Christian identity both needs and exterminates its Jewish model

Evidence

The purpose of such parodic identification is not so much to identify the Jews with Christians (and thus to humanize them), but rather to identify the Christians with the Jews, in order to articulate a notion of Christian identity that both takes Judaism as its model and eradicates it utterly. The fate of the Jews in the Siege of Jerusalem is therefore, paradoxically, double: on the one hand, they must be annihilated so that the superiority of Christianity can be clearly demonstrated; on the other, they must be preserved in order to maintain the authenticity of the model they offer for Christians. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 228

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that a group can only be annihilated after serving as the authenticating template — a double bind of being needed and destroyed at once — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting observation.