Sunday, August 13, 2017

"Thou bearest record of thyself" - History of Prejudice against Jewish People



Pacific Coast and the Tone River Northeast of Tokyo 


History of Prejudice against Jewish People

Jewish people were not always hated and attacked.

Roughly between AD 1 to 500, Jewish people were enjoying their living and business in the Roman Empire though they were expelled out of Palestine and Jerusalem after the Jewish-Roman wars around 100.  Christian churches were busy trying to establish their base in the Empire, and thus Christian authority did not especially hate Jewish people.   Specifically, before the Great Barbarian Invasion started around 300 and continued through 500 to 700, Jewish people had already settled in many European cities under control of the Roman Empire.  So, when ancestors of current Germans and Frenchmen started to settle in regions of Germany and France of today, Jewish people had been already living there.   Without prevalence of Christianity, Jewish people had no problems in coexisting with those new settlers, namely ancestors of Germans  and Frenchmen of today.

Roughly between 500 and 1000, Christian churches were busy establishing their base in Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire.  In the period of the early Middle Ages, most of European people did not read the Bible but heard preaching of priests in churches.  They had no special reasons to hate Jewish people as enemies of Christianity.  But church leaders and priests who could read the Bible, written in Latin or Greek, came to feel prejudice toward Jewish people.

Roughly between 1000 and 1500, the Vatican solidified its power base and authority through sending Christian Crusades to Jerusalem.  To further strengthen their power base, they found easy targets in Jewish people.  The contents of the Bible came to be diffused more widely among European people, and they came to find enemies of Christianity in Jewish people.  The more the Vatican system was fixed, the more Jewish people came to look like a kind of enemies of Christianity.

Roughly between 1500 and 2000, the printing technology allowed the Bible to be read by ordinary Europeans.  They found that Jewish people were depicted in the Gospels  as a kind of enemies of Christ Jesus.  While some Jewish people came to be suppressed to live in ghettos, other Jewish people came to become members of the middle class in the European society.   And especially they succeeded in the financial sector like Rothschild, because the Vatican did not encourage Christians to be engaged in money handling and accumulation of income interest.  But this balance between Jewish people and biased Europeans collapsed in the early 20th century, leading to the Holocaust.  However, after WWII, Jewish people succeeded in establishing their nation Israel.

And today, in the early 21st century, it looks like prejudice against Jewish people has gone, while more and more Jewish people are engaged in the financial sector or highly intelligent professions, especially, in the US.

But, the Gospels are still there.  And, Jewish people show no acceptance of Christ Jesus as God, which is the key ideology of the Vatican and other Christian churches.  The underlying issue is not yet solved.

The first step to the solution of the prejudice against Jewish people is to review the key ideology of the Vatican and the religion Christianity that Christ Jesus is God and Jewish people have rejected God.  It is important, since Abraham, Moses, and Christ Jesus were originally all of  Hebrews.


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Joh 8:13 The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true.
Joh 8:14 Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go.