The Beginnings of Anti-Semitism

 

In 63 BC a delegation of two hundred Pharisees paraded through the streets of Rome towards Capitol Hill where one of the Senators was already waiting to submit their petition to the House. The request was to reinstate their exiled high priest Hyrcanus II. To the amazement of the Roman politicians these funny people asked a foreign power to intervene in what seemed an entirely domestic dispute.

The Pharisees’ appeal couldn’t have come at a better time. The Senate was about to commission Pompeius Magnus (106 – 48 BC) with extraordinary powers to clear the Mediterranean Sea of piracy and to reorganize the Roman territories and zones of influence in the East, in Greece, Anatolia and Syria. The Pharisees’ plea was opening a door to Palestine. But in this case, Pompey was asked to arbitrate in a situation, of which the full complexity must have eluded him. Not that the sight of Jews in the streets of Rome was something entirely unknown. In 139 BC we hear of the first Jewish exclave in Rome. The Roman Senate of the period, however, had a dim view of the new arrivals’ frantic proselytizing and the praetor Hispalus had issued deportation orders for these Jews on ten days’ notice (Valerius Maximus I: 32). Of course this setback would not stop further immigrations.

The Jewish population in Palestine was only a fraction of the Jewish communities in Iraq, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, and the Cyrenaica. (Cicero, Pro Flacco, 28:68; Strabo, frag. 6, Josephus, Antiquities, XIV, 7:2; Wars II, 16:4, VII, 3:3; Philo, In Flaccum, 7; Seneca, frag. 41-43; Augustine, City of God 6:10; Acts 2:9-11). To some extent these communities and neighborhoods had been a product of the colonial policies by Alexander the Great (Josephus Contra Apion, II: 4, Antiquities XII: 1; Appian Syr. 50). Alexandria was as much a city of the Jews, as it was of the Greeks. Jewish communities spread wide into the rural areas. Later the census by Emperor Augustus would reckon a population of one million Jews living in Egypt alone.

Everywhere in the East the Jews held political charters on an equal footing with Greek communities and with their own courts and fiscal jurisdiction. All they were asked for in return was use of the Greek language. This extended well into Palestine, where Aramaic had replaced Hebrew and was the language of the peasantry. Long before Judas Maccabeus, the process of Hellenizing had been well under way in the urban communities. If for nothing else, this is born out by the Greek names of the last high priests before Maccabeus and by most of the personal names in his own dynasty, such as “Onias III,” “Jason,” “Menelaus,” and “Alcimus” (Josephus, Antiquities XII, 5: 1, 9: 7). In fact, even the record of this anti-Hellenist uprising is written in Greek. In Egypt, Ptolemy II, Philadelphus (309 – 246 BC) ordered the sacred scriptures of the Jews to be translated into Greek. During this period the knowledge of Hebrew among the Jews in Alexandria was just as rare, as among Christian readers is the knowledge of the original Greek of the New Testament. For the characters in the New Testament the Septuagint was the only known source of scripture. The affluent Judaism of the Hellenistic world was anything but exclusive. The gospels tell of rabbis who traveled land and sea to make a proselyte (Mt. 23: 15). Gentile “Hagioi,” a Greek word meaning "saints," "holy ones," "believers," "loyal followers," or "God's people," terms later to be used in reference to members of the early Christian communities, could expect to be admitted to the synagogue without being circumcised.

However, in their immediate neighborhood, the Jews’ undisguised contempt for the Hellenic cults, pageants, and gymnastic displays, and their uncompromising religious propaganda, didn’t make them the most popular people on Earth, especially not among their Greek neighbors.

In Jerusalem the situation was complicated. Until 161 BC Judea had been an occupied country and after the desecration of the shrine in Jerusalem by Syrian troops and their Jewish collaborators, the last high priest of the old theocracy, Onias IV, went to Egypt into exile. With King Ptolemy IV Philometor’s permission Onias erected a new Temple in Leontopolis in Lower Egypt, the only other cult center apart from Jerusalem where Jews of the post-exilic era have performed sacrifices (Josephus, Wars VII, 10:3). It was meant to become the new center of Judaism, but Judas Maccabeus and his brothers had other plans. They gradually liberated the country from the Syrian mandate and established the Hasmonean monarchy. Yet to their surprise, this met with resistance from their own people – the Pharisees. The edict of King Cyrus in 538 BC had given permission for the exiles to repatriate to their homeland, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and live according to the statutes of Nehemiah and Ezra. The Great King’s offer did not entail political independence, it did not even entail statehood, and two hundred years later there were renewed deportations under Artaxerxes Ochus (359 – 338 BC). Accordingly the form of government in Jerusalem before Judas Maccabeus had been a theocracy, and there were enough supporters who insisted that it should stay that way. “The ideal of national exclusiveness and priestly control holding the mind in chains had long before the Roman period developed, under the government of the Seleucids, the so called Mosaic theocracy, a clerical corporation with the high-priest at its head, which, acquiescing in foreign rule and renouncing the formation of a state, guarded the distinctiveness of its adherents, and dominated them under the aegis of the protective power.” (Mommsen). 

In 135 BC King John Hyrcanus succeeded to the throne and continued the expansive policies of his predecessors. He annexed the whole of Samaria and Idumea. The population in Idumea was given the choice of either circumcision or exile. This added fuel to the internecine conflict with the Pharisees and the king arranged for the assassination of prominent figures in the pharisaic opposition (Josephus, Antiquities. XIII, 10: 5-6; Talmud, Kidd 66a). The next king, Jannaeus Alexander (103 – 76 BC) inherited the conflict. His entire rule is a story of bitter strife with the Pharisees. (Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 5: 9). In 93 BC, at the feast of Tabernacles, the king officiated as his own high priest making a mockery of the ceremony. This was very much in the spirit of the age. In Rome it is said, an augur reading the future out of the entrails of a sacrificed animal suddenly cracked up in front of the public and asked his colleague how he managed to keep a straight face. In a secular metropolis as Rome this didn’t matter; in Jerusalem, however, the Pharisees failed to see the humor. They responded to the provocation with a riot, but the king was prepared. He called in his guards and in the ensuing massacre, it is alleged, they killed some six thousand people. The Pharisees appealed to the king of Syria for aid. The Seleucids saw an opportunity to regain prestige and territory but King Jannaeus repelled the Syrian army and nailed 800 Pharisees to the cross (sic!) for treason (Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 13: 5). In 75 BC the king died and his widow took up the reins. Queen Salome recalled the exiles and leaned for support on the Pharisees. For the first time the term “Sanhedrin” emerged on the legend of Salome’s coinage, a strong Pharisaic faction demanded the restoration of the ancient theocracy.

“Although Salome held the title, the Pharisees held the real rule of the country, and they administered it with the harshness, insolence, and recklessness of a fanatical religious party which suddenly obtains unlimited power. All who were suspected of Sadducean leanings were removed by intrigue or violence from the Sanhedrin. Previous ordinances differing from Pharisaical views were abrogated, and others breathing the new spirit substituted. So sweeping and thorough was the change, that the Sadducees never recovered their former status, and those in office were obligated in all time coming to conform to Pharisaic practice” (Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 1: 4; 16: 2). After the accession of King John Hyrcanus II in 67 BC, this was leading to open civil war between Sadducees and Pharisees. The Pharisees of the period can be best described as a fundamentalist movement with strong support in the peasantry. The Sadducees represented a more urban class of Hellenized merchants and aristocrats. The king’s brother, Aristobulus II, deposed of John and drove him into exile. That’s where the Pharisees decided to ask Rome to intercede.

The oblivious Pompey didn’t expect any trouble. In his experience, there was nothing that could not be negotiated. These days, Julius Caesar, his associate and adversary, overshadows what we remember of Pompey; but in his own days Pompey was the one casting the shadow. Caesar had glamour, but Pompey had method, he was called “Magnus” (“the Great”) for a reason. As a military commander he lost only one battle in his entire life, an entirely unnecessary loss that ended his career, when Pompey had not only superior numbers, but had beaten Caesar in the battle of Dyrrhachium and blockaded the retreating enemy’s supply lines: as always in his career, Pompey held all the aces, his military doctrine was to engage only after superiority in armament and manpower was secured. He could have starved the opponent into submission. Instead at Pharsalus he tested the determination of a still dangerous enemy driven to desperation. Pompey was a genius of logistics, a man who could conjure up entire armies out of thin air. He combined superior generalship with skilled diplomacy and was the first to understand that the application of force was just politics with different means. His contemporaries looked on in utter amazement when he cleared the Mediterranean of piracy in less than five months and virtually without firing a shot, where others had failed in years of campaigning. Pompey may have lacked Caesar’s panache and popularity, but unlike Caesar he respected the constitution. The quarrel in Jerusalem seemed small fries; Pompey delegated it to Gabienus and Scaurus, to arbitrate and sort out the situation in Judea.

Their mission failed, partly because of Gabienus’ highhanded approach. He stripped Judea of its possessions along the seaboard and divided the state into five independent administrative districts. He reduced the country to a state of single city-polities and petty principalities and deprived Hyrcanus of all his secular privileges. Tempers flew high and Pompeius was left with no other option but to intervene in person, lay siege to Jerusalem and take Aristobulus prisoner. After repealing most of Gabienus’ measures he finally brokered a deal between the parties and departed without touching the treasure in the temple.

Before he left, he took a guided tour into the holiest of holiest, to see for himself, what all the fuss was about. (Orosius 6: 6; Dio 37: 15; Plutarch Pompeius 41: 42; Florus 1: 39; Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 3: 3,4). Pompeius left with a shrug. He was not impressed. Yet on his return to Rome in 61 BC he was even less impressed with the Roman Senate. The House endorsed only some of Pompeius’ dispositions and confirmed Hyrcanus II as “Ethnarch” in Judea. But the newly established autonomy of the Greek cities along the seaboard the Senate left untouched, the Judean protectorate over Samaria remained lifted, and the Decapolis was released into self-government (Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 10).

The Senate’s lukewarm attitude probably had something to do with the alarm over the annual drain of bullion in Italy, which allegedly was collected and exported as temple-tax to Judea. If true this would indicate a considerable number of Jews already living in Italy. The principal tax for the Temple in Jerusalem was the didrachma, an annual poll tax, to be raised by the Sanhedrin from each Jewish adult at home and abroad (Philo, De Legatione 23). It provoked vigorous opposition in the Greek municipalities, who brought their grievances before the “Senate and the People of Rome.” In 59 BC the Propraetor Flaccus in Anatolia went so far as to confiscate the Jewish temple-tax collected in Asia Minor. Jewish clients through their patron in Rome lobbied for redress and pressed charges. Flaccus’ defense attorney was none other than Cicero (Cicero, Pro Flacco, 28).

For the Triumvir Licinius Crassus, already the richest man of his time, this was a welcome pretext to get even richer; in 55 BC he pillaged the Temple in Jerusalem and repealed the tax privilege of the Sanhedrin. Needless to say, after his departure from Judea, he left behind a heady anti-Roman sentiment, and not just with the fanatics in the hills. In the following year Crassus lost his life in an ill-fated campaign against Parthia, which destabilized the political association between Pompey and Julius Caesar. Pompey took it upon himself to act as the trustee of the Republic and went to war against his former associate and brother in law when Caesar marched on Rome. Yet Julius Caesar needed money to finance his coup and approached the Jewish communities for assistance. In return, in 47 BC, Caesar awarded the Idumean warlord Antipater with full Roman citizenship and the title “epitropos” (regent) of Judea for his services in Caesar’s campaign in Egypt (Caesar, Bellum Civile; Plutarch, Caesar; Appian, Civil War). The dictator granted the Jewish kingdom complete freedom from dues, occupation and levy and reinstated their tax privilege and their civil jurisdiction. Antipater appointed his sixteen-year-old son, Herod, as governor of Galilee. The young man immediately launched a full-scale campaign against the “bandits” (Josephus’ favorite term) in the hills of Galilee and executed their leader Ezekias. This gained Herod the Great (74 – 4 BC) some popularity with the people and the esteem of the Roman governor in Syria, but it didn’t chime well with the Pharisaic Sanhedrin in Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 8: 3,5, 10: 5-6, Wars I, 9: 5, II, 18: 6). The honeymoon with the Romans had come to an end.

After the assassination of Caesar, his heirs ordered an empire wide subscription in 44 BC, a one-off payment to finance their struggle for dominance against Caesar’s assassins and among themselves. It was a complete reshuffle of the deck in which the least popular, least experienced and least favored player would turn out to be the one who had the required gumption, tenacity and patience to play the winning hand. Judea was ordered to supply 580 talents of silver bullion (15,000 kg). Antipater obliged but lost his life in the riots during the collection of the money (Appian, Civil War V: 75). With the Romans’ seal of approval Herod the Great acceeded to the throne.

In 43 BC, Hyrcanus’ nephew Antigonus made his second bid for the throne, yet Herod expelled him from the country and to secure the legitimacy of his own claims he married Hyrcanus’ daughter Mariamne. Meanwhile the Roman civil war was gaining momentum. Consul Lentulus raised two legions of Roman citizens in Asia. Yet at the request of Jews with Roman citizenship, Dolabella, the proconsul of Asia, granted them exemption from the draft (Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 10:13); it was setting a precedent. The exiled Antigonus, however, had not given up just yet. Aided by Parthia, Antigonus returned from exile in 40 BC at the head of an invasion force. He deposed and mutilated his uncle the high priest Hyrcanus II, and styled himself as “King Antigonus.” Herod the Great was forced to regroup; he needed more reinforcements. He left the country and went to Rome to plead his case in the senate.

The Romans didn’t leave their man in the lurch and in 37 BC, at the head of two Roman legions, Herod returned, captured Antigonus and executed him. Taking Hyrcanus II hostage, the remaining Parthian troops withdrew. (Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 9: 5 – 11: 4, Wars I, 10: 8). King Herod now consolidated his power, recruiting mercenaries from Samaria and Idumea. In 33 BC, on Herod’s demand, the Royal Court of Parthia extradited Hyrcanus to Judea. After keeping him for three years in prison while taking the country’s temperature, Herod executed the eighty-year-old Hyrcanus II on charges of treason.

Herod’s calculation was correct. The Pharisees looked on with approval. Pharisaic and Jewish tradition has remained hostile to the memories of the Hasmonean dynasty ever since.

There was only one surviving Hasmonean left: a year later Herod executed his own wife Mariamne (Josephus, Antiquities XV, 7; Wars I, 22). The incident was not too well received in the population, despite the general prejudice against the Hasmoneans. So in 22 BC, as a gesture of reconciliation, Herod began the extensive reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities XV, 11:1). The Gospel according to John suggests this date as the year of Jesus’ birth (Jn. 2: 20; 8: 57). Eight years later, in 14 BC, the empire was at peace and the borders secure, the constitutional reforms of the first emperor created stability and a well-oiled administrative apparatus.

There was however an insidious cause for trouble: the Roman’s concession to the spiritual chiefs in Jerusalem to exercise legal and fiscal authority over the Jewish neighborhoods outside of Palestine. Accordingly the Sanhedrin acted as the supreme court of appeal for all legal disputes in the Jewish communities. When the Sanhedrin allegedly sent Paul on a mission to apprehend Jewish heretics in Damascus, he would have acted within the Sanhedrin’s rights and could have counted on Roman cooperation. Not before long, Emperor Augustus realized that these were ill-advised privileges.

They not only created an internal dualism in the civil administration, it became an open invitation for hostile powers from abroad to stir up trouble, especially for Parthia. So the Romans were careful not to make the already established autonomy of Jewish neighborhoods in the East a model for Jewish exclaves in the West. There was toleration of the Jewish faith; Emperor Augustus paid favors to a Jewish colony in the Roman suburbs, even supplemented his largess for those who on account of the Sabbath had missed the payout (Philo, De Legatione), yet at the same time the emperor avoided all contact with Jewish worship. In fact the Jews may have been privileged residents, yet legally they remained resident "peregrini," foreigners deprived of all the rights and honors to which a citizen was entitled in the polities of Greece and in the Roman state.

In the municipalities and the Greek cities the Jews were required to pay the same poll tax like every other foreign resident. The only way out was to obtain the privilege of citizenship, which alone could assure full equality. For a pious Jew, this, however, was bound to create difficulties; the corporate charter of a city in those days required the observance of the local cult, which effectively excluded every Jew true to his faith. As a full citizen, on the other hand, he neither had judicial autonomy nor was exempt from military service.

The geographer Strabo (63 – 3 BC), in his census of the four classes of inhabitants in Libya, made a distinction between Jews and citizens (Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 7: 2). Philo, however, declared that the Jews considered as their "real homeland" the country they inhabited (Philo, In Flaccum, 7) and we hear that rights of citizenship were indeed accorded to individual Jews. Paul is depicted as calling himself a citizen of Tarsus (Acts 21: 39) and even claimed the privilege of Roman citizenship by birth (Acts 16: 37-39). Somebody here was desperate to provide his protagonist with the right credentials – rabbinic education and Gentile legal status – yet the claim positively contravened Paul’s adherence to Jewish observances. Tiberius Alexander, the chief of staff of Emperor Vespasian, was a Jew who had abjured his national customs, because even as a Roman by birth you forfeited your civil rights, if you embraced the Jewish faith. The exercise of Jewish observances contravened the "jus honorum" (the right to stand for office) and the exercise of "connubium, commercium,” and “testamenti factio."

Emperor Augustus thought he could rewrite the charters of civil privileges and confronted the Jewish neighborhoods (or ‘collegia’) in the East with the alternative, either to withdraw from their faith, or to assume full responsibility as active participants in the municipal administration. There was an immediate uproar and a snowstorm of petitions. Augustus’ colleague in office, Agrippa, therefore decided in favor of the status quo and wrote into the law the Jewish privilege of the Sabbath and the exemption from military service. Previously, the governors and the Greek municipalities had granted such privileges only individually (Josephus, Antiquities XII, 3: 2; XVI, 2: 3-5). Augustus even “directed the governors of Asia not to apply against the Jews the rigorous imperial laws respecting unions and assemblies” (Mommsen). Yet when Agrippa reinstated and confirmed the fiscal and legal privileges of the Sanhedrin, it again caused an outcry and frantic petitioning, this time from the Greek polities of Anatolia and North Africa. Agrippa was compelled to throw the book at the petitioners and break the resistance. (Josephus, Antiquities XIV: 6: 2-7; Philo, De Legatione 40). Only Roman citizenship was a way to claim immunity from local jurisdiction. Since the time of Cicero there had been an electorate of Jewish citizens in Rome. (Philo, de legatione 23; Cicero, Pro Flacco, 28; Acts 6: 9). In Ephesus, Sardis, and Anatolia, a considerable number of Jews possessed Roman citizenship (Josephus, Antiquity, XIV, 10: 13, 14, 16-19). In Jerusalem, in 66 AD, we hear of Jews who were Roman knights (Josephus, Wars II, 14: 9).

Nevertheless, the Imperial government came to the realization that the legislative privileges for Jews carried the seed of race hate and civil war into the municipalities. Yet despite the fact that “owing to the barrier which their deeply rooted religious observances formed around them, the Jews never became absorbed in the surrounding populations” (Richard Gottheil), the civil privileges induced a great number of non-Jewish Orientals to attach themselves to the Jewish faith.

In 4 BC, after ten marriages and thirty-four years of rule, Herod the Great died – one of the great benefactors of Hellenic culture and hated for it in Judea. As a token of gratitude, he had constructed the new harbor and city of Caesarea and dedicated it to Augustus as a personal gift. From the ruins of the old Samaria rose a new town and was called Sebaste, from the Greek name for Augustus. Everywhere, Herod had been building theatres and hippodromes for games, even at Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities XV, 8: 1, XVI, 5: 1; Wars I, 21: 1, 5). The religious establishment looked on with a frown and Herod’s body was not yet cold when “the Jews, being delivered from Herod’s tyrannical rule, petitioned Augustus to put them under the jurisdiction of the legate of Syria. He, however, not willing to set aside Herod's will, gave to Archelaus the half of his father's kingdom, with the title of ethnarch, the royal title” (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, 8: 2, 9: 2). The new ruler’s territory included Judea, Samaria, and Idumea with the cities of Jerusalem, Caesarea, Sebaste, and Joppa (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, 11: 2, 4-5). Ten years later Archelaus first arranged the death of his brother and then married the widow. "Not able to bear his barbarous tyranny", Augustus allowed himself to be persuaded by deputies of the Sanhedrin to banish Archelaus to Vienne, in France (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, 9, 13: 1-2).

The emperor was running out of suitable candidates. Augustus saw no longer any other option and placed the administration of Archelaus’ territories under the jurisdiction of the legate of Syria, with a governor for Judea residing in Caesarea (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, XVIII, 1: 1).

The Sanhedrin welcomed the move but a certain Judah of Galilee (sic!) begged to differ and became the vociferous leader of a rebellion. Josephus (37 – 96/100 AD) describes him as a scholar and assassin. Judah renounced paying tribute to Rome as a violation of Jewish religious law. Israel, he said, should have no king but God. The Romans apprehended and killed him, but many of his followers survived and formed a new terrorist organization, the Sicarii (Acts 5: 37; Josephus, Wars 2: 117-8, Antiquities 18: 1-8). If we go by the birthday given in John, Jesus would have been about twenty-six or twenty-eight at the time and would not only have lived in Judah’s immediate neighborhood, but could even have participated in the events.

So when in 26 AD Pilate, the “praefectus iudeae” (according to the epigraph and Jn. 18: 12), arrived in Judea the stage was set for confrontation. It came to repeated standoffs with the natives: "Pilate provoked a fresh uproar by expending the temple treasure upon the construction of an aqueduct. The populace formed a ring round the tribunal of Pilate, and besieged him with angry clamor. He foresaw the tumult and a troop of his soldiers in plain clothes and armed with batons mixed with the crowds. From his tribunal he gave the signal and in the stampede many Jews perished from the blows or trodden to death by the fleeing crowd" (Josephus, Wars II: 175-177, Antiquities XVIII: 60-62). In 29 AD then, Pilate allegedly charged a native from Galilee with sedition, a man in his late forties or early fifties, according to John. This Jesus apparently came from a tough neighborhood. He knew first hand what it means to live in poverty. His hometown, Capernaum, was a four-hour’s jog away from Caesarea, the seat of the Roman administration. In Caesarea the houses had glass windows. The people did their shopping at well-stocked markets; after a day’s work they washed off the dust in the public bath and went to the playhouse or the arena. Capernaum, on the other hand, was a place in the extremes of destitution. The wind whistled in empty windows, people bought their produce at the market next town, and what went into the garbage was used and reused and being mended and reused again. So it is not much of a surprise when of the two hours worth of “sayings” put in his mouth, Jesus devoted one hour for telling the rich “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mk. 10: 25), and he was asking to consider the ravens, “they neither sow nor reap, and neither have a storehouse nor a barn, but God feeds them anyway.” Human welfare here and now seemed of no concern; he had no suggestions how to improve the economy. If you think of it, blessing the poor is a backhanded way of telling off the rich. Family-life was dismissed as an obstacle to “salvation,” whatever this term may have meant to him. Jesus seemed to enjoy weddings like the next one, but on several occasions he made it very clear that even the mere concern for wellbeing and a good life before death was detrimental to his objective. His big issue was the imminent end of the world. “Verily I say unto you, there be some of you standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.”

The gospels give us the story of a man who earned notoriety as a wandering exorcist (Mk. 1: 39) and a ferocious prophet of imminent doom (Mk. 1: 15, 6: 7, 6: 11, 9: 1(sic!), 13: 26; Mt. 10: 5; Lk. 9: 62, 10: 1). Mark has Jesus sending herds of possessed pigs (sic!) over a non-existing precipice into a “nearby” lake some thirty miles away (Mk. 5: 13). The real miracle here is the pigs. What were they doing in a kosher Jewish orthodox neighborhood? In a culture obsessing with demons, Jesus constantly referred to his powers as an exorcist (Lk. 11: 20); it was his chief credential: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven, and if I with the finger of God cast out devils, how can you doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you" (Mk. 1: 15, 1: 39, 6: 7, 6: 11, 9: 1 (sic!), 13: 26; Mt. 10: 5; Lk. 9: 62, 10: 1, 11: 20). We look at a typical cult leader, a man resorting to his unquestioned charisma. If bereft of his presence, his followers felt an intense self-loathing: "we are made as the filth of the world, and are the off-scouring of all things" (I Cor. 4: 13). Like Koresh and Jim Johnes, Jesus demanded to sever all family-ties: "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my companion.” A statement worthy of a Mujahidin with Semtex strapped to his chest!

On more than one occasion Jesus was seen to be rude to his own family, especially to his mother (Mk. 3: 31-35; Jn. 2: 4). Mark gives us the names of four brothers (Mk. 6: 3); the sisters receive only a cursory nod. Somewhere an aunt, his mother’s sister, is mentioned. Theologians have speculated whether this “James the Just” mentioned in Josephus, could have been the “James a brother of Jesus“ in the New Testament. Yet the supporters of James the Just in Josephus account are the very same law-abiding Jews and Pharisees from Jerusalem’s establishment, which the gospels vilify as Jesus’ personal enemies. There also seemed to have been a wife; Luke has Jesus read the Torah in the synagogue (Lk. 4: 19), which in those days was permitted only to married men. 

Perhaps we hear so little of his family because Jesus felt embarrassed to face the people who had seen him growing up in Capernaum (Mk. 6: 4). Word in the streets had it that his biological father was not Mary’s husband but a Roman soldier, the Syrian Archer Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera.

This soldier was stationed in Caesarea before the Romans lost three of their legions in Germany and in 9 AD frantically scraped together reinforcements from all over the empire. Pantera was transferred to Bingerbrück on the Rhine where he died a natural death. The inscription on his headstone reads: "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40 years' service, of the 1st cohort of archers, lies here" (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, XIII, 7514 and Dessau, Inscriptiones selectae, 2571). The stone is now in the museum at Kreuznach. The data tally well with the alleged birthdates of the son, some twelve, or perhaps even thirty-one years before Pantera’s transfer, and for a mere rumor it would be quite a coincidence to actually find a grave that is not only fitting time and location but belongs to an individual that listens to the same name as given in the Talmud. In fact the evangelists were aware of the rumor, too. There is this episode of a tacit understanding between Jesus and a Roman centurion with remarkable sensitivity for Jewish customs (Mt. 8: 5; Lk. 7: 2).

As it were the authorities in Jerusalem saw no reason to think of Jesus as a gentleman and scholar; in the verbal exchanges they used “rabbi” as an ironic taunt. He didn’t seem to mind, he had no intention to impress the people of learning. His target audience was the untutored and illiterate. Neighbors, that saw him grow up in the streets of their hometown, marveled “how this man knows letters, having never learned” (Jn. 7: 15). They took offence and even the dedicated propagandist must admit, “he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Mt. 13: 55-58). A real rabbi would have caught Jesus fibbing when he pronounced: “Have ye not read in the law, how on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless” (Mt. 12: 5). There was no such law, but he was too smart to pause and leave the listener time for reflection. Instead he lunged into a fit of calculated fury: “You hypocrites, you discern the face of the sky, but how is it that you do not read the signs of this time? I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled” (Lk. 12: 49). Accordingly, Jesus went preaching "through every city and village," together with his closest companions and a sizeable retinue of women, "Mary called Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, Susanna, and many others," who ministered “unto him” – what is the expression – “from their substance" (Lk. 8: 1). It gives a whole new meaning to the pronouncement that “whosoever of you has not forsaken all his possessions, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14: 33).

These women became his surrogate family (Mk. 3: 31-35) and it is easy to overlook what is written here between the lines: most of the women were married and had left their husbands. Jesus would visit them in their own homes, and Maria couldn’t turn her glazed look away from his person, leaving it to Martha to potter around (Lk. 10: 38-42). I have seen this dog-eyed look on a video.

It belonged to the face of a woman living with the prophet Michael in New Mexico. In 1989 Michael Travesser had left the Seven Day Adventists and started his own cult. As I speak the prophet is convicted to ten years for statutory rape. Needless to say his underage victims don’t feel raped at all. And just as Michael, his ancient precursor had not always been on his guard and made big promises to his companions: “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Yet when he failed to deliver, “there were some” of his companions, who felt “indignation among them,” and began to wonder whether this man really was “the living bread which came down from heaven” (Jn. 6: 32). A cousin of his, John the Baptist, was sending him from prison an ironic note, whether it is "he that should come, or do we look for another" (Mt. 11: 2-30).

Josephus speaks of John the Baptist as “a good man, who commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so receive baptism; not only for washing away their sins, but for the purification of the body; since the soul is already purified by righteousness,” and he continues: “Herod Antipas feared the great influence John had over the people, even that he might raise a rebellion, for the crowds seemed ready to do anything he should advise. So Herod thought to prevent any mischief John might cause before it would be too late. John was imprisoned in the fortress of Macherus and put to death” (Josephus, Antiquities VIII, 5: 2). According to the evangelist, the formula spoken on such a baptism was the announcement: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you” (Lk. 3: 22), possibly the exact words when the Baptist held somebody’s head under water. Jesus knew John the Baptist had put his leadership in question.

So, Jesus gathered his following at Caesarea, right under the noses of the Roman administration, sending “them forth by two and two, to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” preaching that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Yet one wonders how important the whole affair possibly could have been for the other team. The flippant “did there ever arise a prophet out of Galilee” does not have the ring of a profound concern. To up his game, Jesus therefore asked his companions to sell their garments for swords (Lk. 22: 38) and prepare for an assault on the Temple.

With Rome in charge the Temple had fallen under the jurisdiction of the Gentile “pontifex maximus,” the chairman of the board for all legally acknowledged cults in the empire, an office often held by the emperors themselves. An imperial stipend provided funds for a daily sacrifice on the emperor’s behalf. Driven to extremes, mostly under the pressure from his own following, Jesus started a riot on the temple precinct. He meant to challenge the Sanhedrin, but sure as hell he pissed off the Romans. Within the context of the period, Jesus’ alleged accusation “is it not written, 'my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mk. 11: 15-19) doesn’t make any sense: most of the transactions that offended this zealot’s sensitivity were for the purchase of sacrificial animals and the whole trade a feature of the religious observances. Apart from this it was an established fact of life that every of the larger temples in the Roman domain acted as an equivalent to our high-street banks, offering loans to the surrounding business community, keeping individual safe deposits and facilitating the transfer of large sums over long distances on “chierographs” – letters of credit – guaranteed and backed up by the bullion hoarded in the temple’s vaults without actually moving the cash and exposing it to the dangers in the streets. None of this of course was of any concern to the man who is asking us to behold the lilies in the field. So, surprising as it may seem, among the evangelists it is the author of John, the latest and most “mythical“ of the lot, whose background story does actually check out. After putting the incident in the Temple at the beginning of his story, where it logically belongs, only John is telling us of years of a cat and mouse game with the authorities, during which Jesus could no longer risk to show his face in Jerusalem. On the festivals he stayed behind with a lame excuse: “You go up: I will not, for my time is not yet come,” and waited for the ‘all clear’ before he would risk it to join his companions, yet “not openly, but as it were in secret” (Jn. 7: 8-10).

In the end Jesus couldn’t avoid arrest and faced charges of lèse-majesté, violations of the 5th commandment, and blasphemy, all of which punishable by death (Mt. 8: 21-22, 10: 35, 19: 29, 12: 48-49, 27: 11, 27: 37; Mk. 15: 2, 15: 26; Lk. 8: 19-21, 9: 59-60, 12: 53, 14: 26, 23: 3, 23: 38; Jn. 2: 14, 6: 15, 18: 33, 19: 7-8, 19: 19). The gospels make Jesus face two different trials in the brief span of 24 hours: one before the Jewish High Priest and one before the Roman Governor.

Contrary to the anachronistic protestations in the Gospel according to John (Jn. 18: 31), before the fall of Jerusalem the Sanhedrin did have the authority to pass capital punishment by means of stoning, burning, or slaying, even extended their jurisdiction outside of Jerusalem as the evangelist himself was very well aware of (see Acts 6: 12; 7: 59 and 9: 2). A session of the Sanhedrin at night, especially on the night to Passover, was of course strictly against the law, but the gospels are explicitly designed to besmirch the Jews in any possible way. The trials are at the heart of an unending anti-Semitic libel cover to cover (see the appendix below). In the course of the narrative the author of Luke couldn’t resist to show off his erudition and squeezed the session into the early morning, thus digging himself a hole with his timing. People rush around in the jerky quickstep of a silent motion picture and after having him brought before Pilate, Luke drags the defendant twice across town, from Pilate’s chambers to the tetrarch’s palace and back, with interrogations on both ends, all within thirty minutes. It would have taken more time to buy a sheep on the market (Lk. 23: 11-12). Also Deuteronomy (Deut. 17: 6 and 19: 15) decrees that no person may be convicted on one testimony alone, which has been interpreted to exclude even a verdict on the strength of one’s own confession. If true this would make this provision the first habeas corpus known to history, since it deters interrogations under torture. So what is the meaning here when the narrator accuses the Sanhedrin of dismissing witnesses as untrustworthy (Mk. 14: 59; Mt. 26: 59-60) and yet passing a sentence based entirely on Jesus' own confession (Mk. 14: 62-64; Mt. 26: 65-66)? And anyway, would it not have been as simple as it was expedient to keep the prisoner in custody until after the festival, as Mark (Mk. 14: 2) has suggested? So, why the rush?

There is only one possible explanation: Pilate was already waiting because he himself had issued the warrant for Jesus’ arrest. John was aware of this possibility so he has the arrest carried out under the supervision of a Roman centurion (Jn. 18: 12). The presence of this officer would be inexplicable without orders by his superior (Wellhausen). But the course of events is far from clear.

To begin with, we are asked to believe that at the arrest an act of armed resistance did not lead to further arrests (Mk. 14: 47; Jn. 18: 10). There were no witnesses who could possibly be present at either of the two trials; the proceedings happened behind closed doors. On the night of his arrest all of Jesus’ companions hurtled to Galilee into hiding, fifty kilometers on the trot (Mt. 26: 56). The one man, who allegedly stayed behind, was shooed away from the court of the High Priest when a maidservant blew his cover (Mk. 14: 66-72; Mt. 26: 69-75; Lk. 22: 55-62; Jn. 18: 16-17). Later, in his Galilean hideout, Peter will speak of the one “whom they slew and hanged on a tree.” Apparently the news of the “Christ crucified” had not yet arrived in Galilee. Nobody we know of is giving a direct account, the tales come to light two generations after the fact. And strange tales they are, treating us to the grotesque caricature of a Roman judge hopping up and down from his high seat like a yo-yo and against all etiquette and dignity solicit in plain view his verdict with a lynch-mob that filled the air with loud accusations, blackmail, innuendo and threats for the judge (Mk. 15: 3; Lk. 23: 2; Jn. 18: 30-31, 19: 12 etc.).

Roman law, however, explicitly prohibits collective accusations: “Vanae voces populi non sunt autiendae” – the vain voice of the people is not to be listened to (Codex Justinianus IX: 47, 12).  Unlike the modern district attorney, who is speaking for the people against the accused, there was no public prosecutor at a Roman trial. Instead each party had to hire their own attorney and bring their case “before the people,” who are represented by the judge. Procedures of this nature were not unknown to the Jewish council. In Acts the Sanhedrin hired an attorney to press charges against Paul (Acts 24: 1). So if there was no formal indictment, Pilate’s only legal course of action was to release the prisoner. In a Roman court of law the admission of evidence known to be false could lead to a murder charge against the judge, if this had given cause for the execution of an innocent (Marcianus, Digesta 48, 81 and Mommsen). At least on paper, Roman law imposed severe penalties for false accusations or insufficient preparation (Digesta 47: 23, 2; 15, 1-2; Codex Theodosianus IX: 36,1; IX: 1, 9-14; Codex Iustinianus IX: 12, 7 and 46, 7). And whatever the charge before a Roman tribunal, the defendant was ill advised to claim divine status as a king "not of this world" (Jn. 18: 36). Before the law only one person, the emperor, could hold a claim on divine status. So when the defendant was pleading guilty on his own accord (Mk. 15: 2; Mt. 27: 11; Lk. 23: 3; Jn. 18: 37), it is most surprising to see Pilate finding "no guilt." Only before a Jewish court under the directive of Deuteronomy (17: 6, 19: 15) a confession was not admissible, but why should a Roman judge observe Jewish law? One could of course argue that an itinerant preacher with no status was simply not important enough to raise any scruple. Miscarriages of justice did happen; according to Philo, Pilate himself was going to face charges for "briberies, insults, robberies, outrages and indecent assaults, constantly repeated executions without trial (sic!), ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty" (Philo, De Legatione 301-3). Another blatant disregard of the law would have been the release of the convicted Barnabas, since it was an exclusive prerogative of the emperor to pardon a convict. Any violation of the imperial prerogative would have been a treasonable assumption of excessive powers and punishable under the Lex Julia (Digesta 48, 81 48, 8, 4 and Mommsen; also reflected in the right of appeal – see Acts 26: 32). Why should Pilate expose himself to legal recrimination, when his political enemies were just waiting to trip him up (Lk. 23: 12)?

Luke, who had read his Josephus well, makes it look, as if Pilate tried to move on the buck to Herod the Tetrarch (Lk. 23: 4). But there was no provision in the law for Pilate to delegate the governor's powers inherent in the Ius Gladii to a tetrarch or any other individual, (Digesta 1, 6, 6; 1, 21, 1; 50, 17, 70). Herod himself had full criminal jurisdiction in Galilee. He could follow up on an acquittal by Pilate with an investigation of his own and even pass capital punishment. It would have been a smooth move by the governor – deliver death, without being personally responsible – but that is not the story the gospels are telling us. Pilate did not acquit Jesus. Yet had he handed over a case of lèse-majesté to the tetrarch without such acquittal, Pilate would have made himself answerable to charges and thus invited political blackmail, and this by the tetrarch, of all people, who was the Emperor's good friend, and up to this point in time Pilate's personal enemy (Lk. 23: 7-12). Herod was not at all such insignificant figure, as some analysts like to depict him. He held a seat in the Roman Senate and during stays in Rome his seniority gave him the position of Speaker of the House.

In the end, the defendant’s own plea sealed the case (Jn. 19: 13-16). That Pilate allegedly repudiated his own verdict and washed his hands (Mt. 27: 24) is another reference to Deuteronomy (Deut. 21: 1-9), yet for a Roman judge, representing the People of Rome, this would have been a demeaning gesture.

At this point Jesus’ former enforcer was stepping up to take the reins over the remaining diehards. He was a man better treated with caution! The new guy was known to have walked on water for his boss, yet at times he also had been the man standing up to him (Mk. 8: 35). An elderly couple was holding back on their contributions and Peter gave each of them the third degree. As it so happened, they both died during this nocturnal interrogation, only hours apart. The new cult leader’s gang of “young men” carried them “out into the night” for a clandestine burial (Acts 5: 1-11). Even the author of Luke, the accomplished spin-doctor, couldn’t disguise the “great fear” that “came upon all the church and as many as heard these things.”

So, this was the person, who was telling us that “God raised up Jesus of Nazareth on the third day, and showed him openly,” and now listens to this, “not to all the people, but unto chosen witnesses” (Acts 10: 41). Here it is, the oldest con in the book. Acts doesn’t make any bones of the fact that there were people standing right next to the “event,” who saw nothing out of the ordinary: no sudden darkness, no corpses walking out of their graves, no earthquake, no eclipse, no Jesus, only the hysterics of this group – the squealing and whooping was real enough – and then there was this guy with hands like coal shovels, telling us with a straight face: “These are not drunk, as ye suppose!”

For the moment nobody was interested to notice, the big scoops were still made in Rome. Emperor Gaius (Caligula) in 40 AD issued orders to the governor of Syria, Publius Petronius, to erect a statue of Zeus in the Temple of Jerusalem. Petronius had more than a vague idea about the possible consequences of such a move and tried stalling the order, putting himself in jeopardy with the emperor. Fortunately for him, Emperor Gaius was assassinated before his order to commit suicide could be delivered to Petronius.

According to Josephus it was under Emperor Claudius (41 – 54 AD) that the Jews of Rome received a certified charter of toleration under the proviso never to express contempt for the rites of other cults (Josephus, Antiquities XII, 3: 2; XVI: 2: 3-5). This is not what you can ask from a religious fanatic. A Jew would neither dine at the table of a Gentile nor receive him at his own table. He would not go to the theater, the arena, the gymnasium, nor even read a secular book, "unless it be at twilight." Mixed marriages were something unheard of. It came to riots in the capital. In response the emperor was putting a curfew on all Jewish assemblies in Rome (Dio Cassius, lX: 6). It might have been a simple measure of policing the streets, which in the eyes of the afflicted was misunderstood as an edict of expulsion (Acts 18: 2; Suetonius, Claudius, 25; Orosius, VII, 6: 15). And yet despite the unrest and the troubles, Josephus, Philo and even Seneca got the impression that the entire world was rushing toward Jewish observances (Josephus, Contra Apion II: 39; Seneca, Augustinus, Civis Dei, VI: 11; Philo, De Vita Moysis: 2), although Seneca made it a point to distinguish the Jews by race from the Jews by adoption "gentis eiusdem vel simila sectantes" (Suetonius, Tiberius 36; Dio Cassius, XXXVII, 17). Women in particular felt drawn to the Jewish faith. Poppaea Augusta Sabina, Nero’s wife, a woman of impeccable pedigree, was known for her zealous patronage of the Jews – if Tacitus’ Annals could be trusted. Even royal houses, such as King Izates from Adiabene and his entire family, converted to Judaism (Josephus, Antiquities XX, 7: 1,3).

By and large the intellectuals of the period, Gentile and Jewish, treated each other with respect. Nicolaus of Damascus, himself a Gentile and noted peripatetic philosopher, had carried diplomatic missions to Augustus and Agrippa on behalf of his Jewish client, Herod the Great. Jews held senior positions in the Empire’s administration. Tiberius Alexander was governor of Judea before he became the chief of staff under Vespasian and Titus. He was responsible for preparing the campaign against Judea that eventually would lead to the fall of Jerusalem. Philo of Alexandria (BC 20 – 50 AD) attempted to be the intermediary between Judaism and Platonism. Pseudo Longinus’ brilliant essay On the Sublime might be the work by a Hellenized Jew. As long as the Temple in Jerusalem remained in operation, it functioned as the spiritual center of Judaism everywhere in the world, not unlike the Vatican for the Catholics or Mecca for the Muslims. Every Jew was expected, at least once in his life, to pay Zion a visit and to sacrifice on Jehovah’s own real estate. Emperor Claudius had no problem to give the Herodian dynasty a second chance. In true Herodian tradition Herod Agrippa became a great benefactor of Hellenic cities and his building projects were marveled at everywhere in the Empire. He died in unclear circumstances when his activities raised the suspicion of treason. However his reforms had set an example for good government and in 44 AD the crusty Cuspius Fadus followed this example when he took office as procurator of Judea.

During the requisition of food stocks from a village, one of Fadus’ soldiers tore up a Torah scroll. Fadus had the man arrested, charged and executed. Yet Fadus’ colleagues in Samaria and Galilee were less diligent in their duties, letting a naughty tribune get away with mooning at the Torah. The Governor of Syria, Ummidius Quadratus heard of this and had the two procurators deposed and deported while the tribune was sent to Jerusalem to be beheaded. The Romans thought they exercised fair government, even made a Jew – Tiberius Alexander – governor of Judea from 46 to 48 AD. Yet when it was the turn of Ventidius Cumanus to govern Judea, the Sicarii came out of their foxholes and killed a Roman officer on the open highway, in 52 AD.

For Rome this was a signal that the gloves were off. The emperor sent Antonius Felix and commissioned him for a period of ten years, from 52 to 62 AD, to sort out Judea. Felix used all his energies to clear the country of the so-called "robbers." Faced with certain death, the Sicarii offered their special services to the Romans. Felix saw this as an opportunity to commission the assassination of the High Priest Jonathan for his suspected support of the resistance, which could only escalate the unrest, once the population became aware of the truth. From 56 to 66 AD, to regain their reputation among the natives, Menachem, the grandson of Judah of Galilee, began leading the Sicarii on a relentless campaign of assassinations and kidnapping. “Under their cloaks they concealed "sicæ," or small daggers, whence they received their name; and at popular assemblies, especially during the pilgrimage to the Temple mount, they stabbed their enemies, or, in other words, those who were friendly to the Romans, lamenting ostentatiously after the deed, and thus escaping detection” (Josephus, Antiquities XX, 8: 10; Wars II, 13: 3). On one such occasion they kidnapped the secretary of Eleazar, Governor of the Temple, but released him in exchange for ten of their captured comrades (Josephus, Antiquities XX, 9: 3). How little has changed in this part of the world.

The next procurator of Judea, Cessius Florus, was a rotten apple. Josephus accuses him of embezzlement and having provoked the rebellion that became the cause for the fall of Jerusalem, six years later, but what really set the tempers flying were orders by Emperor Nero (54 – 68 AD) to have his statue erected in the Temple of Jerusalem. Nero had no intention to back down and issued marching orders to his general in Syria. The preparations for the campaign went under way in the following year. Seeing the storm gather, Eleazar, son of Ananias, the captain of the temple guard, whom the Romans previously had considered their friend, now made up his mind and in 66 AD gave the signal for the general uprising. It seemed now or never. The Sicarii plundered the Roman armory at Masada and marched on Jerusalem to join the rebellion. In Syria, the legate Cestius Gallus in all haste mobilized his troops, but the plan to quell the rebellion in a straight push to Jerusalem backfired; Gallus fell into an ambush and had to retreat, leaving behind his heavy catapults and baggage. Many Jews saw this easy victory as an omen that God was on their side.

So did Menachem, the Sicarii’s leader. He proclaimed himself as the Messiah, and his companions crowned him in the Temple as king of Judea. Yet the Sanhedrin and the Zealots had a dim view of this new king. Eleazar, the captain of the temple guard, arrested Menachem and after putting him to torture he executed him together with many of his companions. The surviving Sicarii, under the leadership of Menachem's relative Eleazar ben Yair, took flight to Masada, and from now on refused to participate in the defense of Jerusalem. Instead they pillaged Jewish villages near Masada, and during Passover massacred 700 Jewish men, women and children at Engedi. Meanwhile “on the same day, the 6th of August 66, the Gentiles in Caesarea massacred the Jews, and the Jews in Jerusalem massacred the Gentiles; and thereby was given on both sides the signal to proceed with this patriotic work acceptable to the Lord” (Mommsen). In 67 AD, General Vespasian arrived in Syria to replace the unfortunate Cestius Gallus as the new Legate.

Vespasian, after regrouping and reorganizing his troops, started his campaign in Judea with prudence and caution, first securing the seaboard, Galilee and the Decapolis, before he advanced on Jerusalem. The Jews in Jerusalem had plenty of time to prepare but it characterized the whole situation that the various factions found no better use for their reprieve but to jump at each other’s throat. And should anybody have doubted that God was on their side, there could be no question now: messengers from the north reportd that they had seen Vespasian’s forces on the retreat. How? Why? This was most unexpected news.

Then messangers from Rome arrived and everything became clear. Emperor Nero had passed away. After squabbles with a hostile senate and intimidated by reports of General Vindex’s short lived mutiny in Gaul, Nero was losing his nerves, fled the capital and committed suicide at a time when the army was still loyal. Nero’s popularity with the populace in the East as well as with the lower classes in the West should have carried him through. His death forced General Vespasian to suspend all operations in Judea and in the ensuing clash between the generals to call on the loyalty of his troops and of the military chiefs in the East to confront the other contenders from Spain and France. Later this period would be called the ‘year of the four emperors.’ After a sharp but brief campaign in Italy, Vespasian acceded to the purple and restored order in the empire. For the Jewish neighborhoods these were trying times.

Cities like Parium and Tralles legislated against any form of Jewish observances (Josephus, Antiquities XIV, 10: 8). At Seleucia, Greek colonists killed more than 50,000 Jews in a pogrom (Josephus, Antiquities XVIII, 9: 9). The Jews in Syria suffered from daily assaults and the city council of Antioch demanded their deportation. Often the Roman governor was the only obstacle between the fury of the mob and their Jewish neighbors, as in Halicarnassus, where the Roman administrator imposed stiff fines on any attempt, private or municipal, to obstruct Jewish observances (Josephus, Antiquity XIV, 10: 23). At last, Emperor Vespasian’s son, Titus, breached the defenses of Jerusalem on August 29, 70 AD. The city was turned to rubble.

From now on a Jewish visitor could enter “Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children” (Galatian 4: 24-25) only with a special permit. Judea changed from a half autonomous protectorate to the status of a province, so that agents of the Roman government could continue collecting the Jewish temple-tax, the "fiscus Judaicus." The irony was not lost on the rabbis. The money went now into the coffers of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome (Josephus, Wars VII, 6:6; Dio, Epitome IXVI, 7; Suetonius, Domitian, 12).

With the fall of Masada in 73 AD the campaign officially came to an end – three years after the fall of Jerusalem. Eleazar ben Yair, the defender of the fortress is now an icon for Israeli identity. (A dubious icon – after all he was a sicarii and terrorist). The recruits of the Israeli Army are sworn in at Masada. Eleazar’s last address to the defenders in the night before the Romans breached the walls is surely a testimony for courage in face of the inevitable, but apart from this, it is neither a testimony of particular patriotism nor even a proclamation of Jewish piety. Eleazar said: “From ancient times, our forefathers have corroborated the same doctrine by their actions, and by their bravery of mind, that it is life that is a calamity to men, and not death. Death returns our souls to liberty, and removes them into their own place of purity, where they are insensible to misery. Because when souls are tied down to a mortal body, they participate in its miseries, and really, to speak the truth, they are themselves dead, for the union of what is divine to what is mortal is disagreeable.” Every odd pagan of the period with leanings towards Gnosticism could have said something like this.

There was still Onias’ temple in Egypt, for most Jews barely more than a crumbling embarrassment. Without much ado, Lupus, the prefect of Alexandria closed down the shrine and abolished all services there (Josephus, Wars VII, 10: 4). A flood of refugees started to infiltrate and radicalize the communities in the Jewish Diaspora. One of the refugees – a certain Cerinthus – brought with him a book. For future generations it was to become of more consequence than all the other books in the Bible. The book was the Apocalypse of John. It is an appeal to the supreme judge for retribution against the two men held directly responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem: Nero, who issued the marching orders, and Titus, who was the general in charge during the final assault.

The book betrays a time when Gentiles still had open access to the synagogue. Those elected and marked by the angel are all circumcised, twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes, and have precedence over "the great multitude of other righteous ones," i.e. of Gentile proselytes (Rev. 7 and 12: 1). The main thrust of the text is the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem. Revelation (Rev. 17) depicts the provincial governors as the ten horns assigned to the monster in its copy, and refers to them correctly as the "ten kings, which have not the royal dignity, but have authority like kings." They pronounce sentences of death over the righteous, that refuse to burn incense to the emperor's image (Rev. 6: 9; 13: 15; 20: 4), and ship them off to the capital (Rev. 17: 6; 17: 24) where, in the only recently finished Coliseum (Modestinus, Digesta, 48: 19, 31), the condemned are made to fight gladiators and wild beasts. Internal evidence allows us to establish an accurate terminus post quem.

Under Emperor Vespasian's reign a certain Terentius Maximus of Parthia had gathered a following in the region of the Euphrates and claimed to be "Nero redivivus" (Sueton, Nero, Tacitus, Histories I: 2). During the reign of Titus (79 – 81 AD.), King Artabanus of Parthia prepared to "reinstate" this imposter in Rome by military force (Rev. 9: 14, 16: 12). After prolonged negotiations, the regime in Parthia eventually extradited Maximus to Emperor Domitian in 88 AD. The Apocalypse was published under Emperor Titus in 81 AD, when the author still lived in hope for the Orient's joint attack on the West.

In 83 AD, Emperor Domitian (81 – 96 AD), perhaps unwittingly, dealt another blow at Judaism. He ruled against the circumcision of everyone, who was not born Jewish. Emperor Nerva (96 – 98 AD) confirmed this prohibition (Dio, Epitome IXVIII, 1). The ruling may have had nothing to do with religion, but had been part of Emperor Domitian’s sumptuary laws against the trading of eunuchs. The circumcising of a non-Jew, even if he was a slave, fell under the penalty for castration (Modestin; Digesta, XlVIII: 8), which meant either death or deportation, and always the confiscation of property (Paulus, V, 22: 4). Everybody involved was to be prosecuted: the Roman citizen who submitted himself or who submitted his slave to this operation, and the surgeon who performed it (Paulus, V, 3). Although there were no formal obstacles against a partial adoption of Jewish customs, proselytizing, from one day to the next, had become illegal (Dio, Epitome LXVIII p.361).

For an observer with an eye on the unrest carried into the Jewish communities by the immigrants from Palestine the new laws must have seemed a tad too much of a coincidence. Soon, the crime of Judaizing was held to be identical with that of impiety or atheism, and was penalized with forfeitures of property and condemnations to exile and even death (Dio, Cassius, Epitome lXVII, 14).

Apparently the rabbis in the Diaspora weren’t too keen on the new arrivals and their messianic gospel either – both sides in this debate claimed the fall of Jerusalem as a confirmation of their mutually exclusive positions – nor did they appreciate the unwanted attention under Domitian’s new laws. Shmuel HaQatan therefore issued in 85 AD the "Birchat ha'minim" (Brach 28b, J. Brach 4, 8a; T. Brach 3, 25), the anathema against the "Nazarenes and heretics." The curse became a part of the congregational prayer (Shmoneh esri) causing a Nazarene to fall silent, before a burly synagogue elder showed the unwelcome guest to the door. The evangelists knew this. The Gospel according to John says: “The Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the messiah would be put out of the synagogue" (Jn. 9: 19 – 22). The Gospel according to Mark refers to the same matter: “In the synagogues ye shall be beaten” (Mk. 13: 9). Yet it was not only the Jews who resented the new arrivals. The operative term in Paul’s Gnostic theology is the notion of a spiritual Christ who was sent from somewhere higher up than the demiurge, the lord of this world, to make himself manifest in the carnally imprisoned “soma” of those who long to acknowledge his presence (Bultmann). The immigrants’ messianic theology tried to convince Paul’s sectarians that their Jesus was the carnal incarnation of the Christ, despite of the lamentable end to his career.

For the law-and-order-man, Emperor Trajan (98 – 117 AD), the existence of Christians seemed a mere nuisance. He didn’t object to the “most mischievous superstition,” but the obstinacy of the faithful and the potential for public disorder (Pliny the Younger, Letters X: 25). In the famous rescript he said: “You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. They are not to be sought out; yet if denounced and proven guilty, they are to be punished. Anonymously posted accusations, however, ought to have no place in any prosecution. It sets a dangerous precedent and is out of keeping with the spirit of our age.” This is not a statement of tolerance but of a tyrant who just can’t be bothered. The emperor had more pressing matters on his mind.

Already as a boy, he used to accompany his father on diplomatic missions to Syria and Iraq. So the Emperor knew the politics of the region from his own experience. In 110 AD a dynastic dispute in the Parthian Empire was leading to the disposal and replacement of the prince in Armenia, which was a Roman clientele state. This violated Nero’s treaty with Parthia. Parthia was entitled to elect her own candidate, but could install him not without formal approval from the Roman government. In 114 AD, after a careful buildup, Trajan annexed Armenia to the Empire and then moved in on Parthia proper. In a sweeping campaign the Parthian state completely disintegrated and in Feb. 20, 116 AD Trajan’s emissary announced to the Senate the fall of the Parthian capital Ctesiphon. “Mission accomplished!” So far we have an ancient forerunner for “Desert Storm” and the recent invasion of Iraq. The follow up looks eerily familiar. Trajan was still residing in Babylon, when news reached him of a general uprising in Iraq and the Roman provinces of Africa and the East.

Every Jew in Libya, Cyprus, Egypt, and Iraq seemed to be up in arms. The rebellion reached beyond the Roman borders and apparently was orchestrated from inside of Iraq. It was the biggest of all Jewish rebellions ever, and is today the least known about, but, surprisingly, Palestine took no part in it. The leaders must have envisioned a Jewish empire; in Libya “a certain Andreas or Luke” was crowned as king (which indicates some kind of messianic movement). The Sicarii and the Zealots made a last showing, this time on the international scene. It became a war of mutual genocide.

In Cyrene, Libya, the Jews were accused of “cannibalism” (sic!) and of murdering 220,000 people. In Cyprus, the Jews from Salamis massacred the entire population of the city and many people in the country, 240,000 altogether (Dio Cassius, Epitome IXVIII, 32). The Greeks in Alexandria managed to put up resistance and held out against invading armies from the Cyrenaica until the Romans brought relief. The historian Appian (95 – 165 AD) gives a vivid description how he escaped and ran for dear life, hiding at night in the dense reeds along the river Nile. Trajan responded with his usual energy. He scraped the barrel in the garrisons of Britain and Germania and placed these battalions and the entire navy under the command of his best general, Quintus Marcius Turbo. In retribution a holocaust eradicated the Jewish population of Cyprus, and by pain of death the island became off limits for every Jew, even for the unfortunate traveler who washed ashore from a shipwreck. Meanwhile the Jewish bands from the Cyrenaica spread out in Egypt and frantically recruited a following to fill their ranks. In an amphibian operation, the Roman legate landed troops at Alexandria and defeated the insurgents in pitched battles at Alexandria and Heracleopolis. For the time being the Jewry in Alexandria was practically annihilated (Appian, Histories XXIV: 7).

The crisis was over, but the empire was in no condition to sustain the annexed territories in Iraq.

Emperor Hadrian (117 – 138 AD) therefore decided to pull out and restored the occupied territories to Parthia in exchange for guarantees about Armenia. The treaty established peace in the East until Marcus Aurelius acceded in 161 AD. Hadrian launched into a series of energetic inspection tours, introduced legal reforms, and reorganized the civil service, who from now on was going to wear uniform. Everywhere the Emperor initiated extensive construction projects.

However Hadrian had not forgotten the cause for the insurrection of 117 AD. On his tour through Palestine in 131 AD, Emperor Hadrian announced his intention to rebuild Jerusalem under a different name – Aelia Capitolina – to restore the temple and consecrate it to Jupiter Optimus. The announcement was followed by an eerie silence. Nobody seemed to raise his voice. This was not what Hadrian had expected and prepared for. Yet unknown to him the radical elements in the exiled Sanhedrin of Jerusalem began stretching out their feelers to the highwayman Simon Bar Kokhba. Jewish blacksmiths held back weaponry for the Roman armory, protesting a shortage of raw materials from their suppliers as the cause for these delays.

When Bar Kokhba gave the signal, the insurrection took the Romans completely by surprise. Bar Kokhba declared a sovereign Jewish state and issued his own coinage as the “Prince of Israel.”

It is not quite clear whether Hadrian abolished circumcision as a result of the uprising, or Hadrian’s decree was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He certainly felt no affection for Jews. He had seen what they were capable of in 117 AD. He sent in his generals Julius Severus and Hadrianus Quintus Lollius Urbicus. It was a slow campaign of torched earth in which some fifty fortresses and 985 villages were destroyed. The Jews avoided pitched battles and resorted to protracted guerilla warfare. Only once, at Bar Kokhba’s headquarters at Bethar, there was an open battle that ended it all.

Jewish religion lost its status as “religio licta” (Dio, Epitome IXIX, 10-14), the country’s name changed from Judea to “Syria Palestina.” As a symbolic gesture of ultimate defeat a team of oxen dragged a plow across the salted soil of Jerusalem, something seen the last time when the Romans had annihilated Corinth in 146 BC. “The living together of Jews and non-Jews showed itself more and more just as inevitable, as under the given conditions it was intolerable; the contrast in faith, law, and manners became sharpened, and mutual arrogance and mutual hatred operated on both sides with morally disorganizing effect. Not merely was their conciliation not promoted in these centuries, but its realization was always thrown further into the distance, the more its necessity became apparent. This exasperation, this arrogance, this contempt, as they became established at that time, were indeed only the inevitable growth of a perhaps not less inevitable sowing; but to the present day, the heritage of these times is still a burden on the human race” (Mommsen).

For the Christians of the period this state of affairs could mean only one thing. It was time to sever for good whatever connection there was between them and Judaism. Many of the “Hagioi,” like the Marcionites – followers of Bishop Marcion of Sinope (83 – 165 AD) – began resenting the idea that they and the Jews had anything in common; by rejecting the law of the Jews as an obstacle to salvation (Rom. 4: 15, 7: 5, 10: 9, 11: 6 and 1 Cor. 5: 7-8) the Apostle Paul was the first to sow the seed of anti-Semitism and explicitly accused the Jews of “both killing the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and persecuting us;” for which “the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost” (1 Thess. 2: 15-17). Paul’s greatest admirer, Bishop Marcion, enunciated in his Antithesis that "Christ has emancipated us from the legalistic requirements of Judaism," and went on to prove the irrelevance of Jewish scripture. Since the Septuagint was still pretty much the only book resembling scripture that was available, the church in Rome excommunicated Marcion. He moved next door to open his own church. With the help of the Lord it flourished and grew, and for centuries it outnumbered the Catholics. Ironically it was Marcion’s Apostolicon that was to become the holy book (the New Testament) of the very same Christians who had excommunicated him.

The emerging canon became an anti-Semitic manifesto cover to cover. The New Testament is repeating in countless variations that the Jews (and not really the Romans) had killed Jesus (Acts 4: 10; 1 Thess. 2: 14-16), that theirs is not salvation (Mk. 13: 9; 16: 16; Jn. 8: 43-47; Acts 13: 45-51 1 Jn. 2: 22-23), and strongly hinting: kill the Jews (Mt. 23: 37, 38; 27: 25; Titus 1: 10-14; Acts 18: 6): "Ye are of your father the devil. Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers" (Acts 7: 51-53). In the mouth of Jesus himself  – supposedly a Jew and a rabbi – words were planted, which announced that "upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth. The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Mt. 8: 12, 23: 35). So, when in 152 AD Emperor Antony Pius (138 – 161 AD) repealed Hadrian’s absolute prohibition of circumcision, and again authorized the Jews to circumcise (Dio, Epitome LXVII p.319), the breach between the faiths was already beyond mending.

A certain Calixtus (217 – 222 AD) did time in the Sardinian mines for embezzlement and caused a riot in a synagogue before he became pope of the Roman Church (Hippolytus, Philosophumena, 9: 12) – one of the earliest acts of deliberate anti-Semitic atrocities by a Christian cleric on record. But in 212 AD the Jewish people finally had their big break. It came from the least likely source: Emperor Caracalla's “Constitutio Antoniniana” conferred Roman citizenship on every free man in the Empire.

Originally conceived as a measure to simplify taxation and cut down on the overheads of the imperial revenue, Caracalla, by a stroke of his pen, had removed the obstacles for Jews to stand for office, the "jus honorum," and exercise their rights of marriage, commerce and passing on an inheritance, even of holding guardianship over non-Jews (Modestin, L, 15:6, Digesta XXVII, 1). A Jew could now exercise all the rights of a citizen, without being forced to observances contravening his religion. He now could blend in into a new identity, where a citizenship of the empire (Ulpian, L, 3; Digesta, L, 2:3) began replacing the old system of regional charters. An empire of the nations became a Roman nation state (Digesta, I. 5). The Syrian Caracalla (188 – 217 AD) was a foul character. His own brother and twenty thousand of his faction had lost their lives at Caracalla’s accession. But not every emperor was a disgrace to the purple. Twenty years later a family of dedicated civil servants from North Africa stepped up to the helm of the empire: the three Gordians.

In an approximation of habeas corpus, Emperor Gordian III in 244 AD prohibited the use of torture against everyone, “whether free or slave,” without a conviction in a court of law.

Between the creeds and religions, however, the tone of controversy was becoming  more and more belligerent. A man as urban and humane as the theologian Origen (185 – 253/5 AD) was capable of accusing the Jews to "have committed a crime of the most heinous kind, in conspiring against the savior." This was the voice of a moderate. In 325 AD Pope Sylvester (314 – 335 AD) issued a decree that "every Sabbath on account of the burial of Jesus is to be regarded in execration of the Jews." Emperor Constantine, on the first Ecumenical Synod of Nicene, enunciated as "an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews. Let us then have nothing in common with this detestable crowd" (Constantine's Nicene Letter, 325 AD).

These were ominous noises, but it still was not the boxcars and Cyclon B. Just the buildup. In 380 AD, Christianity was already the religion of the Roman state when the law from February 27, decreed “according to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel,” to “believe in the one deity of the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians.” Christians who had the temerity of begging to differ were branded “with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their gatherings the name of churches, since they are foolish madmen” (Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2). February 27 is the birthday of Catholicism. It entered the scene with a minority coup, a bid for power comparable to the Bolshevik’s October revolution in Russia, which, as we remember, was not a revolution against the Tsar, but overthrowing the socialist government of Alexander Kerensky. The Lenin in this scenario was the prelate of Milan, the Saint and anti-Semite Bishop Ambrose. For the people affected – the Jews, the dissenters, the educators, the scientists and the artists – the consequences were about the same in both instances, except for the additional goodies about homosexuals and the marital bedroom that Catholicism has thrown in for good measure. Under the new law of February 27, 380 AD not to be a Catholic could be prosecuted as a felony. Before anybody even thought of it, this opened the floodgates for the Inquisition. From here on it was naked violence all the way.

 In 395 AD, the local bishop of Callinicum (modern Raqqa) in Syria was seen to take the lead in an act of vandalism against the local synagogue.

Emperor Theodosius I, despite his flaws a good-natured person, was outraged and demanded an inquest. Yet Bishop Ambrose sent him a memo worthy of a Nazi ideologue, combining threats and blackmail with allegations, innuendo and solicitous interpretations. Ambrose, the jurist, the prelate and chief administrator knew exactly what he was doing, that he once and for all was setting the tone for the relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews for millennia to come:

"You gave command that the other perpetrators be punished, and the Bishop himself rebuild the synagogue. Are you not afraid this prelate might oppose you with a refusal? You will then be obliged to make him either an apostate or a martyr, either of them a mode of persecution.

“But let it be granted that no one will bring the Bishop to book, for I have asked this of Your Imperial Grace, and although I have not yet read that this edict is revoked, let us notwithstanding assume that it is revoked (sic! Presumptuous bastard!). What if there are other officials offering in a more timid spirit to restore the synagogue at their own costs; or that the commander of the East already has ordered it to be rebuilt from the funds of Christians? Then Your Majesty will have an apostate general, and to whom will you then entrust your victorious standards? Shall a place be made for the unbelief of the Jews out of the spoils of the Church, shall the Jews write this inscription over the lintel of their synagogue: "The temple of impiety, erected from the plunder of Christians?

“There is, then, no adequate cause for punishing the burning of a building, much less since it is a synagogue, a home of unbelief, a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly, which God Himself has condemned. For thus we read, where the Lord our God speaks by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah: "And I will cast you forth from my sight, as I cast forth your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim. And do not pray for that people, do not ask mercy for them, for I will not hear you." So God himself forbids intercession on behalf of the Jews.

“Jews reject that they themselves are bound by Roman law and yet seek redress by invoking this law? Who is to avenge the Synagogue? Christ, whom they slew, whom they denied? Will God the Father avenge those who do not receive the Son?” (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XL).

Immediately the Christian ayatollahs closed ranks with Ambrose. In 404 AD St. Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD) in his eight anti-Jewish speeches Adversus Judaeos, lashed out against everything Jewish, bitching about the synagogues as "a den of thieves and a haunt of wild animals. This is why Christ said ask for my enemies, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them and slay them before me" (Orationes VIII, Adversus Judaeos). In Africa, St. Augustine, as usual, could barely hold his water when it came to endorsing an atrocity: "Judas is the image of the Jewish people. They bear the guilt for the death of the savior, for through their fathers they have killed the Christ." So when in 415 AD another "doctor of the church," Bishop St. Cyril of Alexandria washed his hands in the blood of the Gentile philosopher Hypathia (350 – 415 AD), he thought how swell it would be to be remembered as the one who kicked the door shut after the last Jew leaving Alexandria. At the time some 40,000 of them were still living there.

The army was called in and raided the Jewish quarters. The soldiers raped the women and looted homes and synagogues. The survivors went into permanent exile. Some expatriated to Spain and to the German Rhineland. Little did they know!

“Anti–Semitism” is an ambiguous term, especially for those who try to rationalize away their own prejudice, but don’t like to run under the proper label. It started as an imperialist’s poor political choice ending in quarrels among neighbors, escalated to an administrative disaster and after episodes of unspeakable violence on both sides, it changed colors and continued with a new mode of religiously motivated defamation – the blood libel – which was followed by centuries of discrimination and the ecumenical synod of Konstanz in 1215, which decreed segregation between the races and ordered Jews to wear a yellow sign on their garb. Amazing what can fit in one sentence, it almost leads all the way to the racial doctrine of “limpizza de sangre“ (pure blood), to Torquemada’s autos-da-fé, to Auschwitz and subsequently to the thing where one kind of Semites – the Arabs – try to wipe out the other kind of Semites – the Jews. But it seems evident to me, that all this time it never was a racial issue. The Nazis resented the presence of Jews for cultural and economical reasons; the eugenic angle and the Nuremberg laws was just their way to rationalize and justify it. "We are so good at kidding ourselves, we could make a living of it" says Stephen King. I have no doubt the Nazis did actually believe their own bullshit, but it never ceased to be a primarily cultural prejudice.

*****

Appendix

The complete anti-Semitic references from the New Testament (just imagine a child reading this: how can it respond in any other way, than thinking the Jews are bad people?)



Matthew (3: 7) The Pharisees and Sadducees are called poisonous snakes; (12: 34) The Pharisees are called evil poisonous snakes; (15: 3-9) Condemnation of the Pharisees for rejecting the commandments; (15: 12-14) The Pharisees are called blind guides leading the blind; (16: 6) Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees; (19: 3-9) The Pharisees are said to be hard-hearted; (19: 28) The disciples of Jesus will judge the twelve tribes of Israel; (22: 18) The Pharisees are called hypocrites; (23: 13-36) The scribes and Pharisees are repeatedly vilified as hypocrites; (23: 38) The house of Jerusalem is to be forsaken and desolate; (26: 59-68) The chief priests and council are shown to condemn Jesus as deserving death; (27: 1-26) The people demand that Jesus, not Barabbas, be crucified; (27: 62-66; 28: 4, 11-15) The chief priests and Pharisees request a guard at Jesus' tomb, the guards tremble and become like dead when the angel appears, the chief priest are said to bribe the guards to lie about their actions



Mark (3: 6) The Pharisees are said to have begun to plan to destroy Jesus; (7: 6-13) Condemnation of the Pharisees for rejecting the commandments; (8: 15) Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees; (10: 2-5) The Pharisees are said to be hard-hearted; (14: 55-65) The chief priests and council condemn Jesus as deserving death; (15: 1-15) The crowd demands that Jesus, not Barabbas, be crucified



Luke (3: 7) The multitudes are called poisonous snakes; (4: 28-30) The members of the synagogue in Nazareth try to kill Jesus; (7: 30) The Pharisees are said to have rejected the purposes of God; (11: 39-54) The Pharisees and Torah scholars are repeatedly condemned; (12: 1) Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy; (13: 14-17) The ruler of the synagogue is condemned as a hypocrite; (13: 35) The house of Jerusalem is to be forsaken; (22: 63-71) The chief priests and council condemn Jesus as deserving death; (23: 1-25) The people demand that Jesus, not Barabbas, be crucified



John (5: 16-18) The Jews are said to have persecuted Jesus and wanted to kill him; (5: 37b-47) It is said that God's word and God's love is not in the Jews; (7: 19-24) It is said that none of the Jews do (what is written in) the Torah; (7: 28) It is said that the Jews do not know the One who has sent Jesus; (8: 13-28) It is said that the Pharisees know neither Jesus nor the Father; (8: 37-59) The Jews are said to be descendants of their father, the Devil; (9: 13-41) The Pharisees and other Jews are condemned as guilty; (10: 8) The Jews are said to be thieves and robbers; (10: 10) The Jews are depicted as those who steal and kill and destroy; (10: 31-39) The Jews are said to have picked up stones to throw at Jesus; (11: 53) It is said that the Jews realized that they would have to kill Jesus; (11: 57) It is said that the chief priests and Pharisees wanted to seize Jesus; (12: 10) It is said that the chief priests planned to kill Lazarus and Jesus; (12: 36-43) It is said that most Jews loved the praise of men more than of God; (16: 2-4) (The Jews who) kill Jesus' disciples will think they are serving God; (18: 28-32) The Jews are said to have demanded that Pilate sentence Jesus to death; (18: 38-40) The Jews are said to be demanding that Jesus, not Barabbas, be crucified; (19: 4-16) The Jews are depicted as insisting to Pilate that Jesus be crucified



Acts (2: 23) Peter tells the men of Israel that they crucified Jesus; (2: 36) Again Peter tells the men of Israel that they crucified Jesus; (3: 13-15) Peter tells the men of Israel that they killed the originator of life; (4: 10) Again Peter tells the men of Israel that they killed Jesus; (5: 30) Peter tells the members of the Jewish council that they killed Jesus; (6: 11-14) Some Jews are said to have brought false accusations against Stephen; (7: 51-60) Stephen shown as condemning the Jews for betraying and killing Jesus; (9: 1-2) Paul is depicted as planning the arrest of disciples of Jesus; (9: 23-25) Jews are said to have plotted to kill Paul; (9: 29) Jewish Hellenists are also said to have tried to kill Paul; (12: 1-3) It is said that the Jews were pleased when Herod killed James; (12: 3-4) Herod is said to have seized Peter also to please the Jews; (12: 11) Peter is said to have realized that the Jews wanted to kill him; (13: 10-11) Paul is said to have condemned the Jew Elymas as a son of the Devil; (13: 28-29) It is said that the Jews had asked Pilate to crucify Jesus; (3: 39) It is said that Jews cannot be forgiven by means of the Torah; (13: 45-46) Jews are said to have spoken against Paul; (13: 50-51) Jews are said to have encouraged persecution of Paul and Barnabas; (14: 1-6) Many Jews opposing Paul and Barnabas and attempting to stone them; (14: 19-20) Jews are said to have stoned Paul, thinking that they had killed him; (17: 5-9) Jews are said to have incited a riot, looking for Paul and Silas; (17: 1) Jews are said to have stirred up turmoil against Paul; (18: 6) Paul said to have told the Jews, "Your blood will be on your own heads!" (18: 12-17) Jews are said to have brought accusations against Paul; (19: 13-19) Jewish exorcists are shown to be condemned; (21: 27-36) Jews are depicted as seizing Paul and as trying to kill him; (22: 4-5) Paul says that when he was a Jew he had persecuted Christians; (23: 2-5) Paul is said to have condemned the chief priest for striking Paul; (23: 12-22) Jews are said to have plotted to eat nothing until they kill Paul; (23: 27-30) Paul is said to have been nearly killed by the Jews; (24: 9) The Jews are said to have accused Paul of many crimes; (25: 2-5) Jews are said to have plotted to kill Paul; (25: 7-11) Jews are said to have continued to bring accusations against Paul; (25: 15-21) Jews are said to have spoken repeatedly against Paul; (25: 24) All Jews are said to have shouted that Paul must be killed; (26: 21) The Jews are said to have seized Paul and tried to kill him; (28: 25-28) Paul is said to have condemned the Jews for never understanding God



Paul (1 Thess. 2: 13-16) Condemning the Jews for killing Jesus and the prophets, and celebrating the suffering of the Jews now that the "wrath of God" has come upon them.

© – 3/25/2010 – by michael sympson, 15,500 words, all rights reserved