Quite a few, actually, including the right one.

Believe it or not, I have talked to churchgoing people whose knowledge of the Bible did not include the Old Testament and who maintained fiercely that the Ten Commandments were given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Different mountain, different prophet, different time period. Simply reading the Sermon on the Mount would have disabused them of that notion. This belief is oddly prevalent. I put it down to the fact that many people have never actually sat down and read the Bible—you know, cover to cover, like a novel for instance (most revealing!!)—but have limited their Bible "scholarship" to bouncing from verse to verse, often using some concordance or other.

And no, I don't think Christians—most Christians—are anti-Semitic. But some definitely are. One example would be the Millennialists, who think that when the dust settles after the Battle of Armageddon, Jews who don't accept Jesus as the Messiah will go to Hell.   There's certainly a tinge of anti-Semitism there, at least in the sense of denigrating the Jewish religion. And historically, how do you explain the persecution of Jews for centuries in Christian Europe? There were periods when even being suspected of being Jewish could get one hanged or burned at the stake. Are Christians anti-Semitic? Some are, some aren't. They certainly have been in the past.

And I think there are those, particularly those who so adamantly insist that "This is a Christian country," who, should their Ten Commandments monument arrive ready for installation in the courthouse lobby with the commandments written in Hebrew, would get pretty darned bent out of shape!

Don Firth