Most are aware of God’s great love for Jewish people. He led them with miracles out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. God gave them prosperity and prophets to whom He showed the future. He made David their King and centered His faith in Jerusalem. Jewish traders and settlers moved throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
Jewish people knew the prophecies. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of The Tribe of Judah and House of David, His birth, life, and death fulfilled over 300 prophecies about The Messiah, some very specific in nature.
As a result, many Jewish people looked at the facts and believed in Him and The Church He Founded.
At the Last Supper, He showed how His Body and Blood would be provided to those with belief sufficient to seek the life He promised: “This is My Body, take and eat.” The Apostles were ordained with the authority to provide Sacraments and ordain others with the authority to do so as His Word became flesh in more ways than one.
As more Jews converted, some Scribes grew desperate enough to do the devil’s work. “This new-fangled nonsense is going to put us out of our jobs! We might have to find work! Get our hands dirty!” They had hated Jesus since the day He had told people what lying thieves they were in Mk 12:38-44: In the course of his teaching Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.”
The sins of the Scribes / that Jesus described / were about to be magnified. “Listen, the reason people believe in Him are those accursed prophets. They see ‘they shall look on Him Whom they pierced’ and relate that to the nails of cross and Longinus’s spear. They see ‘He shall be lifted up before men’ as being on the cross. The fact He died without having his legs broken gives more proof to the prophecies because they say ‘no bone of His shall be broken’.”
How did those Scribes solve the problem? “Every day, our copyists are making more copies of the scrolls. We can remove some passages and change others so that they don’t apply so specifically to Jesus’ birth, life and death! No one will ever know, and if they do, so what?”
The copyists were told: “You will write these passages the way we tell you, or you will be fired.” The Jewish people became victims of a vast fraud perpetrated by those Scribes and the copyists dependent upon them for a living.
Many early Catholics had been devout and obedient Jews. They knew what the prophets had said, and helped identify the scam. Early Catholics were alerted to the diabolical changes in ancient texts. Specific alterations were described in the 100s in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. They noted and described how the Scribes had omitted or changed words and passages to dilute the prophecies. Want to confirm? Check at least the short paragraphs of Chapters 70-80 in this link: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0128.htm
The process of corruption continued. For 2,000 years, 80 generations of Jewish people have been led astray by the biggest con job in history. It is no wonder they have such a hard time believing Jesus was The Messiah. Does the enormity of the fraud provide some excuse at Judgment for not having believed and obeyed Jesus?
A Jewish person’s final plea may be: “Jesus, as my soul stands here before you, I see that you are, in fact, God. Every single person whom I loved and trusted told me You were a fraud. They showed me Scripture to prove it. Now, I realize that the Holy Writings were changed to convince us to not believe in You. I didn’t know I was bearing false witness. I honored my father and my mother who told me the same things they had been told. Can we least get credit for that?”
