[lbo-talk] Saudi anti-Semitism

[andie nachgeborenen]

My recollection of this is dim and my knowledge is exceedingly thin, but many years ago I read a book by Elaine Pagels, then a prof of religion at Princeton, that impressed me as good deal. It was short, for one thing, and accessible to a nonspecialist. Called something like, The Origin of Hell or The The Origins of The Devil, but the title is misleading. It was all about the relations of early Christianity to Judaism. As I recall, who know how accurately, her thesis was that very early Christianity was a Jewish sect or heresy, so conceived, and that the first "mission" of the early Christians, say roughly the people who knew Jesus (Yeshua, that's Josh to you), was to win over the Jews to the right kind of Judaism, sort of like the Lubavichers. Over the hundred or so years, if memory serves me here, between Mark and John, the early Christians became increasingly disillusioned with this goal, proselytized among the Gentiles with greater success, and

 became anti-Semitic in part because Jews were unmoved by their appeals. 

I gather the Khazar/Caucasian mountain theory of the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews is disputed. (Well, what to do scholars do except for dispute things). It's a contender but there are others, I forget what. Even if it is true does not mean, however, that that some eastern European Jews are not at least in part descendants of the victims of the Crusaders' Programs. Jews migrated all over the place and kept kept chucked out of one place or another, and might have gone west, then been forced back east or migrated back east. 

Amusing story, not the first time this has happened. My espouza and I are both Ashkenazi Jews. We were sitting in a working class restaurant in Columbus, Ohio a few weeks ago, got into a conversation with a waitress who wanted to know how long we'd been together. 30 years. You look just alike, that happens to long time married couples she said. Well, of course from a certain distance we look just like, we're Jews from Russia, Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, whose ancestors were raped by Slavic pogromchiki, probably Hungarian pogromchiki too, they'd be called something else in Hungarian, and maybe by some Crusaders way back there. We all look alike to the goyim. Of course you all look alike to us too, so it's equal. We didn't say this to the waitress, of course. 

--- On Thu, 7/17/08, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:


> From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Saudi anti-Semitism
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008, 8:34 AM
> On Jul 17, 2008, at 2:16 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
> 
> >
> > Any theories as to why that is? The theory I just
> pulled out of my  
> > ass 15 seconds ago is that it's because Early
> Christianity arose in  
> > Jewish society and so made a big deal about setting
> itself apart  
> > from it, so they thematized the supposed evillness of
> the Jews who  
> > didn't accept their innovations.
> >
> > --- On Thu, 7/17/08, andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com 
> > > wrote:
> >> This is disgusting, of course. You'd never
> know that
> >> from about the 7th century to 1920 it was Islam
> that was
> >> liberal and tolerant towards Judaism,
> 
> 
> Except that "Early Christianity," as designed by
> the Roman police  
> agent Paul, arose in Greek/Roman, not Jewish, society, in
> antagonism  
> to the Original Christianity led by Jesus's brother
> James.  The  
> Greeks, especially in Alexandria and the other urban
> centers of the  
> East were already anti-semitic but the Roman populace,
> which adored  
> the philosemitic Julius Caesar, was very respectful of
> Judaism despite  
> official antisemitism (cf. Gaius and Nero) caused by the
> continuing  
> Judaean insurrectionary Messaianic movements (one of the
> first of  
> which was led by Jesus).  The genius of Paul was to appeal
> both to  
> Greek antisemitism (the theme of deicide, the figure of
> Judas) and  
> Roman philosemitism (respect for a prestigious and
> widespread  
> religious/philosophical tradition) with a "New"
> Testament justified by  
> the "Betrayal" of the "Old" one by the
> Jews.  But you are right that  
> Pauline Christianity is inherently and violently
> antisemitic (cf. Hyam  
> Maccoby, "Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish
> Evil.")
> 
> 
> Shane Mage
> 
> "Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does
> not consent to  
> be called Zeus."
> 
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
> 
> 
> 
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