Interesting:
Jonah –
Let me add one interesting fact to the deluge of opinion that you’re undoubtedly receiving already. St. John Chrysostom, who is generally regarded as one of the more antisemitic of the Church Fathers, denied that the guilt of the Crucifixion extended either to later generations of Jews or to all Jews of Jesus’s own generation. In his Homilies on Matthew 86, he wrote:
When they [the Jews] saw the judge [Pilate] washing his hands, and saying, “I am innocent,” they cried out “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Then at length when they had given sentence against themselves, he yielded that all should be done.
See here too their great madness. For passion and wicked desire are like this. They suffer not men to see anything of what is right. For be it that ye curse yourselves; why do you draw down the curse upon your children also?
Nevertheless, the lover of man, though they acted with so much madness, both against themselves, and against their children, so far from confirming their sentence upon their children, confirmed it not even on them, but from the one and from the other received those that repented, and counts them worthy of good things beyond number. For indeed even Paul was of them, and the thousands that believed in Jerusalem; for, “thou seest it is said, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe.” And if some continued in their sin, to themselves let them impute their punishment. [emphasis added]
For further discussion of this and other points relating to Christian antisemitism, see http://stromata.tripod.com/id245_february_9_2002.htm
Best wishes,