バートランド・ラッセル「キリスト教の不寛容の根源」

* 原著：Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?
Repr. in: Why I am not a Christian, and OtherEssays on Religon and Rekated Subjects, ed. by Paul Edwards, 1957.
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』
　

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　下記は牧野力氏による要旨訳（ただし、少し字句を修正）に原文を追加したものです。

ラッセル関係電子書籍一覧

　キリスト教の出現とともに世界中に広がった不寛容（intolerance）は、キリスト教の最も興味深い特徴(curious features)の一つであるが、それは、ユダヤ人の 正義及び神の排他的な実在性（注：exclusive reality 他には神は存在しないこと？）のせいであると、私は考える。ユダヤ人がそのような特徴を持つにいたった理由はよくわからないが、（捕虜となった）ユダヤ人を（バビロニア地方の）異邦人の中に移住させて併合しようとする試み（注：いわゆるバビロン捕囚）への反動として、この不寛容及び排他性が発達していったように思われる。
　ユダヤ人たち、とりわけユダヤの子言者らの考え出した個人的正義感の強調と自己の宗派以外を拒否する心情は、西洋の歴史にとても破壊的な影響力を及ぼした。
　ヘロドトスの著述から、キリスト出現以前の古代世界においては、ユダヤ人を除き、外国諸民族の習慣が柔和で寛大であったことを知ることができる。
　現代のキリスト教徒が以前ほほど偏狭でなくなったのは キリスト教徒の内側からの理由ではなく、ルネッサンス以後、今日までの幾世代かに亘る世界の自由思想家の努カのお陰である
　現代では、誰も、世界がキリスト降誕以前四〇〇四 に創造されたとは信じないが、つい先頃まで、これを疑うことは思わしい罪悪とみなされていたのである。
(The intolerance that spread over the world with the advent of Christianity is one of the most curious features, due, I think, to the Jewish belief in righteousness and in the exclusive reality of the Jewish God. Why the Jews should have had these peculiarities I do not know. They seem to have developed during the captivity as a reaction against the attempt to absorb the Jews into alien populations. However that may be, the Jews, and more especially the prophets, invented emphasis upon personal righteousness and the idea that it is wicked to tolerate any religion except one. These two ideas have had an extraordinarily disastrous effect upon Occidental history. The church made much of the persecution of Christians by the Roman State before the time of Constantine.)
This persecution, however, was slight and intermittent and wholly political. At all times, from the age of Constantine to the end of the seventeenth century, Christians were far more fiercely persecuted by other Christians than they ever were by the Roman emperors. Before the rise of Christianity this persecuting attitude was unknown to the ancient world except among the Jews. If you read, for example, Herodotus, you find a bland and tolerant account of the habits of the foreign nations he visited. Sometimes, it is true, a peculiarly barbarous custom may shock him, but in general he is hospitable to foreign gods and foreign customs. ...
It is true that the modern Christian is less robust, but that is not thanks to Christianity; it is thanks to the generations of freethinkers, who from the Renaissance to the present day, have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs. It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians. Nobody nowadays believes that the world was created in 4004 B. C.; but not so very long ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime.