Nazism grew out of Christian anti-Semitism, and was sustained by it.
The death technology available to this hybrid system of beliefs embodied in Germany from the 1930's on allowed for the expression of virulence obviously not attainable by Christian mobs limited in their arms to knives, axes, and the torch. Pre-Nazi Christian anti-Semitism periodically rose into spikes of genocidal killing. I don't know what comparisons of "virulence" mean in such a context.
<<<.It is only to note that some of the occasional virulence of language, such as that found in Revelations, may have been exacerbated by the hostilities "on the ground".>>>
It was the "virulence of language" embodied in scripture, which is language, throughout the New Testament, and not all that "occasionally," that sustained and sanctified the great bulk of Western anti-Semitism in its various expressions. And these privileged texts continue to perform the same function today, as a quick glance at the lunatic Aryan Nations literature will illustrate.
Remember that after the destruction of the Temple, Jews never, until modern times, exercised state power.
After Constantine, with the incorporation of Christianity into the Roman state, a long history of state-backed persecution of the Jews began.
There is no parallelism between the conflicts that broke out between Jews and Christians in the pre-Constantine period and the tremendous, unending toll of Jewish oppression carried out by the Roman state and its various successor states and armies. |
