Rating: 
Summary: Apotheosis of the New Journalism
Review: This book gets 5 stars for the topic and 1 star for the writing. The "New Journalism" is a style of writing/reportage where the author, writing non-fiction, constantly intrudes with his own opinions. Of course, Carroll has every right to do so except he labels his book "A History". I stopped reading when, during a section on the Crusades and the slaughter of the Jews in a town where Carroll had lived, he interrupted the narrative to point out that he had had his first drink there. WHO CARES? I also found his writing style difficult, prolix and digressive. That's the ultimate great shame of this book since his topic is extremely important - the long and shameful treatment of the Jews by the Church and the Christian world. I believe this book could have been cut to a third of the size with a better writer. To Carroll's credit, he does more than wring his hands. He leaves the reader with a five point program to reform the Catholic church: 1) remove the anti-judaism from the Christian bible 2) eliminate worldly power from the Church 3) reform the basic theology of Christianity 4) promote democracy within the Church 5) let the Church truly repent of its anti-Jewish ways As a Jew, I have always wondered how Christians live with their own history. All my Christian friends solve this problem by telling me that whoever performed such acts of cruelty (in Jesus's name, of course) are definitionally not true Christians. Besides giving themselves an easy out, I think they are also intellectually dishonest by never asking themselves why these people who did consider themselves true Christians *could* have acted this way. At least Carroll admits that Christians do have an inglorious past and tries to understand why. For this he deserves credit.
Rating: 
Summary: Must read
Review: This is, simply put, one of the most important books I have ever read. I'm not surprised to see so many 5-star reviews mixed in with 1-star reviews ... this is a provocative, moving account that can't help but stir up extreme emotions. Early on, Mr. Carroll cites demographic figures that suggest that the world Jewish population should be more than 10 times what it is today, if not for the rampant killing and persecution Jews have been subjected to for the last 2000 years. Yes, Mr. Carroll lays much of the blame for this to Christianity, mostly Catholicism. Are you surprised this book has elicited this kind of polarized response? My suggestion: Ignore the nay-sayers and read this book. You will see how the prevalence of anti-Judaism has caused incalculable suffering, and how Catholic absolutism led to this hatred of Jews. Mr. Carroll deftly shows how developments in Christianity - long after Jesus - had tragic consequences for Jews, while showing many paths that could have been taken which would have saved countless Jewish lives. Most provocative, but also quite convincing, is Mr. Carroll's argument about how Christian anti-Judais paved the way for the Nazi holocaust. Hatred of Jews went beyond religion to become racism 500 years before the Nazis during the Catholic Inquisition, and Mr. Carroll shows how this, among many other factors, fueled the engines of history which made Hitler possible. (more reason not to be surprised that there are many people who don't like this book ...) Yes, Mr. Carroll includes much autobiographical information, as many of his critics point out, but he does a masterful job of tying his personal experiences into the history, such as when he describes his skepticism at a rare viewing of the robe of Jesus when he was a teenager. Most all of his personal anectdotes served a useful purpose in making the narrative readable and understandable. I will be recommending this book strongly to my friends. Catholics should certainly read it, but it is most important for Jews to read. Anti-Judaism or anti-semitism has been a real force in our world for two millenia, and Jews need to understand this ugly reality, even those who are living in relative comfort these days. Next time you hear about a terrorist yelling "death to all Jews," it won't seem like empty rhetoric.
Rating:
Summary: My reation to Constatine Sword
Review: An excellent book. 5+ stars! each Jew and each Christian should read it. It is an eye opener. Well written, full of information and feeling.
Rating: 
Summary: Good overview, but many mistakes
Review: This book is popular, and written with a personal stance. It has not been endorsed by any scholar, but mainly by journalists, as the covers of the book shows. Nevertheless, Carroll has read many reference books. There is certainly a need for a recent overview of Western Christian anti-Semitism throughout the centuries, a subjects that embarrass many Christians given that Nationals-Socialists reenacted the traditional, anti-Semitic Western views and laws, and given the perpetual media emphasis since the sixties on the Jewish Holocaust. Carroll's book reads very easily which makes it accessible for a very large readership. The author is not a Jew himself, but a liberal Catholic who loves the people of Jewish religion.
This book has infuriated many Catholic readers who completely reject it. This seems to be an overreaction, as the book does not contain too many mistakes when dealing with history. It does have a lot of mistakes (this may be why no scholar endorses it), but this can be expected when one deals with such large topics, and the author is no scholar. Whereas I think that the books of Karen Armstrong, which contain in my opinion enormous, major mistakes on most pages, may deserve "one star ratings", I think that Carroll's book is of a higher quality that Armstrong's works and deserves more.
I think that what enrages Catholics are Carroll's dealings with theology and philosophy, especially his quick proposals for reforming Catholicism (at the end of the book). There is Carroll's advocacy of Sola Scriptura, a principle not found in the Christian Holy Scriptures and thus false by its own standard, which also contradicts the tradition that decided about the composition of the New Testament in the fourth century and about what is orthodox or heretic, and has led to millions of different Protestants sects and crazy cults. His proposition to purge politically incorrect passages from the Bible is arbitrary as it is entirely defined by today's present political correctness. And removing Greek thought from Christian culture, forgetting all the great thinkers and goods it bestowed upon the West, would lead us right away into obscurantism... On the other hand, once the Roman church has broken its own tradition, removing many things that they had always taught (the Church being the new Israel, etc.), it cannot pretend to maintain a (fixed) standard, hence I think that according to the Vatican II perspective, people like Carroll can rightly ask for a third council. Once the Vatican has started moving, if it moved this much, why shouldn't it move more? Besides the good things in the book, there are also mistakes, too many to list them all. I would like however to mention two common flaws that have been taken over by Carroll and are not especially his own. First the problem of the Jewishness of Jesus. Certainly Jesus was a Jew in the sense that this is how the inhabitants of Palestine (and their expatriates) were called at the time or that he was raised in second temple rabbinic Judaism. But there are two problems. One is that Judaism now is something different, based on Talmud and other books, all largely older than the books of the Old Testament, and many other things. (see also Michael Hoffman's book Judaism's Strange Gods.) Second, Jesus himself rejected this rabbinic Judaism , that famous "Tradition of the Elders" (Marc 7, something many Protestant fundamentalist wrongfully attribute to the Roman Catholic tradition, which did not exist at the time), claiming that his teaching was the true fulfillment of the Hebrew religion, in opposition to Judaism. When Carroll wants to judaize Jesus, he mentions Jesus's continuity with the Hebrew tradition (which is fine), but makes the mistake of calling this "Jewish", by which word he also mean that rabbinic, Talmudic tradition which Jesus precisely rejected. So making of Jesus a Jew (in the sense of rabbinism, Talmudism, according to what is nowadays meant by the word) would mean to destroy the identity of Christianity. As a logical consequence, Christians would then have to convert to Judaism or revert to their former, ancient pagan religions from which they were converted to Christianity.
Another common mistake Carroll takes over is about Jesus's command to love one's enemy neighbor (p. 117). These was only about personal, individual problems with one's neighbors, an addition to the legalism of Moses' law where one would have to settle all private matters in the courts. Besides, Jesus, although claiming to fulfill the Old Testament, never condemned all those divine commands about common, political matters such as genocide, slavery, racism, execution of homosexuals and heretics, etc., tacitly approving them. Finally, there were two words for "enemy" (either personal or common, political enemy), and Jesus when speaking of loving one's enemies spoke only used the word for personal ones, not political ones, as Carl Schmitt rightly remembers us in his authoritative book The Concept of the Political. In conclusion, I can recommend this book as an easy historical overview of Western Christian anti-Semitism, but not as a reference, authoritative work on history. As for the theological parts, well I don't think there are much worth except for enraging Roman Catholics...
For those who would like more reliable books, I can rather recommend two books by Jewish university professors. One is Albert Lindemann's authoritative book Esau's Tears : Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. (Cambridge University, 1997), which may be the most objective and balanced among recent academic books. And the other is David Kertzer's The Pope against the Jews, a shorter book that is partly academic but also partly emotional, and also deals with the modern period.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable meditation, but some serious historical flaws
Review: John Carroll's book is at once remarkably insightful and frustrating at the same time. His thesis is that a systemic anti-Semitism originated in the early Catholic Church out of sectarian competition (as early Christianity was, after all, originally an offshoot of Judaism in the Roman province of Syria), that this hostility became manifested in the early Gospels, and that it became ingrained in orthodoxy upon the coalescence of the church as a formal organization in the 4th century A.D., a process promoted by the writings of early church fathers such as St. Ambrose and Augustine. It's a fascinating idea, the notion that factional strife in an essentially regional context became transmogrified into something else entirely due to the contingencies surrounding the atmosphere of the early church. Carroll traces the effect of this purported doctrinal feature down through the centuries, arguing that it has had a tragic effect on the way that the Jews were regarded in their communities. In calling for such a contemplation, Carroll deserves praise-it's often easy to forget that all beliefs owe much to the historical context in which they arose, and Carroll is attempting to draw attention to this. He writes well, in a clear expository fashion, and his own autobiographical ruminations, on balance, are refreshing. And, Carroll is not blindly anti-Catholic; for instance, he comes to the Church's defense in regard to the anti-Semitic environment of the bubonic plague, noting that it did much to protect Jews throughout Europe, clearing up a misconception that occasionally crops up. Nonetheless, Carroll does grave damage to his own cause by being so careless in too many places with his history; too often, he hasn't done his homework. He confesses in the first chapter that the book's purpose is more a philosophical investigation than a historical one, but on a topic this sensitive, there is simply no substitute for the utmost discipline and rigor in historical analysis, and it is here that he falls short. Most reviewers have objected to characterizations of recent church history, and many aspects of the Reformation and religious-war periods of the 16th and 17th centuries are also problematic; but my greatest concern arises from his depictions of the early history, specifically, early Rome, where Carroll builds his thesis but commits many errors. He states, for example, that Roman policy made the emperor an object of worship; while some emperors were added to the polytheistic Roman pantheon, this occurred *after* their deaths, not during their lifetimes, as Carroll suggests on numerous occasions. Carroll also fails entirely to depict the complexity of the political situation in Roman Syria/Judea; Augustan imperial Rome was actually remarkably *tolerant* of the religious practices of the province, and instituted a set of policies unique to that region to provide accommodation. The fighting that occurred later in 70 A.D. had important causes inadequately explored by Carroll; furthermore, he casually accepts the claim from a second-hand source that Rome was "the world's first totalitarian state," an utterly ridiculous notion that pops up every few years in classical studies circles, only to last all of 5 minutes before being crushed by the mountain of evidence to the contrary. This all suggests a worrisome pattern, because it indicates that Carroll is too often willing to swallow whole even weak and unsupported notions that support his thesis, yet not willing to do the hard work of scrutinizing it in detail, thus providing the nuance that would so strongly help his cause. Most crucially of all, Carroll views Emperor Constantine's conversion to and promotion of Christianity, in the Council of Nicaea and the founding of Constantinople as a Christian capital, as a work of "imaginative genius" whose purpose was a political unification of the Roman Empire on the basis of a uniform Christian doctrine. This is an old debate, but while the Nicene Creed undoubtedly had a unifying feature to it, Constantine for his own part had a streak of religious toleration, openly allowing and respecting continued pagan worship and, as much research has shown, even alternate forms of Christian worship. "Constantine and the Bishops : The Politics of Intolerance" by H.A. Drake discusses this in depth; it is a far more scholarly examination of the same themes that Carroll is investigating, and I highly recommend it. Thus I find that both the positive and negative reviews of this book have a grain of truth. There's a lot to laud in Carroll's work, but it would be a disservice not to recognize where it also falls substantially short. Read it with this in mind (and preferably read H.A. Drake's book as well), and you can learn quite a bit.
Rating:
Summary: At long last
Review: At long last, the truth about the roots of anti-semitism.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent review, sympathetic yet critical
Review: Readers might be interested to know that a very fine and thoughtful review of Carroll's book has been written by Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and President of Magdalene College. It can be found in the New York Review of Books vol. 58, no. 11, July 5, 2001.
Rating:
Summary: Quick Review
Review: I was not well acquainted with the history of the Catholic church or Christianity and found the book to be completely fascinating reading. A real eye opener, very well written and easy to read. The book is undoubtedly controversial and should most likely be balanced by some other points of view.
Rating:
Summary: Great subject, good history, overwrought conclusions
Review: This is a timely, important book. The subject of this book is the devastating effect of Christianity on Jews as far as the actions of the Catholic Church. Protestants can read in the actions of their own churches and both will find his discussions of the Gospels provocative. Making the effort to overlook his "Boomer academic" conclusions is well worth it for any serious student of the Bible and anyone involved in religious education.
Rating:
Summary: thorough
Review: I found this book fascinating and well informed, but at times a bit pedantic. I strongly suggest it for anyone who has ever asked the question "Why is there so much antisemitism in the world?"
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