Gospelcon

The rise of anti-semitism in Eastern and Western Europe including the rampages of Bohdan Khmelnytsky in Eastern Europe and the Spanish inquisition.

Background information from the notes of Dr. David Neiman (1921-2004)

The Jewish-Christian Encounter in the Middle Ages

The Jewish-Christian Encounter can also be understood as Pagan Hostility to Judaism as expressed by some prominent writers of the Hellenistic Age from a least the time of Manetho to the Roman authors; Cicero of the first century B.C.E., Suetonius and Tacitus of the first century of the Christian Era.

While the first generation of Christians were loyal, faithful Jews, following the events of the 2nd century, there were no Jewish Christians left. The overwhelming majority of Christians after the middle of the 2nd century were Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians, Phoenicians and others. The anti-Jewish hostility of the Pagans did not change when they converted to Christianity.

Another element was what Karl Marx would have classified as an aspect of the "class struggle;" the resentment of the poorer classes of Pagan society against the Jews who lived among them and usually succeeded in rising to a more affluent position in society.

The third factor, probably the most important and long-lasting, was the philosophical-theological hostility which developed and was vigorously encouraged by the Church Fathers, the theologians of the Christian Churches. Their teachings tended to strengthen and expand anti-Jewish sentiment and to justify it on religious grounds.

The struggle within Christianity on its relationship to Judaism.

Then there was, of course, the historic reality of the Jews being politically impotent. Jews had lost control over their homeland, the Land of Israel, and were under the control of a vast Roman Empire which rendered impossible the restoration of Jewish independence.

This political powerlessness, combined with the justification of this condition by Christian theology, created the setting of the Jewish- Christian symbiosis that lasted from the rise of the Church as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 325 C.E., until the 20th Christian century.

About Dr. Neiman:

Dr. David Neiman (1921-2004) was the first Jewish scholar appointed to teach Religion at Boston College, one of America's leading Catholic Universities. He served as Professor in the Department of Theology for a quarter of a century. While there he was also invited to teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. After retiring from Boston College, Dr.Neiman moved to Los Angeles, where he taught at Loyola Marymount University, St. John' s Seminary in Camarillo and the University of Judaism in Bel Air.