The Jews suffered during several deportations into varying degrees of bondage,- into Assyria in 721, into Babylon during 597-581, and throughout the lands surrounding the Mediterranean in 70 A.D.,followed by a final “dispersion” after the revolt in 135 A.D. The many expulsions they endured in Europe ensured that the Jews remained a minority group in their host countries, and being without a national state or a means of defence, they subsisted in highly vulnerable enclaves and ghettoes throughout medieval Europe.
Jewish insistence on observing their ceremonial laws was resolved under the guidance of the Holy Spirit during the council of Jerusalem (52 A.D.) for all Christian converts. But Judaism’s attachment to its ancient rituals became a cause for continuous accusation by ancient theologians, who saw the dangers of a reversion to legalism, textualism and ritualism in the incipient church, which generally was eager to escape from a bondage to outward “forms.”
The first Christian writers saw the Jews as a people enslaved or wedded to their rabbinic interpretations of the Torah, that is, the Talmud and its associated commentaries. The were despised as being slaves to the Law and devoid of the inner light of faith, which is the grace gift of the Holy Spirit. Some Christian converts yearned for the observances of the Mosaic law, and so drew hostility upon themselves within the Church.
The writings of some of the “fathers” in the church emphasised the struggles of the faithful remnant in the Israel of the Old Testament as they lived in the midst of the recalcitrant and disobedient race. That race was thought to be congenitally perverse and wayward.
There was adverse reaction towards the Jews by those who adhered to the ancient, pagan cults of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Babylon because of the Biblical doctrine of the divine election of the Jews. The ancient world saw this as an evidence of a concealed arrogance and religious conceit.
Judaism became grounded in the Talmud and was seen as the antithesis of Christian salvation by the grace offered to all mankind through faith in the atoning sacrifice made by Jesus Christ on the cross. Salvation is the gift of God ,- it is received in faith, which itself is a gift from God. It was realised in the early church that Judaism was an empty and spiritually cursed human method of achieving salvation through human effort, or the “works of the flesh”. Judaism was associated with legalism in religion and was inveighed against as a threat to the Christian’s faith in Christ alone. “Judaizers” were thought to be doing the work of the devil.
The Jewish leaders had rejected Jesus as their Messiah, and it was concluded that the whole of the Jewish people was an accomplice in the injustice and sufferings inflicted upon Jesus Christ. The “fathers” of the church therefore deduced that God had also rejected the Jews as the “chosen people”. The sufferings and disgrace which enveloped the Jews after their failed rebellions in 67-70 A.D.and 135 A.D. were thought to be rightful punishments inflicted by God.
Soon all Jews were assimilated under one banner as betrayers and crucifiers of the Son of God, – the incarnate God. The Jewish race was thought by many of the “fathers” of the church as abandoned by God and subject to His curse until the second coming of the Lord from heaven. Neighbours of Jewish groups felt that they had sanction to abuse, harass and curse the “rejected “ race.
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