Reddit mentions of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History

There’s Constantine’s Sword. It was written by an ex priest who is a well known critic of the Catholic Church, though, so take it with a grain of salt- the author is quite open and honest about having an agenda.

> Jews never had to worry about that one in particular because Jews don't proselytize. It's against the Jewish teachings to do so.

While that has certainly been the case for much of its history, Judaism did become a proselytizing, and at times forced conversion religion from the time of the Maccabees about 165 BC to around 800-1000 BC AD when the Khazars converted en mass. As a result Jews went from a fairly small Judea, Samaria and Galilee based sect to being 10% of the Roman Empire's population by 300 AD ^1.

1: The Invention of the Jewish People, by Shlomo Sand

& James Carroll, 'Constantine's Sword'

Why, on their own premises, would they consider a sense of Jewish history useful? Jews are serving a purely instrumental purpose: by their actions in the present, to create the conditions for the Second Coming. On this basis, what Jews have done in the past is presumably irrelevant (except, of course, for their part in the biblical narrative):

Ed Kilgore (among the few progressive writers who take religion seriously) explained this outlook recently in discussing the specific type of philosemitism that animates the evangelicals in Trump's base:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/when-trump-calls-jews-disloyal-hes-talking-to-evangelicals.html

Kilgore explained it this way (which I'm quoting at length to make the details clear):

"So why do Trump’s ruminations about Jews and Israel resonate so much with conservative Evangelicals? Strictly speaking, of course, they are largely of the opinion that Jews are going to burn in hell for all eternity if they don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. But they also tend to view Jews through the prism of their own self-conception as the Chosen People of God — sort of the new, complete model for which Jews were a rough cut. Theologically, this is called “supersessionism,” the belief that a New Covenant God made with believers through Christ has replaced his Old Covenant with the Hebrews. It’s not an exclusive Evangelical belief; Catholic James Carroll wrote an entire book about it as the ultimate source of Christian anti-Semitism throughout the ages. But it shows no sign of fading among Evangelicals, who generally view the Hebrew scriptures as their own inheritance, and themselves as new, perfected Jews.

"If you’ve grown up Evangelical, saturated in the Old as well as the New Testaments, the Jews are a mirror image of yourself, and Israel (or as it is more often referred to in these circles, the Holy Land, a tourist destination even more common for them than Rome is for Catholics) is your deeply familiar spiritual homeland. There is a long-standing strain of Evangelical thinking called Christian Zionism, based on the idea that the reestablishment of a Jewish State in Palestine is an important part of God’s plan for redemption of the world. For many, this idea is more controversially associated with the premillennial prophetic belief, rooted in a literal understanding of the New Testament, that Israeli Jews will go to war with their heathen neighbors in a literally apocalyptic battle (specifically, at a place called Armageddon) that will trigger the final judgment, the Second Coming of Jesus, and the end of the world (at which point, some believe, Jews will get a second and final chance to bend the knee to Christ the King).

"In this scheme (mostly laid out in the New Testament Book of Revelation, an elaborate allegory probably written in the traumatic aftermath of the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70), Jerusalem plays a key role. This is why American Evangelicals were significantly more excited than American Jews at Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy there, as theologian Diana Butler Bass explained at the time, drawing on her own Evangelical upbringing:

>Jerusalem was our prophetic bellwether. God’s plan hung on its fate. Whenever Israel gained more political territory, whenever Israel extended its boundaries, it was God’s will, the end-times unfolding on the evening news. Jerusalem, as the spiritual heart of Israel, mattered. Jerusalem was God’s holy city, of the ancient past, in its conflicted present, and for the biblical future.For many conservative evangelicals, Jerusalem is not about politics. It is not about peace plans or Palestinians or two-state solutions. It is about prophecy. About the Bible. And, most certainly, it is about the end-times.

"And so, in tightening Israel’s grip on Jerusalem, and more generally supporting an aggressive and expansionist Jewish State, Trump may be appealing to Jewish solidarity with Israel, but more important to him politically is the demonstration to Evangelicals that in this, as in many other things (notably the fight to reverse LGBTQ and reproductive rights), he is an agent of the divine will, despite (or sometimes because of) his heathenish personal behavior."

And this vision, mediated through politically-motivated appeasement of the Republican party's most loyal and essential constituency, is now deeply influential in U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.

One of the better accounts I've read of institutional anti-semitism in Europe has been Constantine's Sword which details the 2000+ year history of the split between Jews and Christians, told from a Catholic perspective. Worth a read.

Anyone who's up-voted this should take a look at James Carroll's Constantine's Sword, which is probably one of the most exhaustive and well researched studies of the institutionalized Christian (and particularly Catholic) anti-semitism that ultimately paved the way for the Holocaust to occur.

Actually, what Christians consider the "Jewish canon" wasn't formulated until after Jesus died. Rabbinical Judaism formed the canon, and that form of Judaism only came after the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD. Most notably the status of Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Esther were hotly contested.

BTW, Jewish followers of Jesus were NOT called "Christians", that term was first applied to Gentile followers in Antioch. (Acts 11:26) Jewish follows of Christ were called "Ebionites", or "the poor". While they considered Jesus the Messiah, they rejected the Gentile heresy that turned the man into a God. That concept completely violates the first and most important defining principle of Judaism, that God is one and indivisible, that no man is god.

Jewish followers of Christ were quickly supplanted by Gentile Christians, and the link between Judaism and Christianity was severed. That led to centuries of persecution of the Jews at the hands of Christians.

https://www.amazon.com/Constantines-Sword-Church-Jews-History/dp/0618219080

While of course you are right that at least some of what Jesus is portrayed as saying and doing could be considered progressive for his time, there are plenty of counter examples (Matthew 15:21-28 being particularly notable). Nowhere does the Bible say "All races have equal rights, all women have equal rights to men, and slavery is an abomination." It has been used for millennia to claim just the opposite, in fact, because by cherry picking you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say (Good, as in your case, or bad).

He was Jewish and in fact the first few generations of "Christians" would have thought of themselves as a particular type of Jew. The charge of "deicide" is one of the most powerful causes of antisemitism in history. It is largely repudiated theology now (Vatican II specifically rejected it) but it's been fairly common since about 167CE. Jesus was executed by the Romans but his death was also used for political purposes amongst intra-jewish theological struggles, which is why "Jews" come across as enemies in the Gospels. It's a complex subject that I'm not really qualified to explain.

A good overview of the history of Western Church/Jew animosity that I liked was Constantine's Sword.

Let’s start with one of your own ordained priests. He discusses here how Constantine setup the structure of the RCC to mimic the pagan Roman Empire:

https://www.amazon.com/Constantines-Sword-Church-Jews-History/dp/0618219080/ref=sr_1_28?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1551025955&sr=1-28&keywords=Catholic+Church+Roman+Empire

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more out there, if you look.

Enjoy.