From Roman to Third Reich: anti-Semitism has long history

The Holocaust has its roots in Roman times, according to Dutch professor Leonard Rutgers, who published a book recently on how the Jewish identity was shaped in Christian minds.

In 388 AD a Christian mob led by a local bishop destroyed the synagogue of Callinicum, a Greco-Roman city in northern Syria. The attack angered emperor Theodosius I, who had declared Christianity the religion of the Roman state just eight years earlier. As the Jewish community enjoyed a protected status under Roman laws, he ordered the synagogue be rebuilt be rebuilt at bishop’s expense. This triggered Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, to write the emperor a letter defending the obliteration of the Jewish temple. What could possibly be wrong with destroying a “house of betrayal and godlessness” where Christ’s name was sullied on a daily basis, Ambrose asked.

Since the second century, Christian leaders had been publishing texts denouncing “the synagogue”, a metaphor for all the followers of Judaism in the Roman empire. While American historians have dismissed these attacks as 'ideological constructions,' Leonard Rutgers, a professor of Late Antiquity at the University of Utrecht specialised in religion, recently published a book disputing this rosy perspective. His book, Making Myths – Jews in early Christian identity formation, describes how the verbal violence directed at the Jewish population by the church leaders became physical in the fourth century.

It was during the Late Antiquity (4th-6th century AD) that Christianity became the dominant religion in both the western and eastern parts of the Roman empire.”Monotheistic religions tend to exclude others after they assume a position of power,” Rutgers said in an interview with NRC Handelsblad. Christian sects that fell out of favour could be easily denounced as heretics, but Judaism posed a more complex problem, Rutgers explained. “Since Christianity’s roots are themselves Jewish.”

A challenge to Christian self-image

Christians were still prosecuted under emperor Diocletian (303-306), but Constantine I lifted the ban on Christianity in 313 and it became the state religion by 380. “The archaeological records proves that Jewish communities in the empire were doing very well at the time,” Rutgers said. “Synagogues were constructed in prominent places, challenging Christian self-esteem. Christians thought of themselves as the true Israel, but looking out the window they were confronted with a synagogue. Drawing on scriptures from both the Old and the New Testament they started calling ‘the synagogue’ every bad name they could think of.”

The word synagogue gained new meaning in patristic writings. While originally only denoting a religious meeting place and its congregants it became a metaphor for “the people of Israel” and Judaism in general. A metaphor which mostly existed to be heckled and derided.

The sermons of John Chrysostom (347-407) were particularly infamous this respect. His Greek surname means “golden mouth”, but he was notorious for his denouncements of the synagogue as a “theatre of the effeminate”, “a garbage belt for vagabonds” and “a house of demons and place of idolatry”.

While the eloquence of anti-Jewish rhetoric varied, it drew on a number of fixed tenets: Jews were said to curse Christians during their services and say anti-Christians prayers. The historically inaccurate claim that synagogues had been hotbeds of Christian prosecution was also often cited. Anti-Jewish preachers often called on the gospel of Matthew, which states Jesus sent his apostles out “like sheep among wolves” and Marc, which predicts the apostles “shall be beaten” in “the synagogues”.

These sermons directed at “the synagogue” always built up to a predictable climax: the crucifixion of Jesus – the execution of the Saviour, which was squarely blamed on the Jews.

The Holocaust has its roots in Roman times, according to Dutch professor Leonard Rutgers, who published a book recently on how the Jewish identity was shaped in Christian minds.

Sticks and stones

According to Rutgers, the name-calling escalated into physical aggression over time. “Synagogues were first attacked by the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth. Roman legislation offers evidence of this. Around that time the emperor started issuing edicts protecting synagogues in every corner of the empire. This wouldn’t have been necessary if no real threat existed. The archaeological record offers further evidence,” Rutgers said. “Once synagogues were destroyed, Christians often constructed churches over their ruins, thus affirming their newfound religious and social power.”

Rutgers believes the murder of Jews during the crusades, their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century, the pogroms of Eastern Europe and the Holocaust of the 20th century can all be seen as the culmination of a gradual development which began in the fourth century. Rutgers distances himself from the common distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, the former being based on racist grounds while the latter is religiously motivated. According to Rutgers, anti-Semitism was only made possible by the existence of anti-Judaism. “By the time anti-Judaism became racially motivated, it was able to draw on a collective subconscious mindset which had long therefore been institutionalised by the church. Large segments of the population already believed everything Jewish was bad, and the pseudoscientific anti-Semitic theories made use of that sentiment,” Rutgers said.