Antisemitism and Monotheism

As long as there was only one Monotheistic religion, Judaism, there was no Antisemitism, because the God of the Jews was just another god in the pantheon of Polytheistic gods. Religion in the form of sacrifices to the gods served a valuable purpose, it brought comfort to human beings that gods who were happy would not allow catastrophes to happen. Polytheists admired the god of the Jews, because he was strong and as long as they kept him happy with sacrifices, he would save them.

Problems arose when Polytheists began converting to another monotheistic religion, Christianity and later Islam. Three monotheistic religions, each one claiming to be the only true religion, didn’t make sense. People were forced to choose one or the other. Naturally followers of the various monotheistic religions began competing with one another and clashed against each other and against polytheism.

I think that a new monotheistic religion began to appear when Jews began to be exposed to the wonders of Greek culture.

Until Alexander the Great conquered Judea, Jews did not have much contact with Greek culture. Judaism preached isolation, its laws didn't prohibit social contacts with non-Jews but made sociability difficult by not allowing foods that other nations ate, like pig or mixing meat and milk. Intermarriage was permitted only under certain circumstances,

With the peaceful take over by Alexander the Great in 333BCE, Greek culture and religion began to spread amongst theJews. I think that Jews admired Greek tolerance of their religious customs In this new environment it's not surprising that some Jews began to adopt Greek customs and even Greek religious practices and started leaving Jewish customs.

Gradually, over a period of about 200 years Jewish society began to split. Probably, at first, the split wasn't noticeable but by the second century BCE the rift was so great that civil war broke out, between those who followed Greek customs, known as Hellenists and those who were loyal Judaism, the Hasidim We know this war as the Maccabean rebellion.

The Hassidim, also known as the Maccabees, after their leader Judah the Maccabee, were victorious and set up an organisation, the Sanhedrin, a court of seventy-one rabbis, to purge Judaism of Greek culture and religion.

Their efforts were so successful that it’s almost impossible to find any reference to Greek customs in the Jewish scriptures.

But I think that the Hellenists didn’t disappear, they transformed into a new monotheistic religion, which was a synthesis between Greek religious ideas and Jewish ones.

One of the most prominent beliefs of the new religion, for example, was the idea of life after death and the resurrection of the dead. These were Greek beliefs, which are described in Plato’s writings. However, the new monotheistic belief, in its effort to persuade Jews to join them, carried out an intensive searh ofhe Bibl for words and sayings to show that these were Jewish beliefs. They were only partly successful, and the result is that some Jews contend that these beliefs are Jewish.

Their greatest achievement, however, is spreading the conviction that the New Testament replaces the Bible, which came to be known as the Old Testament, among Christian and some Jews.

This idea is based on the claim that God had cancelled His covenant with the Jews and had made a new covenant with the new religion.

These ideas and the rescinding of the dietary laws and circumcision removed some objections that Polytheists may have had to Judaism, making conversion to the new religion attractive, and many converted to Christianity.

Christianity also set in motion a vigorous campaign of forced conversion and rapidly, by the 2nd century the majority of Roman polytheists had become Christian. After another 200 years Constantine declared it the official religion of the Roman Empire. Monotheism became obligatory and Polytheism was prohibited.

Christians mistakenly thought that Jews would also convert. In fact, they contended that a Jew who became a Christian wasn't converting because Christianity, according to them was Judaism, excepting for a few minor differences. They were both monotheistic religions, after all and in any case two monotheistic religions, each contending that their god was the one God, didn't make sense.

In the new situation that developed, everybody was either a Christian or an enemy of Christianity, there was no intermediate ground.

Jews found themselves on the side of the enemies of Christianity and were hated for their stubbornness in not being Christion.

700 years later another monotheistic religion appeared and also regarded the Jews as enemies and of course competed with Christianity to be regarded as the one and only monotheistic religion.