Quick Edit: Apologies everyone, the holidays ended up leaving me busier than anticipated, and apparently scheduling this entry to post didn't work, hence the severe lateness of this post. I promise I will return to more constant updates now that everything has died down.

In a previous post I laid out the people behind this movie and the reasons for which their motives should be taken into consideration prior to viewing. Now I would like to do a breakdown of the film itself, pointing out anything that is worthy cause for concern and momentary pause. I may give examples of other sermons and lectures by Anderson, people who generally agree with him, and lectures from people who generally oppose him. I would like to emphasize first and foremost that I am not religious, and identify as anti-theist, but for the sake of argument here I would simply like to showcase how Anderson misrepresents the general teachings of the bible as best I'm suited to do.







Let me return first to the opening of this movie. We find ourselves with Anderson and the aforementioned Paul Wittenberger who, as stated before, serves as the film's director, producer, and editor entering what appears to be a library. The conversation cuts quickly from an explanation on how one must "understand the history of the Jews to understand the founding of the modern state of Israel," then continues by saying "What you need to know is that their religion is no longer based on the Bible."

For the record, the Old Testament as Protestants and Catholics know it is not the same as the Jews know it. The Torah consists of only twenty four [1] of the original books that make up the Protestant Old Testament, which consists of thirty nine books. More still if you're a Catholic, Orthodox, or of the Latter-Day Saints (quick warning, Anderson considers all of these faiths to be cults and not true Christians). So to claim that the Jews no longer follow biblical teaching is irrelevant seeing as they don't quite follow the same book.

Later, one of Anderson's habitual quirks are evidenced in his tendency to get hung up on the mundane. "Why don't the Jews practice animal sacrifice anymore after the destruction of their temple?" he asks. It's in their book (by way of his logic it must also be in Anderson's book - yet I have not seen him slaughtering animals in his sermons) so why don't they do it? Orthodox Rabbi Reuven Mann and Conservative Jewish Rabbi Leo Abrami make their first appearances at this point (not lasting more than a few seconds thanks to the abysmal editing habits of Wittenberger) saying that prayers are what took the place of animal sacrifice, as such the practice has been discontinued.

I must imagine that any religion in the United States and most elsewhere would have had to move away from practices the like of animal sacrifice, as most civil societies wouldn't accept such behavior today. One might think that the argument of animal sacrifices on those terms alone would be a moot point in highlighting the heresy in a religion, but Anderson, being the quixotic man that he is, is likely not to have believed that such a thing should matter when it comes to interpreting scripture literally. That being said, the more prominent issue here is that the Torah actually forbids the Jews from having animal sacrifices dedicated anywhere outside of the temple itself [2], therefore, "biblically" speaking, they cannot do animal sacrifices. That should be your answer, Mr. Anderson, but once again research proves to be not within your realm of capability.

This continues on for a bit with some more appearances: Reform Rabbi Irwin Weiner, and Humanist Jewish Leader Jeffrey Schesnol. Schesnol goes back to the point that upon the destruction of the temple, the Jews were forced to make their religion more "portable", so there was seen a sort of "evolution" of the religion, if you will allow me to say so, from "priestly Judaism" to "Rabbinic Judaism". This conversation seems taken out of context, and as later examples will show, it likely was. As we cut right back to Anderson and Wittenberger in that weird frosted square glass room, Anderson states that "Judaism stopped being the religion of the Old Testament and started to become the religion of the Rabbis."

One cannot be certain what Anderson's game is with such a statement. If the religion was indeed required to change and evolve given that the ancient Jews had (once again) found themselves to be a nomadic tribe, then obviously the traditions and ceremonies they were used to keeping would have had to change! This is true of all religions. Even the King James Bible's predecessors saw plenty of alterations before it was established. To suggest that any religion is untouched by such practices is fundamentally ignorant on a historical level.

It is here now that Texe Marrs shows up, splaying the viewer and Wittenberger with verbal diarrhea. I suppose we are to take on faith (pun intended) who Marrs is, because the only tag under his name is "Author". Since not only Anderson but his followers seem to have some form of aversion to education, it might have behooved him to note that Marrs also runs his own ministry out of Texas, but that wouldn't hold any stock with viewers the likes of myself.

A few minutes are given to the supposed origin of the Talmud and how the interpretations of this book appear to be the fundamental difference between orthodox and non-orthodox Jews. The story goes that there were seventy elders who received the Talmud (or the Oral Torah) in conjunction to Moses' reception of the Written Torah (supposedly Moses was given both, but gave the teachings of the Oral Torah only to the elders). The reason the elders were instructed not to write it down was because it was "intended to be fluid" - in other words, the oral torah existed as directions on how to apply the rules of the written torah. However, they were not written down so as to allow for necessary adjustments and to adapt to new circumstances. This makes sense, and actually provides a lot more forward thinking than many other religions seem to apply to their scriptures. [3]

Unphased, Anderson goes on to quote Erubin 21b: "My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah." Well, if the words of the Scribes are what you use to interpret the Torah, this seems like a logical direction to take. If this is supposed to help against translation and interpretation errors, something that Anderson seems impervious to, you might want to have it take at least some precedence.

Some more out of context interview segments are peppered into the run at this point, mostly from Texe Marrs, as well as verse Mark 7:7 in which Jesus is quoted as saying "But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men." (NAS) To put this verse in context, it was actually in reference to Jesus being asked why some of his disciples were eating with uncleaned hands, as it was a tradition of the elders to clean ones hands fully prior to the consumption of food. Literally two verses before this Jesus is asked "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?" (Mark 7:5 - NAS). This was not a full condemnation of the Jews, simply a criticism on how some practices were taking precedence over others. There is further need of study on this verse for full context for both why Jesus said what he said, and to whom it was directed.

Proceeding onward, there are statements of Jesus being a bastard son in the Talmud, which might be blaspheming, certainly. But take into consideration that the story of Jesus being born to a virgin at all was actually the result of poor translation and that may change some things. 

The original word in Isaiah 7:14 referring to Mary was "almah" which means young woman, and while generally speaking this was in application to an unmarried woman who was presumed to be a virgin, that is not a guarantee of purity. [4] This is also covered briefly in Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion and in more detail in Christopher Hitchen's book God is not Great - who later goes on to state in detail how even the fable of the virgin birth is not specific to Christianity and should not be taken as anything that insinuates an application of the divine.

I don't particularly like this image but it does prove a point. (Horus is entered twice because his information carries over - most closely paralleling him to Jesus).

I would like to point out that at this point we start to see highlighted, possibly out of context segments of Peter Shafer's book Jesus in the Talmud. There also seems to be a mix up on Balaam being someone that Jesus is compared to, and later that name being used to represent Jesus himself. If you can, pause and read what you are able of the passages shown from Shafer's book. Anderson references these passages in a way that make it sound as though these words are from the Talmud itself, and not of Shafer's book. Whether this is intentional or not, I cannot say, but it would align with the means by which Anderson has been known to operate in the past. We are also shown a review from Publisher's Weekly on Shafer's book that I cannot find in their past libraries. If anyone can find it, please share it with me.

The movie goes on with a segment of an interview only from Rabbi Irwin Weiner about how the Old Testament is not literal, that it is in fact a book of parables. From this, Anderson proclaims that all Jews now do not believe the Old Testament. I would stake my next paycheck on this not being so, especially if Rabbi Mann had had the opportunity to weigh in on this argument. There is also this interview with Richard Dawkins and Rabbi Gluck which was the opening interview to the documentary "Root of All Evil" to consider when claiming the universal stance of Jews on the Old Testament. (Warning, this interview is uncut which, in my opinion, adds a modest charm to it.)

This poor representation of an entire faith through a select collection of Rabbis, and some very ignorant replacement theologians who dance about and call themselves pastors, continues on for quite some time. Not all Jews believe what each of these specific Rabbis dictate; many have more liberal leanings while others are traditional. I have no intention of refuting the beliefs of the men Anderson speaks to as many of them are quite sound and inarguable as personal faiths are concerned. What is concerning is that so much of this is presented as absolute by Anderson and Marrs, and so many more  who are either uneducated or already nursing anti-Semitic beliefs take this at face value and furthers the justification of these practices.

It is from this point onward that we really get into the meat of this video, highlighting exactly where Stephen Anderson is coming from and his intentions: replacement theology.

The concept of replacement theology is not a new one, and it strikes me as perfunctory of the Christian movement. From the beginning of time humanity as a whole, and to a more detrimental extent, the religious community, has always propagated being the central focus of all things in the universe, not the least of which being quite literally the center of the universe itself. First it was earth, then our solar system, and now with recent arguments about redshifts [5], you have many creationists defending a stance that if not the earth, the Milky Way is at the absolute center of the universe. These ideologies are the underlying precept of why religion as a whole exists, it's the personal belief and inability to accept that we cannot exist without being special. Without God we cannot be exceptional, we cannot have a higher purpose, and we cannot give in to the predisposition to judge others' worthiness because there is no higher establishment that permits us to do so! Replacement theology is just another way to subvert favor of a creator god from one select group of persons to another. It is, by definition, the reaction of a petulant child who believes that his sibling is the favored child over him or herself. "The Jews cannot be God's chosen people after killing his son, it must be us! It has to be! It's not fair!" That is replacement theology in a nutshell.

Moving on we have those aforementioned hilarious voice overs of quotes from people such as John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and Martin Luther. (Don't be mistaken, these quotes are correctly attributed to these founding fathers of modern religion, but I find the presentation to be markedly hilarious.)

I'm going to close this post on a final note that I found equally entertaining while watching this video. Anderson, still in that glass room talking with the mute Wittenberger, mentions "this book here" (no notation as to what book this is - I'm presuming it's in the credits?) as accurately citing all of the countries that the Jews have found themselves exiled from over the course of the last thousand years. I am going to list them here for you, and then wrap with some notes of interest on said list.