Interestingly, Jordan and I were just talking about this very same subject. Christians should get on their knees and thank the Jews for giving them their martyr. That is, if the Jews really had a big part in killing him. I also wonder what Jesus was really like. Wasn't the bible written a couple of hundred years after his death? You wonder if he really was starting his own religion and if he ever did tell people he was the son of God. Maybe, just maybe, his followers created this "son of God" story after his death. Maybe he was only challenging the status quo of the Jewish religion with no intention of starting a seperate religion. something to think about. Of course, I've forgotten everything I've ever learned about Christianity. All of this could be written down somewhere. I'm curious to know.

Normal mainstream Christians don't blame the Jews for anything.

As for the fundie nutheads, I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what their "reasoning" is. I think this brand of Jew-hating doesn't happen much anymore... it was more of a Middle Ages-type thing. Martin Luther, for instance, was a rabid anti-Semite. I'd love to understand why the Christians of old felt this way, too. There's this one line in the Bible (not sure if Gibson ended up deleting it from the movie or not) where after the crucifixion, a Jewish high priest says that the Jews are now cursed because Christ's blood is on their hands. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Here is something for the enjoyment of all: The Lego Old Testament.

http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/er_and_onan/gn38_01.html

I should have said that I know regular Christians don't think this. I'm pretty sure this brand of Jew-hating does still happen, though. I just read Kirk Douglas's autobiography, and he talks about getting called a Christ-killer when he was a kid. I bet it's been said more recently than that too. Antisemitism in general comes from the idea that Jews killed Christ. Here's a Straight Dope article about the history of the idea: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mjesuskill.html.

The reason that certain Christians blame the Jews for the death of Christ has nothing to do with the Bible, and everything to do with the bare fact that some people are just pig-headed, ignorant bigots. There is no difference for the reasons that some Christians pick on Jews than the reasons some whites hate blacks and some men hate women, etc.

I don't have all the specific facts lying at my fingertips at the moment, but it goes back to Roman times. The Jews revolted against the Romans, and they got scattered because of it. They became circumstantially nomadic, and eventually settled all over Europe and Africa, and the Arabs took over their homeland after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Somewhere along the way two things happened. (Well, more than that, but I am not writing a book on this!) 1. Jews were living in a medieval Europe that did not allow Christians to charge other Christians interest, so they ended up taking advantage of this. I don't mean that in a bad way! They were just good businessmen, and Christians could use them for financial reasons, so they both gained from it. Problem is that some people would become jealous, and their "foreign" status made them easy targets for bigotry flamed by jealousy.

2. At some point, some dudes who were bigoted assholes, and just so happened to be prominent religious scholars, wrote some crap about Jews being inferior and Christ-killers, and human nature took over from there. They were accused of poisoning the wells and spreading anti-Christian messages around, and in the 13th century England and France expelled them, followed by most of the rest of Europe in the next 200 years.

This is the over-over-simplified version of it. But it is related to my dissertation, so I know a lot about it. I am a little mad at myself that I could not throw you a name or two for some medieval anti-semitic scholarly writings, but I am a little rusty and at work.

The end point is this: ultimately Christianity has nothing to do with anti-semitism. Bigoted idiots are the problem. Unfortunately, some Christians are bigoted idiots. What a shame.

I never understood the whole "Christ-killer" thing, because Jesus was a Jew too. I guess the anti-semites forget about that part on purpose.

One other thing...

I worry about the people concerned with the possibility of anti-Semitism flaring up as a result of Gibson's movie. It may well be that the movie itself would not have flared anything up at all, but that their big hooplah over the whole thing WILL. For all their attempts to get rid of the movie, they have all but ensured that all the wrong people are going to watch it, and a lot of them.

I am NOT saying these people are wrong. I am saying they may have made the problem worse in their efforts to remedy the situation.

Very interesting, Shane.

Perhaps some of the hatred is due to the fact that Jews plain-old don't believe Jesus is the Messiah! (They also probably didn't appreciate the groups of new Christians roaming the countryside trying to mess with Judaism. I doubt Christians today would, either.)

Just to make it clear, when I say that some Christians are bigoted idiots, I don't mean to infer that only Christians are bigoted idiots. There are Jewish and Islamic and atheist bigoted idiots out there, too. ; -)

But your point, Amy, is also a spot-on factor.

St. Augustine was a big "Christ-killer" spreader.

Yup, and St. Chrysostom and Martin Luther, too.

True, but by the time Martin Luther rolled around, it was pretty much a common and accepted practice. By then most of Europe had already expelled them or forced them to "convert." Or killed them. Whatever was easier.

But the same thing more or less happened throughout history in the Islamic world, too. So it wasn't just a Christian thing. It just doesn't pay to be a minority group.

Christianity was unique in that it was on of the first, if not the first religion to be universal at the outset. It didn't apply only to one group, like Judaism, it claimed to be applicable to the entire population of the world.

Islam wasn't a universal religion at first. It was originally meant to be a trasmission to the Arabs alone. However, when the Persians started converting to Islam in spite of the Arabs trying to "keep it in the family" everything changed. From that point on, Islam grew into a universal religion, like Christianity.

However, ever since Mohammed, Christians and Jews were considered somewhat kindred to Muslims, in that they all shared a spiritual link to Abraham and are known as "People of the Book." At some point, I don't remember when, Muslim scholars realized that even though Christains were "People of the Book," their theology was fundamentally incompatible with Islam's primary commandment. "There is no god but Allah" is always interpretted in the way that Allah has no aspect other than Himself. The Holy Trinity of the Christians professes that God's image is trinary. Muslims realized that this meant that Christians were not a truly monotheistic religion, and were thus not worthy of being peers with Islam.

The Jewish-Muslim conflict is more subtle than this, and I would hate to try to pare it down to a single comment post, but if anyone wants to borrow my book "A Consise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict," I would heartily recommend it.

Not to be critical of your book, but sometimes books like that don't look at the whole story. They have a point they are trying to make, and take what they need to make that point.

Not that what you are saying isn't generally accurate, but SOME Muslims and Christians DO think they are compatible. Unfortunately, they are not very loud people.

No, the book can't look at the whole picture, but I think it does a good job of being impartial.

Of course what I'm saying is general. There billions of individuals that make up those religions, but there is also "accepted doctrine," like Christianity's Nicene Creed, which is what orthodox "interpretation" is based on.

However, even if individuals don't have faith in the doctrine as written, their attitudes are informed by it or in reaction to it.

What about Mel Gibson's dad, who claims the Holocaust didn't happen?

But then what about all those fundies who support Israel because they think for the Rapture to come the Jews have to be in the Holy Land?

Just disconnected thoughts.

Mel Gibson's dad? That IS pretty disconnected! Well, not totally. He is a nut. My favorite nut is the hazel nut. Hazel nut coffee is pretty good, but I don't drink a lot of coffee. Therefore, it can be logically reasoned, the Holocaust did, indeed, happen. : -P

Speaking of Mel and the anti-Semitism thing, Roger Ebert of all people made an interesting and valid point:

"The libel that the Jews "killed Christ" involves a willful misreading of testament and teaching: Jesus was made man and came to Earth in order to suffer and die in reparation for our sins. No race, no man, no priest, no governor, no executioner killed Jesus; he died by God's will to fulfill his purpose, and with our sins we all killed him. That some Christian churches have historically been guilty of the sin of anti-Semitism is undeniable, but in committing it they violated their own beliefs."

That's exactly what I was saying. Jesus didn't come down to hit his head on a rock for our sins. People killed him.

I wonder if in early drafts of the Bible, God did in fact send Jesus down to trip on a chicken and hit his head on a sharp rock for our sins. Then in the peer-review process, they decided to change it. I guess the peer-review process would break down if you were God the Almighty and had no peers, though. I'll shut up now.

Yeah, Mike. Shut the hell up. If anyone wanted to hear YOUR opinion, they wouldn't come HERE. : -P