Posted on 05/09/2024 11:18:45 AM PDT by Vlad0
He remarks: “In the three more historically based earlier Gospels, one sees Jesus in fierce dispute with leaders of the various Jewish groups, such as the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It is clear from these texts that this is an internal Jewish debate. When, according to the Gospels, the Pharisees attacked Jesus because of his behavior, there followed a dispute of a halachic [Jewish law] nature. Jesus reasons in this context, remaining within the fold of Judaism. The debate, however fierce it may be, is less so than, for instance, the internal Jewish dispute between the Qumran sect and the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”
Non-Jews Become Christians Van der Horst says it is difficult to determine where to place the beginning of Christian anti-Semitism. “It varied from location to location. In the Jerusalem Christian community it started much later than in the communities in Asia Minor, Greece, or Rome, or wherever else Christian communities came into being.
“The earliest Christian generation in Jerusalem consisted almost entirely of Jews. These people believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but saw themselves as true Jews. The book of Acts of the Apostles makes it clear that the first Jewish Christians went to the Temple in Jerusalem, attended synagogue services, and wanted to remain Jews.[1] There were tensions with mainstream Jews, who looked askance at the belief that a crucified person was the Messiah. There was, however, no breaking point or even a discussion of excommunicating the Jewish Christians.
“The situation changed slowly in the second generation of Christians. This was directly related to the missionary activities of people like the Apostle Paul and his collaborators. Their vision was that ‘salvation,’ as they called it, was intended by God not only for the Jewish people but also for others. They began to preach their message to non-Jews outside the Land of Israel as well.
“These earliest missionaries wanted to facilitate the entrance of non-Jews into the growing Christian community. They therefore began to downgrade the Torah (the Pentateuch) and its commandments. Later they started to toy with the idea that, if God wanted non-Jews to be part of the community as well, the commandments of the Torah should be solely for the Jewish members. That gave rise to the first tensions between Jewish and gentile Christians.”
I was thinking more about disputes over dietary laws and circumcision.
I'm not anti-semitic. In fact, I was raised believing that the Jews were GOD's chosen people, but it occurs to me that since GOD sent his SON and they mocked, scorned and murdered him by nailing him to a cross, not a hell of a lot has gone well for the Jews and there seems to be no group who really likes them.
Catholics couldn’t attend the Ivy colleges, either.
Hence, they created Fordham university.
Also, according to my limited knowledge of Catholicism, Catholics couldn’t charge other Christians interest on loans, so the job (career opportunity to some) was open to non-Christians, ie. the Jews.
So, Christians were forbidden from engaging in what probably seemed like a very lucrative opportunity and envy being what it has universally been, resentment no doubt tagged along with the fact that the Jews were the ‘money lenders’.
Finally, if you visit Jerusalem today, there are very deeply orthodox neighborhoods that are virulently anti-anybody except other orthodox Jews, and that prejudice applies to Christians, Muslims, and secular Jews alike.
No, Gentiles do not have to do that. I actually don’t keep Kosher, and people in the movement follow what Paul said regarding the freedom we have in matters of food and drink.
My intention is not to belittle or deny Christian anti-Semitism, or to imply that anti-Christian sentiments among Jews has been as historically important as Christian anti-Semitism. I just tire of the notion that this animosity is a one-way street. Sort of like only whites can be racists. It is important that we recognize how this animosity can exist on both side, becoming a reenforcing circle.
Yet anti-Christianity existed before anti-Judaism. (There are Semites who are not Jews).
The Apostles celebrated Passover behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. While Christ was killed at the Crucifixion on Good Friday, on Pentecost (meaning "fiftieth day") after Christ's death, the Apostles received the Holy Spirit and His gift of speaking in tongues enabled them to spread The Word, the beginning of the spread of Christianity to the people.
What about the historic roots of the Jewish anti-Christian activity?
Please bear with me. This is not humor. Ever bought a hot dog at a major league ballpark? VERY expensive. In Jesus of Nazareth’s day, the Sadducees were the “Quislings” who paid the Romans for the “concessions” (changing “filthy” Roman money for “temple money” and selling sacrificial animals at inflated prices) at Herod’s Temple. Jesus and His disciples were all Jews. They were not Jew haters. Jesus roundly criticized the avarice and hypocrisy of the sects in power. Regarding John’s gospel, consider the eleventh chapter. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. The “establishment spies” sent to find fault in Jesus and manufacturing a criminal case against him (sounds like today’s news?) response was to add Lazarus to their hit list. It is not antisemitic to “speak to power” in this ancient case. By the way, Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor par excellence, and once he recognized Yeshua min Nazaret as Ha Meshiach, he was stoned and left for dead. These are historical documents, and we must deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly of history.
Who Are the Semites? - Bernard E. Lewis
A historian traces the origins of the term. [EXCERPTS:]
Semites
As far back as 1704, the German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz had identified a group of cognate languages which included Hebrew, old Punic, i.e., Carthaginian, Chaldaean, Syriac, and Ethiopic. To this group he gave the name “Arabic,” after its most widely used and widely spoken member. To call a group by the name of one of its members could easily give to confusion, and Leibniz’s nomenclature was not generally accepted.
It was not until 1781 that this group was given the name which it has retained ever since. In that year, August Ludwig Schlozer contributed an essay on this subject to a comprehensive German work on biblical and Oriental literature. According Schlozer, “from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates and from Mesopotamia down to Arabia, as is known, only one language reigned. The Syrians, Babylonians, Hebrews and Arabs were one people. Even the Phoenicians who were Hamites spoke this language, which I might call the Semitic.” Schlozer goes on to discuss other languages of the area, and tries to fit them, not very successfully, into the framework provided by Genisis 10.
“Semitic” Languages
The idea that Semitic languages derived from one original language (by German philologists sometimes called Ursemitisch or proto-Semitic, and that the peoples speaking these languages were descended from one people, exercised considerable influence and caused some confusion.
By 1855, the French scholar Ernest Renan, one of the pioneers of Semitic philology, wrote complaining: “We can now see what an unhappy idea Eichhorn [sic; should be Schlozer apud Eichhorn] had when he gave the name of Semitic to the family of Syro-Arab languages. This name, which usage obliges us to retain, has been and will long remain the cause of a multitude of confusions.
“I repeat again that the name Semite here [Renan is referring to his pioneer study on Semitic philology] has only a purely conventional meaning: it designates the peoples who have spoken Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic or some neighboring dialect, and in no sense the people who are listed in the tenth chapter of Genesis as the descendants of Shem, who are, or at least half of them, of Aryan origin.”
Renan was of course right in pointing to the dangers of taking “the generations of the sons of Noah” as a basis for philological classification. He might have gone further. The descendants of Ham, conventionally the ancestor of the Africans, include, in addition to Egypt and Ethiopia, Canaanites and Phoenicians, who lived in the Syro-Palestinian area and spoke a language very similar to Hebrew.
Defining Race
The confusion between race and language goes back a long way, and was compounded by the rapidly changing content of the word “race” in European and later in American usage. Serious scholars have pointed out — repeatedly and ineffectually — that “Semitic” is a linguistic and cultural classification, denoting certain languages and in some contexts the literatures and civilizations expressed in those languages.
As a kind of shorthand, it was sometimes retained to designate the speakers of those languages. At one time it might thus have had a connotation of race, when that word itself was used to designate national and cultural entities. It has nothing whatever to do with race in the anthropological sense that is now common usage. A glance at the present-day speakers of Arabic, from Khartoum to Aleppo and from Mauritania to Mosul, or even of Hebrew speakers in the modern state of Israel, will suffice to show the enormous diversity of racial types.
Because it's only Westerners who like to do the self-flagellation.
Jews don't beat themselves up over their anti-Christian sentiment (past or present) for the same reasons that neither China nor India hate themselves over the fact that there were 10-12 million black slaves in Asia. For the same reason Russians don't beat themselves up over the Holodomor (starvation of Ukrainians a century ago). For the same reason that the Cherokee don't beat themselves up over stealing a bunch of land from the Muskogee. For the same reason that Turks don't beat themselves up over the Armenian genocide. For the same reason that the Japanese don't beat themselves up over killing way more Chinese civilians in WW2 than Americans killed with the atom bombs.
The days when Jews were excluded from suburban country clubs have been over also for decades, in no small part because of the patriotic participation of Jews in WW2, and sympathy for the Holocaust victims in WW2's aftermath post-1945.
Why American evangelicals are a huge base of support for Israel
Jews don’t have much of a record of mass slaughtering Christians, so it’s a less important topic.
Nor do Christians have a record of mass slaughtering of Jews. That was carried out by very anti-Christian Nazi secularists. To pin their crimes on Christians is its own form of blood libel.
Ok. Thanks.
The current anti-Semitism seen on campuses is almost entirely based on either Islamic thinking or conspiratorial nonsense. Christian anti-Semitism has nothing to do with any of this when all of the protestors are atheists or Muslims.
This is not deep at all. I grew up in rural Georgia and distinctly remember hearing a fundamentalist Baptist woman say, "the Jews killed our Savior." I was a little kid then and didn't even know what a Jew was, but hearing that made me remember it vividly. It is as simple as that.
Ignorant people who didn't understand scripture were too ignorant to understand that all that came to pass in the The Gospel was God's plan for our salvation.
How any Christian could agree with and embrace Hitler and the Islamic Caliphate cuts me to the quick. Satan is still doing whatever he will.
All 12 Apostles were Jewish. Almost all his original followers were Jewish. Jewish lovers of Christ created the Christian religion. To attribute the death of Jesus to the Jews, without noticing his deification by some other Jews seems like cherry-picking your data.
WHen you say: and murdered him by nailing him to a cross - remind me if I am getting this wrong. Wasan't Jerusalem an occupied city in the midst of a large chunk of the expanded Roman Empire circa 30 A.D.. Was not the punishment of criminals the sole right of the Government at the time: that is the Romans? Doesn't the New Testament tell us that Pilate sentanced Jesus to die, and that Roman Centurians nailed him to the cross, just as they nailed the two other criminals who were sentenced to death by crucifiction at the same time? Wasn't it a Roman soldier who delivered the coup d'grace by using a spear to stab him in the abdomen?
That's how I remember it, but it's been a while since I read that part of the Bible. Jews were the peanut gallery.
The Romans fell to the Jewish demands to kill Jesus, because Pilate was fearful of a revolt, which Rome would not tolerate. Rome had enough of the problems in Israel.
Yes, the Jews, through and using the Roman proxy and legal system, killed Jesus.
Fairly plain to read.
Rome never once uttered “kill Jesus” by its own initiating.
Anyone will suggests otherwise is simply biased, or ill informed.
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