The Christian Identity Problem and Their Issues with
Judaism
While
the Jewish population in the world is only 0.0025 of the world’s population,
their contributions to society, literature, law, and science is vaguely
recognized. They
produced the basic ideas for most common set of laws and followed strict
monotheism which Islam and Christianity were derived from. They gave us
relativity, socialism, psychology and also the cell-phones. They
were also the scapegoats for every illness and suffered massacres,
Inquisition, ghettoes, expulsions, accusations of blood guilt, and the
Holocaust. However, they do
not look for the guilty or blow all of Europe up in revenge. Instead, they
produce, create, participate in society, write laws, and invent.
Anti-Semitism
is still rampant and prevailing. It is very different from racism, xenophobia,
or any other hatred against groups. It is the oldest obsessive hatred,
strikingly universal and permanent. Negative mental stereotypes of the Jew are
profoundly embedded based on fantasy and this particular hatred transforms into
physical violence.
Dr
Wafa Sultan: “The
Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to
respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not
their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of
the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered
throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We
have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not
seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by
killing people.”
Eliane Amado
Levy-Valensi offered her
interpretation during the 1960s: Anti-Semitism is the result of the Gentiles'
failure in stealing Jewish history for themselves. "Judaism was already an
ancient religion, possessed of a great literature, with great heroes and wise
men in its past, and a divine promise of an even more glorious future.
Christianity possessed none of these. From the very outset, therefore, the
Christians laid claim to the Bible, at first merely as predicting Jesus and
later as being exclusively their own." Also the plight of the Palestinians could
be explained from the same perspective. Even Jesus is presented by them as "a
Palestinian." The lack of a long history of their own, brings other peoples to
hate Jewish ownership of a past. Although no theory alone can fully explain
Anti-Semitism, the combination of several can be useful in dealing with this
social disease.
Who is Jesus?
Christian
views of Jesus center on the belief that Jesus is divine, is the Messiah whose
coming was prophesied in the Old Testament, and that he was resurrected after
his crucifixion. Christians predominantly believe that Jesus is the "Son of God"
(generally meaning that he is God the Son, the second person in the Trinity) who
came to provide salvation and reconciliation with God by his death for their
sins. Other Christian beliefs include Jesus' virgin birth, performance of
miracles, ascension into Heaven, and a future Second Coming. While the doctrine
of the Trinity is widely accepted by most Christians, a few groups reject as
non-scriptural, wholly or partly, the doctrine of the Trinity.
Only
with the inception of this new religion based upon Judaism, did hatred against
the Jews become the norm, with widely and deeply penetrating roots, facilitating
its monstrous growth, sprouting ideological and even theological fruit.
The
essence of the problem is as follows: the nascent church claimed to be the
consummation of Judaism. Christianity emerged from Judaism and the first
Christian church was Jewish in its leadership, membership, and worship. During
the first period of Christianity, until the year 70, while the Jewish state was
still in existence, there was no real antagonism between the two religions.
The
first Christians conveyed their message to the House of Israel, but it soon
became clear that the vast majority of the Jews would not become Christians.
They were firm in their loyalty to biblical law and to an uncompromising view
both of God’s transcendence and of the coming of the Messiah who will heal the
world at the end of times.
Once
doctrinal differences were obvious, the original harmony between the two faiths
was doomed. The realization that the Jews would reject the new notion of the
Messiah as “Son of God” was disconcerting to Christians, whose faith was built
on the Jewish Scriptures and beliefs and therefore expected to win over the
children of Israel. If they were to be the heirs of those beliefs and their true
perpetuators, if Christianity was the fulfillment of Judaism, sooner or later
some flaw had to be perceived in the independent continuity of the inherited
religion. The ongoing vitality of Judaism questioned the legitimacy of the
inheritance.
The
break between the two religions was proclaimed by Paul, the Jewish-born true
founder of Christianity, who resolved against the observance of law as
stipulated in Judaism and established that true salvation comes only from faith
in Jesus as the Messiah. The Jewish-Christians were the minority of Jews who
accepted this dogma, but even they broke with Paul when they discovered that he
was making no distinction between Jew and Gentile. These Jewish-Christians, who
continued practicing Judaism, were seen by the new expanding faith as
temporarily compromised (see Paul’s epistle to the Galatians 2:11-21 in the New
Testament). But Paul had inherited Jesus’ love for his people. Neither he nor
his immediate disciples wished to see Jews either degraded or destroyed.
The
gradual composition of the New Testament was accompanied by a worsening of the
Christian attitude towards Jews and therefore its earlier parts (Paul’s, around
the year 50) are devoid of the Anti-Semitism present in the later parts (John’s
gospel, 100). The earliest known canon of the New Testament was compiled in 140
by Marcion, who out rightly rejected the Hebrew Bible.
The
fact is that some verses in the New Testament describe the Jews in a positive
way, attributing to them salvation (John 4:22) or divine love (Romans 11:28)
while many others can be -and were- much used by Anti-Semite. The two worst
verses are those in which the Jews prompt Jesus’ crucifixion and say “His blood
be on us, and on our children” (Matthew 27:25) and when Jesus calls the Jews
“children of the devil“ (John 8:44). These verses, and the whole gamut of
accusations charged against the Jews during the growth and individuation of
Christianity, were buttressed by constant repetition by people who had but scant
acquaintance with Jews. Jerome, Anthanasius, Ambrose, Amulo, all echo that the
Jews have devilish origins, or that they are tempted by the devil, partners with
him, and ultimately his willing slaves and instruments.
The
main source of later Anti-Semitism from the New Testament is the story of the
crucifixion, full of historical mistakes (this fact does not demean the New
Testament either as a sacred book or as the theological basis of Christianity.
We speak in historical terms alone).
We
are told: during Passover, the Sanhedrin (the supreme Jewish political,
religious and judicial body in Judea during the Roman period) tried Jesus and
condemned him to death. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate attempted to side-step
the death penalty, but eventually gave in to an insistent Sanhedrin. Pilate
“washed his hands” and let Jesus be crucified by Roman
soldiers.
In
Solomon Zeitlin’s Who Crucified Jesus? you can find a complete account of
the story which shows, among others, the following inaccuracies: the Sanhedrin
never met during festivals, and it seldom applied death penalties (the Talmud
has it that “a Sanhedrin which puts a man to death once in seven years is called
a murderous one” -Makkot 1:10- and rabbi Eleazar Ben Azaryah added: “...or even
once in seventy years”).
And
in the case of Jesus, we are surprised by a quick death penalty decreed upon a
Jew -whose crime according to Jewish law is no crime at all. (There were
crimes that according to biblical law deserved capital punishment, but to claim
to be the son of God appears nowhere in the Bible as a crime!). Moreover, the
Sanhedrin could carry out capital punishment without any Roman intervention. Why
would they request the “help” of their worst enemy in order to carry out their
law? (Four methods of judicial execution were stated by Talmudic law: stoning,
burning, slaying and strangling, in contrast with crucifixion, which was
typically Roman).
Besides
that, the role of Pilate is highly unlikely. Why would a man who was in charge
of suppressing the Jews, a man who had ordered the crucifixion of thousands of
them, unexpectedly strive to defend one of them? The way Pilate chooses to
express his lack of involvement is also suspect -it is called ‘Netilat Yadaim,’
the old Jewish custom to wash one’s hands as a sign of purity, which Orthodox
Jews still practice. Why would a Roman warrior resort to a Jewish
practice?
The
answer to these questions is that it is probable that the New Testament tells us
a true story -with changed over protagonists. The Roman announced his intention
to execute a Jew who seemed to be unusually popular, and warned the Sanhedrin
not to react. The Rabbis remained passive (a large group of which opposed
rebellion against Rome; the more rebellious party prevailed only four decades
later). As was the norm, the Romans wrote the reason for the crucifixion on the
cross. In the case of Jesus, INRI (“Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews”) it is
clear that they imply a political crime: sedition.
The
reason for which the crucifixion was retold by the Gospel writers with these
changes is logical. The new religion needed consolidation. Accusing the mighty
empire of having murdered God would have been perilous. However, whitewashing
Rome and at the same time accusing the weak Jews, who competitively claimed the
same sources as their own, the Gospel stood to gain newfound strength and
acceptance.
Moreover,
the Christians could not evangelize by spreading the word that Jesus was the
Messiah, because this argument was meaningless to the pagans. The only
convincing claim was that Christianity was the original religion, the universal
truth for mankind. For that to be the truth, Christianity had to exclusively
possess the history of Israel.
At
the end of the first century, the “Letter of Barnabas” attempts to show
how Jews misunderstood what Christians call the Old Testament, which, the writer
asserts, was never intended to be observed literally, since all therein is but a
prefiguring of the Church.
As
the start of the second century, Ignatius of Antioch summarizes their view:
“Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity.” Thus a
fertile theme originated: the Church is, and always was, the true Israel. The
problem was that the people the Church claimed to have supplanted, continued to
co-exist and, more importantly, laid claim to the same sources of faith,
asserting its anteriority and its ownership of the “Old Testament.”
A
whole anti-Judaic literature developed, according to which the Church antedates
the Old Israel, going back to the faith of Abraham and even to the promise made
to Adam. The Church is “Eternal Israel” whose origins coincide with humanity
itself. The Mosaic Law was only for the Jews, who were punished for their
unworthiness and their cult of the golden calf by the burden of the Law. The
Mosaic prescriptions hence were a yoke imposed upon the Old Israel because of
its sins. The Jews are an apostate nation, deprived of its providential role of
the chosen people. And so on.
The
most complete Christian tract against the Jews during early centuries was the
“Dialogue with Trypho” by Justin, which puts forward the ominous theme
that Jewish misfortunes are the consequence of divine punishment.
But
the worst myth arising during that time is “deicide,” the murder of God, which
was raised for the first time by Melito, the bishop of Sardis, around the year
150. This sinister accusation, which was repeated for years, decades, centuries,
was never the official ideology of the Church. But it became so rooted in
Christian sermons that the Church had to officially reject it during the Second
Vatican Council in 1965.
The
anti-Judaic literature developed while Jewry was weak, humiliated, defeated,
when it posed no challenge to Christianity. In the misfortunes of the Jewish
people, in the dissolution of the state and in subsequent Jewish defeats, the
Christians found definite confirmation of their belief that God was displeased
with the Jews and no longer wanted their continuation. The Christians took it
for granted that Judaism would ultimately absorbed into their new
religion.
However,
after the disasters of 70 and 135 (terrible defeats at the hands of the Romans)
Jewry gradually recuperated vitality and influence, and the Christian reaction
was new literary attacks. We should have in mind that between those two years
Christianity became a definitely gentile movement.
According
to Origen, the first Christian scholar to study Hebrew, Christians respected the
Law more than the Jews did, who interpreted it in a fantastical manner, and
whose practices were trivial; their rejection of Jesus had resulted in calamity
and exile. “We say with confidence that they will never be restored to their
former condition. For they committed a crime of the most unhallowed kind, in
conspiring against the Saviour of the human race....”
By
the end of the third century the image of the Jew was of an unbeliever and a
competitor. At the end of the fourth century, the Jew had been transformed into
the deicidal, satanic figure, cursed by God and discriminated against by the
State. The very term “Jew” was an insult.
The
full flowering of the theology which prescribed Jewish miseries as divine
punishment for Jesus’ crucifixion was one of the reasons for the deterioration
of the Jewish image and status. By the time Christianity became the dominant
religion of the Empire (the year 323), the foundation of its Anti-Semitism was
already laid; it was the natural outcome of theological necessity as well as
defensiveness against the danger of a relapse into Judaism. It was an inevitable
by-product of Christian propaganda, which had to assume that Judaism was dead,
even while Judaism steadfastly refused to die. The Church did not recognized
that Judaism was a distinct religion; it saw it as a distortion of the only true
religion, a perfidia, a stubborn rebelliousness against God. Thus wrote the
Church Fathers.
In
the year 338 a Christian mob led by the local bishop burned down the synagogue
of Callinicus in Mesopotamia. The emperor Theodosius ordered the synagogue to be
rebuilt and the incendiary punished. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, intervened with a
letter to the emperor: the synagogue was “home of unbelief, a house of unpiety,
a receptacle of folly.” Only out of negligence had he himself not set fire to
the synagogue of Milan. Imperial power must be used in the service of the faith.
In the cathedral the emperor was threatened with refusal of the sacraments, and
he eventually ceded to Ambrose. Other synagogues were destroyed in Italy, North
Africa, Spain and even the land of Israel, where a group of monks under Barsauma
massacred Jews.
John
Chrysostom (d.407) brings Anti-Semitism to its highest point within all
“Adversus Judaeos” literature. In his sermons in Antioch he says: “the
Jews most miserable of all men... lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious
bandits, inveterate murders, destroyers, men possessed by the devil. They know
only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one
another... They have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, for they murder
their offspring and immolate them to the devil...”and much more. Chrysostom and
all the Judeophobes among the Church Fathers and their successors were over many
centuries revered as saints by the Catholic Church.
Augustine
wrote at the same time and his original contribution to the Anti-Semites arsenal
is the theory of the witness-people. The reason for which Jews subsist is to
probe the truth of Christianity. Like Cain, he explains, they carry a sign but
are not to be killed. Jews were not only wrong but evil.
And
the theological gulf grew wider and deeper. As the Anglican theologian James
Parkes puts it, the Church did not claim the Hebrew Bible in its entirety, only
its heroes and virtuous characters, God’s promises and praise. The rest, the
villains and the idolaters, the stubborn and the unbelievers, were left for the
Jews. Curses and accusations were for them. And that was the description of the
Jews supposedly written by God. Variations of this theme were preached in
writings and from pulpits, Sunday after Sunday, century after century, whenever
Jews were mentioned.
Summary:
We
can conclude from the above that Anti-Semitism was born with Christianity.
Joseph Eötvösz, a Hungarian nobleman, would say in the 1920’s that “an
anti-Semite is one who hates the Jews... more than necessary.” This was not true
for the pagan world, generally tolerant to the Jews. But once Christianity took
hold, Anti-Semitism became the norm, God’s will, a theological platform with
laws, contempt, calumnies, animosity, segregation, forced baptisms,
appropriation of children, unjust trials, pogroms, exiles, systematic
persecution, rapine, and social degradation.
Albert
Einstein went one step further with the scapegoat explanation: “The shepherd boy
said to the horse: You are the noble beast that treads the earth. You deserve to
live in untroubled bliss; an indeed your happiness would be complete were it not
for the treacherous stag. But he practiced from youth to excel you in fleetness
of foot. His faster pace allows him to reach the water holes before you do. Stay
with me! My wisdom and guidance shall deliver you and your kind from a dismal
and ignominious state.” Blinded by envy and hatred of the stag, the horse
agreed. He yielded to the shepherd lad’s bridle. He lost his freedom and became
the shepherd’s slave.
The horse
represents a people; the lad, a class or clique aspiring to absolute rule over
the people; the stag, the Jews. The horse has been suffering the pangs of
thirst, and his vanity was often pricked when he saw the nimble stag outrunning
him. This is basically the scapegoat theory of Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is
orchestrated by leaders who wish to deflect popular discontent away from them.
When rulers have confronted their inability to satisfy those whom they have
subordinated, they have frequently resorted to this technique: they seek "the
Other," some group unlike the majority, and blame it for the ongoing discomfort.
In European history, the group most consistently chosen to be this Other has
been the Jews. The scapegoat theory is inadequate, because it is merely a
description of how Anti-Semitism is sometimes utilized; not an explanation of
why it exists. For this theory to be operational, Anti-Semites had to exist in
the first place. Moreover, not every Anti-Semitic outburst was the direct result
of some attempt by leaders or kings to divert angry sentiments. Once
Anti-Semitism became deeply ingrained within European culture, it assumed a life
of its own, and was passed on. Gentiles did not attack Jews "because” they
believed they had killed God, rather provided them with a good excuse to vent
their frustrations and anger against a defenseless population. As to why the
Jews were cast as the stag, Einstein takes one step beyond the scapegoat
explanation: "Because there are Jews among almost all nations and because they
are everywhere too thinly scattered to defend themselves against violent
attack." Jews are attacked because of their defenselessness.
Jews often
held positions in which they provided the public face of the ruling elites,
exerting apparent power. They were also lawyers, doctors, teachers,
psychologists and social workers, and therefore Jews often seemed to have power,
which was, in truth, non-existent. "Because Jews are placed in positions
where they can serve as the focus for anger that might otherwise be directed at
ruling elites, no matter how much economic security or political influence
individual Jews may achieve, they can never be sure that they will not once
again become the targets of popular attack should the society in which they live
enter periods of severe economic strain or political conflict.”
Jews
differed from other people precisely because they followed norms that seemed
subversive to the established order. Jews seemed unwilling to accept "reality"
and subordinate themselves to imperial powers. This made them seem threatening
to the ruling elites, who sought to make their subjects distrust Jews before
they got too friendly with them and heard the Jews' ideals of egalitarian
society. Today’s Jews are
integrated in each of the societies they live in but still keep their religion
practices, albeit some have eased the strict rules of the religion with new
ideas and ways of practice as reformed Judaism.
Christianity
has to acknowledge the reasons that Anti-Semitism rose, that Judaism is the
mother of the monotheistic religions, that Jesus’s origins are from modern day
Israel and his story is part of God’s plan. By acknowledging the above facts,
Christianity will understand that the re-birth of Israel is also part of God’s
plan. By condemning Israel, the Jews and practicing Anti-Semitism, Christians
condemn their own origins. All monotheistic religions believe in Judgment Day
and many believe this event is scheduled to happen in the near future, probably
with the use of another Jewish invention – The Nuclear Bomb.
Acknowledgement
New-Angle.org is grateful to Dr. Perednik for his permission to popularize his works.
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web-site by: Albert Talker
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