SECTA NEFARIA

This entry continues to discuss the relationship between the Jews and the Roman Empire.

There are a number of paradoxical twists in the history of the Jews, which do not require an explanation that would be controversial. These paradoxes simply arise when we look at the facts with some attention.

Secta nefaria, the nefarious sect. Whom did the Romans call that? There is a great historical temptation to associate this unpleasant tag with Rome’s intolerant attitude toward the Christians. After all, Christianity in early times was indeed seen as a sect of Judaism. On the other hand, Judaism could never be referred to as a sect!... Or could it?... Here we come face to face with the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

Generally speaking, there are two different, and readily identifiable by an open mind, phenomena, yet both misleadingly receiving the same label of anti-Semitism. One reason for the Jewish persecution has been the Christian religious intolerance, which has convincingly manifested itself in the bloody internecine strife of Christian on Christian, yet certainly has been much exacerbated by the image of the Jews as Christ-killers. Considering a horrific anti-Christian bias in the pre-Christian Rome, fairly tolerant, as we already observed, toward other creeds within the Empire, what was it there, perhaps within the very nature of Christianity that may have generated such excesses of hatred going both ways? I say that it had to be the aggressive thrust of the new faith, its determination to conquer the world by evangelizing it, which first terrified Rome, but then conquered it lock, stock, and barrel.

The other source has little, if anything, to do with religion, anti-Semitism in this case being a manifestation of the Marxian class struggle, that is, the poor against the rich, with the Jews oftentimes identified, to their detriment, with the cursed breed of the filthy rich, and thus ruthlessly run over by the steamroller of popular fury.

Throwing a bridge from the previous entry, where we encountered a still-pagan Rome, to the later times of Rome-sponsored anti-Semitism, we need to keep in mind that the pre-Christian Rome, despite all the nasty instances of anti-insurgency cruelty and the senseless destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, was essentially a tolerant state, and after a very short period of Emperor Hadrian’s punitive actions against the Jews in the wake of Simon Bar Kokhba’s revolt, it relented, in the self-confidence that the Jews had no more military muscle left to mount another such offensive, and more or less left the Jews to their own devices. Granted, it was not exactly a sweet remission of misery for the Jews, left demoralized, religion-less (their former faith, the Temple-centered Torah Judaism, had been obliterated as a result of the destruction of the Temple), and acrimoniously divided. But at least the Romans had ceased to play an active role in that misery. Needless to say, they would never refer to the Jews as a nefarious sect. Nor did they ever bother to apply this tag to the pesky Christians.

The infamous designation of the Jews as Secta Nefaria was a product of Rome’s Christianization, and not a result of either a Bellum Judaicum, or some other kind of prejudice. It first appears in the Roman Imperial edicts only after the adoption of Christianity by Constantine the Great, that is, after the year 326!

So, what are the implications of this early expression of state-sponsored anti-Semitism? Are the Jews from now on regarded as an anti-Christian “religious sect,” as immediately suggested by the word Secta, or perhaps, even likelier, as a cursed race, in keeping with that much-quoted verse in Matthew 27:25: “Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” …It is curious and instructive how the current Pope Benedict XVI has recently chosen to interpret this passage. “It is the cleansing blood of Christ,” he writes [quoted non-verbatim], “which has washed away the Deicidal sin of the Jews, and was passed on to their children.”

Who are ‘the Jews’ referred to by the Pope here: a people or a religious denomination? To simplify matters, let us rapture “Jewish Christians” out, which still leaves us with religious adherents of Judaism and of other non-Christian religions, plus the atheists, who constitute a very large number. So, who are the Pope’s Jews, a race or a religion? The quick, popping like popcorn, standard answer that they are “both,” now suddenly appears unexpected and shocking... But is there any other way of answering this question? The fact is that there is much more to it than meets the eye, and it is always the nuance that makes all the difference.

Perhaps we should now seek an answer from another venerable figure of Christianity: Martin Luther, for which legitimate reason a whirlwind trip through time may be in order. To be honest, Luther’s reputation as a proverbial anti-Semite has been indelibly etched on the rock of history, but still, examining his attitude to the Jews is highly instructive.

We can start by comparing it to his attitude toward the Catholics whom Luther calls Papists. His famously hateful outbursts against both, if we place them together, seem not so much anti-Jewish per se, as affirming his own religious intolerance, which hits the Catholics with no less severity than the Jews, judging from the following passages:

“Jews and papists are ungodly wretches; they are two stockings made of one piece of cloth.” (Tischreden.)

“The ungodly papists prefer the authority of the church far above God’s Word; a blasphemy abominable, it is not to be endured, wherewith, void of all shame and piety, they spit in God’s face.” (Ibid.)

The next passage, even though rather lengthy, is so remarkable in so many ways, that it simply must not be missed.

“The Devil begat darkness (was that so?! Perhaps it is OK as an allegory?); darkness begat ignorance; ignorance begat error and his brethren; error begat freewill and presumption; freewill begat works; works begat forgetfulness of God (he obviously means people forgetting about God, and not forgetfulness in God Himself); forgetfulness begat transgression; transgression begat superstition; superstition begat satisfaction; satisfaction begat the mass-offering; the mass-offering begat the priest; the priest begat unbelief (do I hear the Nietzschean rumblings already, or, perhaps, even before?); unbelief begat hypocrisy; hypocrisy begat traffic in offerings for gain; traffic in offerings for gain begat Purgatory; Purgatory begat the annual solemn vigils; the vigils begat church-livings; church-livings begat avarice; avarice begat swelling superfluity; swelling superfluity begat fullness; fullness begat rage (…is he into clinical psychiatry now?); rage begat license; license begat empire and domination (the hour of political science has struck too); domination begat pomp; pomp begat ambition; ambition begat simony; simony begat the pope and his brethren (sweet music to the Eastern side of the Great Schism, whose explanation of the Papal blasphemy is pretty close to Luther’s), about the time of the Babylonish captivity.” (Now, here is a delicious mix of the literal and allegorical, which is supposed to tie the loose ends at the end: reuniting the Papists and the Jews in this last souvenir of ancient history.)

Such passages from Luther, targeting the Roman Catholics as well as the Jews, may easily produce a strong impression that he is not singling out the Jews with his hateful invective, but that his Christian brethren on the other side of the denominational divide are getting much hotter hellfire from him, even though they date their Church to Saint Peter and had been the sole flagship of Christ for the whole stretch of the preceding fifteen hundred years, before Dr. Martin Luther was destined to expose their true face and genealogy.

But here comes the real catch.

It is obvious that in attacking the Roman Catholics, Luther is attacking their religion only. The same though does not apply to the Jews, and here is perhaps the most revealing example:

 “If a Jew, not converted at heart, were to ask baptism at my hands, I would take him on to a bridge, tie a stone round his neck, and hurl him into the river; for these wretches are wont to make a jest of our religion.” (Tischreden.)

In this remarkable passage, Martin Luther suddenly joins forces with his hated Papists against the Jews. Let us not forget that the infamous Spanish Inquisition, Luther’s contemporary, was primarily targeting not the religious Jews who had long been expropriated and expelled from Spain, but the multitude of recent Jewish Christian converts suspected of ungodly ulterior motives. Thus, talking about “Jews not converted at heart, who are wont to make a jest of our religion,” Luther essentially recites the “Papist” Inquisition line, which had condemned many hundreds, if not thousands, of converted Jews to torture and the stake.

The only conclusion possible in this regard is that in the eyes of the Western Christian world, both Roman Catholic and Reformed, secta nefaria has historically referred not so much to the religion of Judaism, as to the Jews as a race.

Our next entry is about to  expose a surprising paradox, with regard to the relationship of Judaism with Islam, suggesting that in these modern times either “the time is out of joint,” or that there has been a joker in the deck, who has messed up all the cards.