The UK’s Channel 4 is running a series on Christian history, and Scottish Pastor Iain Campbell is blogging about it. The first episode argued Christianity was an anti-Semitic invention of the Apostle Paul. Iain writes, “History might demonstrate that some Christians have been against Jews; but the New Testament is decidedly for them. ‘God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew’, says Paul of Israel, and he anticipates a day when they – to quote one of the Hebrew prophets – will look on the one they pierced and mourn for him.”
Another episode tells us how bad the Reformation was and Protestants today [are] a sorry bunch (some Protestants have especially sorry grammar and spelling habits).
I suppose that might argue that Christianity must be gaining in popularity over there, as common as antisemitism is getting in England. (Sigh.)
Nahhh – most of the antisemitism comes from Semitic people.
You know, I think we need to come up with a new term for antisemitism, seeing that the field’s getting overrun with Semites. Maybe import “Judenhasse” or something.
Paul, a Pharisee (that is, a “more-Jewish-than-thou” Jew) invented an anti-Semitic religion? Presumably because he was a self-hating Jew, just as homosexuals who wish to change (instead of “celebrating” their gayness) are self-hating.
That sound about right?
Which suggests to me a great new name of antisemitism. We could call it “Judeophobia,” incorporating the homosexuals’ snide suggestion that hate (or what they insist is hate) must be born of fear.
Roy, Saul may have been a Pharisee. Paul most certainly wasn’t – in the same way that Martin Luther didn’t die a Catholic.
Ori,
Paul (not Saul) speaks in the present tense here:
Acts 23:6 — Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead.”
And here:
Philippians 3:3-6 — 3For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
To me, that seems that he still considered himself a Pharisee.
But that’s a digression, and not the major point.
The major point is that the notion that Saul/Paul–a devoted Jew, a member of a sect of devoted Jews, someone who spent a fair bit of effort trying to persuade Jews to believe what he had come to believe about Jesus of Nazareth being the fulfillment of the Jewish faith–that notion is bat[deleted] crazy.
It seems that Paul considered himself a Pharisee. But he was wrong by any reasonable meaning of the word for that period. He also said, IIRC, that he was Greek to the Greeks – wouldn’t that mean he did not observe Halacha (Jewish religious law) when he was among gentiles? That, by itself, would mean he was not Pharisee.
I don’t see his Christianity as anti-Jewish, but I don’t see it as Jewish either. Judaism is very much a matter of fulfilling The Law – by imperfect humans as best they can, not by a perfect God. The sacrifices, which are irrelevant now but were really big until 70 AD, were parties – not instances of pain and suffering like the crucifixion.