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To: RobbyS
RobbyS: "The Parthian example shows that religion and politics make a witch’s brew."

The question on the table is: who were the victims and who the aggressors.
I'm saying that's not even debatable -- after the second century Jewish Revolts against Rome, there are no serious examples of Jewish persecutions of Christians within the Empire.
And to judge by the vagueness of your Parthia example, very few outside it either.

The aggressors were Christians, whose populations doubled every century, and whose leadership exercised its political powers to suppress anyone and everyone -- be they heretics, pagans or Jews -- who didn't tow their line.

The irony, of course, is that unlike heretics and pagans, Jews were not targeted for extinction, thanks to St. Augustine of Hippo.
Instead, Jews were to be kept in a permanent state of subjection, so that they could serve as examples and warnings to Christians.

So after the second century Revolts, Jews were invariably the victims, and after 380 AD, Christians the aggressors.

245 posted on 06/12/2013 9:14:58 PM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
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To: BroJoeK

Pray tell how Christians were able to be the aggressors prior to their being made the established religion, at a time when they themselves, unlike the Jews, had almost no legal standing in the empire? And you are resisting the plain fact that Jews and Christians were rivals for the loyalty of young .Jews. The very similarity of the two faiths comes out in Justin’s Martyr’s dialogue. Jews had been hellenized for hundreds of years, since the time of Alexander, and the Pharisee movement was occasioned the need to go against this, to establish a clear tradition for the people to follow. Christianity offered an alternative, and one that that did not require one to cut oneself off as much as the rabbis and sages did. My guess is that after Constantine’s time, many Jews joined with many pagans to follow the path to power by joining the Church. The Church Fathers were not entirely happy about the swelling of numbers. Especially those who had suffered through hard times knew opportunists when they met them, or thought they did. Jealousy made many “old” Christians in 15th Century Spain, do their best to cut down converted Jews to size, by spreading lies.


246 posted on 06/12/2013 9:40:31 PM PDT by RobbyS
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