Replies

The most ironic part of this entire controversy is that Ann Coulter actually brought up the issue that has shaped so much of Christian history. Jesus came 2000 years ago and said that He would fulfill or "perfect" the promises that God had made to His people, the Jews. The Jews didn't see Jesus as the promised Messiah, and they eventually crucified Jesus for making that claim.
History is what you have wrong. Heck, you don't even have the Gospel of Matthew right!
Jesus was condemned for heresy and for being a false prophet. However had been killed according to Jewish law, he would have been stoned in public.
He wasw killed by the Romans, like so many other Messianic claimants, in order to prevent rebellion.

While many of the early Christians were killed by the Romans because the Romans didn't like seeing a new religion gaining popularity, much of the instigation against Christians came from Jews who were angry that Christians still saw Jesus as someone who fulfilled/perfected God's Old Testament promises.
Overblown. Jews were highly suspected and quite persectuded by Rome after 67 AD. Many Chistians were killed as Jews.

And after Constantine, Christian Rome persecuted Jews in the name of Christianity.

The Jews didn't have the power to execute anyone. They had limited autonomy to run many of their own affairs, but they did not have complete authority to enact all of the Mosaic Law. When they took Jesus to Pilate, Pilate told them to go ahead and punish Jesus according to their law. They replied that they were bringing Jesus to the Romans because they weren't allowed to use the death penalty. They made threats about stoning people as they threatened to stone Jesus once or twice and talked about stoning the woman accused of adultery. Maybe they even got carried away by passion and occasionally did stone someone, but they weren't supposed to execute people under Roman law. That's why they brought Jesus to Pilate.

They could complain about Jesus being a false prophet or speaking heresy, but the things He said that they considered to be heresy and false prophecy were His claims that He was the Messiah sent from God. In other words, the real problem between Jesus and the Jewish leaders of that time was exactly as I described.

The Romans were willing to execute anyone who claimed kingly leadership in order to prevent rebellion, but after Pilate questioned Jesus, Pilate concluded that Jesus hadn't done anything that would constitute that crime. Jesus was guilty of nothing under Roman law and was executed only because the Jewish leaders insisted that Jesus be killed.

If you read Acts, you'd see that much of the conflict and persecutive that Christians faced came from the Jewish leaders. One Roman official summed up the controversy against Paul by saying that the argument was over Jesus who had been killed and Paul asserted to be alive. Another Roman official even said of one controversy that Paul might have been freed after one incident if Paul hadn't appealed to Caesar. Certainly, there was Roman persecution of Christians outside of any conflict with the Jews, but conflict with the Jewish authorities was part of the persecution of early Christians.

I don't doubt that Christian Rome persecuted Jews a few hundred years later. Power has a bad habit of causing corruption, and there are those within any government who aspire to power because they enjoy hurting other people. That's why our Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment to try to keep the United States from falling into that kind of sectarian violence.

What I've written is correct. You're welcome to disagree. It's a free country, and people in a free country can disagree. However, you should never think that you are smart enough or educated enough to lecture me. The ignorance of what you've written here proves that point. When you grow up, get some facts straight, and get your attitude straight, maybe we can discuss the issue again.

Bill