Talk:Christianity and anti-Semitism/Archive 3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Why does the page open with such quete as

  "Ask most Jews what they honestly think about Jesus, and you will find a deep bitterness"

As a jew, in europe, I see that alot of anti-semic attitude, is just based on such views, often during discusions, a christian will comment "natuaraly, becuase you don't like Jesus". Wherther or not this is true (which I dought), I don't think the page should _open_ with such a quote.

My personal aquitance with fellow jews, shows rather that jews tend to view Jesus as just another jewish prophet, saying words of the time, not that diffrent from other jewish scholars (such as rabbi akiva, as an example). Christians tend to accept this view of 'un-uniqifing' Jesus as a sort of insult, and deduce that jews have something against him.
Anyway, opening with such a quote, would just strenghthen views of hate I think.

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)

(This paragraph would greatly benefit from evidence and examples.)

This note to editors, which I removed from the section concerning "Reasons Anti-semitism continued", is good advice for that whole section. It just sort of waves its hand over the issues in a vague way, and it would be helped by specifics. Mkmcconn 23:25, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I removed this:

The Synod of Clermont (Franks), 535 CE - Prohibited Jews from holding public office. Nazi Germany, 1935 CE - Prohibited Jews from holding public office.
The 12th Synod of Toledo (Spain), 681 CE - Ordered the burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books. Nazi Germany - Ordered the burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books.
In 692, the Trulanic Synod forbade Christians to go to Jewish doctors, attend Jewish religious feasts or have friendly relations with Jews. Nazi Germany - The Nuremberg laws forbade people to go to Jewish doctors.

Some of the information here might well belong in the article, but the existing presentation was based on a phony logic that things which look similar must be casually connected.

I also changed "Weissmandel" to "Weissmandl" which is how his son spells it. Sometime I will get back to the "quotes" attributed to Weissmandl as other evidence casts doubt on them.

One other thing (which I did not try to change). It says Thus, almost all Jews today are descendants of the Pharisees. It reads like genetic descent is meant but I can't tell that for sure. If so I very much doubt that there is any evidence for it. It is only obvious that the Pharisee practice and tradition came to be the dominant one.

-- zero 14:28, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)


According to [ http://www.lernzeit.de/themen/sendungen/st/st290302_inhalt.phtm ], Cardinal Mindszenty was arrested by the Nazis for opposing the deportation of Jews. He was imprisoned for 4 months. According to [ http://www.eichlers.com/374249466.html ], he "acted as a secret conduit for money transfers to keep Jews alive". It's easy to find more such material. Until someone can provide an authoritative source that proves beyond doubt that this guy was an anti-semite, this one is gone:

Cardinal Joszef Mindszenty, of Hungary, claimed that "The troublemakers in Hungary are the Jews! They demoralize our country and they are the leaders of the revolutionary gang that is torturing Hungary." (Source: B'nai B'rith Messenger, January 28, 1949)

Actually I am not surprised that problems like this exist on the page. Whenever I see an article that consists largely of a sequence of quotations, it is almost a certainty that the academic quality is unacceptable. I bet there are more examples on the page than this one.

-- zero 13:28, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Pluralism statements are being misrepresented

The contention in this article, that Christians are generally coming to agreement with the Jewish equation of evangelism with anti-semitism, is not accurate — but, the view is so pervasively represented in that section of this topic, that I wouldn't know where to begin in correcting or balancing it.

What does appear to be true (summarizing very wide trends can't be done with infallible assurance of accuracy), is that Christians generally have moved to the position that the hostility with which Jews regard Christian proselytism must be considered with the benefit of insight into the unique reasons for why they are hostile, and to overcome this hostility by doing a better job of explaining the cause of Christian evangelism, especially with regard to the Jews. (This is not to deny that "liberal" Christianity, which has redefined the faith into humanistic terms, has no place for evangelism not only of the Jews, but of anyone else).

Several of the statements quoted in the article, and the positions characterized as "ending the evangelism of Jews", must be interpreted this way. To characterize these statements and positions, as the article does, is in several cases shallow, and in some cases a purely false analysis.

But I'm afraid that what's happening in this article is an example of how the present Christian attitudes toward the Jews are being over-interpreted, and these shallow or inaccurate interpretations will in the long run be perceived as deceitful. Especially in regard to very broad church unions, especially of the Protestant sort, editors here need to keep in mind that these unions are made possible by the fact that they embrace a plurality of opinion. Their official pronouncements are intentionally designed to allow for a multiplicity of interpretations. This kind of double-talk is understood by those who live with it, but it is obviously not understood as clearly by those who look at it from the outside.

For the overwhelming majority of Christians, when evangelism stops, Christianity in any meaningful sense has come to an end: If Christians resolve not to evangelize Jews, they have resolved not to be Christians toward Jews. Call this "anti-semitism", or "genocide" if you wish — the problem of how evangelism is perceived is not an issue that Christian evangelists can permit themselves to ignore, so call it what you must. In fact, this problem of "perception" is what is addressed in most of the statements and positions described in this article. But the bottom line is, Roman Catholics have not resolved to "end evangelism of Jews"; similarly, it is not a fact that the PCUSA or the others have all decided to "end their efforts to convert the Jews". What is true, is that they have issued statements intending to assure Jews of several things. They affirm in fuzzy language, that Jews have an ongoing role as a witness to the nations, that has not expired and will not until the end. In light of that, and the belief that Christianity is only true if and because the Jews are an elect people of God, and possessors of the truth of which Christians are heirs (in a way distinct from being Jewish), they assert that it is wrong to particularly target Jews for evangelism, as though being Jewish makes them particularly ignorant of the truth, and specially in danger of the judgment of God - a particularly persistent allegation, which Jews have against Christian evangelism. Etc...

While these statements are broad enough that they certainly permit for the interpretation that "we reject evangelism", that is not the only interpretation allowed; and if it were, the statements probably would not have been adopted, because they would be in conflict at a more basic level, with other commitments internal to the groups' identity and sense of mission. You may expect these groups to dissolve funds, organizations and publications with names like "Mission to convert the Jews". You should not, and probably cannot expect them to stop publishing reasons for Jews to convert to Christianity, or to start publishing reasons why Jews must not convert. Mkmcconn 16:19, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Deleted: alleged Joszef Mindszenty quotation
Reason: RK, the onus is on you to establish the veracity of the Joszef Mindszenty "quotation". As well as being in contradiction to other sources regarding him, it appears that at the time of the B'nai B'rith Messenger article he was the target of a traditional communist show trial in Hungary. We know very well from history that none of the accusations made publically at such a trial, including statements supposedly from the victim, can be taken at face value. Do you actually have any real knowledge about this individual? Did you look at the Messenger article so see if it gives context? Do you care? Until you can do much better than this, I will continue to delete this supposed quotation.

Uh, no. The onus is not on me. This quote is in many history books on this subject, and it is fully in accord with hundreds of other quotes by similar figures in the same time and place. (Books, I said, btw, and not web sites.) The onus is on you if you wish to disprove it. RK
I tend to believe that people are innocent until proven guilty, even if they are Christians. However, since you have books about this one you can tell us the background and original source of this "quotation" so we can judge whether it belongs on the page or not. -- zero 02:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Four weeks later, I have found the issue of B'nai B'rith Messenger in which this "quotation" appears. It is not a direct report but a "bona fide story that happened to Mrs. H. Laski, daughter of the late Chief Rabbi of England Moses Gaster...a few years ago". There is no indication even that BBM got the story directly from Mrs. Laski. In other words, it is a rumor and its deletion was justified. --zero 11:44, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)


Deleted: alleged "papal nuncio" quotation
Reason: The person concerned was the papal chargé d'affairs (not nuncio) Giuseppe Burzio. The account is wrong (it was before Weissmandl escaped from the train and not after) but the main problem is that it is contradicted by the documentary evidence. Here is the summary from Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotations, 1933-1945, p86:

The documents show that while some of the leading clergymen [of Slovakia] were certainly no friends of the Jews, others intervened forcefully, and Burzio, whom Weissmandl attacks, too, was in the forefront of the defense of the Jews, not just the converts.

If one of the leading Holocaust historians doubts our "quotation", then so should we. This same opinion of Burzio is given in the documentary film "Among Blind Fools" about Weissmandl's life. The first sentence of the paragraph (about what the Slovakian laity were taught) is also unacceptable without evidence.

Um, if one person holds one view, then we must agree with him? Since when? Don't we usually agree with the consensus view? I do not follow your logic. RK
There are plenty of books that quote some things from Min HaMetzar, but repeated quoting does not constitute a consensus. The consensus we should be concerned with is that established by the academic historians who have investigated the primary sources. I know of only a few: Teveth (which is mostly an attack on an earlier book of Tom Segev), and Bauer. There are also some in languages I don't read (like Slovakian), but it sounds from Bauer's citations that they mostly agree with his analysis except in details. From what I can tell, Bauer's book is regarded as the most important study on the subject and is repeatedly described in that way by other historians. -- zero 02:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Deleted: alleged Kmetko quotation
Reason: The account here has a number of errors and causes for doubt. First, Weissmandl does not claim to report this from his own experience, but rather says that he was told this story by his father-in-law. Second, the sentence "This is your punishment for the death of our Redeemer" (which I think is a mistranslation: according to a source I trust it says "And you deserve this punishment.") is the only part of the statement that is obviously hostile. The rest of it reads more like a warning than anything else. Kmetko had no power to carry out threats. Apart from the "punishment" sentence it can be read as "The Nazis are planning to kill you and the only way I can help is to convert you." (Many Hungarian Jews were saved by precisely this means, so this reading is quite plausible.) As for the "punishment" sentence, Weissmandl's ability to report past events accurately is in doubt and this is the opinion of many historians (Bauer and Teveth, to name two). RK, before you challenge this I suggest you look into Min HaMetzar a little. I guarantee that you would scream very loudly indeed if people started quoting some of the other things in there. Of course I could be wrong and Kmetko could have been the vilest of antisemites, but I don't know that and neither do you.

I will agree with you on this. RK

Deleted: supposed "Thomas Short" quotation
Reason: After 45 minutes with Google I was not even able to confirm that there is such a person. (However I did find a few "Christian Jew-haters" lists with this same story verbatim.) So what we have is an unsourced story probably relying on the memory of one unidentified person about someone who is utterly insignificant if he even exists. Of course there really are "preachers" who spout this type of bile---I heard one of them years ago---but surely we can do better than slandering someone we only know through a few lines on a web page.

Why are you using Google? Most material in books is not available on the web. In any case, the entire point of this section is to summarize the view of many Christian priests, pastors, preachers, etc. in the 20th century. We would have a misleading, rosy-colored, and unrealistic article without several such quotes, along with a social analysis. We can replace this particular quote with another, sure, but we need to keep this section. RK 16:19, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I used Google to try to find out who this guy is. Anyone who is significant enough to deserve quoting on this page ought to have some on-line trace. Maybe I looked in the wrong places. Anyway, quoting some random bigot who nobody has heard of actually makes your case look contrived. Let's see some quotations from people with influence, together with sources. -- zero 02:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Comment: In fact, a large part of this article consists of stuff that someone collected off the internet without any sort of critical filtering. I'm sure that some (perhaps most) of it is completely correct, but there is no way to know what is and what isn't. If it is all correct it would be a miracle, and the context required to understand it is absent. The issue of anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition is a very serious one but large parts of this page read like crude Christian bashing. Maybe we should have a page of anti-Christian (or anti-gentile?) statements from famous Jews to "balance" it? I could contribute a dozen or two really good quotations without blinking (but I won't; two wrongs don't make a right). zero 11:33, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Uh, that is false. It comes from reading many books, by both Christian and Jewish scholars of this subject, and many journal articles. Some of us use hardcopy books for research. Please stop projecting. RK 16:19, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please start citing. --zero 02:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Now your true intention finally surfaces. You want to "balance" nearly two thousands years of anti-Semitism, persectuion, beatings and genocide with quotes to prove that the Jews are just as evil as those who preached hatred towards them. We will not fall for this obviously anti-Jewish agenda. On other pages, you already have implied Jewish conspiracies about Arab quotes and the Arab press; this already discredits you. I don't know why you have an issue with the Jews, but we will not let you distort our articles in your quest to promote "balance". RK 16:19, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Your reply here is truly disgusting RK. I'm not going to pay you the respect of replying to it directly because you don't deserve it. However I will expand on what I wrote for the benefit of other people who may be reading. It's a simple logical deduction:
  1. It is possible to make a list of anti-Christian statements by Jews which is just as long as the list on this page of anti-Jewish statements by Christians.
  2. Over the centuries Jews have suffered from Christian prejudice to a vastly greater extent than Christians have suffered from Jewish prejudice.
  3. Therefore, the mere existence of hostile statements does not by itself suffice to establish the historical importance of Christian antisemitism. Something more is needed.
The additional thing that is required is some deeper analysis. Quotations simply do not suffice to establish historical reality. Nearly always the context of the quotation is at least as important, and the actions if any accompanying the quotation are usually more important. It matters a great deal, for example, whether a particular accusation was made in the heat of a debate that had both sides hurling abuse at each other, or whether it came from a more sinister motive. Just the quotation alone tells us hardly anything. If we have to have quotations, then the words of a respected historian who has studied the issue and can summarise the whole story would be much more useful than a few words of unknown context.
Another reason I heartily dislike the history-by-quotations genre is that almost everyone says different things at different times. If you want to "prove" that person P believed B, then you can look at all the things P ever said and you have a good chance of finding something close enough that a citation without context appears to establish that person P believed B. What we don't know is that person P spent most of their life combatting B, even though they once believed B sometime in their foolish youth. Even within a short time period people often make apparent contradictions. Compare these:
  1. Whatever the outcome the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate they will have complete autonomy.
  2. This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre of the Jews which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.
These were spoken by the same person (Azzam Pasha) within about a week of each other in May 1948. On both occasions he was speaking to the western press, so it wasn't a matter of telling a different story to different audiences. Maybe this is an extreme example, but this type of inconsistency is completely normal. Needless to say, some history-by-quotation articles quote one of them, and others quote the other one, according to their political positions. I say reject both articles and demand something better. -- zero 02:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)


Um, there is balance in Wikipedia on this subject. Just as we have articles on anti-Semitism(this one, for instance) we also have article on anti-Christian bigotry. The article is called Persecution of Christians, and it needs more contributors. RK 16:26, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I do not know why Zero0000 is debating a position with me that I simply have not held. Why convince me to adopt a position that I already agree with? As far as I can tell, there are enough real disagreements already. Why refuse to take "yes" for an answer? Take the following statements from Zero0000:

Zero0000 writes "It is possible to make a list of anti-Christian statements by Jews which is just as long as the list on this page of anti-Jewish statements by Christians. Over the centuries Jews have suffered from Christian prejudice to a vastly greater extent than Christians have suffered from Jewish prejudice. Therefore, the mere existence of hostile statements does not by itself suffice to establish the historical importance of Christian antisemitism. Something more is needed."

My response: This is not what you had written before. In fact, it isn't even close. What you write here is something that I happen to agree with, 100%. Your previous statement took away things which had made Christian anti-Semitism look bad, and said that to obtain "balance" we should ask for bigoted statements from Jews to add. It is that former position which was way out of line, and which I strongly objected to. Now you have written a very different position, and this newer text is something that I agree with totally. I am glad you agree with me on this, but I just don't understand why you are trying to convince me of a position I already have. Maybe you need to spend more time writing your initial thoughts more clearly. Your initial statements were ugly...and your amplified version was beautiful. I wouldn't have even guessed they were written by the same person. RK 02:20, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Zero0000 writes "The additional thing that is required is some deeper analysis. Quotations simply do not suffice to establish historical reality. Nearly always the context of the quotation is at least as important, and the actions if any accompanying the quotation are usually more important. It matters a great deal, for example, whether a particular accusation was made in the heat of a debate that had both sides hurling abuse at each other, or whether it came from a more sinister motive. Just the quotation alone tells us hardly anything.

Um, I agree totally. I don't understand who you are trying to refute. You don't get quite fully how Wikipedia works. If you believe that this article requires more analysis and context, then it is up to you to add that analysis and context. Don't look at the present state of any Wikipedia article, and get angry at us for what it hasn't yet become! Be bold in updating pages, and spend a few minutes improving the article. You seem to be trying to build a case for change...yet I don't disagree with your proposed changes, and no one here is stopping you. Stop yelling at me, and start editing the pages.
Frankly, Zero0000, if you had written this sort of thing yesterday, I would have been a cheerleader for you! The way you now propose rewriting this articlen sounds like a great idea, and I hope you do it. I will support such changes wholeheartedly. I just object to slowly chipping away this (or any) article, without putting anything else in its place. RK