Pogroms have a history going back to the era of the Crusades, each one of which was preceded by a celebratory pogrom.
<<There was such a thing as Christian anti- Judaism, but the point was to convert the Jews, not kill them.>>
Well, that's very considerate and tolerant of the Christians. However, it isn't actually the way most of the great Church Fathers saw it. Here you get into the problem of how to interpret scripture and commentary on scripture. Many of these worthies--not all-- came up with the notion that the Jews should be punished, driven into unpleasant occupations and excluded from others, and on occasion killed in large numbers, especially when plagues, droughts, or famines struck areas of Christian geography.
If you will look at the conclusions reached by Augustine, which influenced the policy of the mother church, they were that it was very good for the Jews to continue to exist in a state of suffering, suffering being a continuing witness to their evil in the matter of the cooperation of some Jews with the Romans, in having Jesus killed.
<<<sure the Bible sanctioned slavery, so what?... the practice had no religious motivation, but was independent.>>>
If it had no religious motivation, what the hell was PAUL pushing it for? Telling slaves to be obedient to their masters "fearing the lord"? It was a moral injunction from Paul: be a good, obedient slave, "fearing the lord."
And you say, "So what?"
The Bible is supposed to be a moral work. It purports to tell people how to live.
I am glad to hear that the Bible advocates humane treatment of the victims of the slavery it sanctions and defends (both generically and to the slaves themselves), and wish it advocated the same humane treatment for Jews who wanted to keep their own religion.
Do you have a place where, in the New Testament, humane treatment of all slaves is advocated, or is this advocacy one that has to be detected and inferred by hermeneutic maneuvers? I'd be interested in the text, actually. Where in the New Testament is the humane treatment of slaves as a class explicitly advocated, and how much actual text is devoted to the problem of cruelty to slaves? I understand that Christian slaves were to be treated decently. What about Pagan slaves? Are there instructions in the Bible about treating them humanely? (There may be; I really don't know.) |
