Please do not be discouraged or offended by the few foolish people who look to the past and not the present to find your worth. And please, let us drop this whole foolishness about Christian antipathy towards Judaism and the Jews. that is all in the past.

Israel and the Jews were very unpopular in the Roman Empire. They were unpopular because their efforts towards political and religious freedom were a threat to the Empire and Jewish ideas of a universal morality (which included limitations on slavery, usery, etc) were also an affront to common behaviors. The early Christians simply wanted to avoid any association with an unpopular group and things got a bit out of hand. It should be remembered that, although classic anti-semitism enabled the holocaust, Hitler himself denounced Christianity and wanted to distingish his ‘new German’ from the influence of Christianity.

I would like to see less argument about the past and more acknowledgement of the positive role that Christians and the Christian faith play in the world and how valuable and appreciated their friendship is to Jews everywhere today and to Israel.

I want to thank all of you.

I don’t think Negro found it easy to identify with – he’s on the defensive. Where in Mr Broder’s article did he say criticism of Israel should be criminalised? To home in on disagreement of the occupation as being anti-Semitic shows how out of touch Negro and those who think like him are. By conflating Zionist issues with Jewish ones, he shows he is exactly the same as the anti-Semites masquerading as anti-Zionists in Mr Broder’s article. Negro please note I am not trying to stifle debate about this. This is a call for you and others like you to be honest.

I believe it’s counter-productive to stifle debate on the issue, from whatever side it comes. As has been mentioned by another poster, progress can be made only by an honest interchange of views.

Hear, hear, O Great Tutt. No daylight between us on that,

Grey Fox:

I’m not up for interfaith sparring today, Sleek One. I don’t know of an historian who would suggest that Constantine was a friend of the Jews if that is what you’re suggesting. If not, my error.

I’ve always looked upon Julius Caesar and Constantine as the bookends of the Roman-Jewish experience. Julius Caesar had genuine affection for John Hyrcanus, high regard for his Judaen soldiery and deep respect for the Jewish faith. Constantine was hostile to Jews and Judaism, especially after the Nicaean Council.

Under Emperor Constantine, the Council of Nicaea formulated what (with addition of the Cappadocian Correction) remains fundamental Christian theology. Christianity became the official State Religion of Rome and so remained save for a brief interruption under Constantine’s nephew, the Emperor Julian, until the final collapse of the Roman Empire. A period of some two hundred years.

Until recently, I didn’t know much about the last years of the Roman Empire. My daughter is a Bible scholar and I came asross an interesting book on her shelves. It’s a smart, sympathetic, often quietly humorous book about the development of Christian theology written by a Jewish professor from Harvard teaching Conflict Resolution (of all things).

The book is called, When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome by Richard E. Rubenstein. It’s a terrific little read about a fascinating subject full of fascinating characters and events and I recommend it highly.

“Fall of the Roman Empire” is so common a phrase, we forget there was a final moment to a thousand years of empire. For all its evils, millions upon millions sheltered in peace under the Roman Eagles. In one tragic instant, it all came to an end. The final scene after the final battle is dreadful and Rubenstein describes it in horrific detail.

The response of the Christian Bishops and their followers in the Levant where Saul of Tarsus once preached and formulated the Mass and founded Christianity to the news that Caesar and the Legions had fallen and the Empire was no more was celebratory. Triumphant sermons were preached and prayers of thanksgiving offered up.

Not much thereafter, the vacuum left by the collapse of the Empire was filled by the followers of the Prophet. In the Levant, Christianity’s cradle and the hotbed of religious and theological debate and teaching where Christianity’s most lasting ideas were developed, the call to prayer was heard five times a day. In Alexandria, in Antioch, in Cappadocia, the sons of those who had fiercely debated the nature of the Trinity, indeed, bloodied each other in the streets over it, were prostrating themselves and beating their foreheads black and blue on the ground for Allah and his Holy Prophet.

Christianity today is a bastion of Western Civilization under assault from without and within, as Rome was in the latter days of the Empire. The barbarians without are the usual savages opposed to civilization, among them Islamists from the formerly Christian Levant. From within our society is being hollowed out by leftist rot.

Positions and identities appear to have ironically shifted since the final days of Rome. The Christians of those sunset years bear odd resemblance to the Left today.

The left, largely urban, habitually and reflexively distrusts the government. It is hostile to American arms and a robust national defense. It distrusts the traditionalist religiosity of the ruling elites.

Constantine like Julian and, for all their professions to the contrary, the emperors until the collapse were Helios (Sun-God) worshippers. As were the Imperial Legions. (Pat Buchanan may fantasize himself a Christian centurion but Christian centurions, if such existed, were rare.)

The Christians in the cities of the Levant, automatically, reflexively, closed-mindedly, distrusted Caesar and the Legions. They disdained their protection. So self involved were they with their own (arguably petty) affairs, they took their security for granted.

Every time Caesar attempted to bring down the full weight of Roman arms against the barbarians at the borders, he was thwarted. The Bishops, who were thuggish urban politicians, took the absence of Roman troops in their cities for an opportunity to revenge themselves on their enemies. Local governors were forced to divert legions desperately needed by Caesar on the front to quell Christians rioting in the cities.

I think you are wrong in some of your assertions about Jewish-Christian relations post-Constantine but I don’t feel argumentative, Grey Fox. Give yourself a treat, read Rubinstein’s book and come to your own conclusions.

In any event, we’d best forget our differences of millennia past and concentrate on our overwhelming commonalities today. The Barbarians are at the gate again. Yup, the usual suspects. We’ve all met them before.

On one point be powerfully assured: No Jew looks forward to a muezzin’s call to prayer from the Papal Balcony in St. Peters or the sight of the faithful prostrating themselves on their faces in St. Peter’s Square.

After Constantine, Jews and Christians actually lived side by side for 700 years in relative peace, at least in the West – out east there was enough tension between Jew and Christian for the Jews to aid the Zoroastrians in massacring the Christians in Jerusalem during the Byzantine-Persian Wars in the 6th century. There is one case of a high-ranking churchman converting to Judaism and becoming a reknowned apologist for the same without apparently suffering anything harsher than words.

It was only during the 11th century, during the church reform movements, that real trouble began. One basic source seems to have been that the knights were told to act as “vassals of Christ” – since avenging one’s lord was part of a vassal’s duty, and they tended to think in terms of family/clan feuds, there was actually some logic to their thinking, and also explains why the attacks tended to center happen during crusades, when such thinking was at its height. It is worth noting that the clergy did try to stop the attacks at times – just because the warrior/ruling class tended to think a certain way didn’t mean that the churchmen always did.

In conclusion, given that Christian anti-semitism only took off a thousand years after Christ and that the previous millenium was relatively amicable, I find the notion that Christianity required the destruction of Judaism untenable.

The German media, German government and the elite have done everything they can to prettify the ugly immigration situation in Germany, which is still continuing to encourage more immigration. The Leftwing Culture in Germany has ignored and is ignoring the ugly anti-Semitism within its ranks. Broder here has to courage to point out Leftist anti-Semitism and even tells the Members of the Bundestag that they have these new type of anti-Semites even within their own ranks.

This would be like Democrats admitting that they have anti-American socialists among their ranks. Broder TELLS the truth. Broder is an opinion changer in Germany.

Please don’t mistake “Christian Democrats” for Christians. That is a European political designation, and few of them are religious at all.

And of course, there are some anti-Jewish Christians, because anti-Semitism is a reaction to “different”, with Jews a favorite target. And some people don’t like “different,” a fact demagogues have used through the ages.

But today, I would argue that Christians are also being actively discriminated against through much of Europe and Canada. At least one Christian in Canada has been put on trial for preaching his beliefs in Church. Christians are being persecuted in Muslim countries and in parts of Africa (Christian slaves are sold in Khartoum to this day – but all we hear about is Darfur, a different Sudanese genocide). Christians were persecuted under the Nazis and are still persecuted in the remaining Communist regimes.

I recognize that all of this pales compared to the Holocaust, although a lot of Catholic priests also died for their religion in the concentration camps. But, at least in most circles, Anti-Semitism is recognized as evil. Anti-Christianity, on the other hand, is rarely attacked or even seen for what it is.

All that being said, let me be clear. As a Christian, an American and a citizen of earth, I am grateful for the contributions of Jewish culture and Jews through the ages. I admire the Israelis for their democracy in a region of tyrants, their bravery and their military excellence, their technological brilliance, and their democratic propensity to constantly debate the rightness of their own actions.

GM Hi homey! Good to see you here.