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From: ayf@erc3ba.UUCP (A.Y.Feldblum)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Historical Persecution of Jews
Message-ID: <186@erc3ba.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Mar-86 13:09:13 EST
Article-I.D.: erc3ba.186
Posted: Fri Mar 21 13:09:13 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Mar-86 23:03:44 EST
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Organization: AT&T Engineering Research Center   Princeton, NJ
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 	I think that we can distinguish between early Greek and Roman
"anti-semitism" and Christian "anti-semitism". The first was not
religious based, or at least not in the same sense as the second. Greek
and Roman dislike of the Jews was based on a combination of factors,
some of which have been brought up in this discussion. They include the
fact that the Jews kept themselves as a seperate social group and did
not accept Greek or Roman practices (including religion) as readily as
other national groups that the Greeks or Romans conquered. In addition
the Jewish insistance that G-d could not be seen, and that all the gods
of the Romans or Greeks were meaningless (other groups said we have our
gods, you have yours, but they are all powerfull beings) did not make
the Jews well loved by the other nations. However, there was no intense
hatred of the Jews as Jews per se. The Jews did not in any way threaten
the very existance or claim to validity of these other nations. The
study of the relationship between the Jews and the other nations can be
linked with the more general issues of "dislikes" between distinct
groups.

	The nature of Christian "antisemitism" is fundamentally
different. To understand it, one must look at the period of the early
Christian church, before the Roman Empire embraced christianity. During
this period, both the Jews and Christians were active proslytising
elements in the Roman Empire, but both were viewed by the Roman Empire
as Jewish - just two different sects. Depending on the views of the
particular ruler, one group was left relatively alone and the second was
persecuted, with identity of the two groups changing. This laid a
political underpinning for hatred between the two groups. We now add to
this the fact that they were viewed by their prospective converts as
being a jewish sect, and the Jews also looking for converts. A
consequence was that many of these people went both to the jewish shul
and the christian church. To combat this, the church tried to seperate
itself as much as possible from mainstream Judaism. In addition, it
would be difficult to gain Roman converts to a religion whose founder
was killed by the Romans for subversive political activities (there is a
lot of evidence to support that statement). The end result was the birth
of the idea of the Jews as the deicide people - the god killers. Reading
church sermons from that period, which the church has preserved, one
finds such virulent hatred publically proclaimed to rivel anything else
in history. 

	The people of what we call "Western Civilization" over the next
more than one thousand years were educated by the Church. And what they
were taught, untill it became part of the social and political fabric,
was the the Jews were god killers and therefor despised by god and
should be despised by all people. When we now look at specific examples
of modern anti-semitism, although the language and immediate causes may
not be religious in nature, it is only this long historical basis that
allows it to flourish.

Avi Feldblum
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