Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
It's complicated. But for most of these people cosmic forces often play a big part in it. Jews were "blinded" and "deceived" by forces of the devil for hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, and so much so by this time that they were incapable of seeing the truth.
There is a long and well established history in the beliefs and writings of the early Church which promoted demonizing "the Jews". For fun, read through the four gospels in their chronological order: Mark –> Luke –> Matthew –> John, and pay close attention to how "the Jews" are portrayed in each account. You will notice that they tend to be progressively vilified.
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Yeah, I get all that, and I'm familiar with the socio-political reasons why Jews were vilified in post-Constantine Rome (and consequently Europe as a whole). What I'm completely incapable of understanding is how some modern Christians would think that the Christian God and the Jewish God are not one and the same. Both religions believe that their God is the God of the Torah/Old Testament, the deity who appeared to Moses and led the Jews out of Egypt and all those other stories, right?
When the original Jews accepted monotheism, they did so by rejecting the old polytheistic gods. When the original Christians accepted Jesus as their messiah, they
did not reject the god of the Jews; they merely believed Jesus to be his son (or his earthly incarnation for Catholic-like sects that believe in the Trinity).