THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL CHURCH AND SOCIETY TOWARDS THE JEWS…contd…

This basic division between the ancient church and Judaism grew throughout the 2nd. century over the opposed responses to the rabbinic oral laws and the significance of the Levitical  ceremonial rules and ordinances on the one hand, and the new, spiritual life offered to all believers in Jesus as the Messiah or Christ. The stumbling blocks for the Jews were the setting –aside of their oral laws and the revelation that in their midst had appeared the Anointed One of God, Who was the suffering, obedient Servant of God, who vicariously suffered, died, was raised to life, and was exalted to the highest place in the heavens at the right hand of God. These foundational truths for the Christian created an unfathomable gulf between the church and Judaism, which became increasingly subservient in “Christianised “ Europe.

   After the accession of Constantine in 306 A.D. conversion to Judaism became a “crime”; before that time Jews were treated as “ disbelievers” in the Roman gods and unworthy of Roman legal protection. They had been expelled from Rome much earlier by Tiberius and Claudius.

   The young church had the spiritual insight to realize that Judaism was ineffectual in the salvation of men and women because it was powerless to completely set free its people from the burden of guilt for past sins, or to confer an ability not to sin in the present. Judaism’s rituals and customs were seen to be only types or shadows of spiritual realities which faith in Jesus Christ could apprehend . Judaism’s rabbinic rules and rituals were seen to be superseded by saving faith, which itself was the gift of God.

   After the 4th. century the teaching of the church implied that the Jews, as a people, had been rejected by God , that its people had been placed under a curse and a divine punishment for their role in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. A racial hostility began to appear , in which it was considered justified to oppress and despise the Jewish people. Yet they were afforded some limited protections in order that the Jewish race could endure as a “witness people “ to the truth of the scriptures and the origins of the church.