Anti-Judaism

From the earliest days of Christ's ministry until the final destruction of the Jewish nation in AD 135, tremendous tension existed between the followers of Christ and the Jews. This tension often surfaced in the form of violence and bloodshed. In the years immediately following Christ's ascension, Christians hoped to win the Jews to Christ. In Romans 10:1, for instance, Paul states, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved." Up to this time the violence experienced between these two groups was almost, if not entirely, directed from Jew towards the Christian. But by the latter part of the first century, Christians became more interested in suppressing Judaism than in converting Jews.

PERSECUTION BY THE JEWS

Jewish hostilities towards Christians seem to have known intense degrees of manifestation at certain times. In Dialogue With Trypho, for instance, Christian writer Justin Martyr says, "You do all in your power to force us to deny Christ."|0a| This provoked an understandable resistance and resentment on the part of the Christians. "We resist you and prefer to endure death," Justin replies to Trypho, "confident that God will give us all the blessings which He promised us through Christ."|0b| Evidently the persecution of the Christians resulted because they were regarded as traitors of the Jewish faith and political aspirations and because they outpaced the Jews in the conversion of the pagans. Justin, for instance, reports: "In the recent Jewish war, Barkokeba... ordered that only the Christians should be subjected to dreadful torments, unless they renounced and blasphemed Jesus Christ."|0c| The presence of such a profound resentment against the Jews, particularly felt in Rome, would naturally lead Christians like Justin to strike at a cardinal Jewish institution like the Sabbath and turn it, as F. Regan remarks, into "a mark to single them out for punishment they so well deserved for their infidelities."|0d|

PERSECUTION BY THE ROMANS

The Romans had seized control of the Jewish nation prior to the birth of Jesus. Rather than annihilating the Jews as a race, the Romans permitted them to maintain their national identity and continue their religious practices. However, ultimate control over national affairs remained in the hands of the Romans. By the middle of the first century the Jews had begun to stage revolts against the Romans in various cities. These revolts often involved extensive bloodshed and shockingly barbaric actions on the part of the Jews.|1| In AD 66-70, the Jews staged a major revolt at the cost of about 600,000 Jewish lives.|2| In AD 132-135 the Jews staged a second major uprising known as the Barkokeba war.|3| When Emperor Hadrian finally squelched the Barkokeba rebellion, he captured the city of Jerusalem, killing many of the cities residents and driving out all surviving Jews. Hadrian's complete overthrow of Jerusalem in AD 135 effectively ended the Jewish nation.

The Romans, who had previously been tolerant of Judaism, at this time reacted against them militarily, fiscally and literally.|4| During this time Christians not only suffered persecution from the Jews, but also from the Romans who tended to attack Christianity as if it was a Jewish sect.

ROMAN MILITARY MEASURES.

The statistic of bloodshed as provided by contemporary historians, even allowing for possible exaggerations, is a most impressive evidence of the Roman's angry vengeance upon the Jews. Tacitus (ca. AD 33-120), for instance, gives an estimate of 600,000 Jewish fatalities for the AD 70 war.|0e| In the Barkokeba war, according to Dio Cassius (ca. AD 150-235), 580,000 Jews were killed in action, besides the numberless who died of hunger and disease.|0f|

ROMAN POLITICAL AND FISCAL MEASURES.

Under Vespasian (AD 69-79) both the Sanhedrin and the office of the High Priest were abolished and worship at the temple site was forbidden. Hadrian went so far as to prohibit any Jew, under the threat of death, to enter Jerusalem, which had been renamed Aelia Capitolina. Moreover, he outlawed the practice of the Jewish religion and particularly the observance of the Sabbath.|0g| Vespasian also introduced a "fiscal tax," which was increased by Domitian (AD 81-96) and later by Hadrian (AD 117-138).|0h| This Jewish tax of a half-shekel, which previously had formed part of the upkeep of the temple of Jerusalem, was now excised for the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus even from those, according to Suetonius (ca, AD 70-122), "who without publicly acknowledging that faith yet lived as Jews."|0i|

Historical sources do not inform us of any specific action taken by the Christians at this time to avoid the payment of such a discriminatory tax. However we may suspect, as S.W. Baron remarks, that:

For this reason it became of great importance for the Christians to distance themselves from the Jews. While the Jews were considered rebels, Christians tried to portray themselves as loyal citizens not deserving punishment or suppression.

CONCLUSIONS

By the time of the utter collapse of the Jewish nation in AD 135, Christians were enduring tremendous anti-Judaistic pressures from two fronts. First, the Jews themselves persecuted the Christians as traitors to the faith. Second, Christians were in danger of being included in the Roman measures to suppress the Jewish rebellions. Thus on one hand, many Christians hated the Jews for persecuting them directly, while on the other hand, Christians needed to be separate from the Jews in the sight of the Romans in order to prevent Roman persecution. The Christians' hatred of the Jews and their need to separate themselves from Judaism undoubtedly lead to decided efforts to abandon Jewish practices. The Sabbath and circumcision stood out as the two marks that most clearly distinguished the Jews as a nation. The Christians' separation from Judaism could not have been complete without the abolition of these two practices. Anti-Judaistic sentiment placed an extreme pressure on early Christians to reject the seventh-day "Jewish" Sabbath.