Jewish persecutions by Church and Hitler Flashcards
Persecution of the Jews by Catholic Church and Hitler
Source: http://www.letusreason.org/juda15.htm
The Churches past and current history with the Jews
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.
The synagogues were center of Judaism, once the Jews were evicted from the land and there was no temple they became the main meeting place, it was essential to perpetuate their religion. The Dispersion of Jews from the land had also helped the spread of Christianity, as the faith began to grow among the Gentile converts by Jews bringing the gospel. Until this time it was not tolerated in the Roman Empire, attempt after attempt tried to have the bringers of the gospel extinguished by persecution.
Though Christianity was underground it was widespread, but soon some took notice. Emperor Galerius brought an end to the persecutions, then along came 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. There was no Roman “Catholic” Church ruling Christianity before Constantine, because Christianity was an illegal religion and an underground practice. It took a couple of hundred more years for a Roman bishop as the head of the Church, making it an official Roman Church functioning similar to today’s Catholic system.
[MN: Simply put, there was no church for the first three centuries]
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. [MN: 4th Century**]) 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. Later in 325 AD he said, ‘It is right to demand what our reason approves and that we should have nothing in common with the Jews.’ The association that was held between Christianity and Judaism were severed. 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. **[MN: Constantine stomps out Jewish Religion]
While the early church apologists argued in favor of the new covenant and against the law keeping of the old covenant, they overstepped the bounds, making Judaism the same as the Jewish people, both were to be rejected.
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”. …and ‘the blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world.’ _[MN: Like they believed that God was on their side (Romans) and changed his children from the Jews to the Christians. This would show God to be incompetent on his all knowing!]_
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.
Later in the 4th century a “Christianity” was being formed within the Greco-Roman churches that was contrary to the original Judeo-Christianity passed on from the apostles. By the 5th century, this church was in control of the “Christianity” for the masses. Over the centuries they eliminated all the other forms of Christianity that would be more biblical or Hebraic based, taking out the competition. Chrysostom whose Homilies were used in seminaries and schools: “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.” (Chrysostoms “Homilies against the Jews” Patrologia Graeca pp.843-942.)//In the early 4th century, Eusebius who we know as the church historian wrote that the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures were for Christians and not the Jews, the curses were for the Jews.
This became the prevailing view as the Post-Nicene fathers wrote after Nicaean council, this where we find the most animosity.
This attitude continued throughout the centuries and there was anti - semitism in the church as well as outside. ‘The Jews are the most worthless of all men. They are perfidious murderers of Christ. The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon. God always hated the Jews. It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews. (John Chrysostom, Saint, Church Father, 4th-5th century) [MN: This goes against the entire old testament and the first three gospels where Jesus will return on the Apocalypse to redeem his Jewish people.]
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.
*******[MN: Interesting. Christians no longer persecuted because they pointed to the Jews to be persecuted! Christians then made slaves of the Jewish people! circa 613 CE.]
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.
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_.
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.
It was these teachers of the law, not the everyday people that came against Jesus.
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.’I know my mom held this view for most of her life. The Devil was at work prompting the Gentiles to make Christianity another religion divorced from its original founding, instead of a continuation and fulfillment of the Jewish religion, its feast days and prophets.
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. [MN: This is the Catholic Church]
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 landMartin Luther had hoped he would win the Jews to his protest, a reformed Roman faith. But they rejected his attempts to convert them, he turned on them showing the same hatred of the church he had protested.
Martin Luther: What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews?
all be free of this insufferable devilish burden – the Jews.’ (The Jews and Their Lies (excerpts) 1483-1546)
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.
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.
The history of Jewish suffering shows a number of things. First - that God has his hand on them and has kept them from extinction .
Second- most of this has come from people who claimed Christianity but were not practicing it, instead carrying out instructions from men, not God (like Popes). One of the main accusations that had been brought against the Jewish people by these professors of Christianity is to say ‘The Jews killed Jesus.’ But ignore what god actually says.
Flawed teaching in the church has turned this whole matter upside down. they use the verse in Matthew’s Gospel, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’ (Matthew 27.25), to claim that the suffering of the Jewish people is the result of a self inflicted curse and even that Christians are therefore justified in persecuting the Jewish people in Jesus’ name. This is what has subtly taken place in the church, Israel is removed from its rightful place.
[MN: So all this starts with Constantine making the Catholic Church the official religion. When the Jews protested that the Church stole their religion, the Church tried their best to wipe them out. In WWII, Hitler a Catholic opened up the flood gates to eliminate them as his Christian Duty. This is church history! These are historical facts.]
