Jesus the Aryan, from Southern Galilee
Redeemer and Savior, to us in the Christian faith: the Lord and
Great Shepherd of Life, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the World,
the High Priest of Heaven, Messiah and King. The Nazis, though, in and out of the Deutsche Christen,
had great 'cognitive dissonance' with Jesus, the Savior, being a Jew, and a traveling rabbi, at
that. Unlike the Apostle Paul of Tarsus, Jesus was not so easy to downplay in importance
or influence, even in a Church and era which had grown cold and philosophical.
Jesus vs Paul to the Nazis
The Nazis bore a very odd perspective on Jesus, as compared to the Apostle Paul. They emphasized Paul's jewishness far more than that of Jesus, and by the end of the formation of the Deutsche Christen (DC), Jesus had become redefined as a non-Jew. Paul on the other hand was seen as a Rabbi with degenerate teachings: he was self-effacing, constantly focusing on his first love of the Jewish nation, and contributing what Goebbels and others considered a negative 'judaizing' of interpretation on the teachings in the Gospel. Jesus on the other hand, and the Gospels in general, instead of being outright dismissed due to their Jewish content, were redefined as Aryan. Why this is is not absolutely proveable but one may gather that the entrenchment of Jesus as Redeemer and Savior, and Salvation by grace was so firmly set in the German mind since Luther and before, that the overthrow of Christianity would have set a great opposition against the Nazis, even by mainstream Lutherans who were complacent or even supportive of Nazi 'adjustments' to the faith.Jesus the Aryan Superman
A theologian named Grundman, a student of Gerhard Kittel went even further in attempting to re-formulate the Jesus of history, the Jesus of the Scriptures. He posited the following argument:1. Jesus was from Galilee, in northern Israel, the place where there had been a great deal of Assyrian and other influx since the time of the Exile, and therefore was more likely to have been Aryan than Jewish.2. Jesus' mother under Roman occupation, rather than being a virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit may have been raped by a Roman soldier, making him at least half Aryan, even if he was half Jewish.
3. Jesus, the Christ, was indeed, far more by characteristics and 'powers' likely to have been the Herreman, or Superman, or what some termed a 'Thulian'. The legend of Thules had to do with the idea of an island off the lost Atlantis in which the inhabitants were characterized by special 'powers' and abilities. In any case it was proposed that he was at least like that, and rather than dismiss the miracles of the Gospel which some moribund traditional theologies were doing at the time, they incorporated the concept of the miracles being evidence of the non-Jewish, Aryan 'superman'.
Many do not realize it, but some of these propositions have made it into today's Seminaries, with Jesus taught as Aramaic or Gentile and not Jewish: white aryan churches still teach Jesus as a non-Jew even in the US. [e.g. the Identity movement]. Any one who has attended a more liberal Seminary in the U.S. has heard the theory of Jesus being fathered by the unknown rape of a young girl by a Roman Soldier: the anti-virgin theories abound, but that one has been often repeated without realizing the source, including a champion of the theory at Andover-Newton. Those who favor Archetype theory like also to characterize Jesus as a 'messianic type' or a 'highly functioning' person, although the Nazi theory went farther into concepts which many had formed in youth. (See Nazi Beliefs
To the natural and unstudied mind, some of these 'ponderances' seem reasonable, but there are firm Scriptural counterpoints to the arguments of Grundman and others including those to follow:
Scriptural Objections to Grundman's Theology of Jesus
In modern times, many believers are often swayed by 'winds of doctrine' with many popular but unscriptural ideas ever abounding. Since there is less of an emphasis in many churches on Bible study, most do not know when they hear what sounds like 'plausible' arguments they are often accepted without discernment, and unfortunately, the same holds in seminary training. It is a day not given to the acceptance of 'supernatural' phenomena, such as miracles healings, and virgin births, so many run to more 'modern' explanation, a remnant also of German shoah era theology which stemmed from Bultmann.'s Higher Criticism. However, the essential nature of Christianity requires the consent and belief of certain doctrines, however 'unmodern' without which, the whole of belief falls apart, for without a divine nature, the atonement of sin could not have been accomplished.The Scriptural counters to the arguments of Grundman and others follow:
I. While Jesus was most certainly from Galilee, returning there after a time from his birth in Bethlehem there is no real question of his Jewishness, or the necessity of it! Romans states that oracles of God, and the Messiah of God had to be Jewish, and so did countless passages in the Old Testament. (xxxx) But the 'prima facie evidence is at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew and Luke: the formidable Jewish line in the genealogy of Mary and Joseph , his parents, both descending from the line of David. He lived among the Jews, practiced Jewish customs, was dedicated in the Temple, found teaching the elders in Jerusalem, an impossibility if he had not been a Jewish male, however young, he read the Torah, Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at the beginning of his ministry and countless other evidences. One must be Jewish to be the King of the Jews, so the geographical arguments of Grundman fall apart in the light of scripture.Secondly, the area of Hazor, Galilee and surrounds, did have a mix of people, but since the first inhabitation of Israel in the land, Jews were residents. The great influx of non-Jews, other than in the pre- Joshua days, were from Assyria when the Assyrian King and troops swept through the weakened and fractured north, with faulty alliances under the Northern Kingdom sovereigns who had stepped out from under the rule of Judah. The occupation of Hazor and surrounds in the northern section included both the capture and deportation/ghettoization of Jews in the area and the resettlement of those from the invading Assyria. More occurred when Nebuchanezzar swept again through the area heading south to take Jerusalem, leaving his own settlements along the way. However, David, before the time of the Kings had secured the northern border up to the Euphrates, and it was clearly under Jewish rule before the captivity, so the hailing of Jesus from the area of Galilee and capernaum does not really even entertain his nationality or race, with so many other evidences set in stone.
2.The Virgin Mary and the Roman Soldier- This argument required Grundman to step entirely out of the Word of God, the basis with faith of the Christian life and belief, relying only on speculation of what might possibly have happened in history, and it begins with Grundman's unbelief: it was preposterous to him that there could be a virgin birth, so he reconceived it as a child born out of wedlock with an unknown origin. The issue often in 'dissenssioned' doctrines is belief: there are a number of truths God gives which we are asked to accept not on human reason, but on divine reason and trust in the veracity of God. The Gospel teaches that the conception of Christ occurred when Mary was 'overshadowed' by the Holy Spirit:
"Luke 1:35:And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
The greek word for overshadow is episkiazo which is overshadowing, simply, but it is used also in descriptions of the encompassing cloud of glory which appears throughout scripture- it was God creating, within the cloud of glory seen at the front of the camp in the Exodus, when Elijah leaves this world, and at the transfiguration among others. 2 The issue is no different than that of a God who created the world, and intends an act of mercy in it: he comandeers his creation for a purpose, and though it may not make 'modern sense', it is an issue for faith which is asked for, an issue of divine reason. In this Grundman actually blasphemes the work of God, attributing it to a vile work of man, a very dangerous sin. Thirdly, one would have to ascribe to God the quality of 'liar', for He relays the account differently than Grundman's.
3.Jesus the German Superman- This issue is fairly easy to counter with scripture, but it is a commonly held of two major fallacies about Jesus in the modern mind. One is, that he was a great moral teacher, which even most major non-Christian religions are willing to entertain.