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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (34712)	4/13/1999 5:14:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, here goes with a topic that is sure to gain me the enmity of all those whose respect I have so carefully cultivated: "Is it possible for an educated, liberal, kind person to be prejudiced against others on the basis of race, religion or culture?" I confess to being prejudiced against Middle Easterners, for want of a better term. Only with respect to one thing and one thing alone, to wit: I can't rely on their veracity. I haven't met people from all over the Middle East, just, say, people from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. I didn't use to feel like this until I became a lawyer and started a) representing them in Court; or b) having cases in which they were on the other side. I feel terrible about it. And I am not the only one!!!! I don't know one single local lawyer who doesn't feel the same way. Those of us who are more socially tolerant speculate that there is some cultural element involved, for instance, that they don't have to tell the truth to a non-Moslem. Why am I telling you this? Because I suspect that each and every one of us has at least one irrational prejudice, we just are too smart to let on. Maybe if we think about our own weaknesses, it will give us insight into the weaknesses of others.

To: E who wrote (34712)	4/13/1999 6:30:00 PM
From: Sidney Reilly	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

E, I think that this author has missed a very important point. That is that at the very beginning of Christianity the Jews were hunting, persecuting, and killing Christians. There are numerous accounts of it in the new testament. They delivered Jesus to be killed to the Romans and then started persecuting the church. Now, it makes perfect sense that this persecution by the Jews on Christians had a back lash later on when the Christians started to outnumber the Jews and also got away from the basic teachings like "Turn the other cheek" and so forth. I don't think it was one sided at all. SR

To: E who wrote (34712)	4/13/1999 10:06:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

N.- I was going to postpone replying to your latest post -- I too have work to do -- but the post kept gnawing at my brain, so here goes. Some points on Mr. Nicholls' thesis. 1) First of all, I should point out that what I meant to write, in my earlier post, was that I did not think Jew-hatred was THE central theme in EARLY Christianity. I inadvertently left out the word "early". In any event, this seems to be Nicholls' view as well, when he writes that anti-Semitism was "present EVEN in the New Testament". 2) Nicholls is, of course, a respected scholar. But he is a scholar, which means that he has gone through the painful process of writing & defending a PhD dissertation, and that most of his subsequent scholarly work probably conforms to the same pattern. That is: you develop a piece of "original research" and some"original conclusions" to go along with it; you lay out your conclusions in your introduction (and/or in your final chapter); and the rest of the book is spent proving your argument. It is no use quoting to me what Nicholls says in his introduction. What am I supposed to do -- fall down on my knees and say, wow, Nicholls said that, so it must be true? No. And he would not expect me to. If he is a true scholar, he would expect me to examine his proofs before accepting his conclusions. 3) For the rest, I know about the "Christ-killers" strain in historical Christianity, as I made clear in my original post. At the same time, I know there are big gaps in my knowledge of this subject, and reading Nicholls' book looks as if it would be a great way to fill them in. For the nonce, however, I will have to suspend judgment on just how "central" anti-Semitism was to Christianity, even as I acknowledge that it was certainly "present." 4) On one point I DO disagree with Nicholls. And that is that "most" Christians today still buy into a myth according to which the Jews are responsible for the "deicide." Let us not forget that the Catholics, the last hold-outs on this point of doctrine, have officially repudiated it. And may I suggest that you bop over to SI's own "Ask God" thread, which is populated almost exclusively by conservative fundamentalists. And take a look at their reception of our friend E.V. It is every bit as unfriendly as the reception he receives here. Those folks are definitely NOT anti-Semites, however deluded you may think them in other respects. jbe