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Anti-Judaism

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Anti-Judaism is "a total or partial opposition to Judaism—and to Jews as adherents of it—by men who accept a competing system of beliefs and practices and consider certain genuine Judaic beliefs and practices as inferior". Christian anti-Judaism is a Christian theological position in opposition to Jewish belief and practice.

History of anti-Judaism

Anti-Judaism in the Roman Empire

In Rome and throughout the Roman Empire, civil governance and religion were one indistinguishable theocracy; the Emperor came to be worshipped as a god. This naturally led to hostility toward the followers of Yahweh, as well as other religions — worshippers of Mithras, worshippers of Sabazius, and the growing cult of Christianity.

Early Christian anti-Judaism

Theological anti-Judaism "emerge from the church's efforts to resolve the contradictions inherent in its simultaneous appropriation and rejection of different elements of the Jewish tradition." The Church ultimately derived its moralism and liturgy from Judaism; it adopted the Jewish scriptures (the LXX) and the Jewish God, while rejecting the much of the law of Moses given in that text.

A schism emerged between early Christian "Judaizers" —those who insisted that in order to be Christian one must first become Jewish and observe Jewish laws and religious practices such as circumcision, and "universalizers"—those who insisted that the nascent faith was open to everyone. The teachings of St. Paul, whose letters would form the basis for much of the New Testament, demonstrate a "long battle against Judaizing."

First century Jews who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah, nor the claims of his followers that he was God, led to the eventual parting of the ways between Christians and Jews. "To the question, Was Jesus God or man?, the Christians therefore answered: both. After 70 AD, their answer was unanimous and increasingly emphatic. This made a complete breach with Judaism inevitable." The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE would lead Christians to "doubt the efficacy of the ancient law" though Ebionism would linger on unil the fifth century. However, Marcion of Sinope, who advocated rejecting the entirety of Judaic influence on the Christian faith, would be excommunicated by the Church in Rome in 144 CE.

Most modern scholars believe Judaism was a missionary religion in the early centuries of the common era, and thus competition for the religious loyalties of gentiles drove anti-Judaism The debate and dialogue moved from polemic to bitter verbal and written attacks one against the other. Tarfon (d. 135 CE) declared "The Gospels must be burned for paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish faith as Jewish Christian sects." The anonymous Letter to Diognetus was the ealiest apologetic work in the early Church to address Judaism. St. Justin Martyr (d. 165 CE) wrote the apologetic Dialogue with Trypho, a polemical debate giving the Christian assertions for the Messiahship of Jesus by making use of the Old Testament constrasted with counter-aguments from a fictionalized version of Tarphon. "For centuries defenders of Christ and the enemies of the Jews employed no other method" than these apologetics. Apologetics were difficult as gentile converts could not be expects to understand Hebrew; translations of the Septuagint into Greek prior to Aquila would serve as a flawed basis for such cross-cultural arguments, as demonstrated by Origen's difficulties debating Rabbi Simlai.

Though Emporer Hadrian was an "enemy of the synogogue", the reign of Antonius began a period of Roman benevolence toward the Jewish faith. Meanwhile, imperial hostility toward Christianity continued to cystalize; after Decius, the empire was at war with it. An unequal power relationship between Jews and Christians in the context of the Greco-Roman world "generated anti-Jewish feelings among the early Christians. Feelings of mutal hatred arose, driven in part by Judaism's legality in the Roman Empire; in Antioch, where the rivalry was most bitter, Jews most likely demanded the execution of Polycarp.

Anti-Judaic works of this period include De Adversus Iudeaos by Tertullian, Octavius by Minucius Felix, De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate by Cyprian of Carthage, and Instructiones Adversus Gentium Deos by Lactantius. The traditional hypothesis holds that the anti-Judiasm of these early fathers of the Church "were inherited from the Christian tradition of Biblical exegesis" though a second hypothesis holds that early Christian anti-Judaism was inherited from the pagan world.

From Constantine to the Eighth century

When Constantine and Lininius were issuing the Edict of Milan, the influence of Judaism was fading in Palestine and seeing a rebirth in far-away Babylonia. By the third century the Judaizing heresies were nearly extinct in the Roman world. The Council of Nicea ended Passover celebrations for Christians.

After his defeat of Licinius in 323 CE, Constantine showed Christians marked political preference. He repressed Jewish proselytsm and forbades Jews from circumcising their slaves. Jews were barred from Jerusalem except on the anniversary of the Second Temple's destruction and then only after paying a special tax in silver. He also promulgated a law which condemned to the stake Jews who persecuted their apostates by stoning. Catholicism become the official religion of the Roman Empire. "No sooner was armed than it forgot its most elementary principles, and directed the secular arm against its enemies."

From the middle of the fifth century, apologetics ceased with Cyril of Alexandria. This form of anti-Judaism had proven futile and often served to strengthen Jewish faith. With Christianity ascendant in the Empire, the "Fathers, the bishops, and the priest who had to contend against the Jews treated them very badly. Hosius in Spain; Pope Sylvester; Eusebius of Caesaria call them 'a perverse, dangerous, and criminal sect.'" While Gregory of Nyssa merely reproaches Jews as infidels, other teachers are more vehement. St. Augustine labels the Talmudists as falsifiers; St. Ambrose recylced the earlier anti-Christian trope and accuses Jews of despising Roman law. St. Jerome claims Jews were possessed by an impure spirit. St. Cyril of Jerusalem claimed the Jewish Patriarchs, or Nasi, were a low race.

All these theological and polemical attacks combined in St. John Chrysostom's six sermons delivered at Antioch. Chrysostom, an archbishop of Constantinople, (d. 407 CE) is very negative in his treatment of Judaism, though much more hyperbolic in expression. While St. Justin's Dialogue is a philosophical treatise, St. Chrysostom's homilies Against the Jews are a more informal and rhetorically forceful set of sermons preached in church. Delivered while Chrysostom was still a priest in Antioch, his homilies deliver a scathing critique of Jewish religious and civil life, warning Christians not to have any contact with Judaism or the synagogue and to keep away from the rival religion's festivals.

"There are legions of theologians, historians and writers who write about the Jews the same as Chrysostom: Epiphanius, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyprus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Athanasius the Sinaite among the Greeks; Hilarius of Poitiers, Prudentius, Paulus Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, Gennadius, Venantius Fortunatus, Isidore of Seville, among the Latins."

From the fourth to seventh centuries, while the bishops taught anti-Judiasm in writing, the Empire enacted a variety of civil laws against Jews, such forbiddening them from holding public office, and an oppressive curial tax. Laws were inacted to harass their free observance of religion; Justinian went so far as to enact a law against Jewish daily prayers. Both Christians and Jews engaged in recorded mob violence in the waning days of the Empire.

After the Eighth century

Contrasted with Anti-Semitism

Main article: Religious anti-Semitism

"The question of the relation of traditional Christian anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism" has "ignite explosive debates" among scholars.

Whereas, according to Historian Gavin Langmuir, anti-Judaism is concerned with exaggerated accusations against Jews which nonetheless contain a particle of truth or evidence, anti-Semitism (which dates back in Europe to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) reaches beyond unusual general inferences and is concerned with false suppositions. Thus Langmuir considers the labelling of Jews as 'Christ-killers' is anti-Judaic; accusations of well-poisoning, on the other hand, he regards as anti-Semitic. In his view, Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism have existed side by side from the twelfth century onwards and have strengthened each other ever since.

Anti-Judaism is sometimes distinguished from antisemitism based upon racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion . . . a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."

Martin Luther has been accused of antisemitism, primarily in relation to his statements about Jews in his book On the Jews and their Lies, which describes the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriating them, and providing detailed recommendation for a pogrom against them and their permanent oppression and/or expulsion. According to Paul Johnson, it "may be termed the first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust". In contrast, Roland Bainton, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote "One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial". See also Martin Luther and the Jews.

At several points in the history of Christianity, Chrysostom and Luther's writings have been used to justify anti-Semitism.

See also

References

  1. Langmuir (1971, 383), cited by Abulafia (1998, part II, 77).
  2. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 63
  3. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 64
  4. Taylor, op cit, p. 127
  5. Taylor, op cit, p. 127-8
  6. ^ Lazare, Bernard (1903). Antisemitism: Its History and Causes. New York: International Library. p. 49.
  7. Johnson, Paul: A History of the Jews (1987), p.144
  8. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 50
  9. Taylor, op cit, p. 128
  10. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem.
  11. Taylor, Miriam S. (1995). Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus. Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill Academic Publishers. p. 8. ISBN 9004021353.
  12. Taylor, op cit, p. 7
  13. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 56
  14. Dialogue of Justin, Philosoper and Martyr, with Trypho, a Jew.
  15. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 57
  16. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 60
  17. Taylor, op cit, p. 48
  18. Taylor, op cit, p. 49
  19. Taylor, op cit, p. 47
  20. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 59
  21. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 61
  22. Taylor, op cit, p. 115
  23. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 65
  24. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 72
  25. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 73 Cite error: The named reference "lazare73" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  26. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 66
  27. ^ Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 67-8
  28. Saint John Chrysostom: Eight Homilies Against the Jews
  29. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 70-1
  30. Lazare, Bernard. op cit. p. 76-80
  31. Fahlbusch, Erwin (1999). The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Vol. 3, J–O. Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge UK / Leiden / Boston: Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 57. ISBN 0802824153. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ Abulafia (1998, part II, 77), referring to Langmuir (1971).
  33. Abulafia (1998, part II, 77), citing Langmuir (1971, 383–389).
  34. Nichols, William: Christian Antisemitism, A History of Hate (1993) p.314
  35. Johnson, Paul: A History of the Jews (1987), p.242
  36. Bainton, Roland: Here I Stand, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, New American Library, 1983), p. 297
  • Abulafia, Anna Sapir (ed.)(1998). Christians and Jews in Dispute : Disputational Literature and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c. 1000-1150) (Variorum Collected Studies Series). Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate. ISBN 0-86078-661-7.
  • Langmuir, Gavin (1971). "Anti-Judaism as the necessary preparation for anti-Semitism". Viator, 2: p. 383.

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