Debunking "The Jews: The Not So Chosen People"

Oy!

This video is very regularly spread around right-wing circles, and it seems to be some sort of parody of CGP Grey. That’s how I always saw it. A while ago on iFunny I wrote a rant about how shitty the video is, and obviously it eventually got black-holed. Someone asked me to remake it on here, so I’ll do that. Because, while the Jews might not be the chosen people, this video argues it in the worst ways possible.

This is a common issue on the right. You see it with antisemitism fairly commonly, like when people try and pull a ‘gotcha’ on the Jews by saying they were the majority of slaveowners in the South. This is not only completely false, but a statistical impossibility. Jews made up less than 1% of the Southern population. Slaveowners made up anywhere from a sixth to a quarter of the population. Even if every single Southern Jew owned a slave they could not have owned a majority of the slaves. Also, most Southern Jews lived in cities like Charleston, New Orleans, and Savannah. They may have been wealthy enough to own a few house slaves, but were not the ones operating plantations.

You can see two weaknesses in this argument. First, that it is obviously false and so our political enemies will very happily use it to portray all arguments about the JQ as stupid and false like this one. Secondly, that it concedes that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was some sort of extraordinary malevolence which has to be atoned for, since what is going on here is shifting the blame for the atonement onto someone else. This video has earned my contempt for doing something similar. It is both very easy to shoot down by anyone with any knowledge on the subject, and it is subversive to our own interests by postulating certain things that I’ll get to later.

Now, firstly, he is correct about Semites, Eber, and Abraham, albeit “Anti-Semite” and “Hebrew” are obviously colloquialisms. Abraham was not a Jew. Abraham is the ancestor of several semitic peoples, for example the descendants of Ismael, who the Arabs claim to be among. However, very early on he makes a mistake which can be corrected by a simple google search. Judah is not the ancestor of all Jews. Levites and Aaronites still exist and number in the hundreds of thousands, and still have special religious roles in Judaism as they really comprised a sort of religious elite back in the temple days. Levites and Aaronites today also have a distinct makeup of paternal lineages, suggesting that these are actual deep differences and not just Jews we-wuzzing. One can also surmise that the descendants of Benjaminites are found among modern Jews, as there were Benjaminites among the Jews during the time of the New Testament. There’s no reason to think these people just magically disappeared or were rejected by the Judahites. In reality, the Tribes of Israel were probably already mixing with each other quite a bit for their entire existence, but for some reason the author acts like they were separate peoples. The reason Jews are called Jews has nothing to do with them all being Judahites, it has to do with their inhabitation of Judea. Jews are only even called Jews in some languages, in others they’re called Hebrews.

Now we get to this business of “descendant blessing” which is ridiculousness. First of all, all of Abraham’s descendants are part of the Abrahamic covenant. It very clearly states this in Genesis. Abraham’s descendants would occupy the land allotted to them by the covenant, which stretched from the Nile to the Euphrates. The “chosen land” for the Jews under the Mosaic covenant is much smaller. Secondly, all of the tribes of Israel are obviously included within the Mosaic Covenant. Thirdly, the tribe of Judah contributed much of the most important figures within the Old Testament, so to say that the Judahites were not relevant to the covenant is ridiculous. The Davidic line was of Judahite extract. The Prophet Isaiah was a Judahite. Jesus himself was necessarily a Judahite by virtue of being from the line of David, and Jesus being a Judahite is agreed upon by Matthew and Luke.

Cannibal has no etymological connection to “Canaan + Baal”. This is stupid. Cannibal comes from Caríbal, a term the Spanish used for the indigenous inhabitants of the West Indes who were recorded as eaters of human flesh. Hebrew also might not have an etymological connection to Eber, it’s unclear.

Alright, this is when the video goes from retarded, to downright annoying, because it’s here where the author tries to claim that Europeans are actually descended from Israelite semitic invaders who were allied with Phoenician colonists. This is not true, Phoenicians had no genetic impact on Europe and even their more famous colonies like Carthage and Sardignia were probably not very Phoenician either. While we don’t have any published studies from Phoenician cities themselves, we do have samples from the port city of Kerkouane under Carthaginian Rule (as well as Carthaginian Sardinia) which don’t show any significant amount of DNA from the Levant. There are also leaks of a study which found Carthaginians to be mostly indigenous in North Africa and Carthaginian Sicily, but I don’t know if it will ever come out as it was leaked years ago and I haven’t heard anything of it. Anyways, Europeans show no genetic influence from these traders, they didn’t establish any colonies outside of the Mediterranean (trading at certain ports does not constitute a colony), and European paternal DNA is also definitely not from the Levant.

The etymological connections this guy makes are very stupid and obviously false, just like the “Canaan + Baal” performance. Danes and Sardinians don’t have an etymological connection to Dan. It’s not even worth going into. Abraham was already the father of many nations by virtue of being the ancestor of the Israelites, Ismaelites, and the children of Keturah (which includes the Midianites and in some traditions the Assyrians). Sorry, but Europeans are indigenous to Europe, they are not the long-lost descendants of brown desert Jews. Fucking retarded troglodyte. Do you see now, what I was talking about with this being subversive? Trying to say Europeans are desert people and have no history?

Now we are into the section about the Talmud, and first of all, Nero was not a Jew. Nero did not care about Jews. Jews obviously just claimed Nero as their own later on and this has no actual historical basis. Nero was given so much slander that it’s hard to know what to think of him at this point, but if he was a Jew it would have caused public uproar. Also, the Jews were banned again under Claudius before Nero ever came onto the scene. It seems this was not mentioned because Suetonius suggests it was over Jews and Christians (who were, to the Romans, Jews) getting in public squabbles.

The Talmud, without a doubt, is a very nasty book, but many people don’t understand it. When Jews say it is the “Oral Torah” they aren’t really playing a “long game of telephone” like the video suggests. Most of the rulings in the Talmud are argued in the Talmud to be justified by some written Scripture. Are they good justifications? Well, not always, and yes some of the laws of the Talmud are argued for very Jewishly. The Oral Torah is more of a supplementary series of deductions from the Written Torah. They say it is as old as the Written Torah, yes, but that’s because it must have existed to provide some sort of context for certain parts of the Written Torah. To say the compilation of these religious rulings is equivalent to creating a whole new religion is like saying Catholics are not Christians because they have the Catechism.

For some reason Christians like to think that after the death of Christ all of the animosity other nations had towards Israel went from completely illegitimate to completely legitimate. The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Persians (until Jewish Pussy had Xerxes acting strange) who hated the Jews were all just demon-worshipping maniacs! But after the death of Christ? It’s 109 countries this, 109 countries that. Maybe — just maybe! — Jews were always the way they are! If you’ve ever actually looked at the Talmud articles attacking Gentiles, they’re all justified with verses from the Old Testament. Jewish activity during the Old Testament certainly reflects a great deal of hatred for Gentiles, but Christians accept this as righteous Jewish hatred for their pagan religious traditions.

Now, as for the question of Jews being the “chosen people”… I think, yes, even under the doctrine of Supersessionism, Jews are in some sense still the chosen people. Their covenant from Sinai doesn’t go away and the conversion of the Jews is pretty much seen as being the primary mission of the entire biblical journey in the New Testament. Yes, the conversion of the world is seen as fundamentally good, but the conversion of the Jews has a sort of primacy even if it is clearly not going to happen for the time being. From Matthew 15:21–28:

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly”. Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us”. He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel”. The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs”. “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Jesus also acknowledges Jewish primacy in Romans 1:16.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”

While Jesus acknowledges that the Jews, for the time being, will not convert in large numbers to Christianity, he prophecies the eventual conversion of the Jews after the mass conversion of gentiles (Romans 11:25)

“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved.”

Even the regularly used “Synagogue of Satan” quote (Rev 3:9) seems to suggest the eventual submission of heretical Jews to Christ:

“Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie—indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.”

The idea that the “new covenant” makes the old covenant inactive in the first place is dubious at best. If any Christians want to explain that, go ahead.

This line of reasoning has, in my opinion, led to the preservation of Jews in the Christian world, which has caused a great deal of problems in the world and especially in the west. Christians will bring up instances of Christians doing bad to Jews, but the truth is that the literal wordcels in the Church have always come in to protect the Jews at times when the peasantry and gentry wanted to destroy them. Also, Christian leaders have treated Jews better than their pagan kinsmen many times, but I’ll bring up the two most significant examples.

Firstly, under Theodosius, Pagan institutions were largely destroyed and engagement in Pagan rituals began to be persecuted on the individual level. Late in Theodosius’s reign, he banned all pagan rituals, even private ones. His successors would continue this, all the while sparing Jewish synagogues and merely banning Jews from holding certain offices and prohibiting any Jews from rituals which blatantly mock Christianity (for example, the burning of a crucified effigy of Haman in Synagogues — presumably, the crucified figure isn’t *actually* meant to be Haman…). I believe this is all discussed in the Codex Theodosianus which was written under Theodosius II, but it’s kind of hard to find an English translation PDF.

The second example is Charlemagne. Charlemagne, who for most of his reign fought heavily to purge Germanic Paganism both within his domain and in the surrounding region. He famously destroyed and looted the site of Irminsul, an important holy site of the Saxons, in 772. 10 years later, Charlemagne would massacre over 4,000 Saxons at Verden, an event which in all fairness was only partially a response to their Paganism, and partially a response to their disloyalty. In 785, Charlemagne made it so that all Saxons, not just those who engaged in the revolt, were met with an ultimatum — convert, or be killed.

Meanwhile, Charlemagne was much more sparing in his treatment of Jews. Charlemagne brought Jews not only into his empire, but into his court as well. And what Christians will bring up is that Charlemagne and Theodosius had some discrimination against Jews. But they never show you how well the Jews were treated compared to pagan Europeans, even though the Jews seemed to have even more contempt for Christianity.

This may have all been inspired by Augustinian policies on Jews, which held that Jews should be discriminated against (essentially made an example of) and contained, but preserved and not converted. While you might get some sort of pleasure towards making Jewish life suck, it is unproductive and combined with the preservation of them creates a wedge of ferment and resentment wherever they are exiled to. Plus, the reason they had to stick around was, again, because people believed one day Jews would eventually convert, or at least a significant fraction of them would.

If Christianity and Islam did not exist, I’m somewhat skeptical if Jews would still have any prominence, or even exist at all. I have already made separate posts about antisemitism in the classical world, so I’m not gonna harp on about that.

Well, that’s that. Again, I’m just rehashing shit I said on iFunny already at someone’s request, so if someone’s going to call me a “Jew Shill” for this, take that into consideration. Also, maybe just stop devoting your faith to a Jewish wizard and start devoting your faith to an Aryan wizard, hmm? Boom shacka lacka!