[Vlad0]

I have manually excerpted this article, but the whole thing is interesting and available at the link.

Given the events going on in the USA these days, with these campus protests, it seems like it might be valuable to look at the historic roots of anti-Semitism.

[babble-on]

In religions that are about good guys and bad guys it is convenient the BAD GUYS to be few in number, enviable and readily identifiable.

[Tell It Right]

Jewish leaders in Jesus' day: "Crucify him!!!"

Jewish leaders today: "Why did Christians have a history of anti-Semitism?"

[Vlad0]

This is taking the topic of yesterday's post and extending it further backwards in time, to examine the roots of anti-Semitism in the early church. Long before the Reformation (yesterday's post). It too is written by a Dutch Professor, but a different one than yesterday's.

[Jonty30]

Rome was a big factor in the schism between Jews and Christians.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_of_Christianity_and_Judaism

[Petrosius]

Not to justify anti-Semitism, but why is there always talk about it but never any mention of anti-Christian sentiment among the Jews?

[Reverend Wright]

” Non-Jews Become Christians Van der Horst says it is difficult to determine where to place the beginning of Christian anti-Semitism. “

---

It’s from reading the Wikipedia “Early Life and Family” section for prominent Leftists.

[cowboyusa]

Justin Martyr.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

These days, Christian antisemitism isn’t the problem. Its secular Leftist antisemitism.

[Wuli]

Yes. The history lesson is a good one and reminder to Christians - antisemitism did not begin with Mohammed, no matter how much more intense Mohammed made it, for his own reasons.

1. Part of that history most Christian are not taught in school is in most every part of “Christian” Europe, until Napoleon’s “universal” laws, Jews lived all over Europe but could not be full fledged citizens anywhere. This only began to change during and following the time of Napoleon
And keep in mind that was all happening in supposedly very “Christian” countries.

2. The royals in control used the smart or talented non-citizen Jew, and did so in ways which did not endear Jews to the non-Jewish citizens - tax collector, royal money handler and banker, royal land manager, royal trade dealer. Why did the royals do that? They did it because unlike a citizen they have handed the job to, the Jew could gain no political power from it because they were not even a citizen. The “dirty Jew” had jobs the citizens resented. This proced to be a good and a bad thing in time. (A) It was good for Jews as they gained citizenship because around the same time the economies were changing and smart talented Jews had the kinds of experiences that would benefit them in the new economy - finance, banking, property management, trade. (B) However, that natural course also provided a new source of antisemitism - resentment for the “unfairness” of so many successful Jews in the new economy of the world.

3. American Christians also need to be reminded that until late in the last century (1900-2000) Jewsish persons were not admitted to the most prestiges colleges and universities in the U.S.

[The Sons of Liberty]

The Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism

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.

[Racketeer]

What about the historic roots of the Jewish anti-Christian activity?

[Srednik]

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.

[linMcHlp]

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.

[Albion Wilde]

If you are implying that it is Christians doing the anti-Semiting at the universities, I think you are way off base; since the Ivies have been actively suppressing Christian enrollment for decades, and persecuting Christian and conservative campus clubs that support traditional marriage or the biological reality of only two sexes.

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

[Stravinsky]

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.

[higgmeister]

The Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism

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.

[Angelino97]

“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.

John saw believers in Jesus as the ONLY true Jews. This is what he meant by "those who say they are Jews but are not" (Revelation 3:9).

Talmudic Jews (who rejected Jesus) likewise considered Christian Jews no longer Jews, which they made official at the Council of Jamnia at the end of the 1st century.

By then, each side was accusing the other of being false Jews.

Christians are today blamed for turning their backs on "the mother religion," but Talmudic Jews likewise drove away Christian Jews from the 1st century onward.

[daniel1212]

The New Testament has several anti-Semitic elements in its chronologically latest documents. The Gospel of John has Jesus call the Jews “sons of the devil.” There is also a case of an anti-Jewish outburst by the Apostle Paul.

Which reveals ignorance or neglect of context.

[daniel1212]

Given the events going on in the USA these days, with these campus protests, it seems like it might be valuable to look at the historic roots of anti-Semitism.

Given the events going on in the USA these days, with these campus protests, it seems like it might be valuable to look at the historic roots of anti-Christianism, including this contrived hit piece against Biblical Christians.

The Gospel of John has Jesus call the Jews “sons of the devil.”

Wrong, not "the Jews" inclusively as a race but most specifically "the Pharisees" (John 8:13) which are the vocal spokesmen respondents referred to afterward as "the Jews" in John 8, who with the "scribes and chief priests...sought how they might destroy him" (Mark 11:18) "The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God," (John 19:7) and who also lied saying and were never in bondage to any man in John 8:33, resulting in the Lord's statement which is at issue:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44)

While John often referred to "the Jews" collectively yet this was not inclusive of all the Jews or of them as a race, for as John states, "There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings," (John 10:19) "Because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus." (John 12:11) "Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done." (John 11:45-46)

As in life, context is king in interpretation, and it is the Jewish leadership that are representative of those who sought to murder the Christ:

But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. (Matthew 27:20) Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children. (Matthew 27:25)

There is also a case of an anti-Jewish outburst by the Apostle Paul.

Meaning that a class Jews, under murderous leadership, warranted the indictment of the apostle, stating:

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

Yet the same apostle exampled the attitude Christians should have in stating,

That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:2-5)

“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.

Oh really? You mean after deacon Stephens early indictment of Jewish leadership for their hard-hearted rejection of their Messiah then there was no breaking point?

And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. (Acts 6:8)....And....the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council, (Acts 6:12) And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,... (Acts 7:2)

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. (Acts 7:51-53)

And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judæa and Samaria, except the apostles. (Acts 8:1)

“The situation changed slowly in the second generation of Christians....They began to preach their message to non-Jews outside the Land of Israel as well.

Really? Peter and Paul and the persecuted (by Jews overall) Jewish Christians were "second generation of Christians?"

Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. (Acts 8:4-6)

Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord. (Acts 11:19-21)

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. (Acts 10:34-36) To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. (Acts 10:43)

“Later on, as is also made quite clear in the New Testament, gentile Christians began to claim that their communities were the true Israel.[2] They asserted that in neglecting many of the Torah’s commandments, they-and not the Jews-knew what God wanted from His people

Meaning that Pharisee Paul and the church came to realize specifically which ways the promised New Covenant was "Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers.."

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: (Jeremiah 31:31-32)

Under which only the literal observance of temple ordinances, dietary laws and liturgical days — (which the New Testament categorizes →) are abrogated. The reason being that unlike basic universal laws (which the New Testament affirms), these were typological laws, shadows of Christ who would come, precursors of what would be fulfilled by and under Christ. Such as regarding “meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath, Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ," (Colossians 2:16,17) Once the body is come, we need not look at the shadow. Likewise the writer of Hebrews tell us in further revealing that temple ordinances, dietary and the liturgical calendar constituted the abrogated ceremonial law, that "carnal ordinances" regulating “meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation,” (Heb. 9:10) were part of the Old covenant which was to cease, for “that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (likely written before the Temple destruction in AD 70).

Meanwhile, those who most strongly esteem Scripture as the sure supreme accurate authority overall usually support Israel more than others:

White evangelical Protestants also are more likely than Jews to favor stronger U.S. support of Israel. Among Jews, 54% say American support of the Jewish state is “about right,” while 31% say the U.S. is not supportive enough. By contrast, more white evangelical Protestants say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel (46%) than say support is about right (31%). October 3, 2013 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/03/more-white-evangelicals-than-american-jews-say-god-gave-israel-to-the-jewish-people/

Majorities of Protestants (63%) and Catholics (58%) had favorable views of Israel, compared with around four-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Americans (42%). Among Protestants, White evangelicals (80%) had more positive views of Israel than White nonevangelicals (61%) or Black Protestants (43% - August 21, 2023 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/21/how-americans-view-israel-netanyahu-and-u-s-israel-relations-in-5-charts/

White evangelical Protestants are much more likely than members of any other major Christian tradition to say the best outcome would be a single state with an Israeli government; 28% say this, compared with 6% each of Catholics, White non-evangelical Protestants and Black Protestants.

White evangelicals also are the group most likely to say God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people. Fully 70% of White evangelicals take that position, more than twice the share of U.S. Jews who answered a similar (but not identical) question in a 2020 survey by saying God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people (32%). 

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2022/05/05.26.22_Israel.report_0.3.png
- May 26, 2022 https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/26/modest-warming-in-u-s-views-on-israel-and-palestinians/