This is a continuation from the formal debate proposal thread.
I suggest that the Catholic Passion Plays, such as the Oberammergau (not far from Dachau) Passion Play performed since 1634, served to incite hatred against Jews. The play is based on the New Testament, which Christians feel is devinely inspired. Thus the anti-semitism and the violence that accompanied it, is a direct result of the Christian religion.
Here is some historical backround.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberammergau_Passion_Play
Here is an essay by a Rabbi who observed the play in 1901.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/rio/index.htm
...There was no escape for him from the Roman cross,—but he might save his disciples, he might save his followers. They had deluded him, but it was he who had been the cause of their delusion and deluding. He must speedily retreat from Jerusalem, give them his last message and the signal for their flight and dispersion. And then he must surrender himself to the Roman, so that, by his voluntary surrender and subsequent death, his disciples and followers, they who had so intensely believed in him, might be saved from the Roman's sword of vengeance.
But not so is the truth told in the Passion Play, nor in the New Testament, whence This historic fact blurred by falsifications against Jews.the Passion Play of Oberammergau derives its text and theme. There is introduced, and realistically enacted, a mass of falsehoods, of base inventions against the Jews, that obviously never happened, never could have happened, that are flagrantly self-contradictory, that violently outrage the history and law and religion and constitution of the Jew, that had their origin, and that were forced into the gospel stories, at the time when early Christianity had established itself and had become polemical and vindictive, when the theological differences between the monotheistic Jew and the trinitarian Christian had become intense, when the Roman empire was recognized as the most fertile field for the propagation of the new faith, and when, therefore, on the theory that "the end justifies the means," it was deemed politic not only to mingle Pagan myths with Jewish history, blend Grecian gods with a Jewish martyr, but also exculpate the Roman from having crucified Jesus, and lay the guilt upon the Roman-conquered, Roman-persecuted, Roman-despised Jew.
But of this incrimination of the Jew and exculpation of the Roman, of this blackening Which will be analyzed in our next discourse.of the Sanhedrin and whitewashing of Pontius Pilate, which follows in the Passion Play close upon Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, I must speak in my next discourse...
...The further the story of Christ from the life-time of Jesus the more bitter its spirit toward the Jew. In the gospel of John— latest of the four—the Jews are contemptuously spoken of as an alien, outcast people, as offspring of the Evil One. This growing hostility was due partly to the poor success of the missionaries among the Jews, and partly to their desire to escape being classed as Jews, as they had hitherto been, since the Emperor Hadrian had, after the Bar Cochban revolution, decreed the stamping out of all the Jews and their religion...
I suggest that the Catholic Passion Plays, such as the Oberammergau (not far from Dachau) Passion Play performed since 1634, served to incite hatred against Jews. The play is based on the New Testament, which Christians feel is devinely inspired. Thus the anti-semitism and the violence that accompanied it, is a direct result of the Christian religion.
Here is some historical backround.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberammergau_Passion_Play
Here is an essay by a Rabbi who observed the play in 1901.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/rio/index.htm
...There was no escape for him from the Roman cross,—but he might save his disciples, he might save his followers. They had deluded him, but it was he who had been the cause of their delusion and deluding. He must speedily retreat from Jerusalem, give them his last message and the signal for their flight and dispersion. And then he must surrender himself to the Roman, so that, by his voluntary surrender and subsequent death, his disciples and followers, they who had so intensely believed in him, might be saved from the Roman's sword of vengeance.
But not so is the truth told in the Passion Play, nor in the New Testament, whence This historic fact blurred by falsifications against Jews.the Passion Play of Oberammergau derives its text and theme. There is introduced, and realistically enacted, a mass of falsehoods, of base inventions against the Jews, that obviously never happened, never could have happened, that are flagrantly self-contradictory, that violently outrage the history and law and religion and constitution of the Jew, that had their origin, and that were forced into the gospel stories, at the time when early Christianity had established itself and had become polemical and vindictive, when the theological differences between the monotheistic Jew and the trinitarian Christian had become intense, when the Roman empire was recognized as the most fertile field for the propagation of the new faith, and when, therefore, on the theory that "the end justifies the means," it was deemed politic not only to mingle Pagan myths with Jewish history, blend Grecian gods with a Jewish martyr, but also exculpate the Roman from having crucified Jesus, and lay the guilt upon the Roman-conquered, Roman-persecuted, Roman-despised Jew.
But of this incrimination of the Jew and exculpation of the Roman, of this blackening Which will be analyzed in our next discourse.of the Sanhedrin and whitewashing of Pontius Pilate, which follows in the Passion Play close upon Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, I must speak in my next discourse...
...The further the story of Christ from the life-time of Jesus the more bitter its spirit toward the Jew. In the gospel of John— latest of the four—the Jews are contemptuously spoken of as an alien, outcast people, as offspring of the Evil One. This growing hostility was due partly to the poor success of the missionaries among the Jews, and partly to their desire to escape being classed as Jews, as they had hitherto been, since the Emperor Hadrian had, after the Bar Cochban revolution, decreed the stamping out of all the Jews and their religion...
