Jews, Economic Metaphors, and the Healthy Body Politic: The Jewish Role in Christian Economic Narratives and the Birth of Modern Economics

Abstract

The linguistic structure of the Western Christian discourse about economics as resembling and symbolizing the entire logic of earthly government and order was closely connected to the shaping of the Christian discourse about Jews and Judaism as a religious and legal system as seen in the framework of the Christian “economy” of Salvation. Seeing the Christian representation of Jews and Judaism from this viewpoint, it becomes evident that a close historical relationship has existed between the history of Western anti-Judaism and the shaping of the Western Christian way of analyzing and representing public and private economic organization. Otherwise stated, there is a close relationship between European anti-Judaism and Western economics.