To wit in "'The Ruin of Britain'" Gildas remarks that:
"'[...] after cutting down the wood in the grove of idolatry, which, in its moral interpretation, means thick and dark desire, and after the clear signs of the Jewish fleece without the moisture from heaven, and of the Gentile fleece made wet by the dew of the Holy Spirit?'"(3)
Now the meaning of the above passage is not immediately apparent as I have made the decision to omit the profuse mentions that Gildas makes of the "'House of Israel'" given that they can be aptly summarized by explaining that Gildas is talking about the issue of supersession in Christian theology. In so far as God made a covenant with the Jews and then; when the Jews had fallen from grace after killing the long-awaited Messiah in Jesus, made his new covenant with the Gentiles through the body and blood of Jesus.
This means that Gildas' comment about the jewish and gentile fleeces is simply an metaphor for his point that the jews were; per the common Christian criticism of the time, worshiping an empty shell and simply upheld the supposed traditions of their ancestors for no other reason than that the were the traditions of their ancestors,while the Christians in Gildas' orthodox view worship the living God who continually blesses them with his benevolence.
The point Gildas is making then is that the jews worship nothing other than themselves (i.e. essentially idols in the Christian view) and that accordingly are the victims of God's wrath, because they are the conscious or unconscious agents of the devil.
This; of course, is an interesting juxtaposition to the modern and historic jewish view of their own history in so far as they see their history as a series of disasters and trials sent by Yahweh in order to punish them for their wickedness or lack of faith with the principle agents of that punishment being the gentiles.
Gildas by contrast sees the disasters and trials that pockmark jewish history as being symptomatic of the lack of faith exhibited by the jews not being followers of the Jesus and instead viciously clinging to outmoded tradition because it is tradition.
We can see that the two views are somewhat complimentary in that they describe the disasters and trials of jewish history as being sent by God because of the evil the jews have done, but where they differ is on identifying just what precisely the jews have done wrong. To the jews they have done wrong in not following the Mitzvoth of the Torah scrupulously enough, but to Gildas what the jews have done wrong is to cling too hard to those same traditions. So hard in fact that they have become Dostoevsky's Inquisitor who has to reject his own Messiah because of the recognition on his part of the Messiah would overturn everything he believed in.
This impression is confirmed when we later read in" 'The Ruin of Britain'"that:
"'Who of you, I ask, does not seek a field with the reward of iniquity? For Judas was wont to steal from coffers; you waste the church gifts and the souls of her sons. He went to the Jews to sell God; you to tyrants and your father the devil, to despise Christ. He held the Saviour of all as one to be sold for thirty pieces of silver; you for even a single penny.'" (4)
In the above Gildas is again talking about the jews rejecting; like Dostoevsky's Inquisitor, their Messiah as being worthless (i.e. they value him only at thirty pieces of silver), because of their own uncritical self-belief that they; in Gildas' words, are the tribal"'elect of God' "and that accordingly the jews ended up selling God made flesh to tyrants (the Jewish high priesthood and through them to the Romans).
Gildas also clearly identifies that the jews do not worship God in his view, but rather because they worship their superseded traditions (and thus themselves) then the jews consciously or unconsciously worship the devil. Indeed Gildas implies that the jews; represented by Judas, were; and are, a nation of thieves who stole; and continue to steal, money from other people and would sell their own mother if they thought it would bring them a suitable profit.
Gildas finishes his point by making a rhetorical exhortation that if Jesus was worth only thirty pieces of silver then jews themselves are hardly even worth a penny, because they cannot; as mere men not incarnate Gods (although Gildas is obviously using a pun here to attack the egotistic presumption of the jews in seeing themselves as the tribal "'elect of God' "but are only worth a tiny fraction of Jesus worth given that he was sold so cheaply by them), hold a candle in terms of worth to Jesus.
As such then we can see that Gildas is severely taking the jews to task for their starring role in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus and further criticising them for being a nation of thieves and swindlers incapable of seeing anything beyond their next victim. In essence Gildas is accusing the jews of being both completely egotistical and materialistic in comparison to the Christians who he views as being humble and ascetic. (5)
Thus we can see that Gildas was hardly friendly towards the jews and rather saw them as being the major enemy of Christianity and; as a doubtful mention of jews in the fragments of his letters tells us,"'the shadow of things to come'" (6) or put another way "'harbingers of the anti-Christ and the apocalypse'". Essentially Gildas saw the jews as a nation worshiping tradition for the sake of tradition and through this unbridled egotism they sold their own Messiah for the measly sum of thirty pieces of silver and have been effectively servants of the devil ever since.
REFERENCES
(1) Hugh Williams, (Ed and Trans) 1899," 'Gildas'", 1st Edition, David Nutt: London ; note that the work is in three separate volumes but numbers its pages continuously meaning that; per the custom, I will refer to the page and not the volume as it is not necessary.(2)
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