The Great Replacement Theory

[rogue06]

Correct, he did. What about it? Are you laughably suggesting that he was not anti-semitic because the english term 'antisemite' had not yet been coined? Are you truly so damned stupid?

Yes.

She has made that argument about homosexuality in the past, effectively declaring it didn't exist until that term was first coined.

I wonder if that might also be behind her belief that Christians weren't persecuted during the first centuries of our existence -- because "persecute" wasn't a word then

ORIGIN OF PERSECUTE

First recorded in 1400–50; Late Middle English; back formation from persecutour “persecutor,” ultimately from Late Latin persecūtor originally “prosecutor,” equivalent to persecū-, variant stem of persequī “to prosecute, pursue closely”

[Gondwanaland]

Well strictly speaking he could not have been antisemitic. It is the same as when Christians write about Paul condemning homosexuality as the word did not exist in the first century CE

Yes, strictly speaking, he was indeed anti-semitic. It doesn't matter if the current English word describing that behavior did not exist at the time, you utter twit.

That is why he became anti-Judaic. He initially had a great deal of respect for the Jews.

Anti-semitic. And?

You appeared to be misinformed and so I offered some historical information for you.

No, you tried one of your usual games and got trounced and are now pouting because I won't play it with you.

Please do read some history.

Projecting now, are we fake historian?

I might send that to Private Eye it has a Dumb Britain section perhaps it could expand it into Dumb America

The projection continues.

[Gondwanaland]

Yes.

She has made that argument about homosexuality in the past, effectively declaring it didn't exist until that term was first coined.

I wonder if that might also be behind her belief that Christians weren't persecuted during the first centuries of our existence -- because "persecute" wasn't a word then

ORIGIN OF PERSECUTE

First recorded in 1400–50; Late Middle English; back formation from persecutour “persecutor,” ultimately from Late Latin persecūtor originally “prosecutor,” equivalent to persecū-, variant stem of persequī “to prosecute, pursue closely”

WHy am I not surprised? That sounds like exactly the sort of absurdly ignorant argument that would come from her ill-bred mind.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Yes, strictly speaking, he was indeed anti-semitic. It doesn't matter if the current English word describing that behavior did not exist at the time, you utter twit.

Anti-semitic. And?

No, you tried one of your usual games and got trounced and are now pouting because I won't play it with you.
Projecting now, are we fake historian?



The projection continues.

I cannot be bothered to deal with someone who is incapable of engaging in an exchange without resorting to personal name calling. It shows the puerile nature of your thinking.

So feel free to brag that you have won.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Yes.

She has made that argument about homosexuality in the past, effectively declaring it didn't exist until that term was first coined.

Where have I made that precise statement? Can you quote me?

I wonder if that might also be behind her belief that Christians weren't persecuted during the first centuries of our existence -- because "persecute" wasn't a word then

You appear to be at risk of being accused of distortion as I have never written that Christians were not persecuted by Rome.

However, given your correspondent I suspect there is a degree of cronyism in your remarks.

ORIGIN OF PERSECUTE

First recorded in 1400–50; Late Middle English; back formation from persecutour “persecutor,” ultimately from Late Latin persecūtor originally “prosecutor,” equivalent to persecū-, variant stem of persequī “to prosecute, pursue closely”

You seem to have destroyed your own contention.

[tabibito]

It is the same as when Christians write about Paul condemning homosexuality as the word did not exist in the first century CE

arsenokoites directly corresponds with homosexual relationship between men. Homosexual being a Modern English language term (and not specific regarding the sex of the participants) Paul could not have used it - Modern English itself did not exist.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

arsenokoites directly corresponds with homosexual relationship between men. Homosexual being a Modern English language term (and not specific regarding the sex of the participants) Paul could not have used it - Modern English itself did not exist.

My emphasis.

As I have already pointed that out to another correspondent you might like to inform them of your own comments.

[seer]

No, they're just using the name for other ideas, in order to try to confuse things.

Right and those other ideas are not about race.

Sort of the way they did with Critical Race Theory.

Really Stoic, that is nonsense. The ideas of CRT are being taught in schools. We have offered plenty of evidence.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Over four hundred if you're counting the founding of some of the colonies.

But, yeah. Around here folks think if a house is a hundred years old that it is really ancient. And there aren't a whole lot of houses that old still around. I had a friend who lived in what was a barn from the Tudor period that had been converted during the early Georgian period while staying in Southern England for a few months. That's old.

Not overly old but I can imagine it seemed so to you.

Over here there are buildings still in use that date back to the late 1000s - take the White Tower in London. There are other buildings across Europe that date back many centuries that are still being used.

[tabibito]

My emphasis.

As I have already pointed that out to another correspondent you might like to inform them of your own comments.

And as I pointed out, Paul used the appropriate term for the circumstance of homosexual relationships in the language that Paul was using.
ἀρσενοκοιτης = ὁ μετὰ ἄρσενος κοιμώμενος κοίτην γυναικείαν = ‘one who has intercourse w. a man as w. a woman’ [BDAG] (= ἀρρενοκοίτης, sodomite [LSJ])
cp. the formation of μητροκοίτης [μήτηρ + κοίτη] ‘one who has intercourse w. his mother’

There is no escaping the fact that Paul was referring to homosexual relationships.

[rogue06]

Where have I made that precise statement? Can you quote me?

Your attempt to create wiggle room by demanding "that precise statement" when I did not provide a quote to extract a "precise statement" from, is transparent. What I said was

She has made that argument about homosexuality in the past, effectively declaring it didn't exist until that term was first coined.

And that can indeed be demonstrated

The word arsenokoitai appears to have been first used by Paul and is used very infrequently by him. Authors of most lexica, including all the standard English ones, have traditionally contented themselves with corroborating the inference of biblical translators by giving this definition as “sodomite”. The assertion that this word “obviously” means “homosexual” would appear to be an over-statement. As a point of information the word homosexual was coined in the nineteenth century .

The only reason for claiming that the word wasn't coined until the 19th cent. is because you are trying to argue that wasn't what was meant because the word didn't exist.

You appear to be at risk of being accused of distortion as I have never written that Christians were not persecuted by Rome.

The remark was "jocular" in nature, but it does logically follow given your claims regarding anti-Semitism and homosexuality.

[rogue06]

Not overly old but I can imagine it seemed so to you.

Not really. I was just correcting your error.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Not really. I was just correcting your error.

My original remark referenced the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the USA. That event was a mere 246 years ago [and will officially be so in July].

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Your attempt to create wiggle room by demanding "that precise statement" when I did not provide a quote to extract a "precise statement" from, is transparent. What I said was

She has made that argument about homosexuality in the past, effectively declaring it didn't exist until that term was first coined.

And that can indeed be demonstrated

Then kindly demonstrate it with exact quotes from me.

The only reason for claiming that the word wasn't coined until the 19th cent. is because you are trying to argue that wasn't what was meant because the word didn't exist.

Same sex relationships clearly existed but they were not [at the time] referred to as homosexual.

The remark was "jocular" in nature, but it does logically follow given your claims regarding anti-Semitism and homosexuality.

Perhaps you should read around the definitions of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism.

As for Martin Luther engaging in an Early Modern version of anti-Semitism, his views on the Jews were rooted in a religiously motivated anti-Judaism although it might be contended that his attitude towards the Jews [including their apparent financial greed and murderous inclinations] did in some ways pave the way for modern anti-Semitism which has a racial/racist element within it . The issues are dealt with [albeit briefly] here:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/do...318/hau4.3.021

The terms “anti-Judaism” (the Christian aversion toward the Jewish religion) and “anti-Semitism” (aversion toward the Jews as a racial group) are omnipresent in the controversies over the churches’ responsibility with regard to the extermination of the Jews, as well as in debates related to the Passion of Oberammergau. Since 1945, most of the works on “anti-Semitism” have contrasted this term with “anti-Judaism,” as one would oppose the new to the old, the modern to the traditional, the political to the religious, science to theology. The use of these words in scientific discourse raises, however, two formidable difficulties.

The first difficulty is related to the use of these words as analytical concepts in the social sciences in spite of the major disagreements over their definition. Indeed, one scholar may argue that “anti-Judaic” refers to Christian theology and to Christian theology only, while another author holds the same adjective to apply also to the discriminatory policy of the churches from the fourth to the ninth centuries—which is a consequence of this theology. Likewise, some authors advance that eighteenth-century Catechisms were “anti-Semitic,” while others reject the use of the term before the date of its first appearance (1879), while using it simultaneously as an analytical concept. It seems to me that this confusing practice should be avoided. We should, rather, use the terms for what they are: elements of an indigenous discourse which, as such, are allowed to free-float. I will therefore write them in italics and without quotation marks.

The second difficulty concerns the antithetical placement of these two terms (the new and the old, the political and the religious …). This operation has proven fruitful in the exploration of anti-Jewish racism and has served as a framework for fascinating research. Yet it becomes a major epistemological obstacle as soon as it is used to describe the interaction between religious and racial issues in the nineteenth century. I will provide four examples.

Léon Poliakov, in the latest edition of his impressive Histoire de l'antisémitisme (1991a, 1991b),¹ erects a chronological succession from anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism: the first volume, L’âge de la foi (“the age of faith”) is followed by the second volume L’âge de la science (“the age of science”), ending with La solution finale. The author is too attentive to empirical history to use this opposition as more than merely a convenient way to order his narrative. Yet this edifice has a perverse effect in that it suggests that science has dissolved religion and that atheist anti-Semitism dissolved anti-Judaism. Furthermore, considerations on the actions of the churches from the nineteenth century onward are absent from the second volume, which suggests that Christians must have massively converted to science, unless they have joined the ever-growing ranks of godless reactionaries.

In The Aryan myth (1996), Poliakov nevertheless acknowledges that the ages of humanity do not have any daylight between them and that Christian anti-Judaism has not vanished as if by magic with the coming of the age of science. With the apparition of anti-Semitism, “the ineradicable feelings and resentments of the Christian West were to be expressed thereafter in a new vocabulary” (ibid.: 194). But why is it that the passions remained ineradicable, if not because the culture that sustained them was still in place? By this I mean the complex of representations and of Christian customs concerning the Jews, spread and transmitted for nineteen centuries through a variety of means of communication: theology, liturgy, law, predication, catechism, familial education, opinion. It is possible that there were fewer Christians going to church during the age of science, but religious representations kept shaping minds.

Colette Guillaumin shares Poliakov’s point of view in her work L'idéologie raciste: Genèse et langage actuel ([1972] 2002), but supports it with an impressive theoretical apparatus which reinforces the opposition between the two periods, and positions them antithetically. According to the author, until the end of the eighteenth century, the Western world included the Others in the unity of the species (mankind): the churches, in particular, offered conversion to the Jews as a way of escaping divine malediction. But in the nineteenth century, with the domination of the capitalist bourgeoisie, industrial development, and colonial expansion, a radical change in mentalities was provoked. “Anti-Semitism succeeds to anti-Judaism, race succeeds to religion. A difference in race is assumed in lieu of the constatation of a religious difference” (ibid.: 10). The chronological succession between the two forms of aversion thus maps onto a difference in worldview: before capitalism, people agreed upon the unity of mankind, and therefore on anyone’s potential salvation; after capitalism, the individuals who belong to the socially constructed categories “Jews” are trapped in a biological malediction that they cannot escape.

Guillaumin’s assertions are justified if one considers the most solemn statements of the Christian doctrine: indeed, they endorse the dogma concerning the unity of mankind and affirm the redemptive value of conversion. But one only has to examine the policies of the churches, their concrete action toward the Jews and the declarations of the clerics—during l’âge de la foi, but especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—to see that the matter is not at all clear-cut.

Hence, we can pose these questions, which add to those already raised by Poliakov’s work: Can Christianity be reduced to the most official statement of its doctrine? How should we handle the numerous situations where religious authority itself contravenes it? What is the relation between theology and the policy of an ecclesiastical institution? What is the relation between the various levels of ecclesiastical enunciation: that is, in the Catholic Church, between the decisions of the councils, the articles of canon law, the pontifical orders (among which we find many contradicting statements), the legislation of the states of the church, the popes’ interventions with secular rulers?

A third example: Hannah Arendt. In the very first lines of “On anti-Semitism” ([1951] 2004: 3), she poses anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism as entirely independent phenomena: “Anti-semitism, a secular nineteenth-century ideology—which in name, though not in argument, was unknown before the 1870s—and religious Jew-hatred, inspired by the mutually hostile antagonism of two conflicting creeds, are obviously not the same; and even the extent to which the former derives its argument and emotional appeal from the latter is open to question.” Accordingly, political ideology has nothing in common with the religious doctrine, nor anti-Semitic passion with the Christian hatred of the Jew. It would therefore be useless to search, as Jules Isaac stubbornly did,² for the “Christian roots of anti-Semitism”— since it only appeared at the dusk of the nation-state, with the rise of imperialism and its consequence, totalitarianism. Thus Christianity is off topic from the start, deemed obsolete from the very beginning of Hannah Arendt’s preface. Her general argument is problematic;³ but, furthermore, how would she qualify the relations between the Catholic Church, Judaism, and the Jews from the nineteenth century onward? Not as anti-Judaic—it is too late for that; nor anti-Semitic, since religion has nothing to do with it. And in fact, why would the author even be interested in finding the right terms, since Christianity is over?

One last example. Thomas Nipperdey and Reinhard Rürup, in a historical dictionary on German political ideas reedited several times, emphasize the cultural revolution produced by the invention of anti-Semitism. The two scholars assure us that they are presenting the conceptions of the historical actors of the 1880s—who, interestingly, already talk like Guillaumin and Arendt. “Anti-Semitism—as it was clear for the members of the various groups as well as for their opponents—referred to an enmity toward the Jews and Judaism that was entirely different from the traditional aversion for the Jews which existed, at the time, in Eastern Europe and South-Eastern Europe” (Nipperdey and Rürup [1972] 1992: 141–42).

Only one difference subsists, then, between the people of the nineteenth century and the theoreticians of the twentieth century: the former argued that anti-Judaism had disappeared from civilized regions, but that it still lived in a few inliers of credulity, in the borderlands of Christian Europe. But aside from that, the agreement is total: religious hatred toward the Jews has vanished, replaced by racial hatred.

It is unlikely, in my opinion, that Europeans of the nineteenth century, even if secularized, would have uttered such statements. Of course, they could have witnessed the traditional anti-Judaism of Catholic publications (which would survive effortlessly until the Second Vatican Council), but the clerical discourse of the 1880s did not limit itself to this. At that time, one could very well identify as a Christian and as an anti-Semite: this raises a doctrinal problem, but it is possible to avoid confronting it. Nipperdey and Rürup exclude this possibility:

Not only did the term [“anti-Semitism”] provide a new definition to an old enemy: it identified a new enemy. First, it designated a secularized form of the aversion toward the Jews and its ideology. It did not direct its aversion toward their religion, and it did not rely upon the Christians’ aversion: the religious question and the theological justification became secondary. (Nipperdey and Rürup [1972] 1992: 141–42)


It seems to me that the authors have superimposed on the nineteenth century their own convictions concerning the chronological and conceptual impermeability between the two justifications of hatred toward the Jews. It is very likely that this conflation was unintended, given how common this idea is in the social sciences. In text after text, we have seen it taking shape and reinforce itself: to the empirical succession of “eras” (Poliakov), a radical dissemblance in principles was added (Guillaumin and Arendt); finally, Nipperdey and Rürup insisted on the change of target (we are no longer talking about the same Jew). The unique historical actor of anti-Semitism is, hence, the capitalist bourgeoisie: not the churches, the Christians, or religions, which belong to a premodern past, that is, a precapitalistic past of Europe.

After 1945, the desire to understand anti-Semitism stemmed from the moral panic caused by the destruction of European Jews by the Nazis:⁴ no one could escape this impetus, whether it was acknowledged or not. Some thinkers, like Poliakov or Arendt, started their research right after its revelation; Guillaumin, and Nipperdey and Rürup, did so in the course of the 1960s. Relentlessly determined to discover the succession of events (whether it be historical or logical) that led to anti-Semitism and genocide, they were prevented from perceiving the churches’ actions in that process owing to their theoretical paradigm.⁵

Three kinds of reasons can explain their indifference in relation to the question with which I am concerned. First, they were focusing on the outcome, the National Socialist ideology. This ideology was, from the start, anti-religious; and if its anti-Semitism borrowed numerous elements from Christian anti-Judaism, it was to inscribe them in a very different framework, a totalitarian one. Second, the social sciences from the 1950s to the 1970s held as an almost undisputed certainty that the decay of religions was as a result of the advent of modernity, in spite of the strong movement of religious awakening that occurred in the nineteenth century. Finally, the real object of these authors was not Christian anti-Judaism, since for them it simply played the role of a bump that could support their theoretical construction of anti-Semitism.

In fact, the model offered to account for anti-Semitism only erred because the social scientists who developed it felt obliged to bury religion. Ignoring the avatars of the term anti-Judaism in Christian thought, they unknowingly adopted a distinction already loaded with apologetic presuppositions.

[Ronson]

Well 246 years is not a overly long period of human history. I live near buildings that predate your Declaration of Independence by several hundred years.

A friend of mine owned a house in Chalfont St Peter, England. It was so old that it was included in the Domesday Book. I stayed with him for a week. It was creepy.