I willingly believed this, and I still do. At the same time, however, knowing that such passages existed helped me to understand why there has been so much anti-Jewish sentiment over the centuries. It also offered insight into the anti-Gentile animus that dominated Judaism. It should be noted that all rabbis study the Talmud. How would Jews react if Christian preachers studied Mein Kampf as part of their holy writ, but excused it by saying that the book has no effect on their current attitudes? Any open-minded reader who reads both Mein Kampf and the Talmud would find the Talmud far more intolerant.

When I looked up anti-Semitism in the major encyclopedias, all of them attempted to explain historical anti-Semitism purely as a Christian intolerance of non-Christian Jews. Sometimes, they even suggested that Christians persecuted Jews simply because the Gospels blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ. They never even suggested that one of the sources of anti-Semitism could have been the hateful and ethnocentric attitudes of the Jews themselves, as expressed and encouraged toward Gentiles in their own religious law.

Even during the life of Jesus Christ, the forces of organized Jewry opposed this kindhearted teacher who spoke of the power of love and reconciliation, rather than the militant anti-Roman measures hoped for by the Pharisees. The New Testament records faithfully the intense Jewish terror used to suppress the early Christian faith. In one of the Gospels' most chilling verses it is written:

Howbeit that no man spake openly of him [Christ] for fear of the Jews." (John 8:13)¹

From the early centuries of Christianity, some Gentile scholars became fluent in Hebrew. They developed bitterness toward Jews based on the content of the Talmudic writings. Down through the intervening centuries, dozens of popes issued edicts and encyclicals condemning Judaism. They expressed outrage, not because the Jews crucified Christ, but because of the Talmud's vicious anti-Gentile and anti-Christian passages. Following is a potpourri of popes' views on the Jews:

Not only did the founders of the Catholic Church take this dim view of the Jews, I was amazed to find that the great reformer and founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, shared the same passionate opposition toward them.