WHAT
CHRISTIANS WERE TAUGHT
Edited
by Hugh Fogelman
Let’s
get the time line correct. Until the printing press was invented1 in the 15th
century, the Catholic Church forbade Christians to read the “official/canon”
Christian bible−their New Testament (NT). Until then, all Christians knew
of their bible was only what the clergy would tell them. The Christian pulpit
controlled the minds of their “flock.”
The
pulpit would read from the NT to their “captive” audience, all the Jew bashing
that the NT authors, editors and copyist wrote. Since the Church leaders said
it, the sheeple (Christians) thought it so; that it must be correct.
Week after week, month after month and year after year, these captive
listeners heard:
How Jesus suffered at the hands of
the Jews who wanted Jesus killed; and that
Not only did Jesus suffer from the
Jews, so did his “believers” (disciples).
All this suffering supposedly happened because Jews did not obey their
laws and were always forming angry mobs to stone to death anyone who they
disliked. This is found right in the New Testament; see the examples below:
“O Jerusalem,
“…all the people [Jews]
will stone us” (Luke 20:6)
“Then took they
[Jews] up stones to cast at him” (John
“Then the Jews
took up stones again to stone him.” (John 10:31)
“His disciples say
unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee” (John 11:8)
“…they feared the
people, lest they should have been stoned.” (Acts
“…cast him out of
the city, and stoned him…And they stoned Stephen” (Acts
“And there came
thither certain Jews …and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city”
(Act
“Of the Jews five times received
I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, (2 Corinthians
Since the advent of Christianity the clergy and other church leaders,
having been constantly taught the above and much more, were fueled by these
thoughts and would tell the people such as shown below:
(Pope) Clement I: (year 101 CE) blamed the Jews
for Nero’s persecution of the Christians.
(Saint) Justin Martyr: (year 116 CE) that: “The
Jews were behind all the persecutions of the Christians.”
Tertullian of Carthage: (150-225 CE) “Only those who
were baptized [Christians] and followed the prescribed course of penitence
could hope for release from punishment” and “Divine revelation, not reason, is
the source of all truth.”
Quintas Spetimus
Florens Tertullian: (160-230 CE) Latin Church Father who bruited that: “The Jews formed the breeding ground of all
anti-Christian actions.”
(Saint) Hippolytus: Roman Priest (170-236 CE)
“the Jews were receiving and would continue to receive God’s punishment for
having murdered Jesus.”
(Bishop) Cyprian: (200-258
CE) A pupil of Tertullian. “Outside the Christian Church, there is no
salvation.”
Origen: the
greatest theological scholar of the early church. ‘On
account of their (the Jews) unbelief and other insults which they heaped upon
Jesus, the Jews will not only suffer more than others in the judgment which is
believed to impend over the world, but have even already endured such
sufferings.
Eusebius of
(Saint) Hilary: (315-367 CE) “The Jews as a
people who had always persisted in iniquity [sin] and out of its abundance of
evil glorified in wickedness.”
(Saint) Gregory: (330-395 CE) got his material from the NT – “The Jews
slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God, men who
show contempt for the Law, foes of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith,
advocates of the Devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men whose minds
are in darkness, leaven of the Pharisees, assembly of demons, sinners, wicked
men, stoners, and haters of righteousness.”
(Saint) John Chrysostom: (344-407
CE) The strongest attacks on Jews and Judaism by the Church Fathers are found
in the homilies of Chrysostomin his
(Saint) Augustine of Hippo: (354-430 CE) Church Bishop and Father of the
Roman Catholic church who characterized the Jews as ‘willfully blind to Holy
Scripture, lacking in understanding, and haters of truth.’ Further, he
affirmed: ‘The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord
for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear
the guilt for the death of Jesus.’
St. Thomas Aquinas:
“It
would be licit to hold Jews, because of the crimes, in perpetual servitude, and therefore the princes may regard the possessions of Jews as belonging
to the State”.
(Saint) Ambrose: (340 CE) He defended a fellow Bishop for burning a
Synagogue at Callinicum and asked: “Who cares if a
synagogue -- a home of unbelief, a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly,
which God himself has condemned -- is burned?”
(Pope) Valentinian
III: “I
do not wish Christians to serve such persons, lest by their office they find
occasion to corrupt the venerable Christian’s faith.”
(Emperor) Justinian: (527-564 CE) Author of The Justinian Code which negated civil rights for Jews
including loss of Synagogue, loss of reading the Hebrew Bible, loss of social
gatherings, and loss of holiday celebration [Passover].
(Pope) Gregory VII: He was the Pope (from 1073-1085 CE) who forbade Jews to have
power over Christians and forbade them to hold office.
(Saint) Bernard of Clairvaux: Eleventh Century medieval saint who was partially
responsible for the Crusades that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews.
(Pope) Innocent III: In 1205 CE he announced: “God is not displeased, but,
rather, finds it acceptable that the Jewish dispersion shall live under
Catholic kings and Christian priests. Because of the Jews intolerable sin I
will be your [Jews] Lord since imperialist authority opposed everlasting
servitude on the Jews from ancient times as punishment for the Christ-killing.”
(Pope) Gregory IX: Italian Cardinal (1170-1241 CE) who, in 1233, announced
to the Dominican order that their main goal was to “convert Jews to
Christianity.”
(Pope) Sixtus IV: Italian Pope (1414-1485 CE) who encouraged and approved
of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s (
(Pope) Clement VIII: Italian Pope (1536-1605 CE) who professed that: “All the
world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit. They
have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty, especially the
farmers, working class people and the very poor.”
(Pope) Paul IV: His “Cum Nimis Absurdim” (1555 CE) was a powerful condemnation of “Jewish
usury.” It embodies a legal code to curb “Jewish power”.
(Pope) Pius V: Counter-Reformation Cardinal
(1504-1572 CE) who disclosed his views on Jews in ‘Hebraeorum
Gens’ (1569) when all Jews were expelled from the Papal States.
(Pope) Gregory XIII:
He was the Pope from 1572-1585 CE who declared that the Jews‘ continue to plot
horrible crimes against Christians with daily increasing audacity.’
This
is what uneducated ChristianS heard from their pulpit
for over a thousand years. These horrible, evil thoughts about Jews were
imbedded into their brains. Then the printing press was born and thousands of
Christian bibles were produced, and the Christians could now read for
themselves.
Keep
in mind, with the seed of anti-Semitism subliminally implanted in their mind,
whenever Christians read their bible, they would read what they already knew
from the pulpit―just how evil the Jews were; the children from the Devil.
The Christian mind-set was formed. Their written bible only confirmed what the
pulpit had been telling them.
Then
Martin Luther, the founding father of Protestantism wrote pamphlets on how
to get rid of those “damn Jews” after finding out that he could not convert
them, telling Christians to “burn their (the Jews) synagogues; destroy their
homes; and their rabbi’s must be
forbidden under threat of death to teach.” For complete details go to: MARTIN
LUTHER .
Then Hitler came along! The seeds of hate where already
planted. All Hitler had to do was to water it. Hitler’s job was made easier by
the New Testament, the book of CHRISTIAN LOVE.
"Men never
commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions." -Blaise
Pascal (1623-1662)
Footnote:
1. Johannes Gutenberg invented the
printing press in 1450 C. E.