In this new book; David Harvey seeks to determine what is meant by the term in its different contexts and to identify how accurate and useful it is as a description of contemporary experience.
#188136 in Books James Carroll 2002-04 2002-04-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.25 x 1.40 x 5.50l; 1.46 #File Name: 0618219080756 pagesConstantine s Sword The Church and the Jews A History
Review
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. It would have been an easy 5 star rating with a more reader friendly styleBy P MDifficult read but well worth the effort ; Carroll seems impressed with vocabulary and his approach to answers much self directed towards his desired conclusions. However; his style and factual dialogue definitely command inner thought and conscious review of one's personal religious focus. Additionally; I found his explanation of the impact of the cross on all religions eye opening. It would have been an easy 5 star rating with a more reader friendly style.7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Carroll's personal experiences make this superb book come aliveBy Samuel A. CohenIt starts from a minor; though emotionally divisive event; the erection; by the Carmelite order; of a cross at Auschwitz. The cross was to the memory of Edith Stein; a convert to Catholicism who was executed in Auschwitz; along with hundreds of thousands of Jews. To understand why this event caused such anguish; Carroll takes us on a 2000-year journey from Jesus through the Roman empire; the dark ages; the middle ages; to today. Carroll presents details of the Catholic Churches involvement in pogroms; the Crusades; forced conversions; the Inquisition; purity of blood; ghettoes; expulsions; more pogroms; Bismarck; Nazi's; more ghettoes; and the Holocaust. All this told by an active Catholic; a former priest and a civil rights worker; whose father was a major figure in the US military intelligence and whose mother was a devout Catholic.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Indoctrinated Anti-Semitism Post Nicea's 4 Argumentative MeetingsBy Al SundelConstantine became emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire partly through marriage; he attacked the Western half and killed all other possible heirs to any part of the Empire; including a boy. It was a time when Jewish-Christian sects had splintered into many divisive factions over the course of 300 years. Also; barbarian hordes rimmed the Empire; some blending partial new-sect ideas into their pagan ones. Their main heritage pagan symbol was a stylized cross probably more prevalent among them in the East as icon than it was among the Jewish-Christians in the West.Constantine claimed he saw a vision of a stylized cross that held meaning for both these enlarging populations in southern Europe that he needed to tame. He called the Council of Nicea to meld all Jewish-Christian sects into one. Some invitees never showed up; resisting him. It took 4 no-doubt raucous meetings for the majority to separate themselves further from Judaism; which had given the Roman Empire more trouble than any other people or ideology (cf Hadrian's Holocaust). Nicea 4 retained most of the Hebrew Bible; against the wishes of the Marcionites. They separated Easter from Passover; proclaimed Sunday the Sabbath rather than Saturday (named after the sun; which Constantine worshipped); proscribed Jews as secondary citizens to Christians; may have declared Jewish-Christian synagogues churches; or the change had begun earlier and he solidified it. Constantine himself never became a practicing Christian; although his mother was a Jewish-Christian of possible semi-Pauline leaning that the Ebionites; among others; contested.James Carroll; an ex-priest; explores these landmark anti-Semitic events that increased over the ages as de-Judaizing indoctrination. He omits the bitter effect the Roman-Jewish wars had on Rome; Roman cultural cruelty and Hadrian's Holocaust. He focuses on Constantinian deJudaizing and how it insidiously grew into indoctrinated hate thy neighbor; then ghettoes and then Hitlerian rant and mass murder. This book is the most informative and panoramic of a progressive movement among Christian clergy to exercise free inquiry and opinion about the Church and its relations with the Jews (which have improved enormously from just such criticism). For that; and its patient and civil presentation; this book deserves 5 stars. It is a book of conscience. --As for Eusebius; cited by one reviewer; he was Constantine's Goebbels; a propagandist more than a real historian. The known facts of Nicea and its aftermath speak for themselves.--Al Sundel
