>>2) where Gow holds that the identification of the Antichrist with the one
>>who many Jews would accept as their Christ as opposed to Jesus Christ was a
>>Medieval, largely anti-semitic invention (pp. 2-3). I guess he has never
>>read Scripture (John 5:43; Mt 24:24; 2 Thes 2:1ff.)
>
>this is a bizarre list which reminds me, unfortunately, of the "proofs"
>that Jerry Falwell posted last year that the antichrist will be a
>jew. there's nothing in any of these texts that compels the
>interepretation that the antichrist will be a jewish messiah.

Since this is a Medieval Religion list, I supposed you would see cogency in
proof texts, which were a theological methodology in the West since the
time of the late Carolingian period, begining with the iconclastic
controveries.

so you meant to say, gow hasn't read these biblical texts thru the lense of the exegetes of the MA. but that's precisely his point. it was in the MA that the jewish messiah = antichrist becomes a widely accepted belief.

>>or St. Chrysostom, St.
>>Augustine, St. Cyrill, who are hardly described as medievals.
>
>i know that chrysostom demonized the jews; augustine, hv, did not, and i'm
>unaware that he developed this notion of a jewish messiah as
>antichrist. what are you thinking of? and is cyrill the cyrill of
>jerusalem of the mid-4th cn? cd you cite a passage for this?

I was refering to the patristic exegesis of these very passages, quoting
the reference to these Fathers from Cornelius a Lapide's Commentary on
these texts. He does not give the actual citations, and a good translation
will have a concordance, so such are not always given. Cyrill of Alexandria
is the one who did commentaries on scripture

i stand by my comments about augustine. i don't know of any suggestion from him that antichrist is a jewish messiah.

>>3) Throughout he manifests an anachronistic reinterpretation of texts,
>>reading a classification of the descendents of Abraham based on their
>>religious beliefs concerning the Messiah as if it were simply a racial
>>category that had nothing to do with personal choices.
>>The texts he cites pp. 3-13, in as much as he quotes them, seem to agree
>>entirely that racial categories are not being used, but rather religious
>>categories; to read anti-semitism back into them is to be decidely
>>anachronistic.
>
>i'm not sure where you get the racial notion. he never uses it, certainly
>not the word racial. are you assuming that his use of antisemitism is
>racial?

I assume he is using the word in the contemporary meaning; I did not seem
him define the term or give the reader a warning; nor am I familiar with a
medieval term for it; ergo . . .

Gavin Langmuir, History of Antisemitism. any medievalist who speaks of antisemitism will be using his definition, not a popular or modern usage.

O.K. that's a different sense than common usuage; but I would argue that it
is unfair to the Jewish people to identify their "who they are" as
"rejectors of the Christian message"; they after all did exist before
Christ came. The other reasons are religious, economic, social, etc.

that's not my point. my point was that when xns perceived the jews as rejecting the xn claims about jesus' identity (ie that he was the messiah and god), they were right -- jews did do that. that hardly limits the jews to this "fact", altho apparently for most xns until quite recently, that was so enormous a problem that they had difficulty seeing anything else about jews. your comment is laudible and places you in a minoritarian (non-mainstream (:-) )company.

>>What value is there in attacking anti-semitism when it is your own
>>reinterpretation of texts which accuses authors of the distant past of the
>>prejudice of the last century?
>
>as i said, i think you misread him. he's actually discussing some critical
>transformations in xn views of the jews that occurred in the medieval
>period which historians (possibly for anachronistic or apologetic reasons)
>have paid little attention to.

That is clear. But this is not anti-semitism; which is a modern notion. And
his article makes it quite clear that he is talking about anti-semitism,
for he uses the this term, not anti-judaism (e.g. p. 3)

please read gavin langmuir. the two words, anti-judaism and anti-semitism have specific and distinct meanings when used in a medieval context. if you are disturbed by the linguistic implications of using a term coined in the 19th cn to refer to racist ideologies, then perhaps you'd like to suggest a different term to differentiate the two medieval varieties of jew-hatred.

Because this is not modern antisemitism; that is racial hatred, however
wrongly justified; but this appears more likely to be a cultural
ostracization.

ostracizing and persecuting are two different things. if xns just disliked jews and had little to do with them except maybe some relatively impersonal financial dealings (as if that's really possible in a pre-modern society), then we'd be dealing with anti-judaism. but if xns imagine vast conspiracies to kill and cannibalize xn children, to poison wells, to collaborate with the apocalyptic enemy and wreak cosmic vengence on xns, and then engage in pre-emptive retaliation strikes (pogroms and other massacres) then i think ostracization is a poor word.

I agree that Gow cites some compelling evidence of a trend
growing every more ominous--but if one is to call it anti-semitism, then it
is best to define the term. If he does not mean racial hatred, but
something more generic, then it would improve the article to say as much;
but it would be even better to consider that different kinds of motivation
have different social contexts and developments.

agreed. he needs a footnote to langmuir.

I am sure that reading
such texts now 50 years after WWII has much more significance to us that it
would have to a reader 100 years ago, on account of what has transpired
since. By extrapolation, the medievals would also be moved by it
differently. To pick up these texts to day, and say "Look, antisemitism!"
is historically accurate only if the same definition of anti-semitism is
being used to compare the phenomenon then and in the 20th century AND if
the motivation for such demonization of the Jews is racially based. If a
man hates apples because they are red and another man hates them because
they give him an allergic reaction, then it would be unreasonalbe to say
that both men suffer from the same psychological motivations.

the move from medieval antisemitism (chimeric hatred, or in your imagery, nurtured violent allergic reactions) and modern antisemitism is not so radical as to make them incommensurate. there is no doubt that a) modern racist a-s accepted and exploited the most virulent expressions of chimerical fears (eg the nazi use of the xn protocols of the elders of zion), and b) the racist conclusion that the redness of the apple was a key to its inner nature was born of the long and disturbing experience of xns that jews either cdn't be converted, or if they did, they'd change the xnty to which they converted in disturbing ways. we have moves towards racist definitions of the jews as far back as the visigoths (6-7th cn), and again during the spanish inquisition (16th cn), both in the context of attempts to force the conversion of the jews.

Likewise it
is not accurate to say that what Gow is citing is antisemitism, and he so
glibly jumps to this nomenclature that it is very striking indeed. As
regards elite and popular beliefs, there is a difference of motivation
based on the subcultures which form the persons in each group. To say
otherwise is to say that each group was not influenced in their motivations
by their subculture; or that those who are educated could not rise about
the non-literate culture of their day.

this is a more difficult problem. i am a great believer in major difference btwn elite and popular culture, but i also am attentive to stuff that "jumps the gap". the evidence suggests that violent dislike of jews appears far earlier and more consistently among the elites than the commoners in the early and central MA, and only after it jumps the gap (acc to me, for the first time in 1010) do the elites find themselves dealing with popular notions that sometimes go even farther than they'd like. but the notion that the xn clergy tried to rein in the anti-jewish excesses of the mob is only half the story. they continuously played with fire and every once in a while they started a bigger one than they had intended. but they rarely if ever stopped playing with it.

this is directly related, by the way, to the larger issue of elite vs popular notions about the "end" of the world (millennialism, apocalypticism, doomsday, etc.). the elite may have a discourse that they work out in their texts (eg augustinian a-millennialism), and a variety of other discourses which they use in their interactions with the "masses" (eg sabbatical anti-apocalyptic millennialism), precisely because what may satisfy them intellectually (allegory, typology) has little to no value in communicating with the rest of the population. try taking an augustinian position on Jack Van Impe's show.

I say can, not always will; clearly
the authors Gow cites are reflecting popular ideas more than scholastic or
patristic literary themes.

gow goes to great lengths to point out that the theme of the red jew appears only in vernacular german literature. no trace in scholastic volumes. but that doesn't settle the issue. we know that a preacher who sounds basically dualist in his public sermons can write extensive treatises against the manichees (alan bernstein's work).

In a culture with a dominant unity which unity (Christianity) itself is
derived from a previous and foreign origin, there is apt to be a
misinterpretation of dominant themes with contemporay themes,

i have a bit of a problem with "mis" interpretation. that assumes that we know the correct one (which, apparently, you do think). it's quite clear that many of the disagreements about the nature of xnty that we find tearing at the fabric of "united" xnty in the MA (and producing the inquisition), were already present in the earliest centuries of the movement.

on account
of the culture's self-identification of itself with the very ideal it
received from a previous and foreign origin. In this case, there is
Christianity which has come to cultural dominance in the West; but not in
the same state it was in its origin in cultural terms;

one can say that about the imperial xnty of the 4th cn.

without a solid
scholarly understanding of this distinction it is all to easy to reread
biblical or apostolic or even patristic themes in the context of the
current social order. One sees this in the writings of that apocalyptic
Abbot of southern Italy in the 12th century, e.g., how the biblical
structure of time is superimposed on contemporary events;

name an era in which xns didn't do that. augustine forbids it, but he is honored in the breach far more often than in the observance. quodvultdeus, a self-avowed disciple of augustine, literally cites him incorrectly in order to identify the goths and visigoths with gog and magog.

one sees this in
contemporary religous movements among certain groups in the USA (Aryan
Nations, etc.)

and the pre-millennial rapture types and the marian visionaries, etc. etc. some of us make it our professional task to track these trends which are not limited to xnty.

>>To the medieval the Jew was more a unique minority with a foreign culture
>>than a people which shared the same religious tradition from which their
>>own Christianity was based.
>
>this is a strange and far too sweeping a generalization. all
>medievals?
> when xn clerics consulted jewish rabbis on the textual validity
>of their biblical mss, were they thinking of them as a unique minority with
>no relationship with to their own religion? when people claim to have the
>relic of the holy foreskin, are they ignorant of jesus' identity as a jew?

Certainly you are right: but since the literacy rate of the Medieval West
was less than 5% (correct me if I am wrong), then "more" in the above comes
to the fore, for the simple fact that everyday experience in the market
place or streets or along the byways of the country-side made it quite
clear that the Jewish people had a different culture and different
religion.

yes and no. hawking the holy foreskin, or depicting on the walls of a cathedral the circumcision, or presenting a passion play in which jesus is dressed as a jew and rejected by them -- all of these are popular contexts in which the peculiar relationship btwn jews and xns become part of popular discourse. furthermore, there are clearly relations btwn jews and xns of a religious nature. the canons of councils regularly denounce xns (here one must presume commoners) who ask rabbis to bless their fields, who attend jewish religious ceremonies, etc. you have to assume a ghettoization that didn't exist before the 16th cn to argue that when apostolic iconoclasts cited psalm 115 "idols of the gentiles", that they cd not have known how central that psalm was to the jews. market places, we know, are areas where religious ideas circulate as freely as goods; and remember, schmoozing is a very ancient jewish art.

Where has there every been a wide scale movement in Judaism which
has lead Jews to make it known to gentiles that they themselves are no
different than the gentiles and want to live just like them. For this
reason I think it is not an exaggeration to say "more"

i think it's the same point but made in opposite terms. jews, at least until the modern era, have rarely adopted such a discourse (one might cite the hellenizers in the period of maccabees). it's when jews try to get gentiles to adopt their moral standards (eg paul) that we have unusual and disturbing interactions. i find remarkable similarities of religiosity btwn apostolic xns and jews from the 11th cn onwards (iconoclastic, unmediated relationship to god, communitarian, access to text for all members, dignity of manual labor). to argue that jews and xns are as related as xns are to, say, scythians misses alot. it also misses why jews of all the minorities of xn europe, constituted the most irritating presence.

>>Thus it was not surprising that they were
>>demonized in the popular mind, just as foreigners and minorities have
>>always been.
>
>this is a-historical trivialization. foreigners and minorities have rarely
>undergone the kind of systematic demonization that the jews experienced at
>the hands of european xns in the MA (that's langmuir's point). to
>attribute things like the blood libel and the "red jews" and other beliefs
>about the jews as merely forms of prejudice against "the other" seems a bit
>superficial..

In speaking of the existence of the demonization is one thing, and the
thesis is justified by common experience; that is why minorities are
accorded special protection inasmuch as they are minorities. But the
quality of it, surely I agree with you, had its own unique motives. Do we
see the same program of demonization in any part of the world today?

yes. for example a look at muslim apocalyptic literature offers a wide range of hyper-demonization, not only of jews and the west, but even of internal rivals (iraqis showing khoumeini with a jewish star in his eyes and vice-versa). similarly aryan nation and xn identity movts demonize. it is one of the natural tendencies of apocalyptic thinking.

Then why is that which happen in the Middle-ages so unique; back to the
principle of causality.

the first systematic demonization of a minority sustained over centuries occurs in the middle ages.

There had always been such theological speculation
about the Antichrist and the Jews;

no. indeed, even antichrist as a "figure" is not in scripture, and his identification with the jews appears only in writing towards the end of the 2nd cn.

it's right there in scripture, at least
in the tradition of Christian exegisis of the patristic and scholastic
periods.

it's not in scripture, it's in the desires of the patristic and scholastic exegetes (and jerry falwell) to go back and find support for such a reading. if xn exegetes had expended the same energy denying that these ambiguous texts meant a jewish antichrist as they did denying that xn scripture supports the belief in an earthly millennium (a much easier case), they cd have landed exactly in the opposite camp. why did they want a jewish antichrist and not want a millennium? i'd say the two are related. millennialism is, in their minds, jewish (judaizing) and by branding millennial beliefs with the worst kind of evil, they strike at two birds with one stone.

But the movement took a qualitative jump in the period cited in
texts by Gow. Why?

i think if you read gow after reading langmuir, you'll have a better sense of it, certainly of the role that apocalyptic expectations play in the process.

>>With that, the discussions of the Antichrist and the role of
>>the Jews at the end of time in Christian theology were ripe targets for the
>>truly novel invention of anti-semitism as a racial hatred of the descendents
>>of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
>
>i'm not sure i understand what you are saying here: regular prejudice plus
>antichrist traditions leads to racial antisemitism? if so, how does that
>differ at the simplest level, from what gow is arguing (ie that the
>antichrist tradition is the key to the transformation into a virulent
>anti-semitism).

Because this tradition in Christian writing pre-existed the period by (lets
use Augustine)

better to use chrysostom. indeed, antijudaism seems less severe in latin than in greek patristic writings.

700-1300 years. If Gow is arguing that, then he'd have to
explain why the long delay from the cause to the effect.

gavin langmuir has an interesting explanation for the gap, which dovetails nicely (altho he doesn't think so) with my 11th cn millennial revival thesis.

To explain: there are at least three biblical uses of the term Jew all of
which are found in the NT; in Christian theology the methodology in the
patristic period is exegesis, so naturally each of the uses potentially
could be transmitted. In the texts Gows cites however, by excluding the
possibility of any Jew not adhereing to the Antichrist you have a narrowing
of the term, or rather a conflation of the religious, cultural, and racial
definitions of the term Jew.

in these terms, we already have that process in a figure like chrysostom.

With that conflation, the NT and the tradition
of the Antichrist in Christian theology and culture can be reshaped and
reinterpreted to lead to racial hatred, rather than just economic envy or
religious disagreements. So the crux of the question, it seems to me,
should be "why the narrowing of the terminology'? What was the cause of
this? I'd expect this question to be answered would require a very specific
and holisitic analysis of each authors sources and influence in writing,
audience and occasion, etc.. This all affects motivation and usage of
terms; and that is what one must address in a scientific study of the
origins of modern anti-semitism, which by definition is in practice a
motivation.

on one leg: when xns believe the end has come, there are two things the jews will do -- convert (generally believed to be a small minority) or work with antichrist (most of the jews). (apoc believers tend to be very dualist, they spew out tepidity, and you are either with them or against them.) in the early stages of apoc hope, xns tend (tho not always) to be philo-judaic (see Robert Lerner's recent book The Feast of Saint Abraham : Medieval Millenarians and the Jews, U Penn, 2000), but in the disappointment, they tend to get more hostile and engage in what i call apocalyptic scapegoating -- if only the jews had converted.... the accretion and development of this latter tradition, in the context of continuously renewed and continuously disappointed apoc movements, which in the MA even more than in the late antique period, focussed on the jews, builds up the chimerical fantasies of cosmic enemies.

Sincerely in Christ,

Br. Alexis Bugnolo

respectfully,

richard

Richard Landes
Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University      Department of History
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