David f,
Whilst I have no reason to doubt the historicity of your last post, the underpinnings of the Christian triumphalism are important, even if to focus on this tends to create somewhat of an oversimplification. Literally speaking, anti-semitism means "opposed to Semites," which technically also includes Arabs and other Semitic peoples. However, in practice and as widely acknowledged within academia, anti-Semitism refers only to an opposition or hatred of Jews and or Judaism. The origins of anti-Judaism or Christian anti-Semitism can be traced back to the growing estrangement between the early Christian communities and the Jewish leaders of formative Judaisms.

A literal reading of the Gospels, without any contextual reference, clearly demonstrates how this narrow interpretation of Matthew and John's Gospels distorts original meaning. Matthew's community, in particular, predominantly consisted of ‘Jewish Christians’ who kept the Law and were at odds or in conflict with other notable forms of Judaism. An eventual theological disdain grew within early Christian thought – basically derived from the Jewish rejection of Jesus as ‘The Messiah’. In the classical era, many prominent theologians and church leaders revealed their disdain for Jews and their religion by attacking "Judaisers" and reiterating the charge that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death. The charge of Justine Martyr and Tertullian was basically “…because the Jews had rejected Jesus and the prophets, the entitlements of Judaism should now be transferred to Christianity.” Two of the most influential classical Christian scholars and church leaders who harbored anti-Semitic views were St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine of Hippo. "If it is requisite to despise individuals and the nation so do I abhor the Jews an inexpressible hate." – St Jerome.

Persisting within Islam, is the parallel – it is a religion to basically supersede both the Judaic and Christian one, an idea founded on the same error. Around 620 C.E. the Jews, not surprisingly, rejected the ‘new faith’(Islam) and its prophet; and if the Qur’an is to be believed, they were contemptuous and sarcastic.

Dear Relda,

Wilhelm Marr invented the word, Antisemitismus, in 1879 to mean hatred for Jews not other Semites.

Dear George,

I dig neither the transcendent reality of Kant nor the reality of the astrologers. Kant examined the proofs of the existence of God and found none of them valid. There have been no new proofs of the existence of God since Kant. He recognised that one cannot defend religious faith by rational means but declared himself Lutheran. An “extra-scientific” dimension of Reality postulates a concept for which, by definition, there is no evidence.

Hitler’s definition of Jew depended on ancestry, as does Lustiger’s. I define a Jew as one who regards himself or herself as a Jew and is regarded as a Jew by the Jewish community.

Lustiger ignored history. Edith Stein or he might have been persecuted in the fifteenth century.

Limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood) referred to being ethnically pure “Old Christian” without Jewish or Muslim ancestors. Christians who reconquered Spain despised the New Christians, and called them Conversos. Cleanliness of blood depended on ancestry not on personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood in Toledo, 1449, barred Conversos from most official positions.

The distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism is Christianity distancing itself from Hitler. In Mein Kampf Hitler said the anti-Semitic movement of the Christian Social Party influenced him. Hitler admitted Christian roots to his Jew hatred. Racial theorists later supported that hatred. Hatreds reinforce each other and cannot be neatly separated.

Nazi papers printed Martin Luther’s anti-Judaist sermons verbatim to stoke up feeling against Jews. Jews might abandon their faith under pressure of anti-Judaists to live a precarious existence. Jews condemned to death by burning could sometimes buy a more peaceful death by hanging if they would convert. Christians become martyrs for their faith. Jews become corpses for theirs. I find the difference between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism specious.

Christian religious bigotry is no more acceptable than racism. Jews or anybody else should not be murdered due to religion or due to race.

Dear Relda,

Christian triumphalism is important, and your recounting of the history of early Christianity and Islam seems correct to me. However, Christians have a tendency to ignore what has happened since then. To me it is as though one claimed knowledge of Christianity while ignoring the Arian heresy, the Reformation, the Orthodox-Catholic Schism and all the other important events that have happened since the early church.

To really gain a feeling for the matter it is necessary to know about Jewish-Christian interactions since the early church and the influence each faith has had on the other. That is a long and complex history, but I can suggest a good source.

David Vital’s A People Apart, 1789-1939, Oxford: OUP, 1999 is possibly the best book to deal with the present state of the Jews. 1789 was the date of the French Revolution. It liberated the Jews as well as others. Napoleon opened the ghettoes. He also sparked ethnic nationalism in reaction to his carrying the banner of revolution. The various ethnic nationalisms were based on a unity of ethnicity and religion to form new nation states. This left no place for the Jews who created their own ethnic nationalism called Zionism. There are other books dealing with earlier and later history. However, we are still dealing with the fallout of the French Revolution.

In the United States at this time fundamentalist Christians have formed Christians United For Israel (CUFI). The movement is extremely dangerous since they seem to want to hasten the ‘end days’ at the cost of Middle East peace. They oppose any steps for peace the US or Israel may make and support the most aggressive elements in Israel and the United States. I suggest that they are far more important at present than Christian Triumphalism. Their head, Reverend Hagee, endorsed McCain for president. McCain rejected that endorsement because of extremely bigoted statements by Hagee such as calling the Catholic Church ‘the whore of Babylon.’ However, they are still working for a Republican victory which I fear.

O.K. David, you correctly point out the term ‘anti-semite’ as being coined by the German anti-Jewish polemicist who used it as a replacement word for judenhass or Jewhatred. It is a phenomenon that has repeatedly occurred well before the 19th. Century. Let’s not then reduce it to the vacuous, as John Pilger has done, through its technical meaning – but use the term as used by Marr originally. Understand how it has manifested throughout history, and continues to do so.

Sancho,
Evidence abounds for the positive influence Christianity has had on science. The following type of comment from Paul Davies is quite common in academia, although I wouldn’t agree with it totally:

“If you look back at how science originated, it rests upon twin pillars. The first is Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on the ability of human beings to understand their world through the use of rational reasoning. The second is monotheistic religion—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—with its emphasis on a created world that is ordered by a Designer in a rational and intelligible way. Those were the dominant influences that gave rise to science in seventeenth-century Europe.”

Earlier there was discussion on Einstein’s thoughts and views of religion. If we dig a little deeper and look at some other famous scientists, which of these did not overtly state a Christian testimony: Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur ….? And this list could be many times longer.

Dan,
This time you have used fallacy number 2. (i.e Argument from Authority)

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric

* Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
* Argument from "authority".
* Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
* Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
* Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
* Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
* Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
* Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
* Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
* Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
* Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
* Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
* Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
* Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
* Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
* Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
* Confusion of correlation and causation.
* Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
* Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
* Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"