Jews, the Church, and the History of the World

It's funny that as I tuned in to that show, I thought to myself, "I wonder how they are going to make us Christians look bad." I knew it was coming (it always does). And I was right. The more one learns about real history and about the prevalent anti-Christian, Marxist attitudes and secular premises of our present-day culture, the more one can place sure bets that, when history is presented, it will be slanted so that Christians and Western culture appear as bad, oppressive, "medieval" (used, stupidly, as an insult), backwards, reactionary, evil, colonialist, aggressive, unenlightened, persecuting, and warlike. Jewish culture, on the other hand, is ever-innocent, good, wise, persecuted and suffering. Other nations and peoples are as good or bad as the political interests of the moneyed class calls for that day. One example is the Muslim world: before the World Trade Center attacks of 9-11, the Crusades were presented as an example of Christian "aggression" and "colonialism" against the Muslims, who are more enlightened (a Muslim invented the number 0 after all ²) and -- well, just wonderfully, exotically Third World. After the attacks, when it came time to come up with excuses for attacking Iraq (a country that, while led by a very evil man, had nothing to do with the attacks on America), newspaper articles began to appear with headlines like "A Second Look at the Crusades" and which accurately (finally) described the Crusades as defensive wars on the part of the Christian West.

But let's start at the beginning and see how our public school, PBS version of history is designed to support a culturally Marxist-Talmudist view of the world and which takes from Anglo-Protestant, anti-Catholic, anti-Spain propaganda as it sees fit.

Beginnings

In the first section, I explained the fact that modern Judaism is not the Old Testament religion but is, instead, rabbinic Pharisaism -- a religion which consists of: verbally honoring Torah, but seeing Moses' Books through the lenses of: the Talmud; Kabbalah and other magical practices and beliefs acquired before and during the Babylonian Captivity; and rabbinical authority (not priestly authority, as in the Old Testament). The rabbinical view of history is that the "Jews" were chosen, as a biological race and because of their genetic superiority, by God to bring about an earthly Jewish Kingdom in which Gentiles follow the Noahide laws and are subject to rabbinical authority. Jesus, Whom they consider a blasphemous heretic sorcerer, came along, the Temple fell, many Jews were "led astray" by the followers of Jesus, and His Church has been persecuting the Jews ever since, without cease, for no reason, and never in response to Jewish behaviors and attitudes.

A typical Protestant view is that Messiah came, but His Church was a non-hierarchical entity with no priesthood, no Sacraments, no authority but the Bible (which, apparently, fell out of Heaven into the lap of Tyndale in the Middle Ages). This Church became corrupted when Constantine's Edict started a "State religion" (a false notion: Constantine's Edict of Milan only stopped the persecution of Christians -- and was followed by the reign of the Christian-hating Julian the Apostate). Only thereafter did the papacy develop, they say, and the State Church grew increasingly more corrupt and paganized, slaughtering the "true Christians" (i.e., the Sola Scriptura-Sola Fide Christians who, they claim, have always existed alongside the monster Catholic Church after She sprang into being in the time of Constantine) by the thousands/millions/billions. During the Protestant "Reformation," the Sola Scriptura Christians burst forth on the scene, shaking off the yoke of "popish" Rome, taking the "Church" back to its "true" roots and then inspiring the world on to enlightenment, freedom, democracy, etc. Of course, during all this time, the Catholic Church mistreated the innocent Jews, and for no other reason than the Church's demonic cruelty and desire for unbridled power. Since the rise of dispensationalist theology, the Church is seen as not understanding that the Jews are God's Chosen People who must have political control of Palestine so that Messiah can return after rapturing up the "Bible Christians" and letting the Jews have an earthly kingdom until they, too, are finally converted and "all Israel" is saved -- "Israel" being a word they use to refer to genetic Jews and not God's people of any race, the Church.

(Note: nowadays, you might hear presented the idea that there was a "James" or "Paul" True Church that was opposed to the "Peter" Church, the latter of which was the "anti-Jew" Church which later became the State Church of Constantine. This is becoming a typically Jewish view of Christian history, so as to buttress up the Dispensationalist Zionists against the Catholics. A typically Protestant version is that the "Church of Peter" was the Jewish-Law-loving Church in opposition to the Faith Alone Church of Paul, and which became the Pagan Church of Constantine -- but now, after the rise of Dispensationalist theology, it was also, somehow, anti-Jew, too, in spite of its being a Law-loving pseudo-Church. And some people seem to hold all of these ideas at the same time. Somehow. Any view of history will do as long as it's not Catholic. I do wish the anti-Catholics would pick a story and stick to it! And do they not notice that it is the Catholic Church that put together the Bible which includes the Epistles of Peter and Paul and James? This pitting of Paul against Peter, and James against Peter -- everyone against Peter -- is sickening.)

At any rate, that the Catholic Church, with its hierarchy (including the papacy) and Sacraments, was there from the beginning, in the New Testament, is easily seen by reading the writings of the earliest Christians. ``Where the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be; even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' wrote Ignatius of Antioch in the 1st c., appointed to his See by Peter himself. The 1st c. letters of Clement (the 4th Pope after Peter, Linus, and Anacletus) lays out apostolic succession; the writings of Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Cyril of Jerusalem, etc. can be read by any Protestant if he so desires, and refute any notion of the Church and Her Sacraments not existing until Constantine or Charlemagne or whoever is deemed this week's "real power behind the Catholic Church." (see the Apologetics section of this site for more information).

But what were the Jews doing during these early years? Though it's become unfashionable (and that is a good word for it) and dangerous to say so, the Jews were persecuting Christians from the get-go and at every chance they had. From Herod, an Idumean Jew, who tried to kill the Messiah when He was an Infant, to St. Paul's pre-conversion murdering of Christians, to the plots on the life of Lazarus, to the murders of St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen the Deacon, to the later attempts on the convert Paul's life, to the slaughter of Chrisians during the Bar Kocha Rebellion (A.D. 132-135) against the Romans, to the likelihood of the Jewish Poppaea instigating her (possibly Jewish convert) husband Nero's massacres of Christians, the Church has been hated, and often persecuted, by Jews.

It has become even less fashionable to point out the obvious: Jews are the ones who wanted Christ dead. I know that it's politically correct to bash the Romans on this account, but the Romans had no issue with Jesus and "only" acted as instruments to carry out the Jews' wishes (which is culpability and cowardice enough, to be sure). The Jews, however, did want Christ dead, and used Roman power to make it happen. The Russians didn't want it, the Poles didn't want it, the Ugandans didn't want it, Pilate washed his hands of the matter: the Jews wanted it.

Note, though, please, how many Jews here came to know the Messiah, Who Himself was genetically (partly) Semitic and Who fulfilled the Old Testament promises. The point, which I reiterate here, is that "race" and "ethnicity" are not the issue; the issue is a matter of ideology, faith, belief, and acts of the will. Peter, Paul, Matthew, etc. -- most of the Apostles -- were Hebrew followers of the Old Testament religion who came to know that the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ and who gave up their lives defending that belief.

In addition, while it is obvious historical fact that, proximately, it was Palestinian Jews who used Roman power to kill the Messiah, it is also true -- and has been taught as true since the Church's beginning -- that we are all responsible. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, issued by Pope St. Pius V (A.D. 1566-1572), taught:

In other words, Palestinian Jews were historically, proximately responsible for Christ's Passion and death, just as were those Romans who allowed themselves to be cowed by them, but culpability for His death lies in us all -- the more so with Christians who know Him and believe Him, but still offend Him. While the post-Temple Jewish religion can be described as a "Deicide religion" in that it glories in Deicide when exulting in the murder of Jesus, "the Jews" cannot be decribed as "Christ-killers" in any literal sense. This isn't some new Vatican II teaching that changed the "anti-semitic traditional teaching of the Church" as anti-Catholics want you to believe so they can shame the Church into submission; it is what the Church has always taught, and the only reasons I even bring it up are our inability nowadays to speak of historical fact as revealed by the Gospels, the willingness of too many people to blame everyone -- anyone -- but "the Jews" (why it's OK to diss "the Romans" but not "the Jews" is beyond me as a daughter of Rome), and the stupid, nerve-wracking idea that the Church "used to be anti-semitic," but now, "since Vatican II," the Church has changed Her teachings.

That last is only the world's way of dismissing traditional -- i.e, true -- Catholic teaching altogether and of making the Church seem wishy-washy, anything but divine, and, above all, malleable ("You've 'changed' your teachings on the Jews, why not change your attitudes toward sex and priestly celibacy and the 'ordination' of women?") It's a way of shaming the Church's History and stealing Her rich heritage from those who love Her. And it's also a way of propping up "the spirit of Vatican II," the most destructive force that has ever afflicted Holy Mother Church and which has rendered the institutional Church impotent and sterile, and has almost destroyed the Roman Rite. All one has to do to see the "disconnect" between the what the "the spirit" of this Council really did and how the Modernists want you to perceive it is to study the horrific effects of the interpretations of Vatican II -- and then read how Jews, neo-Catholics, and the media speak of the "great Council" while they dismiss the "pre-Vatican II Church" as barbarous and unenlightened.

At any rate, it's rather paradoxical, this clamor on the part of Jews to absolve "the Jews" of Deicide (note the hysteria in response to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"), especially when in their "holy" books and by the pens of their "sages," they openly and proudly state that Jews did kill Jesus. Note what Maimonides, who is considered by Jews to be "The Second Moses," wrote in his "Letter to Yemen":

And see the Toledoth Yeshu (onsite). Interestingly, an article appeared on the website of the American Jewish Committee that affirmed what is being said here about what Jewish writings themselves say about the death of Jesus. That article disappeared from the site within days (oops! how'd this get published?), but you may read the article here on-site. Jews are taught to hate Jesus so deeply that many refuse to use the plus sign (+) in math; instead, they leave off either the top or the bottom of the vertical line so as to not make a Cross shape:

To continue with the topic: the errors of the Pharisaic rabbis, their legalistic, "anti-goy" elitism, grew even greater after the Temple fell and the only priests left were New Covenant priests -- i.e., Catholic (and, arguably, Orthodox) priests. Their desires for a restored Jerusalem and a worldly Messiah-King were not shared by the Christians, ethnically Hebrew or not, whose Messiah told them to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"; this Christian anti-Zionism only fueled the Pharisees' hatred for the Christians.

Around A.D. 100, the Pharisees gathered to solidify their power and authority. They threw out the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, used by the Palestinian Jews for hundreds of years and cherished by the Apostles, because this version, which contains the Deuterocanonical Books (referred to as the "Apocrypha" by Protestants), was used by the Christians to proselytize Jews due to its more specific language used to convey the Messianic prophecies. There arose, too, the Birkat ha-Minim -- a part of the Amida prayer which consists of a curse against Christians and asking God to destroy us. This Amida prayer with its curse against Christians has been prayed by religious Jews three times a day for almost two millennia. In A.D. 125, rounding all this out in a way that would be called "racist" if uttered by a Christian (or "notoriously and virulently antisemitic" if uttered against Jews), Rabbi Simeon Ben Johai -- one of the most respected rabbis, a man who is quoted over 700 times in the Talmud -- formally declared that non-Jews are not even human.

Jewish pogroms against Christians took place not only in Palestine (note the famous Bar Kochba Rebellion of A.D. 135), but in Caesarea, Scytpolis, Yemen, Antioch -- a town through which Jews dragged the body of Patriarch Anastasius in A.D. 608, after they threw his genitals in his face and disembowelled him -- and any other place they could get away with it.

When reading the typical history book talking about the "repressiveness" of the Church, or hearing a typical dispensationalist Protestant sermon reviling the great Saints like John Chrysostom who spoke against the errors of Pharisaic Judaism (just as Jesus did!), you won't hear a word about the above -- or how Jews agitated anti-Christian animosity among Kings and Emperors, resulting in the slaughter of true Israel, the Church. You won't read this, from Sozomen's (c. A.D. 375-c. 447) "Ecclesiastical History," Book II, Chapter IX:

You won't hear how Jews allied themselves with the Christian-born but later professing pagan Julian the Apostate, Emperor of Rome between A.D. 361 and 363 and fourth successor of Constantine, who oppressed Christians even as he tried to help Jews rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, a project that ended when mysterious balls of fires emanated from the ground (and sky, depending on the account) at the site, burning the workers to death, and an earthquake struck. (For fascinating accounts from primary sources as to what happened when the Jews tried to rebuild the Temple, see this page, onsite).

You won't hear how the Jews allied themselves with the Persians in attacking Palestine in A.D. 614 -- and how they reveled in slaughtering the Christians there and razing their churches, including the one built over Christ's Tomb. According to Monk Strategius of Mar Saba (Antiochus Strategos), Jews purchased Christian slaves from the Persians for the sole purpose of slaughtering them "just as one might buy cattle to slaughter." ³

You won't hear how Jews rose to high levels in medieval Spanish society by falsely claiming to have converted to the Holy Faith, how many became priests, rose to prominence in the Church, and then proceeded to Judaize that country's Catholics. You won't hear how these false converts also cooperated with Muslims to overtake that country during the Muslim aggressions (oh, so that's why that nasty Catholic Queen Isabella kicked them out in 1492!) These facts are the reasons for the Spanish Inquisition, which only had power over self-professed Catholics.⁴

You won't hear that on Yom Kippur, Jews pray the Kol Nidre, a prayer that releases them, in advance, of all vows they will make in the upcoming year, a prayer which allowed them to engage in fraudulent business practices against "Gentiles" (not other Jews) while still remaining faithful to Judaism.

You won't hear how Jewish group behaviors can be self-focused to the detriment of those around them. E.g., from an article⁵ that touches on the bad relations between Black and Jewish people in New York City:

Indeed, the whole story of Hasidic community growth and its impact on some established neighborhoods has been pretty much ignored by the mainstream press. Hasidic activities in Brooklyn, in Jersey City, in New York ex-urb Bloomingburg and Lakewood and Toms River, New Jersey are deplorable, and attempts by local communities to fight back are regularly met with claims that the locals are anti-Semites. Hasidim routinely register their homes as places of worship to avoid property taxes, making other local residents pay for police and fire services as well as maintenance of infrastructure. When sufficient Hasidim become residents to get elected to the public school board, they divert the funding of state provided education to support their own private schools. As Hasidim get married within their community and do not register with the state, the women routinely file as single mothers to get public childcare subsidy checks. The men often do not work at all so they can study the Talmud so they are able to engage in wholesale welfare fraud, claiming poverty, to get food stamps, social security, and other money services.

Hasidim also do not consider the judicial system applicable to themselves. They have private courts that have served to hide criminals including even child molesters in their community. Once they achieve a certain presence in a town or city neighborhood, they buy up buildings and force long-term residents out. They ignore building codes and zoning to bring in co-religionists with their large families, and, once established, they create enclaves that are hostile to outsiders.

And you most certainly won't hear about usury -- the other true source of "anti-semitism" in Christian lands. Scroll through the links at the index page for this sub-section to learn about this.

Footnotes:
1 "He [God] sent against them [Israel] Nero the Caesar. As Nero was coming he shot an arrow towards the east, and it fell in Jerusalem. He then shot one towards the west, and it again fell in Jerusalem. He shot toward all four points of the compass, and each time it fell in Jerusalem. He said to a certain boy, 'Repeat to me the last verse of Scripture that you have learned.' He said, ' I will wreak My vengeance on Edom through My people Israel.' Nero said, 'The Kadosh Barukh Hu [the Holy One] desires to lay waste His Temple and to lay the blame on me. So he ran away and converted to Judaism, and Rabbi Meir was descended from him.'" [Gittin 56a]

² I've read various accounts of the history of zero, some stating that it was a Babylonian concept that evolved, others stating that it was invented by an Indian mathematician, others saying what is obvious: that its History is obscure. A web visitor reminded me that the Mayans, too, had zero, so why it is attributed with firmness to "Muslims" in our High School textbooks is beyond me.

³ Schafer, Peter. The History of the Jews in Antiquity: The Jews of Palestine from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Harwood Academic Publishing, Australia, Austria, Luxemberg, United States, 1995. Cited at http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/03jech.htm. F. Conybeare's translation of Monk Stratego's account, found in "Antiochus Strategos' Account of the Sack of Jerusalem (614)," English Historical Review 25 [1910], p 506-508. Reprinted in Deno Geanokoplos, Byzantium, (Chicago: 1984), 334-335, 266-67 reads:

⁴ The Inquisition didn't touch a single Jew who professed Judaism. Not a one. And in contrast to what the widely accepted, Protestant "Black Legend" would have you believe, the Inquistion's Courts were far superior to secular Courts of the day, so much so that many accused intentionally blasphemed in order to be tried in the Church's Courts rather than those run by the State. The execution rate of the Spanish Inquisition was on par with that of modern day Texas, i.e., between 4 and 14 per year during the 356 years it lasted, depending on whether you accept the lower or higher estimates given by modern historians. It most certainly in no way ended in the deaths of "hundreds of thousands" or "millions" as believers in the Black Legend would have you believe.

Part III The Historical Memory Hole

Beginnings

Part III
The Historical Memory Hole