Origins of animosity, and Martin Luther's views

Martin Luther and the Jews

Initially, Jews had high hopes that Martin Luther's challenge to the Catholic Church in 1517 and the beginning of the Reformation could signal a positive change in Christian-Jewish Relations. Luther initially published a book called That Jesus Christ Was born a Jew, written around 1523. Luther appeared sympathetic, hoping that Jews would convert to his own vision of Christianity. When Jews did not convert to the Protestant faith, as Luther had believed they would, he was upset. Specifically, he was irritated with the Jews continued indifference to his vision, and eventually published a revised version of his book, renamed Concerning the Jews and Their Lies. He made several racist remarks that would often be cited by later anti- Semites.

Christian-Jew animosity

From the start, Church fathers faced a choice. They had created a new faith out of Judaism. As such, they could view the two religions as parallel paths to the same goal, or they could say that theirs was the true religion. The later path was chosen, with Paul stating, "The only way to the Father is through the Son." He went on to claim that the Jews were a "withered stump", and that the true Jews, or "Spiritual Israel" were Christians whose hearts were right with God, It should be noted that Paul had no intention of initiating the hatred against Jews, but merely wished to show his own vision of life and thought. Unfortunately, his denying the Jews legitimacy as a religion started said hatred; The Church continued what Paul had begun. They started with theology, and then law. A millennium after Paul wrote, mobs would act on these thoughts and laws. Paul himself thought that the Jews would disappear, but they obviously persisted.

Another Church father, Origen saw that the century separating him from Paul had been miserable for the Jews, and he spoke of Deicide, a theory that built on the Gospel's account of Jesus' death. Origen claimed that not only where the Jews of Jesus' time guilty of his death, but that Jews in all generations bore guilt. Because of this perceived crime, Jews would be forced to endure generations of hatred as "Christ killers" In 1964, after a considerable amount of pressure, the most coming from American Catholics, the Church would finally redefine its thoughts of Deicide, saying "One should not hold Jews of today or all Jews of Judea to blame for Jesus' death."