Jewish Persecution Focused Flashcards
CARD #1:
Persecution of the Jews by Catholic Church and Hitler Focused
Source: http://www.letusreason.org/juda15.htm
The Churches past and current history with the Jews
Prologue: The emergence of Christianity has always been understood that it was an outgrowth of Judaism, a fulfillment of the Jewish prophets.
Judaism failed in winning many non-Jews prior to Jesus first coming, after the first century the church became more Gentile than Jewish. It failed to win Jews and then resorted to force for conversion. Hellenistic Judaism was predominated among the Jews outside their homeland, modified by the pervading Greek culture, and the very same thing happened to the church to a certain degree that removed them from the Jewish origin of the Scripture.
Constantine and made Christianity to be a legal religion, the Church was allowed to be united with the State, the Roman Empire. Some may argue of Constantine’s converting to Christ but it is more accurate to see him do this for political expedience.
[My Comment: Simply put there was no church for the first three centuries. Not until the 4th century.]
Many of the citizens of the Empire become Christians, (joining the church made them Christian).
This change of status through the reign of Constantine affected of Christianity outside the bounds their Empire, Asia Minor had tremendous growth. Christianity was now politically correct_. All types of people joined the Church for reasons other than Christ._
When Constantine established Romanized Christianity, the organized church became an official religion of the Roman Empire (approx. 312 AD.) Christians were no longer concerned about persecution. However, for the Jews, it was another story**. He issued many anti-Jewish laws. Jews were forbidden to accept converts; much pressure was used to make them forsake Judaism. **Constantine ordered the persecution of Jews, including Jewish followers of Christ. Constantine issued laws forbidding Jewish believers to keep Saturday as the Sabbath, celebrate Passover, and circumcise their children, etc. The punishments included imprisonment, and even death.
Origen of Alexandria wrote that the Jews “have committed the most abominable of crimes” in conspiring against Christ, and for that reason “the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election”.
We have the first vestiges of replacement theology, they believed the Jewish people have no future in God’s plan, they forfeited it completely and the Church has taken the place of the Israel.
CARD #2:
John Chrysostom** (Saint, Church Father, 4th-5th century) stated, **“The Jews sacrifice their children to Satan....they are worse than wild beasts. The synagogue is a brothel, a den of scoundrels, the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults, a criminal assembly of Jews, a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ.” “I hate the Jews because they violate the Law. I hate the synagogue because it has the Law and the prophets. _It is the duty of all Christians to hate the Jews.”_ Ref: (Chrysostoms“Homilies against the Jews” Patrologia Graeca pp.843-942.)
******** [My Comment:** This is insane! Here is the Christian church saying that God is incompetent because for 4,000 years he is the Father of the Jews, and the Jews are his chosen people. Now, with the church father, **John Chrysostoms, it is declared that God has always hated the Jewish people and that all the Hebrew Old Testament scriptures were really for the Christians which nobody ever heard of for the first 4,000 years of Old Testament writings!
The Christians were no longer persecuted as Roman Catholicism became the main visible organized accepted church, yet the Jewish people began to suffer continual persecution. In Spain (613 AD) all Jews who refused to be baptized were forced to leave the country. Later the remaining Jews were made as slaves by Christians.
[My comment: Jews were made slaves by Christians]
In Vicars of Christ, Jesuit historian Peter deRosa (a Roman Catholic) writes of those early days: [_Catholicism] will become the most persecuting faith the world has ever seen_. They will persecute the race from which Peter and Jesus sprang…[and] order in Christ’s name all those who disagree with them to be tortured, and sometimes crucified over fire. They will make an alliance between throne and altar; they will insist that…the throne (the state) impose the Christian [Roman Catholic] religion on all its subjects. Ref: (Quoted in The Berean call July 1993)
CARD #3:
History shows popes, such as Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, continued the persecution of Jews.
“We hear of no persecution of Jews in Gaul until the severe enactments of the third and fourth Councils of Orleans (538, 541), a generation after the conquest of Arian Visigothic Gaul by the orthodox Christian Clovis. _Before the Crusades the active persecution of Jews in medieval Europe was sporadic._ The Byzantine emperors continued for two centuries the oppressive policies of Justinian toward the Jews. Heraclius (628) banished them from Jerusalem in retaliation for their aid to Persia, and did all he could to exterminate them_. Leo the Isaurian sought to disprove the rumor that he was Jewish by a decree (723) giving Byzantine Jews a choice between Christianity or banishment. Some submitted; _some burned themselves to death in their synagogues rather than yield. Basil I (867-86) resumed the campaign to enforce baptism upon the Jews; and Constantine VII (912-59) required from Jews in Christian courts a humiliating form of oath- more Judaico - which continued in use in Europe till the nineteenth century (p.498 The Age of Faith, Will Durant)
Over the centuries thousands of Jews were blamed for the death of Christ, as if they were there and personally responsible. The Bible teaches Jesus mission was to come to earth to be crucified, so they did not know their own Bible. He would have had to die for our sins no matter what, that was his mission.
Because of the increase tortures and killings of the Jewish people, the Jews began to view Jesus, not as a Jew, as someone who hated the Jewish people, they blamed him for their misery.’
This false view is still perpetuated today, blaming the Jews for nearly everything possible. The first Crusade in 1096 saw zealous persecution of Jewish communities as the Crusaders began their journeys to the ‘Holy Land’ to liberate it from the Muslims. They said, ‘We are going to fight Christ’s enemies in Palestine (i.e. the Muslims), but should we forget his enemies in our midst (i.e. the Jews)?’ 12,000 Jews were killed in the cities along the Rhine River. When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred all the Jews and the Muslims.
[My Comment: 12,000 Jews killed in crusade of 1099.]
CARD #5:
In 1215 Pope Innocent III condemned the Jews to eternal slavery by decreeing, ‘The Jews against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although they ought not to be killed, lest the Christian people forget the Divine Law, yet as wanderers ought they remain upon the earth until their countenance be filled with shame.’
The first ritual murder charge against the Jewish community was in Norwich in 1144 when the Jews were accused of killing a Christian child at Passover time to drain his blood in order to make Passover matzos. This ridiculous rumor persists, adopted by Muslim’s to incite hatred of the Jews today.
In 1290 King Edward I expelled all Jews from England. In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was directed against heretics – Jews and non-Catholic Christians. In 1492 Jews were given the choice of forced baptism or expulsion from Spain. 300,000 left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Columbus a converted Jew sailed to find a new land
I’m certainly not saying that what the Jews believe is all right or accurate, it wasn’t in Jesus’ day. But this does not make them an enemy that one wants to remove them as some want. These same sentiments were adopted by the Nazis in their propaganda. Hitler used whatever was available to promote his final solution. And this continues today with Islam and their religious competition.
Eventually Europe was engulfed with Christianity, or more accurately the church/state religion. Anti-semitism reached its height in the Middle Ages, with pogroms. The Jews often became scapegoats for many natural catastrophes, anything that went wrong they were to be blamed.
[My Comment: Pogroms. (Paa GROM; grom as is grommet) Pogroms is a call to war to destroy enemies, like the Jihad of Islam. Pogroms have been called for in nearly every century by various groups, mainly the Catholic/Christian church. In WWII, The Catholic church opened up its population records for Hitler so he could easily find and round up Jewish people to exterminate. Hitler was praised for this. He never was excommunicated by the Catholic Church even after killing six million Jews!]
CARD #6:
In the late 19th century Russia instigated the pogroms, these were violent attacks on Jewish communities. They burned houses, mass murder, and rape. ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ alleges a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Many believe it was anti-Semites from Russia that produced the pamphlet. This was adopted as fact by the Nazis and became part of their propaganda effort as they implemented the ‘Final Solution.’ 6 million European Jews were exterminated, by mass killings and being put in ovens through the Holocaust. Today the same lie is being promoted in the Muslim world to incite hatred for Israel and the Jewish people.
