The Jews, during the time of Jesus, cherished a supreme
hope: the coming of the kingdom of peace and justice, when the former glories
of King David and Solomon would be seen again. When the Jews were in exile they
had longed for such a triumphal period. Israel’s ideal Messiah would be an
ideal David and greater than him. Even during the times of Jesus, the Jews, as
they were under the Roman subjugation, dreamed of such a redeemer. This could be
why the evangelist makes people sing: Hosanna to the son of David (Matthew:
21:9).
The Jews have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Their
standpoint is clear. Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies mentioned
in the scriptures. Messiah was to bring an age of perfection characterized by
universal peace and recognition of God. Isaiah 2:1-4, 32:15-18, 60:15-18;
Zephaniah 3:9; Hosea 2:20-22; Amos 9:13-15; Micah 4:1-4; Zechariah 8:23, 14:9;
Jeremiah 31:33-34). This has not happened.
The Bible specifically says he would build a third temple. (
Ezekiel 37:26-28) and gather all Jews to the Land of Israel. He would usher in
an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. He
would Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite
humanity as one (Isaiah 43:5-6). Nothing of these has ever happened.
Because no one has ever fulfilled the Bible's description of
the expected future King and prophesies concerning him, Jews still await the
coming of the Messiah. Christians believe that these promises will be fulfilled
in His Second Coming. This is a way of escapism when you cannot counter the
facts. In the Jewish Bible there is no concept of a second coming of the Messiah.
The mainstream Jews have totally rejected Jesus-that too for
valid reasons- and his story has harmed the community in many ways. Some modern
Jewish thinkers feel that the historical Jesus may have been closer to Judaism
than either the Gospels or traditional Jewish accounts would indicate. Jesus was born a Jew; he lived and died a
Jew. He never even thought of instituting a new religion; perhaps St. Paul did
that dirty work.
The original Jewish God is the Christian God too. But as
Jesus Christ was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jews,
Christianity encouraged hatred towards Jews and when it became powerful-after
the Roman Empire made it their official religion. In 380AD Theodosius I decreed
Christianity to be the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Thereafter
the Jews were looked down upon and their troubles began. Ambrose, the bishop of
Mediolanum, opposed the efforts of Theodosius to acknowledge the civil rights
of Jews, pagans, and heretics as equal to those of Christians. In a public
confrontation with the emperor, in his cathedral, Ambrose made the emperor back
down. He proclaimed that Christ was killed by the Jews and God the Father might
avenge them, whom they do not acknowledge as Father since they do not
acknowledge the Son. This became the
typical Christian attitude for centuries to come. Christians’ conviction that
the Jews had crucified Jesus and that the Jewish descendants have to share their
sin - hereditary guilt- (like descendants of Adam and eve share the original
sin). The correspondence of Gregory 1 shows that Jews lived untroubled among
Christians in certain regions and were treated cruelly by others. In the
century that followed Gregory’s papacy, the expulsion of Jews started in
Europe- France under King Dagobert (626) and under the Spanish monarchy
expelled them with the collusion of the Church. By the end of the 7th century
the Jews had two options: choose baptism or slavery. All the time Christians
believed that Jews were being divinely punished or will be punished for not
accepting the new belief.
The Jews of Western Europe began to suffer new indignities
as the crusades came on. The Christian mobs and crusaders slaughtered Jews or
committed pillage and it lingers long in the Jewish memory. In the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, the slanderous charges against Jews often led to
massacres. Many German Jews fled eastward. Even Martin Luther, towards the
latter part of his career, wrote against the Jews and termed them ‘damned
rejected race.’ From the early 19th century, anti-Jewish sentiment of the
Catholic and the Protestant Europe was becoming more pronounced. Anti-Semitism
was simply targeting the Jewish ethnicity.
The Jews were often preyed upon by the Christian majority
and harsh infringements of Jewish rights got censured and restrictions were
imposed on their full participation in the society. They had to pay for
crucifying Jesus and for not accepting the new religion! Some Christian
historians observe that although such cruelties and enslavement did take place
but the Jews were not eliminated as it happened in the Nazi era! The cruelties and enslavement have continued
for centuries up to the modern times.
Many of today’s Jews and a good section of the world community are
convinced that the horror of Hitler’s days (recall the gas chambers at
Auschwitz) was simply the culmination of centuries of "Jew Hate"
entertained by the Christians.
Thus Yahweh-the
common God of the two groups- inspired Christians to kill His own people whom
He had selected so judiciously and freed them from the Egyptian slavery by
punishing Pharaoh and all Egyptians. He had helped them settle in the land of
Canaan by massacring surrounding kingdoms and guarded them like a possessed one
and with whom he traveled in the desert in an arc always. It is contradictory
to the nature of any god to let his chosen sect persecuted and killed by a new
sect owing allegiance to the same God.
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