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The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity

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This book is divided into three parts, each of which, in my opinion, can be read without reading the other two parts.

The first part discusses Roman pagan attitudes towards Judaism - not just the attitudes of kings and politicians, but the attitudes of intellectuals as well. Some pagan writers were anti-Semitic, but others revered Judaism as one of many venerable philosophies. Gager suggests that Jewish prosletyism "exercised a significant influence on Romans", and cites numerous statements by intellectuals implying that their readers knew something about Judaism. For example, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote: "whenever we see a man hesitating between two faiths, we are in the habit of saying, He is not a Jew, he is only acting the part." More interestingly, he writes that anti-Jewish Roman commentary is actually less common after the final crushing of Jerusalem's Jews during the Bar Kochba revolt in 135- perhaps because pagan nationalists felt more threatened by Christianity, since Judaism was no longer a political threat to the Empire.

The second part of this book focuses on Judeo-Christian relations. Gager suggests that Christian anti-Semitism is based on Christian fear of "Judaizing" - that is, adoption of Jewish practices by Christians. For example, in 386 John Chrysostom delivered a set of anti-Semitic sermons at the time of Jewish fall festivals such as Yom Kippur, apparently to discourage Christians from celebrating those festivals with Jews. Similarly, in 360 a Council of Laodicea prohibited Christians from resting on Saturdays, and in 341 a Council of Antioch prohibited Christians from celebrating Passover with Jews. Why the hositility? Wrote St Jerome, "if they are allowed to observe [Jewish rites] in the churches of Christ ... they will not become Christians, they will make us Jews."

The third, and least readable, part of book discusses the writings of Paul; Gager suggests that according to conventional scholarly wisdom, Paul believed that the Torah could not lead to salvation. But Gager rejects this view, arguing that Paul believed in a kind of "dual salvation" concept- that "Torah remains the path of righteousness for Israel; Christ has become the promised way of righteousness for Gentiles." Because Gager's discussion relies so heavily on New Testament citations, it is less interesting for a layperson than the first two parts.

Please allow me to offer a summary of this book for you, before you waste your time reading the entire thing as I did: First, everything that is said about Judaism in any ancient text, whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan, is actually supposed to be understood differently than the plainest meaning of the text and the way that everyone has always understood the text; this applies especially to the letters of Saint Paul as found in the New Testament. Second, because of our collective white guilt in the wake of the holocaust, we must find a way to completely distort what the New Testament actually says about Jews in order to make them feel better; essentially, because of something that happened in the 20th century, we must mutilate Christianity beyond recognition in order to make it seem nicer to Jews. In short, this book was a complete waste of time and is a better study in what modern white guilt does to a mind than in anything historical at all.