For almost a century, the early believers in Yeshua the Messiah were culturally and ethnically the same as, and worshipped alongside, mainstream Judaism. The first “Christians”, as such, were Jews. The Torah was of great importance to them and they kept its laws, observing the Sabbath and performing circumcision. They did not follow “another religion”, but remained within the Torah framework of Judaism.

This Messianic movement spread largely among Jews to begin with, and for some time it remained a sect within Judaism, mostly known as the sect of the Nazarenes. Early in the second century, the Nazarene sect, consisting of both Jewish and Gentile believers who converted to Judaism, became subjected to a number of religious and political events.

In 117 CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem and renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, turning Jerusalem into a Roman City. Demoralized after such a loss of Jewish national and religious life, which had begun with the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish people looked for a Messiah to save them from the oppression of Rome.

In 132 CE, Simon Bar Kochba was endorsed by the leading Jewish intellectual of the time, Rabbi Akiba, to be the promised Messiah, and in 135 CE, Bar Kochba led a revolt against Rome. [1] The Nazarene Jews, however, refused to join in the revolt, as they concluded this would go against their belief in Yeshua as the Messiah. Although they had fought in the initial revolt against Rome, when Bar Kochba was declared the Messiah, they refused to fight under his banner. This resulted in bloodshed between Jews on both sides. By the end of the second century CE, a wedge was driven between the Nazarene movement and mainstream Judaism.

However, the Bar Kochba revolt was not the only reason for this separation. As more and more Gentiles joined the new Jewish movement, the actual Jewish presence became progressively less numerically significant. Although Christianity didn’t officially take a stance against Judaism until early in the fourth century, divisions and differences of opinion began in the first century CE. As a result of the Apostle Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, the ethnic composition of the Nazarean movement began to rapidly change from a Jewish majority to a Gentile majority. For some time, Gentiles remained within the Nazarean movement. However, by the end of the first century, non-Jewish influences affected the structure and beliefs of the now Gentile-dominated movement.

In the second century CE, many of the “Early Church Fathers”, or “Apostolic Fathers”, began to make statements which further separated gentiles from everything Jewish. Non-Jewish doctrines began to be developed which became the foundational beliefs of Christianity. Although Gentile Christians were not particularly opposed to the Jews and many still converted to Judaism, the formal position of the Church was decisively set against the Synagogue. The Church sought to conquer the Synagogue which, in their view, continued to cling stubbornly to its ancestral faith.

Frustrated and embittered, the Church Fathers set out to prove that Judaism was a legalistic, dead and superseded religion. [2] By reversing the Biblical image of the Jews, the Church claimed to be the “New Israel”, the “Jacob”, whereas the Jews were Esau and Cain, the murderers of their brother. Israel was portrayed as blind and divorced by God. This theology of replacement, which evolved into a theology of displacement, stated that the Jews had forfeited what God had given them and now Christianity was the new “heir” to the promises and blessings of God. The Jews, however, could keep the curses.

In the Epistle of Barnabas, written around 135 CE, this “replacement theology” is clearly stated. Referring to the Mosaic Covenant, Barnabas writes:

The Church, however, did not claim the Biblical commandments in a literal sense, but rather “spiritualized” them. They perceived the literal as being only a shadow of what was to come, being that Jesus completed and abolished law. To continue observing the literal Sabbath, literal circumcision, literal dietary laws etc., was foolishness and nonsense. The Church Father, Tertullian, wrote concerning the Sabbath and circumcision:

In a letter to Diognetus, possibly written by Justin Martyr in the second century, similar statements are made concerning Jewish practices:

The Apostolic Fathers continued issuing statements clearly divorcing Christianity from anything Jewish. The Mosaic Law, including the Festivals and the Sabbath, circumcision and Israel’s election by God, were all brushed away as things of the past. Also, in order to gain the acceptance of Rome, the now Gentile-dominated “Church” made it loud and clear that it had nothing in common with Judaism. In the Epistle of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, to the Magnesians in 115 CE, Christians were warned of the error of looking to Judaism:

The teaching of the Church Fathers managed to invalidate Judaism in the eyes of the Gentile world. Although up until now the Jewish/Christian debate was not much more than a debate, the real turning point for the Jews in the Roman Christian world was the Council of Nicea, held in 325 CE. At this Council, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman State and the concepts and claims of the theologians were put into practice and the separation between Christianity and Judaism became official. Constantine, Emperor of Rome and leader of the Church declared:

As the Church developed into the fourth century and became an international political power, it was confronted with the terrible fact that the Jews, merely by continuing to be Jews threatened the very legitimacy of the Church. They concluded that if Judaism remained valid, Christianity would then be invalid. Christianity’s idea of redemption was so manifestly in opposition to that of the Jews, that it rendered their mutual coexistence inconceivable. The Church Fathers had to deal with this Jewish challenge and they did so in a most logical manner.

Judaism was declared an apostate and superseded religion and the Jews had now lost their right to exist. However, the Jews did exist and so the Church needed a reason for their continued existence. If their failure to recognize the Christ resulted in their dispersion, and if Christianity had superceded Judaism in being a “light to the gentiles”, then why were the Jews around at all? The Church concluded that the reason Jews survived was to prove the truth of Christianity. They were to be around always, to be persecuted, vulnerable, wanderers on the earth without a home, as proof of God’s wrath upon them.

The condition of the Jews was to be a negative witness to their crime of deicide. This was the purpose of their existence. The Jews, therefore, were forever, everywhere, held collectively responsible for Yeshua’s death because they were “a wicked nation.” Furthermore, the calamities that befell Jewry–the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion–were seen as having Christological import, pointing to what Christians saw as just desserts for killing Christ.

Augustine declared:

Concerning the accusation of “deicide”, the killing of God, Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, stated that the Jews should “rightly suffer”, for they had “slain the Just One.” [9] If the Church believed that the Jews had, in fact, killed God, then it would stand to reason that “God is dead”.

The stereotype of the “deicide people” was transmitted through theological writings, sermons and in following centuries, through Passion plays, folklore and the arts. Christian theologians condemned Jews, accusing them of being idolaters, torturers, spiritually deaf, blasphemers, gluttons, adulterers, cannibals, Christ-killers, and beyond God’s forgiveness. John Chrysostom, known as the “golden mouthed” orator due to his eloquence in speech, unleashed a series of “Homilies Against the Jews.” In the late fourth century he falsely wrote:

Chrysostom argued that Jews will be crucified throughout history because they crucified Christ:

Persecution and violence toward the Jews became common due to heavy restrictive measures imposed by the Church against the Jewish people. In the three centuries from 300 to 600 CE, a host of rules were passed containing discriminatory provisions against the Jews in the Christian Roman Empire. These were summed up in four major rules contained in the Laws of Constantine the Great (315 CE); the Laws of Constaninus (399 CE); the Laws of Theodosius II (439 CE) and the Laws of Justinian (531 CE).

In 418 CE, Bishop Severus of Majorca forced Jews to convert. Violent street fighting broke out with a mob incited by the bishop. The synagogue was burnt. Finally the leaders of the Jewish community gave in and 540 Jews were converted. St. Jerome, who had studied with Jewish scholars in Palestine and translated the Bible into Latin wrote about the synagogue:

In 489 CE, a Christian mob set fire to the synagogues in Antioch and threw the bodies of slain Jews into the fire. Jews could exercise no position of authority and Christianity had to be rigidly protected from “contamination” through living, eating or engaging is sexual relation with them. [14]

The status of the Jew was thus no more than that of an animal, as Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, declared to the faithful:

Under the stigma of this image, the Jews were gradually excluded from every sphere of political influence and their political and civil rights were increasingly denied them, until eventually such rights were almost entirely a thing of the past. Church teaching, such as that of John Chrysostom, paved the way for the slaughter of countless numbers of Jews throughout history.

Statements such as these from Cluny and Chrysostom were constantly reiterated by Church leaders. The image of the Jew progressively evolved from that of “apostate”, to the total representation of evil–the very incarnation of the devil himself. The “Church triumphant” saw herself as bearing the task of making the Holy Land (and other lands along the way) Judenrein. The leader of the First Crusade, Godfroi Bouillon, in 1096 CE, swore to avenge the blood of Christ in Israel and to leave no single member of the Jewish race alive. When the Crusaders arrived in Israel, then called Palestina, they rounded up the Jews in Jerusalem, herded them into the synagogue and burned the building to the ground. Marching triumphantly around the inferno, they sang a hymn– “Christ We Adore Thee”. Inside the burning synagogue, no doubt the Jews heard these strains of “Christian worship” as they perished.

Shortly before the Church’s Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215 CE, Pope Innocent III condemned the Jews to eternal slavery by decreeing:

With this statement, the Church settled the destiny of the Jewish people for many centuries. Church doctrine ultimately legitimized the torture and murder of Jews in Christendom for nearly two thousand years. They were to live as wanderers on the earth, having no home, rights or privileges. The Jews were treated as pariahs and became the scapegoats for all the ills of society. People everywhere, in all classes, were eager to exterminate the Jews. These people were not born with an instinctive hatred in their hearts toward the Jewish people, their hatred was the product of clerical propaganda. [17]

The doctrines and teachings of the Church from its beginnings to the Fourth Lateran Council, laid the initial layer of “Jew hatred” and took the Jewish people all the way to the Holocaust. This first step began with the attempt to drive Jews either into Christianity or into a place of non-identity, as Judaism was no longer recognized as a valid religion. By doing so, the Church clearly defined anti-Semitism’s first characteristic — “You have no right to live among us as Jews.”