Dr. E. Michael Jones is an American academic who in 2008 published a 1200 page book called ‘The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit’, which claims that there is a consistent pattern in history whereby organized Judaism opposed and attacked Western Christian civilization. Jones asserts that the origin of the supposed Jewish anti-Catholic sentiment and activity can be traced to the passion of Jesus, when they as a group rejected Him as their messiah, or as he puts it, when they rejected Logos. Jones then ‘reveals’ some moments in history where a few Jews aligned themselves with anti-catholic revolutionaries, and, he claims, not a few times where they created those movements themselves: the failed attempt of reconstructing the Temple in the time of Julian, an alleged later use of Muslim rulers and Protestant revolutionaries, and to their present day influence on American politics and media. Jones purports that Jews have tried, and often succeeded, in destroying neighbourhoods, created wars and perverted the morality of institutions and nations.
This is conspiracy theory on steroids, and as with many such theories, a grain of truth is required on which to construct it. A few Jews are in powerful positions in finance, academia and entertainment. Secular Jews are very often progressive ideologues who believe in the possibility of creating a better world, in recent centuries through some form of socialism. This inevitably brings them into conflict with Roman Catholics who assert the right to private property and believe in Original Sin; the consequence of the latter is that Catholics deny the possibility of creating heaven on earth, a conclusion which history tends to confirm.
But the theory falls apart in the face of the obvious fact that while Jews, like all such groups, are able to form networks and collaborate, they simply have never had the capacity to organise a world-scale plot persisting for a couple of millennia.
Neither does Jones’s narrative hold up in the light of the history of the Christian Church itself. Jesus – God incarnate – was a Jew. John the Baptist was a Jew. Mary, Joseph and Anne were
all Jews. The father of John the Baptist was a priest in the Jewish Temple. All of the
disciples were Jews. The Seventy were all Jews. The Jews did not, as a group, reject Jesus as the Risen Lord. The original Christian Church
consisted entirely of Jews. All of the authors of the New Testament were
Jews. Paul, who began as a persecutor of the Christian Jews (there were not called Christians until later on) on behalf of some other Jews – the religious authorities – became a key figure in the spreading of the Christian message.
It was not until a few decades later that the first conversions of the Gentiles occurred, giving rise to questions which had to be resolved at the Apostle’s Council, held in Jerusalem and described in Acts 15. Jones might as well argue that the entire Christian Church is a Jewish conspiracy against the pagan gods.
Jones is also questionable in his charge that the Jews rejected ‘Logos’. This was a Greek concept, the product of a reflection in theological terms of the narrative events described in the Synoptic Gospels. Whilst implicit in pre-Joannine theology, Logos was not spelled out until the writing of the Gospel of St John, thought to be around 65AD.
Over the centuries, the main damage to Catholicism was due to a gradual degeneration in Rome itself, verging at times on the scandalous. Additionally, Rome changed the Creed itself, without authorisation by any Church Council, thereby downgrading the Holy Spirit. Then the Eastern Orthodox Christians were ejected by a dead pope in 1054, and after that came the sacking of Constantinople by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204; the Eastern Empire never recovered from the damage, and it opened the way to the Ottoman conquest. What had the Jews to do with any of these key events? All of them had their origin in the papacy itself. How many of the Popes were Jews?
Going forward to the sixteenth century, there was another catastrophic split, originating in objections most of which had previously been made by the Eastern Orthodox five hundred years previously, including the doctrines of Original Sin, Purgatory and Indulgences; these were the immediate occasion for Luther’s 95 Theses. Again, this most damaging event had nothing to do with Jews; it was self-inflicted.
Moving on a couple of centuries, the next most damaging event for Catholic Christianity was the French Revolution. This was a product of the Enlightenment, a Gnostic movement propagated primarily through Freemasonry. Yet again, it had nothing to do with Jews; Gnosticism has many roots, principally, ancient Indian philosophy.
What of the twentieth century revolutions? Marx came from a Jewish family which had converted to Lutheranism. His theories are derived from Enlightenment philosophy. Many of the followers of Marx, were indeed secular Jews, including the Bolsheviks. But the Jews in Tsarist Russia had been treated as outsiders for over a century, and were restricted to living in the Pale of Settlement, that part of Poland which had come into the Russian Empire when Poland was partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century. Consequently, it is unsurprising that they had no loyalty to the regime. Worse still, due to the nationalisation of the Russian Orthodox Church by Peter the Great, and a requirement that state officials receive communion at least once a year, career opportunities for Jews, for example in academia, were closed off; their situation was probably similar to that which Catholics in Northern Ireland suffered for many decades. This was a perfect breeding ground for subversion; that the subversives were Jewish was an effect rather than a cause.
However, when we look at the actual Bolshevik leaders, what do we find? Stalin was a Georgian who had attended an Orthodox seminary before he went to the bad. Felix Dzerzhinsky, secret police head, was a Polish Catholic of aristocratic descent, Lenin was Russian, Trotsky and Kaganovitch were indeed Jewish. The mass of the Bolshevik supporters were, of course, working class Russians. The fields for revolution had been fertilised by the Tsarist regime. An industrial working class suffering from low wages and poor housing provided an army of supporters. Reform came too late for the Russian political system to be transformed into a constitutional monarchy, which would probably have saved it. The Russians entered the First World War hopelessly unprepared for war with Germany, which was technologically fifty years ahead. The disastrously incompetent military campaign in East Prussia in 1914 destroyed morale and confidence in the established order. The German authorities lit the spark when the allowed Lenin to pass through the country from Switzerland to St Petersburg. Neutral Sweden also helped Lenin on his way by allowing passage to Lenin.
Yes, quite a few of the actors were Jewish, and Marxist ideas were and are attractive to secular Jews, but it is ludicrous to claim that ‘the Jews’ were behind the Russian revolution. Most of the Jews in Russia did not support the revolution and were foremost among the victims.
The other twentieth century revolution, Nazism, was every bit as anti-Catholic as the Marxist one. Does Jones blame that on the Jews?
What of the present? Within Protestantism, while bible-based evangelical sects continue to spread, we see the mainstream denominations in retreat. Is that the fault of the Jews? We also see the Roman Catholic church in retreat. The collapse in vocations in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council is propelling the church towards an institutional implosion as parishes are forced to close through a lack of both clergy and congregations. How were ‘the Jews’ responsible for the liturgical reforms which were such an important factor behind the collapse?
Jones’s entire thesis ultimately founders on both historical facts and the notion that ‘the Jews’ exist as a coherent, organised entity. Some Jews are indeed strongly anti-Christian. Most Jews give the subject little, if any thought. More than a handful of Jews are themselves Christian. But Jones is mischievous. This becomes evident from the comments on his blog; anti-semitism is often a manifestation of a paranoid delusional condition, which can spill over into violent action when those affect believe that ‘The Jews’ are out to get them.
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