Talk:Christianity and anti-Semitism

Talk:Christo anti-Semitism archive

In any event, I found this excerpt concerning the SBC:

The most significant opportunity came the morning of Sept. 10, when the CBS television network broadcast an interview with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Don Kammerdiener, executive vice president of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

A CBS producer estimated the total national audience for that broadcast at about 1 million.

Foxman echoed other Jewish activists in criticizing Southern Baptists and claiming to be offended by the prayer guide.

"It's offensive. It's arrogant. It assumes that the Baptists and the Christians possess the absolute truth," Foxman told CBS "This Morning" interviewer Thalia Assuras. ?It?s this attitude that Jews on their own, without Christianity, have no future that led to inquisitions and expulsions and is the basis of Western anti-Semitism.

"To say you are against anti-Semitism and at the same time work toward the non-existence of the Jewish people is very, very ironic."

Kammerdiener countered that Baptists in America, far from being persecutors of the Jews, have been the staunchest advocates of the religious freedom that has benefited Jewish Americans.

"Baptists would find it ironic to be accused of anti-Semitism or persecution across the centuries," he said. "We've been the greatest defenders of religious liberty.

"The fact is, we do not claim Southern Baptists have a monopoly on truth. We claim that Jesus Christ is the truth, and we worship Him. ... Our goal is to offer to Jewish people the opportunity to understand that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah."

Personally, I do not understand how one can say "we do not claim we have a monopoly on the truth" and immediately say "we calim JC is the truth." In any event, I think I understand why Christians do NOT think this is anti-semitic. Do Christians understand why Jews think it is? I think a good article will do justice to both sides, SR

Kammerdiener is so full of zeal to exterminate Judaism that he twists the English language around so that words are used in the opposite way of what they mean. He claims that Christians only have the monopoly on the truth, and that the truth is that one must believe in Jesus Christ, but then he tries to claim that "We don't claim to have a monopoly on truth". These are childish word games. He should at least be honest. RK

I think this is what has been called "theological anti-semitism" in the anti-Semitism article. I don't know, but perhaps Kammerdiener meant that Christianity is a more complete revelation of the truth, without denying the truth that is within Judaism. This takes us right back to religious pluralism. :-) --Wesley

It seems to be much more than that. Kammerdiener is saying that all Jews are damned to Hell, and that his Church is actively working to destroy the religion of the Jews. This would be opposite of pluralism. I wonder how he'd feel if millions of non-Christians spent 2000 years trying to exterminate Christianity? Apparently he never learned the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." RK

BTW, I'd still love to see some attributions for those quotes. --Wesley

I got the excerpt I quoted above from the Baptist Press News, article, "Media storm over prayer guide puts Baptist witness center stage" by Mark Kelly; Sep 15, 1999 -- SR

Thanks, but I meant the quotes in the main article from the Church fathers, especially the ones attributed to Origen, Tertullian, and Martin Luther, and the quotes from John Chrysostom that are missing a citation. Sorry I wasn't more clear. I'm looking for the citations both for my own education, and so that any historical perspective can be added if it would be helpful. --Wesley

Here is a seconday source for the quotes for Ephraem, Jerome, Gregory and Chrysostom - they are cited in "Jesus and Israel", by Jules Isaacs, pp.241-242. The text on Augustine is from "Three Popes and the Jews", Pinchas Lapide, p.42; the quote to Amrbose is from Lapide's book on p.47. Martin Luther's words are from his essay "Concerning the Jews and Their Lies", written by him in 1543.

Thanks. I'll try to find those books at a local library this weekend. --Wesley

It took me a while to check, but it appears that my local library does not have a copy of "Jesus and Israel", by Jules Isaacs. They do have a copy of Lapide's book though.

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It looks like St. Ambrose's 40th epistle, addressed to Emperor Theodosius, deals extensively with the burning of a synagogue. It can be found online here: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-10/Npnf2-10-52.htm Based on that text, I'd like to amend this text:

Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340-397 CE) - Amrbose publicly praised the destruction of a Roman synagogue by an anti-Semitic mob. He threatened the Roman Emperor with excommunication, and labeled the emperor a "Jew", because the emperor committed the "sin" of helping to rebuild the Jew's synagogue.

to something along these lines:

Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340-397 CE) - A bishop was accused of instigating the burning of a synagoge by an anti-semitic mob, and Emperor Theodosius was preparing to order the bishop to rebuild it. Ambrose discouraged the Emperor from taking this step because (1) no action was taken against those responsible for burning the houses of various wealthy individuals in Rome; (2) no action was taken against those responsible for the recent burning of the house of the Bishop of Constantinople; (3) Jews had caused several Christian basilicas to be burnt during the reign of Julian, yet had never been asked to make reparation, and some of those basilicas were still not rebuilt. Ambrose asked that Christian monies not be used to build a place of worship for unbelievers, heretics or Jews, and reminded Ambrose that Christians had said of Emperor Maximus, "he has become a Jew" because of the edict Maximus issued regarding the burning of a Roman synagogue.

Comments? Is there another letter or homily by Ambrose that speaks differently on another occasion? --Wesley

This sounds fine to me. RK

Since I figure RK would be the one most likely to raise any objections, I'm going to make the proposed change to the entry on St. Ambrose. The original text is still just a few lines up if anyone else objects. --Wesley

I would add that in Ambrose's 41st epistle, found here: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-10/Npnf2-10-53.htm#TopOfPage, we probably find the threat of "excommunication" spoken of in the original text. It is plain that Ambrose addresses the Emperor in the homily before going up to the altar to prepare the Eucharist, and waits for him to promise not to require the bishop to rebuild the synagogue before celebrating the rest of the Divine Liturgy. This "excommunication" is simply not serving communion that day without the emperor's repentance; it is NOT a threat of eternal damnation, as is sometimes understood by the term today. Today in the Orthodox Church in America, many priests sometimes bar members from communion for one or two weeks to help them realize the severity of their sins, but such "excommunication" is always meant to be temporary, and the objective is always to encourage them to repent and to restore them to communion. Reading this 4th century account with the current practice of the OCA in mind seems to put it in a rather different light. --Wesley

I didn't even know that some people viewed excommnication as the same as damnation! I assumed, in fact, that people didn't necessarilly correlate the two (although I certainly see how they are connected.) Is there an entry on excommnication in Christianity? If not, we could at least create a stub, and link to it. RK

Argh. Looks like I just opened up another can of worms. I should caution that that's only the impression I received of Roman Catholic excommunication... in my Lutheran confirmation class. So don't just take my word for it. OTOH, if one were to be permanently and explicitly cut off from the Church, that would imply separation from God for Christians who have a strong eucharistic theology. Whether that separation is eternal would depend on who you ask; I'm fairly confident that most Eastern Orthodox would not go so far as to say the person is therefore eternally damned, at least the ones with whom I've come in contact. --Wesley

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I removed the following from the main page because it appears to be unverifiable:

• Saint Gregory of Nyassa[?] (ca 335 - 394 CE) - In his homilies on the resurrection, section 5, he states that Jews are "Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the Prophets, adversaries of God, haters of God, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of their father's faith, advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men whose minds are in darkness, leaven of the Pharisees, assembly of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners and haters of rigtheousness."

In all the online listings of the works of Gregory of Nyssa, I have found none entitled "Homilies on the Resurrection". The closest title I could find is "On the Soul and the Resurrection", the text of which is in the public domain at http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-05/Npnf2-05-37.htm. It has no mention of Jews whatsoever. Although I would rather keep this quote and include the context for it, as with John Chrysostom quote, I can't even be sure that the quote even exists. Perhaps it is a collection of things said by him in various places in different contexts, as now that I look at the text, it doesn't even comprise a complete sentence. Wesley

Why are people trying to hide the existence of anti-Semitism? I am concerned about the way that some people are deleting articles about anti-Semitism, and rewriting Wikipedia biographies of well-known anti-Semites like Henry Ford and Richard Wagner. There is an obvious (and rather childish) concerted attempt by anti-Semites to whitewash and deny the existence of anti-Semitism altogether. Please, people, be aware of the way that people are abusing Wikipedia. RK

What does this have to do with this article? Why do people free to fabricate quotes and attribute them to prominent Christians in the past? What's the point of asking rhetorical questions? If you have a problem with the biography of Henry Ford, shouldn't you discuss it at that article where people interested in his biography might be able to respond or even correct his bio? (btw, I amended the above IP to my sig., as I remember making the comment ages ago but must not have been logged in by the time I saved it.) Wesley

Wesley, you can't seriously be accusing people here of fabricating quotes and attributing them to Christians in the past. Up until recently you never challenged this entry as factual. Surely you are not claiming that these are Zionist lies, and should be deleted as Stevertigo wants. Further, how can you say that you don't understand what this has to do with the article: Someone deleted this entire article. How can that not have something to do with this article? RK

I think it was some time ago that I questioned the Gregory of Nyssa quotation, and there used to be a few other quotes on this article that I eventually deleted when they couldn't be documented. I don't really think these are examples of "Zionist lies" though, just plain sloppy scholarship that we're all guilty of from time to time, including myself. I said what I did about "fabricating quotes" in an attempt to point out that it's very easy to accuse someone of racial or religious bias, when they may instead be simply mistaken, or have some other entirely innocent reason for making edits. I hadn't noticed until after making my above post that the whole article had been deleted and restored. Deleting this entire article without any discussion was of course uncalled for. Wesley

I looked for the quote with google and found [1] (http://www.messianicmoments.com/antisemitism/gregory) [2] (http://www.jibp.israel.net/page79) [3] (http://www.holywar.org/jewishquestion2) [4] (http://www.elijahnet.org/A%20History%20of%20Contempt) [5] (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/6480/catholics/apostolic3chp4) [6] (http://www.nashvilleblessesisrael.com/Chapter6.htm) (etc, etc). All are almost exactly the same quote as the one earlier in this talk page... are they all fabricated, though? Martin

Well, I don't know for sure. If it's a genuine quote, it should be possible to find it as part of a larger work called "Homilies on the Resurrection". What looks like a fairly complete set of his writings is here: [7] (http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-05/TOC.htm). As I said before, I can't find anything with that title, let alone that quote in context. The reason I started looking for it is I wanted to see what he said before and after that quote, who his audience was, the occasion of writing it, when he wrote it approximately, etc. But the references you give above could easily have been copied from each other, making me think it's some sort of urban legend. I'm still ready to be proven wrong by being shown the full primary source of the quote, though. Wesley 21:26 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Well I looked, and the best I got was [8] (http://www.billwilliams.org/ANTI/anti-semitism) which has an actual set of notes, http://www.billwilliams.org/ANTI/notes, which credits the quote to Fred Gladstone Bratton in Europe and the Jews, pg83. Assuming I'm reading it right. Bratton apparently claims that the quote is from Oratio in Christi: Resurrectionem: XV, pg 553. Can I find a book called "Europe and the Jews" by Mr. Bratton? Can I heck. Can I find the full text to this oratio? Nope.

I'm going with the "fabricating quotes" option. There should probably be something in the article about such things. *sigh* Martin

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Tertullian - "the whole synagogue of the sons of Israel killed him [Jesus]."

From the edit history, it appears that RK added this particular quote. [9] (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Christianity_and_anti-Semitism&diff=243883&oldid=243882) way back on Dec 30, 2001. I can't find it on the net at all, so I'm curious what the source was... Martin

Origen - "The blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world."

Similar story - this one is at least the same as other quotes on the web, by Origen, but none of these purported quotes give an actual source.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) - In Epistle 82 he writes "The ceremonies of the Jews are both baneful and deadly to Christians and whoever keeps them is doomed to the abyss of the devil."

Both Letter 82 (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102082.htm) and Tractate 82 (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701082.htm) appear to be lacking this phrase. I've not been able to find a copy marked as an epistle, but I'm under the impression that an epistle and a letter are much the same thing.

Augustine preached "The Jews held Jesus, they insulted him; the Jews bound him; they crowned him with thorns, dishonored him by spitting on him; they scouraged him; they heaped abuse upon him; they hung him on a tree; they pierced him with a lance." This quoting became a popular Easter sermon in Churches, often leading to pogroms.

I only found this online here: [10] (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:lwI_khLm5ngC:www.olsztyn.com.pl/_olsztyn/sub/online/hydepark.php%3Fhp%3D1%26pos%3D11+%22Jews+held+Jesus,+they+insulted+him%3B+the+Jews+bound+him%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8), a random message board posting that also repeats te epistle 82 thing. This does not seem a reliable source, even assuming that we're not breaching copyright.

removed reinstated quote - found reference

Uh, guys? As hard as it is to believe, I get a lot of my information from printed books, not the world-wide-web. If you go to a libray and pull out a dozen or more books on Christian anti-Semitism (many of which nowadays are written by Christians, even priests) you can find all these same quotes, with references and footnotes. Just not on websites. There is no anti-Christian conspiracy. This is real, even if makes some people uncomfortable. RK

I'm sure it is real, which is why I left the referenced notes on Eusebius and Ambrose, and why I spent over an hour doing various searches to try and find many of the sources for these quotes. I was hoping that you could provide references for the above quotes so that people can read them in context and verify their correctness. Without references these quotes are unverifiable and out of context, and therefore deleting them is entirely proper.

In the case of Augustine of Hippo, I went to Epistle 82 online, looked, and the alleged quote simply wasn't there. In the case of Gregory of Nyassa, wo different lists cited two different works supposedly by Gregory, and neither of those works appears to exist.

I have managed to find Augustine's City of God quote, though, so I'll be reinstating that, with link and chapter numbers. If you'd help me with the rest, that would be helpful :)Martin

Two things occurs to me to bring up here. It is fact that anti-Semites show no hesitancy in fabricating quotes to try and incite anti-Semitism. See the wikipedia entry on Benjamin Franklin, for example. Given this fact, it is completely unsurprising that anti-Semites also fabricate quotes from the Christian fathers. I take a harsh view of all fabricated quotes, whether they be fabricated against Christians, Americans, or anyone else.

The second is that there are two subjects here - the first is possible anti-Semitism in the church fathers and the early church; the second is (ab)use of quotes from church fathers to promote anti-Semitism, and also to promote anti-Christian sentiment amongst non-Christians. These are, to my mind, seperate issues. Martin

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Wow! I just read this page from beginning to end for the very first time. I am sorry, guys, but I am pretty much astounded at the lack of serious scholarship here. It is just one anachronism after another. It seems to me like there is this homogeneous label, "anti-Semite," which is attached (or not) to people based on quotes (or misquotes) from their writings. The apologetics are no better (and possibly worse). Here's a little history lesson for all of you. Four hundred years of Jewish-Christian history in a nutshell.

There was a religion called Judaism, which was very prevalent in the Roman Empire. It attracted a large following among the pagan peoples, many of whom did not convert, but who identified with Jewish religious principles (monotheism, etc.). Of course, it also had its detractors. At the same time, it also had various sects within it, and these sects did not always get along. After the destruction of the Temple, the dominant Jewish sect was the Rabbinates, who followed the traditions of the Pharisees of Temple times. The Christians were a small but growing sect, though to many outsiders, they were indistinguishable from the Rabbinates. Inevitably, there were differences between the two sects, and differences often lead to disputes. Nevertheless, for a time, there was also cooperation and acceptance. Look at Romans 11:26 "And so, all Israel shall be saved ..." and 11:28 "As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father's sake." This went both ways. Acts 5:38-39 quotes Rabban Gamaliel: "And now I say unto you, refrain from these men, for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought. But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it..." A century later, Tertullian describes how Jews rescued Christians during times of persecution by hiding them in synagogues. Oh, and there were fights too, but I think I mentioned that already. In any event, Stephen was probably betrayed by Jewish supporters (Poppea, wife of Nero?), but that is to be expected between two rival groups.

There are a number of reasons why tensions increased between the two groups. Simple reasons: Christians fled Jerusalem in the Great Revolt (67-70); Rabbi Akiva proclaimed Bar Kochba the messiah; the Council of Jamnia created an invocation against the minim (it is unclear whether this was intended against all Christians or just Jewish Christians). Whatever. The fact is that as the Christian group increased in size, so did the animosity between it and the Rabbinate group. After all, they were vying for the same followers and each group felt threatened by the other.

This is an important point though. You will notice that many of the Christian quotes (and considerably more texts than are quoted) speak out against the "Judiazers." They felt threatened that people would leave the emerging religious group and revert back to the Rabbinate interpretation of Judaism. Meanwhile, the Rabbinate Jews felt threatened by the people abandoning them for the Christians (hence the Jamnia invocation). The split was in the making, with both groups laying claim to the same legacy (Matthew 5:17: "Think not that I come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfil"). For the next two centuries, the split was a matter of debate within the Church--should the Sabbath be on Saturday or Sunday? How does Easter relate to Passover? In this period, even people who condemned the Judaizers seem to be referring to those who opposed to clear distinctions between Church and Synagogue. Eventually they lost, but their influence was still felt for the next, crucial century--the century of the Church fathers most often quoted in this article.

By the fourth century, the split was complete, though the two groups continued to influence each other. Aphraates, Cyril of Jerusalem, Saints Ephraim, Epiphanius, and Gregory of Nyssa wrote in varying degrees of harshness against the Jews, though it appears that they were aiming at the Judaizers and the relics of Jewish influence. An interesting case of this is St Jerome, who studied Hebrew and the Bible with rabbis, but who also called the Jews "serpents." I will go out on a limb here and say that their opposition, despite the rhetoric, was directed against the rival Jewish religion, rather than against the Jews as a people. This even seems to have been the initial motivation of St John Chrysostom. The Christians of Antioch were still "too close" to the Jews. They were visiting synagogues and even using Jewish ritual objects. As a zealot he had to put a stop to it once and for all.

His answer was Adversus Judaeos. The fact is that his writing is particularly offensive: "... Inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil ... (Homily 1:6). The problem with Chrysostom though, as I see it, is not his rhetoric, so much as his establishment of the theology of deicide in the Judeo-Christian debate. For this he declares that there is "no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon." He made it an obligation to hate the Jews: "He who can never love Christ enough will never have done fighting against those [Jews] who hate him" (Homily 7:1). In effect, he had declared war against the Jews.

A different attitude was taken by Augustine. Despite their rejection of Christ, the Jews survived. This posed a challenge to the Church, which Augustine answered by introducing a new concept: testitis iniquitatis et veritatis nostræ--the Jews were witnesses to the truth of the Church. He compared them to Cain, the archetype of the murderer, but like Cain, they were to live in degradation but not be killed. The Jews were being punished for laying hands on Christ. (This, by the way, can be seen as the basis of Martin Luther's vituperance against the Jews twelve hundred years later, but I am not going that far in this little history diatribe.) By the way, in Epistle 5, Augustine also called on Christians to preach to the Jews "in the spirit of love," but this is often forgotten.

Anyways, these are two early attitudes that had an impact on the Church for hundreds of years. Inevitably, the underlying philosophy evolved and transformed itself countless times. Inevitably, there were also great Christian leaders who looked to earlier sources based on cooperation. There are lots of reasons why anti-Semitism flourished for centuries in Christian Europe, not all of them based on religion. Nevertheless, religion, particularly some of the early Church fathers like Chrysostom and Augustine, could be quoted (or misquoted) to provide a basis for the persecution of Jews.

Well, I probably just pissed a lot of people off, so I will stop here. This was in a nutshell. It is even more complex than all this and there are plenty of opposing views too. I just thought that if you're gonna discuss the issue, you might as well have some of the history to place it into context. Bye. Danny 02:37 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)