The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #112434   Message #2386212
Posted By: CarolC
10-Jul-08 - 09:13 PM
Thread Name: Was 'Lord of the Dance' anti-semitic?
Subject: RE: Was 'Lord of the Dance' anti-semitic?
The Gospels may indeed be 100% inaccurate. And so may the old testament. I'm inclined to think they are myself. But if that's the case, we really can't say there's any such thing as either Jews or Christians, can we? Or Muslims, either. And if that was the case, seems to me there would be a lot less bickering in the world (I won't say violence, because it's money and power that are the root cause of that).

In both the Christian and Jewish religions, there's a central theme of being persecuted by authority figures. The Jews being persecuted by the Egyptian rulers, then the Roman rulers, and then Christians. The Christians being persecuted originally by the Jewish elite, then the Romans, and then, the Protestants being persecuted by the Catholic rulers, and Catholics being persecuted by Protestant rulers. I don't think either religion could function without this central theme. Maybe the early Christians fabricated their tradition of being persecuted by Jewish authority figures. But maybe the idea that this Christian tradition is a form of persecution of Jews has been fabricated by the people promoting this idea.

We'll never know. So I guess the best thing to do is just let everyone keep their own traditions and stop bickering about them, and we can all strive to speak out against anyone who uses any of these traditions as an excuse to treat other people badly.