Language:
English
Year of publication:
2009
Titel der Quelle:
Seeing Things Their Way
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2009) 91-133
Keywords:
Christianity and other religions Judaism To 1500
;
History
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism 1500-1800
;
History
;
Christianity and antisemitism History To 1500
;
Christianity and antisemitism History 1500-1800
;
Philosemitism
;
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism
Abstract:
Rejects the view of Norman Cohn who, in his "The Pursuit of the Millennium" (1957), ascribed to the early modern "revolutionary millenarians" not only anti-clericalism, but also unbending hatred toward the Jews. From the Middle Ages, the Church associated its apocalyptic expectations with the coming of the Antichrist, which would precede the second coming of the true Christ. The Church associated this Satan-like figure of the Antichrist with Jews. Protestantism associated the Antichrist with the Pope, but nonetheless could not do away with traditional anti-Jewish prejudices and, characteristically, demanded the conversion of the Jews to Christianity as a pre-condition of God's kingdom on Earth. The Counter-Reformation, while describing Luther and Calvin as "precursors of the Antichrist", only intensified anti-Jewish motifs in its apocalyptic doctrine, which was summarized by Roberto Bellarmino in 1586. Remarkably, it was the millenarians who, having admitted partial rightness of Judaism and its messianic expectations, abandoned the anti-Jewish imagery in their apocalypticism, gave up the demand of conversion of Jews, and thus created a philosemitic theology. Far from issuing in fanatical intolerance of the kind documented by Cohn, radical millenarianism went far beyond mere toleration to affirm religious unanimity of Judaism and Christianity and their consequent everlasting coexistence.
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