Christianity and Antisemitism - Antecedents of Christian Antisemitism

Antecedents of Christian Antisemitism

See also: Anti-Judaism#Anti-Judaism in the pre-Christian Roman Empire

In Rome and throughout the Roman Empire, religion was an integral part of the civil government. The Emperor was from time to time declared to be a god and demanded to be worshiped accordingly. This created religious difficulties for Jews, who were prohibited from worshiping any other god than that of the Hebrew Bible. This created problems in the relations between Rome and its Jewish subjects, as well as for worshipers of Mithras, worshipers of Sabazius, and Christianity. In the case of Jews, this led to several revolts against Rome and severe persecutions by Rome as punishment.

Many of the early gentile converts to Christianity probably came from and shared this cultural bias. As gentile converts they also were not well acquainted with the internal life of the Jewish community. Hence they read many of the New Testament texts as condemnations of Judaism as such, rather than as internal differences which were commonplace within the Jewish community.

Read more about this topic:  Christianity And Antisemitism

Famous quotes containing the words antecedents, christian and/or antisemitism:

    “The conclusion suggested by these arguments might be called the paradox of theorizing. It asserts that if the terms and the general principles of a scientific theory serve their purpose, i. e., if they establish the definite connections among observable phenomena, then they can be dispensed with since any chain of laws and interpretive statements establishing such a connection should then be replaceable by a law which directly links observational antecedents to observational consequents.”
    —C.G. (Carl Gustav)

    “Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.”
    —Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)

    “Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human race is imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.”
    —George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)