David,

I appreciate that you do not see the NT as hate speech. To many modern Christians, it would not occur to them to hate the Jewish people for the things written therein. In fact, most would be horrified by such a notion. (When I was a Christian, I would have been horrified by such a notion too.) But much of modern Christianity is separated from its history and is horrified by the scope and temporal proximity of the holocaust.

Let me explain why I call it hate speech. Even if the words addressed to the Pharisees and other groups were accurate–I do not say that they are–they weren’t delivered to those people. The books of the NT are largely directed to non-Jews. And so the image that is painted of the Pharisee to the non-Jew is one horribly skewed. They have no context. They are left with this image…