Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 07-21-2009, 12:34 PM

Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Paula Fredriksen

Also previewed on google books and reviewed here.

Fredriksen is interviewed here.

Quote:

BU Today: One of your ideas about both early Christian culture and Augustine himself is that Jews were not as persecuted or reviled as generally believed. Can you explain the disconnect?
Fredriksen: The Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity in 312, the Theodosian emperors really get to ruling in the 380s and 390s, and in that period, their form of Christianity, called catholicism with a small “c,” becomes the sole legitimate religion. But at that point, the most dangerous thing to be, in terms of your health or your actuarial tables, is a Christian of a minority group. The second worst thing to be is a pagan. The safest thing to be, if you’re not actually a member of the majority Church, is a Jew.

Most people, and most historians, thought that Jews were persecuted, because Jews are persecuted in the Middle Ages, and there is this vituperative, horrible, negative, insulting language that gentile Christians use for Jews. But that’s the other big discovery — rhetoric is just a way of speaking in antiquity, and it sounds horrible.

She sees the Christians of this time as more henotheists than monotheists. Today we believe in tolerance, which means that we respect others rights to believe in fairy tales, but we don't believe in their imaginary friends - but she thinks that the ancients all actually respected each others gods at some level.

Toto · 07-21-2009, 12:53 PM

Another review

Quote:

While she concedes that Augustine could be use as vituperative rhetoric about the Jews as any of his predecessors, contemporaries or successors, his involvement in anti-Manichean apologetics forced him to develop a comparatively favourable view of the Jews, at least as a theological category. The Manichees, like most Gnostics, exploited the anti-Jewish rhetoric characteristic of many early Christian authors and went even further than Marcian in their rejection of the whole Jewish religious edifice including the Old Testament. Augustine, as an ex-Manichee and, thus, interested in the issue, argues not only that the Old Testament was necessary to the Christian exegete because it made the crucial prophecies for the coming of Jesus, but he insisted that the Jews themselves were necessary because they provided an independent, even hostile witness to these prophecies and, indirectly, to the truth of the Christian gospel. While Augustine accuses the Jews of reading their scriptures as too literal and 'fleshly', their witness was simply too valuable to eliminate that community.

Time magazine: St Augustine: Good for the Jews?

Quote:

Imagine if all our public discourse was conducted in the language of legal combat. His was. Learned argument did not aim to represent an opponent's position fairly, but to make it look as ridiculous as possible. Part of his rhetoric regarding Jews reflected this. Also, Christians using harsh language against Jews were often actually aiming at Christian opponents, whom they painted as darkly as possible by comparing them to hostile caricatures of Jews.

So when Augustine used such language, he meant nothing by it?
He could mean many things by it, but often he's dealing in what you might call "rhetorical Jews" rather than real Jews. It's also important to remember that for much of Augustine's lifetime Jews were Roman citizens with the rights of citizens. This begins to change in the late fourth century, when the Emperor decides to link government closely with one particular form of Christianity — a big faith-based initiative. But the real social disenfranchisement of Jews occurred long after Augustine. Medieval persecutions and — much later — the Holocaust, were not events that Augustine could have imagined.

Susan2 · 07-21-2009, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Paula Fredriksen

Also previewed on google books and reviewed here.

Fredriksen is interviewed here.

Quote:

BU Today: One of your ideas about both early Christian culture and Augustine himself is that Jews were not as persecuted or reviled as generally believed. Can you explain the disconnect?
Fredriksen: The Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity in 312, the Theodosian emperors really get to ruling in the 380s and 390s, and in that period, their form of Christianity, called catholicism with a small “c,” becomes the sole legitimate religion. But at that point, the most dangerous thing to be, in terms of your health or your actuarial tables, is a Christian of a minority group. The second worst thing to be is a pagan. The safest thing to be, if you’re not actually a member of the majority Church, is a Jew.

Most people, and most historians, thought that Jews were persecuted, because Jews are persecuted in the Middle Ages, and there is this vituperative, horrible, negative, insulting language that gentile Christians use for Jews. But that’s the other big discovery — rhetoric is just a way of speaking in antiquity, and it sounds horrible.

She sees the Christians of this time as more henotheists than monotheists. Today we believe in tolerance, which means that we respect others rights to believe in fairy tales, but we don't believe in their imaginary friends - but she thinks that the ancients all actually respected each others gods at some level.

I guess she believes in fairytales. Didn't we all at one time or another? I think we did, but maybe not.

Here is another quoted review from the same Amazon web site, linked in the original OP.

Quote:

As Fredriksen elegantly contends, Augustine argued that the Jews should be exempt from Christian persecution. Since the religious practices of the Jews devolved from God the Father—the same God Christians worshipped who was also the source of Jewish scriptures, tradition and practice—therefore God and the Jews, and thus the church and the Jews, maintain an abiding relationship.

I am tempted to ask, so persecution rolls down hill, and I, as a woman was supposed to accept that persecution, with out questioning that persecution, as from God? Well yes, I did for many years, until one day I was tired of that persecution, knew it was persecution, and therefore acknowledged it for what it is, persecution.

This is the most absurd thing that I have ever read. Jews should be exempt from persecution, because I am a decent law abiding citizen and for no other reason. The Jewish, Catholic, Christian, and Islamist religions encouraged violence against women for thousands of years. My decency has absolutely nothing to do with the Jewish God, the Christian God, the Catholic God, nor the Islamist God, though I will acknowledge that I gave them credit for what they didn’t deserve. In fact, much of the pain, angst or confusion I feel as a woman has everything to do with the teaching of both the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Roman/Catholic religions.

These are cults that demanded perfection in women, but not from men/themselves, and they have the writings, and the slaughter that prove it.

I find these quotes offensive.

It reminds me of the additions added to the end of Mark. "ah gee, we were only kidding"

mountainman · 07-21-2009, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Susan2

I guess she believes in fairytales. Didn't we all at one time or another? I think we did, but maybe not.

Joseph Wheless on Augustine (c.1930)

Quote:

The greatest of Christian Doctors, pyramid of philosophers,
has abiding faith in the reality of the Pagan gods, who, however,
as held by all the Fathers, are really demons or devils; they are
very potent as wonder-workers and magicians. Some of them, however,
are evidently not of a malicious nature:

"The god of Socrates. if he had a god, cannot have belonged to this class of demons."

(xiii, 27; p. 165.)

Time and again he vouches for and quotes the famous Hermes Trismegistus, who he assures us was the grandson of the
"first Mercury." (viii, 23, 24; pp. 159, 161.)

And for history he says, that "At this time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas is found to have lived, that great astronomer, the brother of Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder Mercury, of whom that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson." (xviii, 39; p. 384.) Also that "Picus, son of Saturn, was the first king of Argos." (xviii, 15; p. 368.) He accepts as historic truth the fabulous
founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, their virgin-birth by the god Mars, and their nursing by the she-wolf, but attributes the
last to the provident interference of the Hebrew God.

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