| Interestingly, we just discussed this in my "Banality of Evil" course.
In Rome, Catholics sought to gain credibility as a legal religion. (The Roman Empire was rather tolerant of religions, but required that one obtain permission first.) Catholics thus sought to try to shift the blame for killing Jesus onto the Jews -- if they said "The Romans killed our God!," it would not be a very effective way of gaining favor with the Romans. (Of course it makes absolutely no sense to blame it on the Jews, seeing as Jesus himself wa Jewish.) Biblical scriptures blamed the Jews, and it stuck, eventually being elevated.
It was really interesting to learn about this, actually -- I knew that the Jews were disliked around the time of the Holocaust in part because of their prosperity. But this, surprisingly, was also the case around Jesus' time. Combined with the "You killed our God!" claims of Catholics, they became rather unpopular as Christianity eventually grew.
(I feel compelled to note that I'm not one of the crazies who actually believes that that we should hate Jews for killing Jesus, just explaining history!) |