Ancient anti-Semitism

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Ancient enmity against Jews denotes a hostility towards Jews in the epoch of ancient history of Israel (around 1300 BC to 135 AD), which has been going on since the 4th century BC. In the Tanach and extra-biblical sources. Persecution of Judaism took place under Antiochus IV around 170 BC. BC for the first time on its destruction, but remained regionally and temporally limited and unsuccessful. In the Roman Empire , the "systemic conflict" between ancient multiculturalism and Judaism led to several wars, in the course of which the Romans destroyed the second Jerusalem temple (70) and Jews settled inJerusalem forbidden (135 AD). Since the rise of Christianity to the state religion (until 380), the oppression of Jewish minorities has become a widespread permanent condition in the history of Europe.

Antisemitism research considers antiquity to be one of the historical roots of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism .

Israel and the peoples in the Bible

The people of Israel looked on as a foreign body in a hostile environment against which it had to say about the earliest beginnings. In the advanced Asian cultures of antiquity, however, Judaism only became known with the emergence of the (unsecured) Davidic-Solomonic empire around 1000 BC. Perceivable as a political greatness, demonstrably only with the provable successor kingdom , the northern kingdom of Israel . The territory of the Israelites was occupied by various empires, including Egyptians , Assyrians , Babylonians , Persians , Medes , Macedonians and Romans . Their policy was aimed at the political unity and cohesion of their empire, so that they let the religions of the subjugated peoples exist in part.

Judaism rejected polytheism , syncretism and the oriental god-king cults due to its belief in the only creator god ( categorized as monotheism in religious history ). It saw itself as a people chosen by this God with a mission for all other peoples (Gen 12: 3). This made it impossible for believing Jews to participate in the cults of the surrounding peoples. In particular, the Jews who had been exiled several times were only able to preserve their identity by distinguishing them from the foreign cults of their environment, which appeared to them to be overwhelming. His belief, which was unique in antiquity, was codified and handed down in writing, was a cause of the later, sometimes systematic anti-Semitism of the Greco-Roman upper classes.

Until 1945, historians and theologians often claimed that the ancient hostility towards Jews arose at the same time as Judaism itself and could only be explained by the people of Israel's exclusive belief in election. This view uncritically followed the biblical historiography , which emphasized the special position of the Jews among the peoples wanted by YHWH as the cause of the rejection of this people.

Assyria and Babylonia

The forcible deportation of the upper classes was a common method used by ancient empires to pacify and incorporate conquered countries. The Assyrians first deported in 733 BC. 6,000 inhabitants from the northern kingdom of Israel , 722 BC. Another 27,000 from the rest of Samaria . This ended northern Israel's existence as a state. 586 BC The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and led the entire ruling elite from the kingdom of Judah to Babylon.

In the Babylonian exile created a number of Jewish settlements, even after completion of the Babylonian rule and return permission of the Persian king Cyrus II. (539 v. Chr.) Are remained. In Egypt , too, a Jewish community of refugees had emerged from 586, whose members were mercenaries of the Persians around 550 BC. Were given permission to build their own temple in Elephantine .

After their return from exile , Ezra and Nehemiah had around 450 BC. BC made the separation from other peoples the basis of the new Jewish state, so as not to lose one's own cultural identity. This isolation from the syncretistic environment created distrust of the Jews, but also their social division. While the common people clung to the law of Ezra and Nehemiah, circles of the upper class in particular opened up to the Hellenistic culture.

Persia

That around 150 BC The Book of Esther , which was written in BC, reports on an attempt at extermination from the Persian period : According to this, Minister of State Haman is supposed to give his King Ahasuerus to Have suggested ( Est 3.8f.  EU ):

“There is a people scattered and separated among all the peoples in all the lands of your kingdom, and their law is different from that of all peoples, and they do not act according to the king's laws. It is not right for the king to let her go. If he likes it, let it be ordered that they be killed. Then I will weigh 10,000 quintals of silver [...] and have it brought to the king's treasury. "

Accordingly, it was about an enrichment of the property of the Jews, which was justified with their strangeness and alleged rebellion against state laws. There is no extra-biblical confirmation of this plan; the otherwise quite reliable Jewish historiography of the time could have projected the attacks of Antiochus IV back into the Persian period. Then the report would reflect a post-Persian hostility towards Judaism in the wake of the Maccabean uprisings . The Book of Esther encouraged Jews on the verge of losing their religious and cultural identity by telling of an earlier, failed attempt to destroy Judaism. Courageous Jews, like Esther at the time, were able to avert this fate.

Hellenism

With his conquests, Alexander the Great created the Great Empire of Macedonia , which stretched from the Bosporus to the Indus for a long time . New trading towns were founded everywhere, in which Jews also settled. Characteristic for the Macedonian rulers, as for the Persians, was an acceptance of the cultural traditions of the subjugated peoples: stable central rule was only possible through cooperation with the local elites, especially the priesthood. This was made possible by polytheism, which was characteristic of all ancient empires. Afterwards, foreign gods were integrated into their own pantheon under new names .

In the Orient, ethnically organized groups in unfamiliar surroundings were a common and generally accepted phenomenon ( Politeuma ). They were dependent on the goodwill of the authorities and were largely politically loyal to the rulers there. Jews were mostly popular in the up-and-coming cities of the Mediterranean as a stimulating economic factor and were privileged to persuade them to settle permanently. They kept their own religious traditions, rejected polytheism and images of God and kept their customs such as the Sabbath rest , purity laws , and Jewish dietary laws . This was generally respected in the cosmopolitan multicultural environment. Jewish trade privileges, however, sometimes led to tensions with the rest of the city's population, who also lived under “foreign control”. Then they could lose the protection of their rulers, as they had to stifle the conflicts as much as possible in order to secure power.

While classical Greek philosophy took no notice of Judaism, there was a lively intellectual exchange in the Jewish diaspora . Greek thinkers like Theophrastus and Megasthenes spoke of Judaism with great respect and saw great agreement with their thinking in its striving for a way of life determined by God's commandments. Conversely, Jewish theologians also saw Pythagoras and Plato as legitimate disciples of Moses .

After Alexander's death in 323 BC His empire broke up and there were succession wars. The Seleucids tried to secure their power through stronger Hellenization. The adherence of the Jews to their customs, the growing awareness of their religion, economic privileges and political conflicts with Jews created and reinforced a widespread religious and cultural rejection of Judaism. The not only religious-cultural, but above all also social disputes came to a head until the "pro-Hellenists" wanted to eliminate their opponents by persuading the Seleucid king Antiochus IV. Epiphanes 168 to forbid the Jewish religion and to complete the Hellenization of Jewish society. Antiochus is therefore in the book of Daniel, which was written at that time, as an archenemy and “blasphemer”, because he wanted to destroy Israel's religion ( Dan 7.25  EU ). In fact, the religious edict of Antiochus, which was unique for the religiously tolerant Hellenistic rulers, provoked a popular uprising: After losing battles (175–164 BC) Judas Maccabeus succeeded in chasing the Seleucid troops out of Jerusalem. The successful uprisings of the Maccabees created from 167 BC A relative state independence of Israel again, so that the relations between Jewish diaspora communities and the heartland intensified. Unlike other minorities, the Jews under the Seleucids achieved exemption in many places from the obligation to worship local deities and the right to pay a temple tax to the Jerusalem priests. At the same time, Judaism became a missionary religion, whose communities won many proselytes and so grew.

Roman Empire

The Hasmonean royal house emerged from the successors of Judas Maccabeus, which was able to secure Judea state and religious autonomy for around 100 years. As a result of independence, the hostility to Jews grew among the Greeks of the East. Many scholars did not see the collapse of the Seleucid Empire as a result of its internal weakness, but rather blamed the “betrayal” of Judea in conjunction with the overpowering Rome. The expansive policy of the Hasmoneans, combined with forced Judaization, worsened the image of the Jews among the Greeks. They took over Egyptian allegations and developed them further in order to defame the Jews under the new masters in Rome and to drive a wedge between the allies.

When the Roman Empire conquered the Mediterranean, there were Jewish enclaves outside of Israel all over the then known world. There were particularly large diaspora communities since the 5th century BC. In Antioch (Asia Minor), Damascus (Syria) and Alexandria (Egypt), since the 2nd century BC. Also in Rome . The Romans seamlessly adopted the Egyptian-Greek anti-Jewish polemics against the Jews from their Greek teachers: Cicero , Seneca , Quintilian , Juvenal and others picked up motifs from it and spread them. Jewish customs such as circumcision were hardly known and they were assessed as "barbaric". In Tacitus about it said also that Jews were "hateful to the gods" and "the other religions opposed." The accusation of odium humani generis - hatred of all people - also became stereotypical. That differentiated this anti-Jewish polemic from the rest of the Roman contempt of the “ barbarians ”. That is why one speaks here of an ancient anti-Judaism in Rome's first-century educated class. This worsened after the defeat of the Jews in Judea.

64 BC BC Pompey conquered Judea for the Romans. These initially protected the privileges of the Jews in their empire. But as it expanded, they had to centralize their rule more strongly. The Roman emperors often only gained support for this when they bought the good behavior of some peoples and responded to their wishes. This “ tolerance ” went hand in hand with the enforcement of the imperial cult , which Jews could not recognize without religious self-abandonment. As a religio licita (approved religion), the Jewish religion was exempted from the imperial cult - with a few short-term exceptions. In AD 6, Augustus revoked the privileges of the Jews, allowing "nationalist" circles to incite them and deprive them of their property. In 19, Emperor Tiberius ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Rome and later the appointment of Pontius Pilate as governor of Judea . This provoked the Jews as soon as they took office with imperial standards in the Jerusalem temple district . His brutal crackdown on any anti-Roman movement was covered by the anti-Jewish adviser to the emperor, Lucius Aelius Seianus .

In 38, a great pogrom followed against the Jews in Alexandria with the imperial tolerance: their synagogues were destroyed, many were tortured and massacred, the rest were driven away. The Diaspora Jews in the Roman Empire reacted to this by increasing their demarcation: They refused table, marriage and cult communion with local people of different faiths. They saw this again as proof that Jews were (optionally) arrogant and elitist, primitive and backward.

41 Caligula wanted to have his colossal statue set up in the temple. That would have led to war. He was murdered beforehand. His successor Claudius tried in vain to ease the growing tensions. There followed three uprisings of the Jews against the Romans: the Jewish uprising 66 to 70, the Alexandria uprising 115 to 117 and the Bar Kochba uprising 132 to 135.

The first Jewish-Roman war ended with the destruction of the temple and the temple city by the Romans; after the third, the Jews also lost their right to resettlement in Jerusalem and their relative state autonomy. The province of Judea was renamed Palestine and placed under direct Roman administration. Most of its residents were murdered, displaced or starved to death. The remaining Jews were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. The Romans wanted to destroy the rebels and prevent future uprisings, but they did not intend to exterminate all Jews. They were concerned with securing power and suppressing the Jewish religious traditions from which the rebellion had emerged.

In the first century, roughly three reaction patterns can be distinguished on the Jewish side:

  • Adaptation and Apologetics : Educated historians and philosophers such as Flavius ​​Josephus and Philo of Alexandria defended Judaism against other Hellenistic and Roman writers.
  • Political-religious resistance : The Zealots practiced strict segregation from “pagans”, i. H. Gentiles , hatred of Jewish collaborators and violent self-defense with assassinations and a willingness to be martyred (for example collective suicide in Massada ). This corresponded to fantasies of revenge and power in the Jewish apocalyptic , for example Dan 7,26f. EU .
  • Consolidation, preservation and further development of one's own traditions: In the 1st century, the Halacha (oral Torah interpretation) and Mishnah (collection of rabbinic Torah interpretations) became the central religious writings of Judaism: the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds .

Christianity

While early Christianity saw itself as part of Judaism and recognized the biblical election of Israel to the people of God, Christianity, which around 100 was its own religion, consisting mainly of non-Jews, increasingly demarcated itself from Judaism and also adopted the traditional Egyptian-Roman anti-Jewish stereotypes . While the Egyptian polemic against the Exodus tradition could easily be refuted as a distortion of the Bible, early Christian theology withdrew this basis from the Jewish apologists. With the appearance of the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth, she claimed to have a fulfillment of the Old Testament promises that had overtaken Israel's expectation of salvation and ended. Therefore the election to the people of God has now passed over to those who believe in Jesus Christ .

When the Jews lost their center of faith in Jerusalem, this inner-Jewish demarcation soon turned into an anti-Judaistic theology which, against Romans, also referred to the Hellenistic-Roman polemics against Jews. Now these caricature images were given a new foundation: Israel was basically denied access to salvation of its own. The Alexandrines had expelled the Jews because the "plague" of their electoral consciousness was not compatible with their Hellenistic-cosmopolitan ideas: Christian theology, on the other hand, went the way of the complete theological expropriation of Israel. This laid the foundation for the continued hostility towards Jews in Christian Europe.

In antiquity, this did not immediately lead to the exclusion of Jews, but it did lead to a change in the situation of diaspora Judaism: Now the Jews in the Roman Empire were not only confronted with a hostile state, but also with a rival religion that claimed the same religious traditions for itself as she herself, but turned it against Judaism.

Nevertheless, the various Christian emperors sometimes tried to preserve the Roman legal tradition and also issued protective regulations for Jews. This became necessary because, after the Constantinian change , the Jewish communities, as formerly legally privileged minorities, were now more and more marginalized, despised and ostracized. Anti-Judaism is a further development.

See also

literature

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  1. ↑ Werner Bergmann : History of anti-Semitism (= Beck'sche series. CH Beck Wissen 2187). 3rd, reviewed edition. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-47987-1 , p. 9.
  2. ↑ Jules Isaac: Genesis of Anti-Semitism. Before and after Christ. Europa-Verlag, Vienna et al. 1969, pp. 29–34.
  3. ^ H. Graetz : History of the Jews from the oldest times to the present. Revised from the sources. Section 2: History of the Israelites from the death of King Solomon (around 977 BC) to the death of Judah Makkabi (160). Half 2: From the Babylonian Exile (586) to the death of Judah Makkabi (160). 2nd unchanged edition. Leiner, Leipzig 1902, pp. 306 and 315 (3rd edition, reprint of the edition Leipzig, Leiner, 1902. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1998).
  4. ↑ Alex Bein : The Jewish Diaspora. In: Alex Bein: The Jewish question. Biography of a world problem. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-421-01963-0 , pp. 15-19.
  5. ↑ Zvi Yavetz: Enmity against Jews in antiquity. Munich 1997, p. 72.
  6. ↑ Kurt Schubert: Jewish history. Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3 406 39175 3 , p. 26.