Jesus the Jew

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Description

Written and presented by leading British writer Howard Jacobson, this program examines the story of the origins, and consequences, of Christian belief. The bare facts are that although Christianity originated in devout Judaism, for Jews, it has by and large been a calamity. The roots of anti-semitism that enabled the Holocaust lie in 2000 years of Christian vilification of the Jews based on the false accounts of Jesus's death written in the Christian New Testament itself. The four Gospels place the blame for Jesus's betrayal, arrest and agonising death on the cross on the Jewish people, accusing them of rejecting Christ and damning them for eternity as the "children of Satan". The result was a theology of hatred of the Jews, developed and embellished by later Church Fathers, that led to frequent pogroms, blood libels, expulsions and forced conversions on pain of death for Europe's Jewish population lasting well into the twentieth century.