The Holocaust has its roots in Roman times, according to Dutch professor Leonard Rutgers, who published a book recently on how the Jewish identity was shaped in Christian minds.
By Dirk Vlasbom
In 388 AD a Christian mob led by a local bishop destroyed the synagogue of Callinicum, a Greco-Roman city in northern Syria. The attack angered emperor Theodosius I, who had declared Christianity the religion of the Roman state just eight years earlier. As the Jewish community enjoyed a protected status under Roman laws, he ordered the synagogue be rebuilt be rebuilt at bishop’s expense. This triggered Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, to write the emperor a letter defending the obliteration of the Jewish temple. What could possibly be wrong with destroying a “house of betrayal and godlessness” where Christ’s name was sullied on a daily basis, Ambrose asked.
Since the second century, Christian leaders had been publishing texts denouncing “the synagogue”, a metaphor for all the followers of Judaism in the Roman empire. While American historians have dismissed these attacks as 'ideological constructions,' Leonard Rutgers, a professor of Late Antiquity at the University of Utrecht specialised in religion, recently published a book disputing this rosy perspective. His book, Making Myths – Jews in early Christian identity formation, describes how the verbal violence directed at the Jewish population by the church leaders became physical in the fourth century.
It was during the Late Antiquity (4th-6th century AD) that Christianity became the dominant religion in both the western and eastern parts of the Roman empire.”Monotheistic religions tend to exclude others after they assume a position of power,” Rutgers said in an interview with NRC Handelsblad. Christian sects that fell out of favour could be easily denounced as heretics, but Judaism posed a more complex problem, Rutgers explained. “Since Christianity’s roots are themselves Jewish.”
A challenge to Christian self-image
Christians were still prosecuted under emperor Diocletian (303-306), but Constantine I lifted the ban on Christianity in 313 and it became the state religion by 380. “The archaeological records proves that Jewish communities in the empire were doing very well at the time,” Rutgers said. “Synagogues were constructed in prominent places, challenging Christian self-esteem. Christians thought of themselves as the true Israel, but looking out the window they were confronted with a synagogue. Drawing on scriptures from both the Old and the New Testament they started calling ‘the synagogue’ every bad name they could think of.”
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