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Joe breaks down why Christ Is King has Jewish roots.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to talk about the phrase Christ is king. I love the phrase, but I’m also aware that people online sometimes use it today in ways that are regarded as and often meant as anti-Jewish. Now I know when I say that there’s already a segment of you who instantly want to write me off as being an overly sensitive person who thinks any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. But hear me out, that’s not me. And if you still think I’m wrong at the end of the video, you can tell me why I’m wrong below. Let me give you a little context. I spoke on this subject recently at Benedictine College’s Nostra Tate conference in April. I explained the Jewish roots of the expression Christ as king and in response, some student was so outraged that he posted anonymous flyers on professor’s doors declaring that we have no Jewish roots with our phrase Christ is king.
And after a lengthy anti-Jewish tirade, he ended with the phrase Christ is king and giant letters. Now that is not a normal reaction I get from my talks, whether I’m before a relatively friendly crowd of Catholics, whether I’m before a more hostile crowd of Protestants. So whatever the subject is, this is an unusual kind of reaction and it inadvertently beautifully illustrated my point. Namely, the people using the phrase Christ as king to mock Jews, they don’t really understand how Jewish the expression is. After all, Christ is a Greek word for the Hebrew Messiah, which means anointed one. And one of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah is that he would share in God’s own kingship. God says to his anointed in Psalm two, “Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage in the ends of the earth your possession.” So that’s actually pretty fascinating and can be really helpful to explore the roots of this.
So those of us Catholics who love the phrase Christ as king can understand the phrase better in its proper Jewish context. Now to get there, I want to first go back a hundred years ago to Mexico. From 1926 to 1929, the Mexican government headed at the time by a fiercely anti-Catholic atheist president, Plutorico Eliaskayas, they waged war against what were known as the Christeros. So Catholics and rural parts of Mexico rose up against the anti-clericalist laws and the government used that uprising as a justification to more violently crack down on the Catholic church. And the government is actually the one who originally introduced his term. They mockingly referred to the rebels as Christeros for their rallying cry.
Give me that. Long live Christ. And this was Socraia on the lips of both Blessed Miguel Pro and the 15-year-old Saint Joseph Sanchez del Rio as they were martyred for their faith, as along with many others who faithfully defended the kingship of Christ against an oppressive secular regime. And this proclamation of Christ as king, it echoed the words of Pope Pius the 11th who had established the feast of Christ the King in 1925, mere months before the outbreak of the Christero war. So for nearly a century, that’s more or less how the phrase Christ the King was used. It was a reminder amongst faithful Catholics that our highest loyalty is to Jesus Christ. It’s not to any secular state. But somewhere around 2023 or 2024, something changed. Between 2021 and 2024, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, usage of the phrase Christ is king rose fivefold on Twitter.
That sounds great on the surface, but many of the loudest voices proclaiming the kingship of Christ were doing so in ways that seemed to be saying more than they were saying. You may remember that The Daily Wire in 2023 was embroiled in a feud between Canice Owens who worked there at the time and her Orthodox Jewish employer, Ben Shapiro. The feud had stored it over their radically different responses to the war in Gaza, totally reasonable, but it led to Candace first tweeting about how you cannot serve two masters, God and money, and then following up with a simple tweet declaration, Christ is king. In that context, it looked like a snipe against Shapiro for being Jewish and that’s how people understood it and it was quickly followed by similar messages across Twitter. By March of 2024, you’ve got Andrew Tate saying, “As a Muslim, it warms my heart to see the resurgence of spirited Christian declarations.” Christ is king.
So it’s hard to read that as simply a declaration of his Christian faith given that as he says, he’s a Muslim. And the top comment and reply to Tate was a cartoon of a Muslim and a miniret and a Christian and a bell tower trying to shake hands while a Jewish stereotype labeled Zionism tries to push their two towers apart. By May, you’ve got Nefuentes saying, “What we believe Christ is king America first, what we want Christian government and white genocide.” So as a Catholic, as somebody who loves a Christiero cry of Viva Christo Ray, who loves the solimity of our Lord Jesus Christ, kick in the universe, that’s the full name of the day we ordinarily call Christ the King. I hate seeing this sacred proclamation used in a politicized way, particularly when done to mock Jews. And I understand why many people have responded to those kind of provocations by simply declaring the phrase Christ is king antisemitic, but I don’t agree with that.
I think that’s a counterproductive and false reaction. I think the better response, the one I would propose is to restore the proper sense of Christ’s kingship, to restort to his proper Catholic roots, but indeed also to his proper Jewish roots. So having said that, let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. More specifically, the start of the Jewish year, which is actually weirdly the beginning of the seven month of the year on the Jewish calendar. The Jewish high holidays or days of awe are the two feasts of Rosh Hashanah and Yam Khapur. Now, these feasts are 10 days apart in a period sometimes called the 10 days of repentance. Now, many of you, I suspect, are familiar with Yam Khappur’s day of atonement. It’s pretty clear in the Bible. There’s been a fair amount of Christian reflection on the theological significance of this feast, but for those of us Christians, Rash Hashanah is typically not nearly as well known.
That’s in no small part because there’s actually no feast by that name in either the old or the New Testament. In fact, to make matters a good deal more confusing, the one time we do find the phrase used, Ezekiel 40, it refers to Yam Kapoor, not Rosh Hashanah. So what is Rosh Hashanah and where does it come from? Well, the easiest answer is that it’s the Jewish New Year, but that’s actually a litle bit of an oversimplification. In Leviticus 23, verse 24 to 25, God says, say to the people of Israel, in the seven month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no laborious work and you shall present an offering by fire to the Lord. Similarly, in Numbers 29, verse one, “On the first day of the seventh month, you shall have a holy convocation.
You shall do no laborious work. It is a day for you to blow the trumpets.” Now, the Torah is actually pretty mysterious on this point. We’re told that the first day of the seventh month is to be a holiday, but we’re not really told why it’s a holiday or what was being celebrated, both what to do and why we’re going to do it are pretty vague in scripture and those seem to have developed somewhat over the life of Israel. So we know it was typical to mark the new month with the sound of a trumpet, but God instructs on this day that the Israelites were not simply to announce a month, but to observe a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets. In Hebrew, you have not merely a techia, but a Tarua. The root in that word is Rua breath, and Taru refers both to the shout of the voice, or in this case, the shout of a trumpet or a shoufar, a rams horn.
So long before it became known as Rashashana, it was called the feast of trumpets or Yam Tarua, the day for sounding the shofar. But there’s still this question of why we’re blowing the trumpets. Now, at some point, this feast of trumpets is acknowledged as one of the four Jewish New Years. Now, I know it sounds weird to say there are four Jewish New Years, but if you think about it in terms of even our modern calendars, you have an academic year, a fiscal year, a calendar year, and so on. So something similar is happening here. So for instance, we read in Philo, who is a contemporary of Jesus, about this feast is taking place at the start of the year, but Philo still doesn’t know it by its current name of Raj Hashanah. That seems to take place later and the name simply means head of the year.
Rosh is header beginning, has the and Shaunah is year. So just as there is a slow emergence of this feast as the Jewish New Year, there’s also a slow emergence of some of its more important theological theme. So it can be a little tricky to know how far back in history some of these themes go, but one thing that becomes very clear over time is that Rash Hashanah is associated with the proclamation of God as king. And I think this actually is a key to understanding the holiday. Now, we don’t see this kingship proclaimed in the early Rashashana liturgies like the one we see in Nehemiah nine. There we find the people saying, “Stand up and bless the Lord dear God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.” But at some point, either during the second temple period or else early on in the rabbinical period, there arises a special blessing centered around God’s kingship.
Blessed be the name of his glorious kingship forever and ever. In the mission attracted Rashashana, we’re told that on Rashashanah, all creatures pass before him, God, like sheep as it is stated, he who fashions their hearts alike who considers all their deeds. And in the Gamara, the 2nd century Rabbi Yahuda is quoted, who teaches that man kind is judged on Rashashana and the sentences sealed on Yam Kapur. So that’s how you end up with the 10 days of repentance. The start of the year was treated sort of as a precursor to the judgment day. So this emphasis on God’s kingship fits in quite nicely with what we do see of the feast from the Torah, namely the shouting of the trumpets. In his book, celebrating the Jewish year, Paul Steinberg suggests that the sounding of the trumpets of that day is another clue as to the origins of the festival.
In several Psalms, we have the combination of the sounding of the horn and the proclamation of God as the sovereign ruler of the world. For example, Psalm 47 tells us that God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. There’s a parallelism there because the shout there is Bitrua, which again is used both for the shout of a human voice, but also seemingly here, the shout of a trumpet or shofar. So this actually matches really nicely with what we know from surrounding cultures. As Shirley Lucas has pointed out in her book, Christ the King, the Messiah and the Jewish festivals, Hamarabi, the Mesopotamian King, at his enthronment in the New Year festival is entreated by the God’s anu and inle to cause justice to shine in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, the strong oppressed not the week, to conduct the people, make the land enjoy righteousness, rightly to conduct orphan and widow, rightly to conduct the oppressed.
In other words, these surrounding nations practiced a right which scholars sometimes call sacred kingship and which the king was presented either as representative of God or as God himself and this kind of divine kingship thing was done at New Year’s at the beginning of their particular calendars. So perhaps it’s not surprising to see that the Jewish New Year consists in proclaiming that the God of Israel is the king of the universe and he alone. Rather than saying the king is God, the Jewish response is, no, God is king. And we may see hints that this is what’s going on in the Talmud when it describes the three liturgical themes of Rashashana, kingship, remembrances and chauffrat with the blowing of the shofar. So why kingship? Well, we’re told there so that you will crown me as king over you. Now, that language is fascinating. Remember, the pagan New Years were enthronments and coronations of their kings as gods, but Rashashana seems to have been a ritual enthronment of God as king at the head of the year.
And this is emphasized, by the way, in the prayers that we have for Rashajana as a feast. For instance, the Avinamakenu is an ancient prayer composed by Rabbi Akiva, and it’s a famous one. The Israeli prime minister, Shimon Perez, actually asked Barbara Streisand to sing it for him for his 90th birthday party. The name means our Father, our king, and it consists of a series of proclamations to God under that title.
In English, our Father, our king, we have sinned before you. Our Father, our king, we have no king but you. Our Father, our king, act with us for the sake of your name. Our Father, our king, renew for us a good year, our Father, our king, a good year. Our father, our king, removed from us all harsh degrees. So the prayer continues on with many more similar petitions and we see those same kind of things in the Elenu prayer, which began as part of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, but eventually becomes part of daily Jewish prayer. It begins with the declaration. It is our duty to praise the master of all to acclaim the greatness of the one who forms all creation, for God did not make us like the nations of other lands and did not make us the same as other families on the earth.
God did not place us in the same situation as others and our destiny is not the same as anyone else’s. Now look, while acknowledging God as master of all, this kingship of God’s initially seems limited. He’s the king of Israel. He doesn’t seem to be the king of the nations of other lands, but eventually the scope of the prayer broadens affirming that in fact, God is king over all mankind. So it continues, “May all the world’s inhabitants recognize and know that to you, every name must bend and every tongue must swear loyalty. Before you add an eye, our God, may all bow down and give honor to your precious name and may all take upon themselves the yoke of your rule and may you reign over them soon and forever and always because all rule is yours alone and you will rule an honor forever and ever.” So we have the turning of the Jewish liturgical year marked by a celebration of God as king, first of Israel and then of the world.
A kingship proclaimed with the sound of trumpet blasts and which culminates in his judgment of all the world. Now read in that light, I don’t think it’s hard to find the parallels with the feast of Christ as the king because bear in mind, while Rosh Hashanah proclaimed the unique kingship of God over the whole cosmos, this is coupled with a specific Messianic expectation of a Messiah king, which we see both in the Old Testament and in, for example, the Babylonian Talmud, which teaches in the tracte Suka 52A. The sage is taught to Messiah Ben David, Messiah, the son of David, who is destined to be revealed swiftly in our times, the holy one blessed be he says, “Ask of me anything and I will give you whatever you wish as it is stated. I will tell of the decree. The Lord said unto me, you are my son.
This day have I begotten you. Ask of me and I will give the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.” So the Messiah, the son of David has the whole earth as his possession and all the nations of his inheritance because he is the begotten son of God. Now the difference between Judaism and Christianity is precisely this. As Christians, we believe this Messiah has already come and it’s precisely in this light in the light of the Jewish beliefs about the kingship of God and about the kingship of the Messiah that we should understand the feast of Christ the king. In the New Testament, the angel Gabriel appears announcing to Mary that she’ll bear the Messiah and that the Lord God will give to him the throne of his Father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there’ll be no end.
This kingship of Christ is proclaimed ironically in the words emblazoned above his cross, declaring him Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. But while Christ’s kingship may have initially appeared to be simply over Israel over the Jews, we find it quickly extends from Israel to the nations. Having begun with Israel, his earthly mission broadens, culminates in the sinning of the apostles to make disciples of all nations, just as is anticipated in the feast of Rosh Hashanah and as to remind a world that had grown cold to those spiritual realities of the Messiah’s universal kingship that Pope Piusy 11th instituted the feast of Christ as the king. As he explained himself at the start of Quasprimas, and we remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives, that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics.
And we said further that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ and that we promised to do as far as lay in our power. In the kingdom of Christ, that is it seemed to us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the empire of our Lord. Now you’ll notice just in passing here, Pius isn’t targeting the Jews or for that matter, pagans, but fallen away Catholics. And significantly, Paius stresses that this kingdom is spiritual and is concerned with spiritual things. As a result, this kingdom is opposed to none other than to that of Satan and the power of darkness.
It demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things and a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice and more than this, they must deny themselves and carry the cross. So I hope you can see that the perversity of seizing upon this fea state’s proclamation of the kingship of Christ, this call to a spirit of gentleness and then twisting that to become a tool of antagonism and scorn or simply in trying to co-opt it to become the very kind of secular program that Pius insists that it’s not. Now, having said that, that’s not to say that there are no political implications to recognize in the kingship of Jesus Christ. Of course there are. And Pius acknowledges that. He says it would be a grave error on the other hand to say that Christ has no authority or whatever civil affairs since by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power.
Nevertheless, during his life on earth, he refrained from the exercises of such authority and although he himself disdained to possess or care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possessed them. So Pius saw fit in his words to close this holy year with the insertion into the sacred liturgy of a special feast of the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. He said that such an annual feast would call to their minds that it is both the minds of citizens and rulers that thought of the last judgment wherein Christ who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected, and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults. After all, it’s someday in the future, St. Paul tells us in one Thessalonians four, “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command with the archangel’s call and with the sound of the trumpet of God.” And he tells us in one Corinthians 15, “We shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised and perishable and we shall be changed.” So we have the turning of the Catholic liturgical year marked by a liturgical celebration of Christ as king, first of Israel and then of the world, a kingship proclaimed with the sound of trumpet blasts and which culminates in Christ’s judgment of all the world.
Rather than a dog whistle for anti-Jewish hatred, a true understanding of Christ the king is extremely Jewish. So I thought it might be good to close this episode to the prayer that encapsulates the spirit of both Rosh Hashanah and Christ as a king. Notice how easily we can take this Rashashana prayer with no amendment and apply it to the kingship of Christ. May all the world’s inhabitants recognize and know that to you every nie must bend and every tongue must swear loyalty. Before you out an eye, our God, may all bow down and give honor to your precious name and may all take upon themselves the yoke of your rule and may you reign over them soon and forever and always because all rule is yours alone and you will rule in honor forever and ever. But understanding the Messiah’s kingship is important, not only for how we understand Jesus Christ, it’s also the Jewish background that we need to properly make sense of why we Catholics refer to Jesus’ mother, Mary, as queen.
So if you’re not familiar with the role of what’s called the gabara in Judaism, I hope you’ll check out this video to learn something both about the history of Old Testament Israel and about Mary that you may not already know. For shameless popri, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.