that previous video is a very hard one to deliver because i'm not interested in offending
anyone and i'm not interested in specifically promoting a particular point of view and history
other than what seems to make sense to me and you know it but it's hard to avoid it when you
look at topics such as the historical jesus but we get on a little bit more comfortable ground when
we move away from the founder of christianity and look at still some people who are revered
by christians world around to understand how the church and synagogue could grow so far apart
so let's begin that discussion now undoubtedly to understand the direction that christianity took
after jesus death is we have to look at the work of saul of tarsus also known as saint paul now
paul never actually met jesus in conventional real life he encountered the risen jesus as
he describes on the road to damascus here's an amazing depiction of this from the 16th century
here check this out this is uh the risen jesus here a very dramatic kind of posture with the
angelic host and so on and in the story that paul describes once he sees the risen jesus he's struck
blind for several days and like incapacitated and it's like an overwhelming experience for him
he eventually comes to his senses and he realizes that he's got to go on a mission
to talk about jesus and his teachings and he is wildly successful before we leave this painting
just look at how the horse is at the center of the composition it's such a powerful emotion on
the horse's face i mean that's really something that i admire i'm not an art historian but i love
these kinds of things at any rate back to paul he goes on this massive journey devoting his
life to touring the eastern mediterranean he goes through asia minor and the greek peninsula and the
italian peninsula and his word reaches perhaps through extensions even to the iberian peninsula
and everywhere he goes he's speaking primarily to jewish audiences in the diaspora and to
fellow travelers with those small diaspora communities whenever possible and reaching
out beyond the jewish community to talk about what jesus said and what it means for society
now it is at this point that we should understand that christianity had a tremendous amount to offer
the peoples of the world it took some of the key ideas of judaism such as life after death
that's a big plus a personal deity that actually listens to prayer that is full of mercy that has
requirements of humanity that holds humanity to task that there is a mission for humanity all
kinds of really amazing things and of course attaching it to a religion of great antiquity
and at the same time christianity omitted a lot of the sort of high barriers to admission to judaism
judaism at this point is still very much an ethnicity a people one may convert to judaism
famous conversion story in the bible for example the story of ruth
but it's still primarily an ethnos and one gets into it by being descended from other jews so
and in order to make that leap into the jewish community one would have to submit if one were
a male to circumcision and then of course there's all the ritual commandments like as maintaining
the dietary laws observing the sabbath and so on and these things are quite onerous
especially if you don't appreciate how amazingly beneficial they are so there are a lot of gentiles
who are attracted to these ideas may be attracted to judaism itself but not necessarily willing to
undertake those kind of responsibilities and paul finds he has a huge audience he has people who are
really listening to him at the same time one of the most obvious questions he's going to be asked
is like so what's different between you and other jews and he's got to explain the relationship
between this new emerging ideology and the mother ideology of judaism this is where you begin to see
something that's called the adversus judeos literary tradition it's exemplified in particular
by john chrysostom but we see many other figures among the church fathers who are participating
in it which is kind of like against the jews there's a discussion of why christianity is better
that involves why judaism is worse why judaism is a less so kind of ideology
this obviously has you know negative connotations and will have negative repercussions particularly
as the debate becomes much more gentile versus jew us versus them and this will precede a pace
over the next few centuries where we see this especially clearly is in the ecclesia et synagoga
theme uh the church and synagogue theme which to jump ahead for a few centuries to illustrate this
point um you see it in gothic art in particular here's some monumental architecture from
strasbourg that shows on the left the ecclesia which represents the church and you can see she's
got an upright staff signifying her authority her bodice is done up properly she's wearing
a crown she's regal she's clear-eyed and so on and on the right is the fallen synagogue
which uh you can see that she's holding the ten commandments in her left hand her weaker hand
and upside down they're falling out of her hands she's not even attached to the law properly
the staff that or spear that represents her authority is broken uh she's blindfolded and
she's even in an act of decline she's like falling away from the rock and this kind of
image of contrasting the church to the synagogue in which the synagogue is the lesser partner is
something that we see over and over again as the church fathers developed this at versus judeo's
kind of literary tradition here's another example there are literally hundreds and hundreds of them
this is from the church of notre dame and you can see that synagogue has all the same
kind of elements but her eyes are blinded by a serpent right clearly an allusion to the serpent
of genesis and so on that is not permitting her to see the truth of christianity and here's one
especially notorious one from the 14th century a stained glass window in verb in germany that
on the left you can see the church being crowned by heaven holding the upright staff the chalice
and so on riding a tetramorph a being of mystical significance and on the right the synagogue broken
staff crown knocked off the head blindfolded and just to make sure you got the point
a sword is driving through the top of her skull indicating divine displeasure it's one other
detail by the way before we leave this i find it fascinating that jesus in this particular image
is clearly represented with dark skin which you know seems to be something that really
energizes a certain portion of my audience here you go fascinating representation so
back to our topic however there's clearly a period of time that begins with paul and extends on later
where the synagogue is derided the synagogue is put down that the church is clearly ascendant
some would say that paul advanced a kind of replacement theory there are passages
in his writings that suggest that might not be totally accurate but at any rate this is the
general trend that will be evinced over the next few hundred years now the jewish community is not
standing still while all this happens there is a reaction from the jewish world as well one might
even suggest we don't know which is the action and which is the reaction perhaps they happen
around the same time but this particular text the so-called blessing of the heretics appears
probably around the end of the first century it's just its creation is described in the
talmud and tracted page 28 in which a a person named shmuel samuel the lesser is given the
task of creating a passage in the liturgy the mandatory uh central part of the liturgy called
the amidah or the 18 blessings that is designed somehow to make a clear distinction between
jewish jews and jewish christians in other words you have this kind of amorphous period of time
in the decades following jesus's death in which it's not clear what a jew should believe
and what a christian may practice and so they ask samuel to create this blessing
which is inserted into the mandatory prayers and it's not actually a blessing it's really a curse
now there's a significant amount of debate about exactly how this was created how it was placed
in the liturgy how it was enforced but if we look at the text itself it says in english
let there be no hope for informers now that informer is a euphemistic term here for a
jewish christian for reasons which goes beyond the scope of our talk and may all wickedness instantly
perish may all the enemies of your people be swiftly cut off etc etc and the idea is that
as as much of the historiography argues that if a person was suspected of being a jewish
christian meaning a jew with christian beliefs they would be asked to recite the prayers publicly
as part of the prayer service and when they came to this new passage it was kind of like
a litmus test if they read it then they would be pronouncing a curse on themselves if they
harbored christian beliefs on the other hand if they omitted it they would be outing themselves
as a christian and theoretically could be removed not only from the pulpit but from the synagogue
there's some analysis that suggests that the gospel according to john was written by someone
who experienced this and in fact his gospel is much more filled with invective than the synoptic
gospels you know references to the synagogue of satan and things like that um so this was kind
of like a um a line in the sand that from the jewish perspective marked off an ideological
boundary that was not present before the inclusion of this text in the prayer so we see that this is
a family dispute that has gone really sour and they're separating uh from both sides
finally let us not forget the fact that by the time we get to the early fourth century
christianity has become so large and so popular that ultimately becomes the state religion under
constantine shown here the famous story behind it there's some interesting things about his family
that were attracted to christianity as well but he would have this dream where he would
see or this vision where he would see this cross and it would say in huck signo vince
under this sign will you conquer and then when he pieced it together that it was attached to
christianity that's when he converted that's the traditional story associated
with it but with his conversion and his you know stamp of approval on christianity a once
heavily persecuted faith uh not only uh reading the gospels by people like paul as a pharisee
uh who was bent on persecuting the church but also clearly by the romans who you know sent christians
to the gladiatorial games and things like that this represents a dramatic turning point where the
the once despised religion is now a state religion with far more power and that's actually going to
be the status quo in europe until the modern era okay i hope you found this useful we're going to
continue in the next videos uh by going back to judea and focusing on internal jewish politics and
we're going to look specifically at the origins of the great revolt thank you very much for watching