The Early Church and the Beginnings of Anti-Semitism
Christianity is one of the best examples in history
of a little religion that made it big in the world. At the death of Jesus (and the conversion
of Paul), there were twelve apostles,
the original disciples of Jesus who were imbued with the Holy Spirit
to teach Christianity to the masses. At the beginning, each had equal
status, and the major doctrine (developed by Paul) was salvation for
those who believed in the saving grace of Jesus and who underwent Baptism.,
the ritual which cleansed the soul. Paul added the theological point
that Christians were the "true Israel," the Israel of faith
rather than the crude Israel of the flesh (the Jews).
The Christians felt that because they were preaching to non-Jews, they
had to discredit the status of Jews by emphasizing their lack of faith
and their fall from favor because they didn't accept the teachings of
the Messiah, of Christ.
As in all new religions, Christianity had birth-pangs.
The major assumption of the budding religion was that the Messiah had come and that the New Age was at hand. This idea could not last
for very long before it started losing its immediacy. If the New Age
was at hand, why wasn't anything new happening? Paul's answer was that
something new was happening. The Christians just had to look inside
themselves to see how much change there was.
This response couldn't last very long either; it encouraged people
to provide personal answers to theological questions. There had to be
official, concrete answers and rules to the questions emerging through
the community. First, the leadership agreed that the only ones who could
teach and describe the truths of the new religion were students of the
apostles. Each apostle specified a special student to take over the
teaching and explaining when he died. This student in turn taught other
students, specifying one as the special student to continue the teaching.
This line of students from the original twelve apostles through the
generations was called the Apostolic Line. It successfully challenged
the legitimacy of any other group as being the New Israel.
However, this legitimate New Israel now had to define itself; what
did it really believe? What was the truth? The leading Christian thinkers
from 80 CE until 420 CE spent most of their time writing defenses and
arguments against heretical arguments; applying proof texts from Scripture
to their theology, and concretizing the beliefs of the new religion.
These writings were called Apologies, and the early Church fathers were
called Apologists.
In their zeal to justify early Church doctrine, the Apologists inevitably
vilified the Jews. In making Christianity the New Israel, they had to
explain the sins of the Old Israel, the fallen Israel, the false Israel.
The first apologist to do this was a newly-converted
Christian named Justin Martyr (who was later killed by the Romans).
In 145 CE (ten years after the Bar
Kochba Revolt) Justin Martyr wrote an apology in which he was having
a dialogue with a Jew named Trypho. Using Bible proof texts, Justin
Martyr claimed that the Jews were originally selected by God because
they were such an unspiritual group; they needed added laws. He blasted
the Jews for rejecting Jesus, for killing Jesus, for leading people
away from salvation. He gloated over the destruction of the Temple as being just punishment for Jewish perfidy. Justin Martyr's writings
became incorporated into early Christian thought, and were the origins
of Christian anti-Semitism.
Sources: JewishGates |