key: Each passage is followed by numbers which refer to volume, lesson, and track, e.g., 3:1:7 means Volume III, lesson 1, track 7. Color text refers to other sources, such as the Bible, other books, etc.

The following is a collection of various comments made by Jimmy Carter that are insulting and offensive to Jews.

Here Carter makes a number of denigrating remarks about Judaism. Notice the tone of his message and why it is insulting to Jews. He teaches that Judaism is degenerate and obsessed with inconsequential minutiae, while its leaders, antagonistic to the message of Jesus Christ, derived their authority only from Roman support, not from their own moral leadership. Jews would have good reason to be offended: it is a short step from condemning a religion to condemning the people who follow it. If a person holds a religion in contempt, how does he or she avoid holding the people who follow it in contempt?:

“we’ll continue this morning with this criticism of Jesus being inevitable from the religious leaders of the time and the conflict that we’re going to describe this morning is the first stage of a, . . . the very first instance of an altercation or development of animosity or condemnation against Christ by the religious leaders of that day, primarily the Pharisees and others because Christ’s new description of God was so absolutely and diametrically contrary to the approach to religion espoused by the religious leaders of that time. They had degenerated in their description of a covenant between God and the Chosen People into a dry analysis of individual scripture verses, and they had developed more than 600 little detailed orders and commands and rules and regulations that a good person should have to follow in order to be reconciled with or compatible with God Almighty and that was the totality of their faith. And that was the source of their authority as both the religious and really the political leaders of the Jewish community that was the time during the Roman empire when the Romans said Ok you can worship the way you want to in Jerusalem as long as you pay taxes to Caesar and so forth.  But this was the source of their strength in every way.” 2:2:9

There are numerous things wrong with this nasty passage. First, Jewish leaders did not degenerate the conception of the covenant between God and the Chosen People; their idea is identical with the description in the Bible itself. Second, the Bible itself lists over 600 laws commanded by God. These were not invented by later religious leaders. These include the Ten Commandments as well as the great moral teaching of Jesus himself: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Carter, in his ignorance, claims that the purpose of these laws was for reconciliation. This is wrong, because reconciliation is a Christian concept based on later Christian theology and could not therefore be the motivation for the biblical reasons for the Law. Carter is imposing his own misunderstanding of the Hebrew Bible onto the people of a different religion in a different time from the Christian era. Furthermore, the authority of the religious leaders derived from their spiritual greatness, as recognized and appreciated by the populace (about which Carter knows nothing), and not from the power of Roman support. Finally, the disagreement between the religious leaders of the time and Jesus had to do with the issues of blasphemy, not because Jesus introduced a new concept of God.

Given that Carter has been conducting Bible classes for decades, it is surprising to learn of his ignorance of his own Bible with regard to the Law. His own Old Testament is overwhelmingly supportive of the Law and its benefits for people who follow it. For example, Psalm 119 begins with:

Happy are they that are upright in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Happy are they that keep His testimonies, that seek Him with the whole heart. Yea, they do no unrighteousness; they walk in His ways. Thou hast ordained Thy precepts, that we should observe them diligently. Ps 119:1-4

and continues to praise the Law for another 172 verses!

No discussion of anti-Semitism is complete without reference to the special relationship of Jews to money. There is a theological basis for this connection and its relation to anti-Semitism. The New Testament teaches that the love of money is the root of all evil, so it follows that a people (such as the Jews) who supposedly love money above all else would naturally exist as the root of all evil. Although this idea is consistent with the fundamental anti-Semitic idea that Jews are the greatest moral threat to society, this is not the only basis for  anti-Semitism. However, it is one that gets reinforced every time Christians are reminded of the Jewish connection to money.

 

Even when he talks about unselfish love, Carter draws the connection of Jews to money. Here, he is describing the ideal kind of love:

“It’s love of people who don’t deserve to be loved, who are not lovable; it’s love similar to what? Christ exhibited when he dealt with money changers who were Jews who collected taxes for the Romans and were despised by their own people” 3:1:12

One mistake here is that the money changers were not there to collect taxes. They were changing coins with engraved (forbidden) images for coins that were more acceptable in the Temple. Likewise, tax collectors were not money changers. Notice how he portrays the Jewish people as lacking in “Christian” love for tax collectors, and by implication, anyone else who is also not lovable. If Carter were fair, he might describe an instance of Christians rejecting people they deemed unloved. A good history of Christian anti-Semitism would provide him with plenty of examples.

Carter seems oblivious to the fact that there are millions of Jews in this world who do not hold values or practice customs he ascribes to them! The idea in the next example is that the Jewish religion permitted someone to designate money for the Corban sacrifice instead of using it to help needy parents, in violation of the morality of the Ten Commandments to honor father and mother.

“Then he said to them further, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition, for Moses said . . . you see now he’s gonna quote directly from the Ten Commandments for Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother, and whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die’ but you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘whatever support you might have had from me is corban,’ (that is an offering to God) then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, just making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on and you do many things like this.  .  .  .”

He quotes the 10 commandments but he himself is guilty of violating the one that says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Then he goes on:

“Corban was a uh prayer that could be performed by usually a man in an endorsed ceremony by the Pharisees that you could say in effect, ‘God, everything that I own all these sheep all these goats this nice house and the money that I have, I dedicate to you, to God.’ And from then on according to the Pharisees law those riches didn’t belong to that person anymore. They were whose? God’s! So As long as those riches were belonged to the person, that person was supposed to share them with needy parents right? But once it was God’s it wasn’t theirs and they didn’t have anything to share with their parents. So with impunity, and approved by the Pharisaic law, they could avoid taking care of their needy parents by a trick that had been evolved by the incorrect and improper interpretation of the law primarily designed by religious leaders to benefit whom? The rich folks! The powerful people! Because the poor man wouldn’t have all of this stuff to give to God. He would probably, in fact he might very well have his parents in the house with him or still be living with his own parents.” 2:5:12

First of all, a corban was a sacrifice, not a prayer. Second, Carter is maligning the Jewish people and their religion by claiming that its leaders favored the rich over the poor and were willing to allow, condone, and perpetuate this corrupt practice by allowing a loophole to circumvent the Ten Commandments which instructs us to honor our parents.

This is an instance of anti-Semitism because it portrays Judaism as being corrupt in helping the rich, in contrast to Jesus who was concerned with helping the poor. If it were in fact true, there may be a justification for this criticism. The point is that it is false--the Jewish religious leaders did not do this. Judaism has such an emphasis on helping the poor that even secular Jews today are among the world’s leading givers of charity!

If Jimmy Carter knew his Old Testament better, he would know that such a practice would be considered unacceptable by Jews. The Book of Proverbs, for example, makes it clear that: ‘It is a snare to a man rashly to say: 'Holy', and after vows to make inquiry.’ 20:25 (in other words, it would be rash to hastily set aside money for the holy Corban when needy parents would obviously take precedence). More to the point, another proverb tells us, ‘The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination; how much more, when he bringeth it with the proceeds of wickedness?’ (Prov. 21:27) Abandoning needy parents clearly makes one wicked. How then could that person’s sacrifice (i.e., the Corban) be acceptable? For Carter, the Jewish religious leaders not only violated basic moral principles enunciated by Jesus Christ, but contradicted principles spelled out in the Hebrew Bible itself! And for what purpose? For benefiting “the rich folks, the powerful people!” This is the slander Carter is spewing about Jews and their religion, one that reinforces dangerous negative stereotypes about them.

When Carter rails against the rich, one wonders if he has Jews in mind. When he asked Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, to say a few words, Fuller said: “I’ve heard President Carter mention many times that in his opinion that the greatest discrimination in the world today is the discrimination of the rich against the poor.” 3:4:16  Is Carter hiding his contempt for Jews when he criticizes the rich? He talks about the Jews discriminating against gentiles in the discussion of circumcision. Does Carter think of this as a modern continuation of Jewish discrimination against gentiles? Evidence for that appears in his discussion of the Corban, when he teaches that Judaism was designed to help the rich. (He refers to Jews on occasion as being materially well off but never mentions Jews who live in poverty.)

Before going into more derogatory comments about Jews, it is worth noting that Jimmy Carter also knows how to praise as well as revile, although Jews are not the ones he praises. It’s himself! This might seem surprising, because pride and boasting are condemned by both the Old and New Testaments (Ephesians 2:9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”). On further reflection, it seems obvious that if he disregards the prohibition against hating and slander, it is reasonable to expect that he might ignore other biblical teachings as well.

Here is a partial list of the boasting he does in these recordings:

All of his playmates were black kids in a fully integrated neighborhood. The Carter Center helps treat diseases for the poorest and most forgotten people in the world 3:1:6; His commitment to human rights as president 3:1:8; He gave a speech at new center for peace and justice 3:2:6; Hospital visit 3:3:4; Helping black and Mexican children in Plains 3:2:6; Grandson joining Peace Corps, and mom was in the Peace Corps 1:2:4; Carter Center analyzes world conflicts 1:2:5; Wife writing a book on mental illness and he’s working on book on ageing 1:3:4; Raising money for building houses in Houston as part of Habitat for Humanity and about Friendship Face; Also the Carter Center involved in cooperation for groups in South America 1:4:3; Makes his own furniture each year to contribute to an auction; Gave human rights speech in Cuba criticizing Castro in his presence 2:1:6; Tried to negotiate with Hugo Chavez and reduce tensions in Venezuela 2:1:9; Explains how the Carter Center is an NGO involved with peace and freedom and human rights and elections and alleviation of suffering all over the world 2:4:5; He and his wife planned a trip to Nigeria to help conduct honest elections there and other projects in other countries regarding health and agricultural programs 2:4:5; Plains Georgia has a very active Better Home Town Committee and Historical Trust Organization to improve things in which he and Rosalynn are very active, and  he mentions the school house museum he built as a place for young children, as well as a boys’ and girls’ club, and he efforts to revise the main street for black and Mexican children 3:3:6

One would never learn from his classes that Jews in general, or Israelis in particular, provide and offer extensive humanitarian help around the world—that Jews are the leading charitable group in the United States. Instead, they are portrayed, for moralistic teaching, only in edifying examples of bad behavior that need to be avoided by good Christians. For example, while he brags about his role in helping to develop precision weapons to avoid collateral damage in war (2:3:6), he fails to give credit to the smart bombs actually developed in Israel. This is in keeping with the ancient Christian tradition in Europe that it is not enough for a good Christian to hate Jews. One must also make them hateful to others.

[Click here to see a list of Israeli accomplishments in the field of medicine alone. Click here to learn of other technological benefits Israel has provided to the world.]

The primary way of making Jews hateful is to reinforce the anti-Semitic notion that being Jewish is a bad thing. He lists the good character of Christians as “little Christs” based on the commitment of Jesus to certain moral values:

“Christ is saying to us . . . go back to the essence of the word of God which means justice and peace, humility, service, forgiveness, compassion, sharing, generosity and sacrificial love. Those are the characteristics that describe the life of Christ. Those are the characteristics that describe a ‘little Christ.’” 2:5:15

In Carter’s world those characteristics would not describe a good Jew, because if a Jew exhibited them, he would be a Christian! By saying that Christ wanted us to “go back to the essence of the word of God,” he seems to admit that these ideas did not originate with Jesus after all, but were part of the Jewish religious culture before him. Nevertheless, the fulfillment of these moral behaviors are identified by Carter as being a Christian characteristic simply because Jesus performed them.

“These characteristics of Jesus are the ones that are supposed to describe the characteristics of whom? Of all of us, of every Christian of every person who says, ‘I am a Christian, I am a little Christ.’ That’s what Christian means. Christ was a epitome, or the personification of unselfish love, of sharing what we have in an aggressive way, not sitting dormant husbanding or keeping close to us our precious possessions as a right of citizenship I can keep what I have learned, I don’t have to share it I don’t have to share my life with others”

Then he contrasts that with the dishonorable behavior of Jews, which resulted in their being rejected by God:

“Those are the kinds of characteristics that alienated the Israelite people from God by saying ‘I don’t have to comply with these standards of proper life as measured by God as demonstrated and taught by Jesus Christ’”  3:3:15

This is obscene! Jews have never--would never--say that. Even the New Testament does not claim that Jews ever said that. For one thing, Jews never believed that Jesus taught or demonstrated standards of proper life not already found in the Hebrew Bible or taught by Jewish tradition. Nor would they ever say that they do not have to comply with the ethical standards of God, whatever the source. In fact, Jimmy Carter would be a better person if he followed the ethical teaching found in the Talmud: Ben Zoma says: Who is wise? The one who learns from every person... (Avot 4:1)

Here is another passage in a similar vein, with the added implication that people without Christ (i.e., Jews) are self-absorbed and inconsiderate of others:

“You have the right, the unfettered, unrestricted right to decide what kind of life you’re gonna live. You can live a life as closely attuned to that of Jesus Christ as possible or you can live a life dedicated to your own well being and forget the standards of generosity and love and compassion and sharing and forgiveness justice peace and humility of Jesus Christ.” 3:3:16

as if there were only two choices: accept Jesus or be selfish, greedy, and mean.

“the very issue that separated Jesus Christ with his pure, simple, description of God Almighty from the technically-oriented scholars who tried to substitute a human, rigid interpretation of the Holy Scripture and impose it on other people.” 2:2:15

Is Carter so unaware that it was the followers of Christ who imposed their rigid interpretation of Holy Scriptures on others? Has he never studied Christian history, how they implemented the most fanatical imposition of their ideas on other people, condemning, isolating, torturing and eventually massacring those identified as unbelievers and heretics?

On Christianity superseding or replacing Judaism:

“The 40 days—do you see any symbolism in the 40 days, the number 40?

Anyone? [inaudible]

I think that’s exactly right, I think the Jews wandered in the wilderness or in the desert you might say 40 years and Christ was told by the spirit to go out into the desert or the wilderness for 40 days so that 40 and 40 shows that Christ again is the inheritor of the original covenant that God had formed with the chosen people.”  2:1:16

That logic is like the song in the “Music Man” where the salesman is trying to make the case that pool tables are bad for kids: “’pool’ begins with ‘p,’ which rhymes with ‘t,’ which stands for ‘trouble.’” On a more serious note, according to Dr. Franklin Littell, who was the chairman of the religion department at Temple University: The cornerstone of Christian Antisemitism is the superseding or displacement myth, which already rings with the genocidal note. This is the myth that the mission of the Jewish people was finished with the coming of Jesus Christ, that “the old Israel” was written of with the appearance of “the new Israel.” To teach that a people’s mission in God’s providence is finished, that they have been relegated to the limbo of history  has murderous implications which murderers will in time spell out. . . . The existence of a restored Israel, proof positive that the Jewish people is not annihilated, assimilated, or otherwise withering away, is substantial refutation of the traditional Christian myth about their end in the historic process.” (The Crucifixion of the Jews: the Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, page 2)

Here is another example of de-legitimizing Judaism:

“By the way, the chosen people weren’t chosen because they were special; they were special because what? Because they were chosen. And they were chosen so that there would be a repository, a set-aside people, from which would emerge the long expected and predicted Messiah.” 2:1:16

“But Abraham was given God’s blessing. Why? Because of his what? Faith! Because of his faith and not because he was a Jew. And not because he was circumcised. Abraham was circumcised later, by the way. And Paul said the covenant of God through Abraham includes all those who share faith, which is all of us. Right?” 1:2:12

Carter claims that the special covenant of God with the Jewish people is now shared by Christians also. That probably means that Christians share the right to the “Holy Land” too, since that was the promise in fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham and his descendants. The Christians already have countries in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere. The Jews only have one small country they can call their own. If everyone has the same right to the “Holy Land,” what do the Jews end up getting? Nothing! This would not be the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham.

Carter’s logic is not even biblically accurate. The reason Abraham was chosen according to the Old Testament: ‘because that Abraham hearkened to My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.' Gen 26:4-5 The reason had to do with following God’s laws. It was not just about faith.

‘Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice; to the end that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him.' Gen 18:18-19

‘that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast hearkened to My voice.' Gen 22:17-18 God talking to Abraham

The reason the Jewish people are chosen can be found in Deuteronomy 7:

“For thou art a holy people unto THE LORD thy God: THE LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be His own treasure, out of all peoples that are upon the face of the earth. THE LORD did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people -- for ye were the fewest of all peoples -- but because THE LORD loved you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore unto your fathers . . . Thou shalt therefore keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command thee this day, to do them. And it shall come to pass, because ye hearken to these ordinances, and keep, and do them, that THE LORD thy God shall keep with thee the covenant and the mercy which He swore unto thy fathers, and He will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee; He will also bless the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land, thy corn and thy wine and thine oil, the increase of thy kine and the young of thy flock, in the land which He swore unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be blessed above all peoples” Nothing about the Messiah or other people

Also Psalm 105:

O ye seed of Abraham His servant, ye children of Jacob, His chosen ones.  He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He hath remembered His covenant for ever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations; The covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath unto Isaac; And He established it unto Jacob for a statute, to Israel for an everlasting covenant; Saying: 'Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.' Nothing about the Messiah or sharing the land with other people based on their faith.

The Taliban and women:

In 3:4:7, he talks about his assistant teacher Mashook, a former Muslim from Afghanistan. Then he makes the point that Mashook could provide special insight to the Old Testament because he came from that region and knows the character of the people and their customs! How could someone from a country so fanatically Muslim know anything at all about Jewish customs in the Old Testament or the character of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria 2000 miles away and 2000 years ago? That would be like saying that a Muslim from the Sudan who converts to Buddhism can be an authority on Catholicism since Khartoum is only about 2000 miles from the Vatican! Jimmy Carter obviously must consider the entire Middle East to be without any cultural diversity and where no cultural change ever took place. On a more sinister level, he might be implying that all non-Christians are the same and therefore understand each other!

For Carter, this is no simple mistake. In his mind he clearly associates Jews with the Muslims in Afghanistan, the place where the United States invaded to fight our war on terrorism. If there were any other people in this world as despised as the Taliban, no doubt Carter would have found a way to compare the Jews to them as well.

What follows is an insult that is jaw-dropping in its brashness, ignorance, and double standards. It combines the boastful superiority of Christianity over Judaism with a degrading comparison of Judaism to radical, extremist Islam. He does this by comparing the Jewish treatment of women to the Taliban:

“prior to Christ coming, the role of women in the society of that day was similar to what the Taliban imposed on women in Afghanistan—a completely subservient position: they couldn’t own property, they couldn’t testify in court, they had to stay submerged in the male dominated society” 2:1:10

1. (1)It is an insult to compare Jews to their enemies—like the popular anti-Semitic trope of calling Jews in Israel “Nazis.” There are many societies and religions (including Christianity), past and present, that deny or have denied women the right to own property, etc. Why select the Taliban?
   

2. (2)It is an insult to Jews to compare them to a society so far removed from the kind of society that Jews have developed, especially in terms of human rights, including women’s rights and respect for women.
   

3. (3)Not only is it an insult, but it is factually wrong to compare the two society’s ways of treating women, because the Taliban is an extremist Muslim culture which allows what Jewish law and culture forbid (female genital mutilation, daughter-, sister- and wife-beating, easy divorce for men, polygamy, female sexual and domestic slavery, child marriage, veiling, rape, honor killings, etc.).
   

4. (4)It is wrong to imply that Christ liberated women above Judaism. In ancient times, Judaism elevated the status of women above their contemporaries and even in modern times, Jews have been leaders in the liberation movement for women. Furthermore, there is nothing in the New Testament to support Carter’s slander that disparages the way Jews treat women. This is merely a gratuitous attack on the Jews by Jimmy Carter just for the sake of demonstrating the superiority of Christianity. In fact, we see that he was not able to do this at all.
   

First, he tries to show the superiority of Christianity:

“and Jesus Christ promoted women to an absolutely equal status in all the services of his administration with men.” 2:1:10

Notice that Jimmy does not explain how Jesus fixed any of the three accusations he leveled against the Jews: (a) not allowing women to testify in court, (b) own property, or (c) keeping women submerged. In fact, later on, when talking about passages in the Bible which seem to support racism, Jimmy admits through a joke,

“there are even some verses in the [Christian] Bible that says women should be subservient to their husbands which is the strangest one of all to me!” 2:5:8 [accompanied by lots of laughter]

So what happened to all this “elevation” of women by Jesus, if it indeed happened at all? Why did his own New Testament teach that women were to be subservient? Shouldn’t he have compared the Jews to the Christians? Or, better yet, he should have compared the Christians to the Taliban. What then made the Jews like the Taliban? Carter provides no proof or explanation for any of this. Comparing Jews to he Taliban was just another wanton insult.

What about his favorite victims, the Palestinians? How do they treat women? Carter recalls how he monitored the elections in the Palestinian territories. He himself witnessed an instance of subjugation of women by the Palestinian Authority and yet never uttered an objection to it:

“I’ll always remember they had men and women lined up to vote. These were Palestinians a good many of them were Christians and they wouldn’t let the men and women in the voting place at the same time so they would let 20 women go in and vote and then they would come out and they would let 20 men go in and vote and come out.” 2:1:15

He probably thought that equality was established by letting an equal amount of men and women vote at a time. It looks like he believes in “separate but equal” for women. Why was there no word of criticism for that? Considering his silence in this matter, along with his trying to distance himself from the instruction to keep women subservient in his own New Testament, what makes him qualified to judge the way Jews treat women?

Insulting Jewish traditions:

The entire 5th lesson in volume 2 is about rejecting Jewish traditions in favor of Christ’s message. In track 8, he introduces the idea that not all traditions are merely quaint or benign or pleasant. Some are positively despicable, and of course he brings this up to denigrate Jewish traditions. As an example, he talks about the traditions of racism in his own church to show how traditions can be evil, although he does not demonstrate that any Jewish traditions are on the moral level of racism. By bringing in the subject of racism, he poisons the discussion of tradition by associating those racist Christian traditions with the Jewish ones he is trying to undermine.

Which Jewish custom does he actually select to compare with the racism he discussed in Christian tradition? He picks the Jewish tradition of washing one’s hands before eating. What a horrible custom! He does not tell us what is actually wrong with this practice other than to claim that one is not defiled if one does not wash his hands before eating. Apparently, he is trying to compare the Jewish tradition of washing one’s hands before eating with the Christian tradition of racism to show the dangers of tradition (meaning Jewish tradition)!

Judaism is wrong:

It often seems that Carter does not consider Judaism to be a separate religion on its own terms but rather a distorted, confused, and deficient form of Christianity. Since, according to Carter, Jesus introduced a new way of viewing God, the traditional Jewish approach needs to be amended. The problem, however, goes beyond just offering a revolutionary as opposed to a traditional approach. Carter’s comment on the Jewish religious system under which the Jewish community lived was that

“Jesus saw that as basically wrong.” 2:5:14

Not only is Judaism basically wrong, but Jews don’t even understand their own Bible:

“Father, we are grateful this morning to have open to us for this month the words of Isaiah, an ancient prophet who may not have understood all he said, but we’re also grateful that we [Christians] now know the full meaning of the ancient words that you have Isaiah say for you” 3:1:17

“If you were an Israelite listening to Isaiah’s words, that they may not be entirely comprehensible . . .  but we [Christians] have an insight into the character of God. We have an insight into the truth about God that was not existent then and that insight came with the birth of Jesus Christ.” 3:3:14

St. Augustine wrote in the year 415: “The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.”

Here Carter claims that Judaism is inaccurate and that Jews don’t pray directly to God

“One reason that Christ came to earth was to show us a different and accurate picture of God Almighty, not someone who ordained a bunch of rules to be memorized, not someone or entity of supreme entity that would be judgmental or condemnatory, but someone who loved us, someone filled with not punishment but grace, someone filled with forgiveness and love, a God that was not remote and separated from us by religious authorities, but someone with whom we could relate personally and individually, to whom we could bear our hearts and minds, to whom we could worship directly.” 2:5:14 (this was recorded March 2003)

Besides being mistaken for not knowing Judaism properly, Jimmy Carter is saying here that Jews do not worship God directly, at least in the context of traditional Jewish religious teachings, because they had the wrong concept of God. (See the topic of “Mistakes” to learn why Carter is wrong for claiming that Christ brought this new concept of God to the Jews.)

Yet, five years earlier, in Volume I, recorded in January 1998, he admitted that he himself used to think that God was judgmental!

“The human temptations that seduce us, all of us, drives a wedge or division between us and our creator, whom we quite often characterize in our mind as kind of a harsh judge. Maybe you don’t, but I do. I had always envisioned since I was a child that God was kind of uh, my creator and a kind of a distant uh, older, grandfather-type who was keeping tabs on me: good marks on this side of the page and bad marks on that side of the page something like Santa Claus and then I was always afraid my bad marks would be more than my good marks and the harshness of his judgment, of God’s judgment, I feared.” 1:1:13

How strange that he criticizes Jews so vehemently for supposedly believing in what he himself once believed! Is he projecting onto the Jews his own former ideas? Is he falling victim to double standards again?