On the Jews and Their Lies (Martin Luther) Options

[kotepho]

This is a not-so random one. A spin-off article (On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies_%28excerpts%29 (T-H-L-K-D)) was AFD'd and that is how I found this gem. This version is the one that I will be reviewing.

On the Jews and Their Lies (German: Von den Juden und ihren Lügen) is a treatise written in January 1543 by Martin Luther, the German theologian, in which he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated.

Example heavy; Intros should be succinct

They should be shown no mercy or kindness, [1] should have no legal protection, [2] and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. [3]

Woah woah woah-- You might want to attribute that to someone unless you write for Stormfront. Also, enough with the fucking examples

Four centuries later, the Nazis used quotations from this pamphlet, which was cited by the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer during the Nuremberg trials, [4] to justify the Final Solution.

Assertion is not supported by the source provided

Heiko Oberman states that earlier in his career, Luther had appeared to sympathize with the Jews, [5] especially regarding their treatment under the Papacy, declaring that "[t]he Jews are blood-relations of our Lord, the Jews belong more to Christ than we" [6] in the hope of converting them to Christianity, although historian Paul Halsall has disagreed with that view, stating that "Luther's hatred of Jews ... was present very early on" and was "not some affectation of old age." [7]

Who the fuck are these people and why do I care what they say? "historian" doesn't mean bollocks

In On the Jews and Their Lies, published three years before Luther's death in 1546, he expressed his fear that Jews were successfully converting Christians to Judaism and wrote that he wished to be identified among those in opposition to them: "I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them." [8]

You already told me when it was published and I don't see the year of Luther's death playing into this. This paragraph reads like it was take wholesale from something not dedicated to discussing this work.

Luther stated in his introductory remarks to On the Jews and Their Lies that he was writing in response to an anti-Christian pamphlet, unidentified by historians, written by an unidentified Jew or Jews, sent to him by Count Wolfgang Schlick of Falkenau.

In the treatise, Luther wrote that Jews are devils, blasphemers, and liars who "lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it," a "miserable, blind and senseless" people, "nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury." "God and all the angels dance when [the Jew] farts." They should be "toss[ed] out ... by the seat of their pants," and "eject[ed] ... forever from this country." God's anger with them is "so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!" [3]

Their synagogues and schools must be set on fire to "bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them." Their houses must be "razed and destroyed," their "prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them ... their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb," their money, gold and silver confiscated, and no safe conduct on the highways be available to them, because they have "no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home ..." [3]

<blockquote> Jerusalem was destroyed over 1400 years ago, and at that time we Christians were harassed and persecuted by the Jews throughout the world for about 300 years ... During that time they held us captive and killed us ... So we are even at fault for not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then ... We are at fault in not slaying them. [9]</blockquote>

Four centuries after it was written, the Nazis cited Luther's treatise to justify the Final Solution. Some scholars have attributed the Final Solution directly to Luther. [10] Others oppose this point of view. [11]

Jesus tap dancing christ. If you are going to quote him, QUOTE HIM. Even if that were done it is a huge mishmash of "waah wahh he said a lot of bad things!" with no real value added. Also note that we are now mentioning the nazi's again, but this time with more weasel words!

According to Martin Bertram, [12] who translated On the Jews and their lies for the American Edition (vol. 47), Luther used the following sources:

* Burgos, Paul of. Scrutinium Scripturarum ("Investigation of the Scriptures").
* Lyra, Nicholas of. Pulcherrimae quaestiones Iudaicam perfidam in catholicam fide improbantes ("Most Excellent Inquiries Rejecting Judaic Falsities by the Catholic Faith").
* Margaritha, Anthony. Der gantz Jüdisch glaub ("The Entire Jewish Faith"). [12]
* Porchetus, Salvagus. Victoria adversus impios Hebraeos ("Victory over the godless Hebrews") [13]

In the text itself Luther makes mention of these sources by naming their authors.

... OK? Please sir, may I have some context and maybe less of a non sequitur?

There is a broad agreement among historians that Luther's anti-Semitism as expressed in On the Jews and Their Lies was based in religion, i.e. the rejection of Christianity by the Jews. Luther historian Roland Bainton stresses the religious component to Luther's position: "His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day." [14] Uwe Siemon-Netto has written: "Anti-Semites are racists, and racists appeared on the scene much later in history — after the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Luther did not think of Jews in ethnic terms; his bias was religious. Just before his death he admonished the princes to treat converts from Judaism as brethren." Dr. Paul Halsall makes the same point: "The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them." [7] [15]

No source for the broad agreement claim and we have 3 people (only one of which they find it necessary to tell us who they are) that say it isn't racial.. but Jews aren't a race?

Despite the religious nature of Luther's hostility towards the Jews, his views laid the groundwork for the racial European anti-Semitism, which emerged in the 19th century. Halsall argues that "there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism... based on pseudo-scientific notions of race." [7] Richard Marius, one of Luther's biographers, writes that: "Roland Bainton in his effort to make the best of Luther declared that Luther's view of the Jews 'was entirely religious and by no means racial.' True: the crackpot version of social Darwinism that gave rise to 'racial' anti-Semitism was a creation of the ninetheenth and twentieth centuries. Luther hated the Jews because they rejected Christ. But his fury was no less cruel and vicious because its underlying motives were different or because his suggestions for carrying his cruelty to some final solution were less comprehensive and efficient." [16] Dr. D. G. Myers, Professor of Religious Studies at Texas A&M University writes that the treatise "goes beyond theological anti-Judaism," and calls for "state-sponsored violence against the Jews." It therefore "contributed to a historical climate of German opinion in which genocide was conceivable." [17]

I'm glad they could find someone to say that calling for people's houses to be destroyed goes beyond a simple religious disagreement.

Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, has argued that there is a "strong parallel" between Luther's ideas about Jews and Judaism and the anti-Semitism of most German Lutherans throughout the Holocaust. [18] He argues that Luther scholars who try to defend Luther's views on the Jews ignore the implications of what Michael calls Luther's anti-Semitism: "Suffused with theological myth, his writings were viciously antisemitic, his language libelous, abusive, and filthy, his proposals cruel and potentially deadly." [19] He writes that the parallels between Luther's program and Hitler's are clear. "No one can rationally deny the parallels between Luther's program for the Jews and Hitler's. Many have denied that Luther advocated death for Jews. These people have not read The Jews and Their Lies." [19]

Scare quotes, my favourite. The writing is bad, but this is the first paragraph I would not completely delete.

Julius Streicher, the Nazi publisher of the anti-Semitic Der Stürmer, cited On the Jews and Their Lies during the Nuremberg trials: "Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them ..." [4]

OK... this the the third time this has been mentioned, but at least what they say is actually supported by the source this time.

Martin Bertram, the 20th century Lutheran scholar who translated the treatise in Luther's Works into English notes that "it is impossible to publish Luther's treatise today ... without noting how similar to his proposals were the actions of the National Socialist regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the so-called Kristallnacht, for example, 119 synagogues in all parts of Germany, together with many Jewish homes and shops, were burned to the ground." [20]

The first physical violence against the Jews under Hitler's government came on November 9-10 on Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) where the Nazis killed Jews, shattered glass windows, and destroyed hundreds of synagogues, just as Luther had proposed. In Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, he writes:

"One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews'".[21]

came on November 9-10? Also, if you are going to quote like that.. USE A BLOCK QUOTE... but the quote is completely redundant anyways.

Many of the events of Kristallnacht echoed material in The Jews and Their Lies:

* "First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. ..."
* "Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. ..."
* "Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. ...".

Finally, Walter Buch, the head of the Nazi Party court, admitted Luther's influence on Nazi Germany, in Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich, "When Luther turned his attention to the Jews, after he completed his translation of the Bible, he left behind "on the Jews and their Lies" for posterity". Buch then said, "Many people confess their amazement that Hitler preaches ideas which they have always held.... From the Middle Ages we can look to the same example in Martin Luther. What stirred in the soul and spirit of the German people of that time, finally found expression in his person, in his words and deeds". [22]

Yes, you already mentioned all of the horrible things written in the pamplet.. stop fucking repeating yourself. "Finally..." the puncuation is just terrible and Finally? Are you writing a persuasive paper or trying to write encyclopedicly?

Alex Bein writes however in his The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem": "This is not the place to document in detail the influence which Luther's anti-Jewish opinions and writings exercised on his contemporaries and subsequent generations-and moreover sufficient scholarly research is lacking in this area"'.[23] In the annotations to his work, Bein again expresses this opinion: "There has not been, as far as I know, a scholarly study of the influence of Luther's portrayal of the Jews which considers all aspects of the question has argued that there has been insufficient scholarly research into the influence of Luther's writings about the Jews. [23] Others argue that Luther's anti-Judiasm or anti-Semitism may have exercised a formative influence on Protestantism, if not directly on National Socialism. Franz Heinrich Philipp writes that: "It is true that Luther's suggestions concerning the treatment of the Jews were ignored or expressly rejected by the Protestant princes. Yet his attitude on the Jewish question continued to be the decisive factor in determining the standpoint of the Lutheran Church in the succeeding centuries, and a one-sided selection of his opinions formed a standard part of polemic anti-Semitic literature well into the 20th century". [24] Haim Hillel Ben Sasson writes in A History of the Jewish People that "it was rather the Luther of 1523 than the Luther of 1543 who remained predominant in the view of large segments of the Protestant world until well into the 20th century". [25]

"Alex Bein writes however in..." also, who the hell are these people? Some of them are even red links so that certainly isn't going to help.

and it just ends. I was expecting there to be some actual discussion of the work considering the title of the article, but it is not forthcoming. So all in all, it is a loose collection of quotes from random people (and they want to have more quotes? per the afd) and mostly about Nazis than the damn pamplet. It tries to cite sources, but of the ones that are online the sources do not back up the claims or are mailing list posts? I don't care enough to go to the library to verify the others.
I give it an F. Kill it with fire.

[Sgrayban]

In all honesty this isn't even in Britannica so it really shouldn't be on WP at all. Its there to just cause racial/theo issues.

[Saltimbanco]

In all honesty this isn't even in Britannica so it really shouldn't be on WP at all. Its there to just cause racial/theo issues.

Interesting point. What makes this book noteworthy enough to have its own (long-ish) encyclopedia article? Isn't it enough to note in Martin Luther's article that he was a raving anti-Semite, and that among his writings is a hateful screed called "On the Jews and Their Lies?" Is there any reason to want to know about the book without knowing who Martin Luther was?

[Sgrayban]

Interesting point. What makes this book noteworthy enough to have its own (long-ish) encyclopedia article?

I don't even like seeing my handle in the index with this title, but here we are...

The reason this is an article is because Wikimedia Foundation doesn't have a WikiNotes service along the lines of Cliff Notes. Everything, including book summaries, atlas info and political analysis is lumped together under the dubious rubric of encyclopedic content. Apparently nobody wants to spoil the fun of an ongoing streetfight by mandating rational context and guidelines for publishing various types of crowd-sourced articles.

I agree... This article is written in a book report format, not as a article. If anything it shoud be under a new CAT for cliff/wiki notes.

[kotepho]

There is already an entire article on Martin Luther's antisemitism at Martin Luther and the Jews (T-H-L-K-D) that covers all of this but without the huge amount of quotes (and yet still manages to be every bit as horrible and badly written).
Note that the afd on the article that was just quotes of this booklet failed, even though it was transwiki'd to wikiquote. I'm baffled.