Martin Luther, The Reformation and Anti-Semitism
One of the most striking ironies of Christianity is its pervasive and persistent anti-semitism. Even though the man/god it worships was a Jewish man himself, anti-semitism has a long and inglorious history in Christianity. Even the Reformation didn't change that. Martin Luther, himself, wrote a long treatise about the "horrible Jews." You can learn about it at the link below. You certainly won't learn about it at church:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies
Here are some of the low points of his treatise:
In the first ten sections of the treatise, Luther expounds, at considerable length, upon his views concerning Jews and Judaism and how these compare to Christians and Christianity. Following the exposition, Section XI of the treatise advises Christians to carry out seven remedial actions. These are
to burn down Jewish synagogues and schools and warn people against them;
to refuse to let Jews own houses among Christians;
for Jewish religious writings to be taken away;
for rabbis to be forbidden to preach;
to offer no protection to Jews on highways;
for usury to be prohibited and for all silver and gold to be removed, put aside for safekeeping, and given back to Jews who truly convert; and
to give young, strong Jews flail, axe, spade, and spindle, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Other than order, they're the same.
In other words, Protestantism may have been anti-Semitic, but they abided by the ruling of the Great Assembly or perhaps rulings as late as the Tannaim. Depends on when you think the Hebrew canon was assembled. Surely most of it was set by the time the Romans destroyed Qumran, given the documents there, but I think Song of Solomon is lacking from the fragments found.
Christianity has had a long and tortured affair with Judaism. Even before the NT canon was formed, there were disputes and debates. If you hold the OT to be holy, how do you justify Sunday observance and Christmas? Esp. when the NT is entirely in a Tanakh-related setting, and "righteousness" is obviously tsedakah; when Paul uses a rabbinic 3-way distinction between "bad, righteous, and good"?
Judaism had the same difficulty in dealing with the heretic Xians and making sure that their belief system didn't make hash out of what the Pharisees bequeathed to the Tannaim. For a long time there was a lot of overlap, and neither side liked it at all. Esp. among communities where the Xians weren't also Jews or half-Jews. What do you do with unclean gentiles who didn't perform the conversion rituals and do the mikveh thing but otherwise are pretty much righteous?
The eventual ruling was "priestly authority", making the Sabbath a fast day but Sunday a day of glory; declaring Quartodeciman observers heretics and pushing Easter and other local observances. But there was always the pull to be faithful to the way the early church would have ordered its doctrine--if it's good for Jesus and the apostles, why not Xians? Anti-Semitism was not just a response to supremacist thought ("Israel is God's people, not gentiles"
or strange folkways, but also the way to define the boundary between Xianity and papal authority and the texts themselves. If you think of Jews as Christ killers, there's nothing there to admire or respect or think you should do. That means the priests are the unalloyed authority.
Martin Luther, when push came to shove, said "Biblia sola" and then, as he exited the pulpit, muttered, "Eppur il papa!" Of course, he had to say it in Italian because if he used German he'd have given away the truth. And while he was anti-Semitic, he still upheld the Great Assembly. Because if it was good enough for Jesus and the apostles, it was good enough for him.
