The Historical Seeds of Religious and Racial Bigotry

As you can tell by now, I'm also reading "Democracy Matters" by Cornell West. In the book he describes the debates about Jesus in the first century mostly between Christian Jews and non-Chrisian Jews. Of course Jesus was the Jew who challenged the Jewish elites as well as the Roman authorities. West states that the phrase, "the Jews" is used 87 times in books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Thus, the writers of the synoptic Gospels - all Jews as well - were mostly engaged in discussions between themselves and non-Christian Jews. However, beginning with the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire in the 4th century, all other religions became illegal and were persecuted. Thus the Gospel phrase, "the Jews" became the foundation for "Christian anti-Judiasm." Consequently, Christian anti-Judiasm (a religious bigotry) became Christian anti-Semitism (a racist bigotry). Jews who converted to Christianity avoided the religious bigotry, but all Jews suffered the racist bigotry.