'They were refugees, fleeing for their lives from one Middle Eastern country to the next. As Matthew tells the tale, Joseph, fearing that the government had marked his newborn son for death, gathered up his wife and child and stole away by night across the Judean border into Egypt. And just in time: Unsure who, exactly, to kill, that government — a king named Herod, who’d heard some kid would one day become a rival king — proceeded to slaughter every remaining child in Bethlehem under the age of 2.
'This isn’t a chapter of the Christmas story that has made it into the general celebration, but it’s there in the gospel, for those who give the gospels credence and for those who don’t. For both groups, it’s clear that the authors of the New Testament intended to recount (for the believers) or compose (for the nons) a story that echoed the Old Testament’s concern for strangers, foreigners and refugees (“The stranger among you shall be as one born among you,” says Leviticus, “and you shall love him as yourself”), that foreshadowed Jesus’ teachings to care for castaways and the least among us, and that laid the foundation for institutional Christianity’s transnationalism.'
--------------------------------------------
On Meyerson's reading, Leviticus might as well be a proto-Sermon-on-the-Mount, except that Leviticus details nearly a score of offenses for which death is prescribed, including blasphemy and not keeping the Sabbath, two key charges against Jesus of Nazareth. The Judaism of Leviticus is a religion steeped in violence by Jews against Jews, violence which is routinized against offenders against God's law, not to mention against countless animals slaughtered eventually in a Temple to appease an angry God and feed an idle clerisy.
In true liberal fashion, only the one element of this book which is convenient to the present liberal narrative is featured. All the inconvenient facts of the rest of it are omitted, the ones which cannot be pressed into the service of the liberal project, indeed which argue against it, which in this case is to shame those who reject refugees. Does it really need to be pointed out that according to Matthew Jesus and his family were rejected by the Jews, and became refugees from Judaism, not to it?
Meyerson similarly paints the Matthew story of the Slaughter of the Innocents as if it were a matter of government oppressing the people, when in fact Matthew is at pains to tell us a different story in which "all Jerusalem with him" was involved, not just Herod by himself, "troubled" as they both were by the news from the wise men about a new king "of the Jews" coming to replace Herod, and upset their profitable applecart.
'"Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.' -- Matthew 2:2f.
This is but the beginning of Matthew's message that Jerusalem was unalterably opposed to Jesus. By the end of that story Jesus himself is saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" -- Matthew 23:37
Indeed, when it comes to anti-Judaism in the gospels it is most singularly expressed by Matthew, in the account of Jesus' trial before Pilate where all the Jews become willingly complicit in Jesus' death:
'Pilate saith unto them, "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" They all say unto him, "Let him be crucified." ... Then answered all the people, and said, "His blood be on us, and on our children."' -- Matthew 27: 22, 25
If Harold Meyerson is seen to be a tendentious hack intentionally misrepresenting Leviticus and Matthew, in the end he does turn out to be right about one thing:
'A sharp rise in the number of adherents to alternative realities in a world otherwise governed by empiricism is not without unhappy precedent in modern history. It has sundered nations and brought fascists — with their characteristic disdain for rationalism — to power.'
In our time they all seem to type for the Democrats at The Washington Post.
