Jesus was a bigot

“Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so” (Traditional, Words by Anna B. Warner)

Most Christians assume Jesus loved anyone who accepted him; that Jesus had a personal interest in each and every individual. Yet they misunderstand their main man. Jesus did not love Gentiles (who he referred to as pagans.) He told his disciples:

“Do not turn your steps to pagan territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel”  (Matt. 10:6, NJB.)

He said:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of  Israel”  (Matt. 15:24, NJB.)

Jesus even told his fellow Jews not to pray like pagans (non Jewish people):

“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt. 6:7–8, NJB.)

Here is Jesus’ encounter with a Greek (i.e. non-Jewish) woman:

“He left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, but he could not pass unrecognized. A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him straight away and came and fell at his feet. Now the woman was pagan, by birth a Syrophonecian and she begged him to cast the devil out of her daughter and he said to her ‘the children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house dogs’. But she spoke up ‘Ah yes sir’ she replied ‘but the house dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps’. And he said to her ‘for saying this, you may go home happy; the devil has gone out of your daughter.’ So she went off to her home and found the child lying on the bed and the devil gone” (Mark 7:24–30, NJB.)

Jesus was drawing an analogy. The children were his fellow Jews, who were to be fed first. Gentiles were referred to as dogs, (when Jews wished to insult someone they often referred to them as dogs) whom Jesus would rather not help. Jesus hesitated before healing the girl because her mother was not Jewish. The woman had to remind Jesus that he should love his neighbour. 

Caesaria was the capital of Judea and Sepphoris the capital of Galilee, yet there is no record that Jesus ever visited either city, despite their size and importance, possibly because Gentiles populated them.

Jesus could have taken his mission outside Palestine. Egyptians, Greeks, Africans, and Romans might have been wowed by his words of wisdom, yet he did not bother with them either, as they too were in Gentile territories.

These facts suggest that Jesus was xenophobic. If Yeshua were an insurrectionist trying to start a war, preaching platitudes to Gentiles would have been the last thing on his mind. It is possible these statements reflect Yeshua’s real attitude.

People who push the “Jesus loves you” line need to read their Bibles more carefully, and should try to understand the real history. It is obvious Jesus did not even like you unless you were Jewish.

The man portrayed in the Gospels was often not meek, mild or tolerant. Consider how Jesus threatened people with hell, and bad-mouthed anyone who did not worship him. The Gospels’ authors were not even consistent enough to create an attractive image of Jesus.

Yeshua, the real historical character, if he ever existed, grew up uneducated in the violent xenophobic backwater that was first century Galilee. He was executed by the Romans because he was a militant sectarian zealot. It is obvious that his image as a peace loving, benevolent, humanitarian preacher is a fiction, written by propagandists decades after his death. They were intent on creating an image of him that was the opposite of who he really was.