[Vision2020] Reply to Nelson in Daily News

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings:

I still want to reply to Pat Kraut on her history lesson, but I'll save that one for later.

I would like to thank Ralph Nielsen for his help on this reply to Don Nelson.

To the Editor:

I would like Don Nelson (Opinion, June 9) to consider the following 
hypothetical story.

* Claiming that I am an eye witness, I write a biography of my greatest 
hero.  However, when it is published, critics say that over half the words 
are the same as a previous biographer named Robert.
* In my book I add a genealogy of my hero, but critics point out that it 
disagrees on significant points with a genealogy of the same man written by 
Thomas, who, incidentally, also borrows more than half his words from Robert.
* I read (in a bad translation) my people's scripture very closely and find 
very improbable references to my hero.  The most embarrassing reference is 
one in which I claim that my hero was born of a virgin when in fact the 
original language says "young woman" and she gives birth in the next chapter!
* My hero is executed by a repressive government, but because most of my 
own people refused to follow my hero, I blame the death on them instead.
* For centuries my people are persecuted because of my misrepresentation of 
the facts.
I submit that I would not be a very credible author, and that I should bear 
responsibility for the results of my errors.

If Nelson had his Septuagint handy he would have found, as Matthew did, 
that the passage he misuses is indeed from 2 Kings 1:16 (not 2 Sam 1:16) as 
we find it in our much better translations.  (I explicitly said Greek 
translation in my letter, the one that early church fathers claimed was 
divinely inspired.)  As with the young mother of Is. 7:14, Matthew also 
rips this passage out of context.  David is confronting the Amalekite, who 
has just killed Saul, "the Lord's anointed."  (The term "Messiah" was used 
for all Israelite priests and kings, even the Persian king Cyrus in Is. 
45.1.)  Therefore, David's curse "your blood be upon your head," is 
directed at a pagan murderer.  It is incredible and irresponsible for 
Mathew to use this passage as a false prophecy about the killing of Jesus 
as the Messiah, and particularly vicious because he is blaming Jesus' death 
not on the pagan Romans but his own people.  Nelson's suggestion that it 
would common for Jews to use this curse is absurd.

I knew that Michael Medved was a Jew, Don, but I would rather listen to the 
Jews in Denver, who were startled to read "The Jews killed Jesus!" on the 
marquee of a Pentecostal church the day Mel Gibson's "The Passion of 
Christ" opened.  Ten days later the same Jews were horrified to find 
swastikas painted on their synagogue.

Nelson claims that Gibson's deviations from the Gospel account are 
"irrelevant." Scholars have traced most of these extra scenes to the 
visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), who Gibson says "supplied 
me with stuff I never would have thought of." Emmerich believed that the 
defining feature of the Jews are their long noses, and the more bent the 
nose the more evil the Jew. When Gibson says that he doesn't consider 
Emmerich to be anti-Semitic, he is clearly admitting that he doesn't have a 
clue about what hatred of Jews is all about.

I'm beginning to believe that Nelson is just as dense as Gibson.

Nick Gier