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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Historical Persecution of Jews
Message-ID: <1452@ames.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 22-Mar-86 11:32:08 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.1452
Posted: Sat Mar 22 11:32:08 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Mar-86 20:58:14 EST
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Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
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Xref: lsuc net.religion.christian:400 net.religion.jewish:1928

From Matthew Wiener (brahms!weemba):
>I am curious if the roots of Christian
>anti-Semitism go back to the first century CE or not.  Were the
>early Christians so annoyed at their twain for not seeing the light
>that bigotry developed?  And were the early Christians trying to
>disassociate themselves from the disasters that befell the Jews
>in 66-70 CE in the Jew-Roman war?
>
>These questions are probably unanswerable.

	Actually, we can make some educated guesses. Some of the
early Nazarenes (Xians) had already parted company with the Torah
by 30-40 AD. There seems to have been considerable friction between
the Nazarenes and Pharasaic Judaism almost from the beginning.
	The real break came, as you suggest, in 66 AD. The Xians
refused to join the Jews in defense of Jerusalem (possibly
because of their belief that the end of the world was just around
the corner, but that's speculation), and instead fled the city.
After that, no Jew considered them a branch of Judaism. As for
the Xians, they probably bore grudges about the executions
of some early Xian leaders at the behest of the Sanhedrin.
	I'm skeptical of the idea that modern antisemitism is
explained by this ancient history, but it does seem clear that
Xianity and Judaism were at odds from the very start. And the
Xians were actually picking up what was already a long-standing
tradition. The Romans were down on the Jews before Jesus was ever
born, and Hellenic-Semitic conflicts go back even farther. Many
of the coastal settlements in Palestine were Greek from time
immemorial (e.g., the Philistines were a Hellenic people); the
conflict was an ancient one. It was perhaps natural, as Xianity
became less Semitic and more Hellenistic in its philosophy and
outlook, that it picked up some long-standing Greek cultural
prejudices. Indeed, the first Nazarenes to forsake the Torah
appear to be Jews who'd already left traditional Judaism behind
for Hellenism, judging by their names (e.g., Stephen). That
other Jews also refused to acknowledge their messiah was
just more fuel for the fire.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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