberration from the right way. 

See the latest Encyclopaedia Britannica edition, English version under: Augustine.
The prestigious reader can revise my article “Remphan, The Pagan Star” for more information.