κατά ίουδαίων - ϛʹ

Why do you reverence that place?

Must you not despise it, hold it in abomination, run away from it?

Some answer, that the Law and the books of the prophets are kept there...

What is this?

Will any place where these books are be a holy place?

By no means! This is the reason above all others why I hate the synagogue and abhor it: they háve the prophets, but do not believe them. They read the sacred writings, but reject their witness - and this is a mark of men guilty of the greatest outrage.

Tell me this...

If you were to see a venerable man, illustrious and renowned, dragged off into a tavern or den of robbers; if you were to see him outraged, beaten, and subjected there to the worst violence, would you have held that tavern or den in high esteem because that great and esteemed man had been inside it while undergoing that violent treatment?

I think not.

Rather, for this very reason you would have hated and abhorred the place.

Let that be your judgment about the synagogue, too.

For they brought the books of Moses and the prophets along with them into the synagogue, not to honor them but to outrage them with dishonor.

When they say that Moses and the prophets knew not Christ, and said nothing about his coming, what greater outrage could they do to those holy men, than to accuse them of failing to recognize their Master, than to say that those saintly prophets are partners of theír impiety!

And so it is that we must hate both them and their synagogue.

All the more because of their offensive treatment of those holy men.


~chrysostomus~
against the jews
homily 1