A rchive Date
[ 06-11-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Religion ]
|
[http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/mine/antisemitism.htm
Questions on Christian Anti-Semitism
Jews for Jesus is a fraud. A deception to trick Jews into converting to Christianity. They are Christians, so don't fall for it!
by Lewis Loflin 06/11/2004
Since the Holocaust of the 1930s-40s anti-Semitism in all its forms is a sensitive topic. Often many of those hostile to Christianity have claimed Christianity is to blame while many Christians blame it on humanism. The answer is both. There is more to anti-Semitism then just religion. Other social and political factors play into the mix of hatred against our fellow man.
In the case of Jews, anti-Semitism often takes on irrational tones be it religious superstition or secular conspiracy theories.
For example, Jews were murdered after being accused of torturing consecrated wafers used in Catholic religious ceremonies and today are blamed for something as silly as inventing AIDS. An early example occurred in 1021 when Pope Benedict VIII had Jews executed, blaming them for a hurricane and an earthquake. Other Popes like Pope Innocent IV (1247) tried to protect Jews.
Quoting Rabbi Tovia Singer of www.outreachjudaism.org:
Virtually all the reformers and church fathers held the Jewish people in contempt and encouraged their utter destruction. These founders and defenders of Christendom are therefore enduring the recompense of their iniquity under the wrath of God, as promised in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Genesis.
Understandably, after nearly two millennia of unimaginable suffering at the hands of both the Catholic and Protestant faithful, it becomes clear to the Jewish people that the consistent pattern of unrelenting hatred emanating from the Christian is no coincidence. For example, my people have not endured this pattern of merciless hate from the followers of other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Mormonism. Even more disturbing, the Jewish people have not experienced this genocidal enmity from members of the more liberal expressions of Christianity such as Unitarians and Methodists. Historically, Christian anti-Semitism has come, almost without exception, from the most devout segment of Christian society: the fundamentalist evangelical community. This history of relentless cruelty has not gone unnoticed by the Jewish people.
Understandably, the nation of Israel must ask this question: What connection exists between the beliefs of the devout Christian and his unyielding hate directed against the children of Israel? Why has the fundamentalist Christian, almost without exception, been our source of bitter anti-Semitism and savage oppression for the past 19 centuries?
Our focus here is Christianity. I'm neither a Christian nor a Jew but a freethinker with some ideas I accept and reject from both Judaism and Christianity. Thus I'm neutral in that respect. So let's explore Christian anti-Semitism real and imagined.
What is anti-Semitism?
A Christian definition that attempts to distance Christianity from mass murder:
Antisemitism is a form of racism. It is hatred of Jews as a race of people. Jews are defined by both race and religion. People who do not practice the religion of Judaism may still regard themselves as Jews by descent. And Antisemitism, certainly the Nazi variety, concentrated on descent. Jews who had abandoned Judaism were still likely to face discrimination, arrest, and even death, and many did.
But the idea of race or blood predated the 19th century:
In Spain anti-Semitism as well as anti-marranism grew alarmingly. The notion arose that hereditary Jewishness or mala sangre (bad blood) was the problem, a problem which not even baptism could alter. Spanish racism, the obsession with pure blood, was born. Similarly, racism was the basis of the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph and Nuremberg Laws, barring Jews from public office and denying them German citizenship. 1
But if anti-Semitism is secular and occurred after the Age of Reason, then Christian anti-Judaism played hand-in-hand with Nazis in places like Poland and the murder of three million Jews. Catholics were willing to help converts, but often turned their backs on those that wouldn't convert.
The German political writer Wilhelm Marr coined word Antisemitismus in 1873, at a time when racial science was the rave in Germany, but religious prejudice wasn't. The term replaced the older German word Judenhass, meaning Jew-hating. In The Victory of Judaism over Germanicism (1879), Marr may have advocated secular racist ideas of Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races. (1853) His book was very popular, and he founded the League of Anti-Semites (Antisemiten-Liga), an organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany posed by the Jews. They demanded Jews be removed from the country. The 1870s were bad in Germany and much of Europe due to the October 1873 stock market crash. Conspiracy theories abounded.
In 1881 that year Marr published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte," and Wilhelm Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the "Neue Freie Presse." (New Free Press) The word semitism was coined around 1885 which didn't Jews as was the term Palestinian to refer to the nation or people known as Jews, as distinct from the religion of Judaism. That is what the term was understood to mean until 1967. Arabs denied the existence of "Palestine" before that time.
Anti-Semitism has always referred to hatred against Jews alone, and not to other people who speak semitic languages such as Arabs. Some have argued that the term anti-Semitism should be extended to include prejudice against Arabs, since Arabic is a semitic language but is rejected for its political overtones. (Source: Wikipedia )
It seems anti-Semitism is an invention of the 19th century but the foundation was Christian anti-Judaism.
Is religious bigotry anti-Semitism?
While some today consider any criticism of Jews on any subject as anti-Semitism, how do we separate what is just religious bigotry from anti-Semitism? At what point does religion get associated with race? In America for example, Evangelicals.
Can we call the Inquisition anti-Semitism? This blot on Christianity terrorized Muslims as well as Jews and was just as happy burning Christian heretics at the stake. In 1481, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the rulers of Spain who financed Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World just a few years later in 1492, declared the Spanish Inquisition. All Jews in their territory were compelled to convert to Christianity or flee the country. While some converted, many others left for Morocco and North Africa. Estimates are that between four and eight thousand secret Jews (morraños) were burnt alive, as well as many Moriscos. (Secret Muslims) It is questionable whether this constitutes anti-Semitism in the racist sense, since it was directed at recent converts from Judaism and Islam. Any form of Christian heresy met with equal violence.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) founded a new Christian faith, Protestantism, in the 16th century. He had been an ordained priest, but disputed Church policy with respect to the sale of indulgences (a partial remission of the punishment for a sin). Once a supporter of the Jews, he was frustrated by their unwillingness to embrace his own religion. Martin Luther became one of the most intensely bitter anti-Semites in history. His writings described Jews as the anti-Christ, worse than devils. Jews were poisoners, ritual murderers, and parasites, he preached, and they should be expelled from Germany. His view was that synagogues should all be burned to the ground, and all Jewish books should be seized.
Luther's violent tirades came after most Jews refused to convert, but his rages weren't directed at just Jews but all forms of religious dissent. He was directly involved in the death of 100,000 Anabaptists and advocated the murder of heretics such as the Unitarians. John Calvin, the other leading Protestant figure of that era, was just as bad as Luther. But Luther's negative writings on Jews would be the bread and butter of later anti-Semitism, in particular non-Christian Nazism.
While Luther was a primitive superstitious brute, he never thought of Jews in racial terms as we know it. His rantings on the Anabaptists have been forgotten but those on Jews influenced German Protestantism and the Nazis.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the U.S., has rejected suggestions that it stop seeking to convert Jews, a position some call anti-Semitic. The SBC (as do most Evangelicals) see this as consistent with their view that salvation is found solely though faith in Christ. In 1996, the SBC approved a resolution calling for efforts to seek the conversion of Jews "as well as for the salvation of 'every kindred and tongue and people and nation." They also target Muslims and Hindus and Mormons and just about everybody else at various times. At the same time Evangelical Protestants are among the most pro-Israeli groups while many Leftist self-hating Jews such as Noam Chomsky hate Israel with a passion.
By contrast, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Canada and the Roman Catholic Church have ended their efforts to convert Jews. Most Jews see evangelism directed specifically at Jews as anti-Semitic. At the same time, some more liberal churches are among the most anti-Israel which some claim is a cover for anti-Semitism.
Would being anti-Israel (anti-Zionism) be the same as anti-Semitism?
Most of the anti-Israel crowd does include cults such as Christian Identity which is also racist and not orthodox Christian to begin with. We also have the Left for the most part strongly anti-Israel where the "rights" of the so-called "Palestinians" (Arabs) have taken on an air of religious obsession. (Often a cover for larger political agenda.) But it's also odd the same Left that screams so loud for "human rights" is silent on Tibet, silent on the mistreatment of women and homosexuals under Islam, and never says anything critical of any communist nation (China, Cuba, N. Korea) or Islamo-fascist states. The Left equally hates America and Christians as well.
It seems to me anti-Semitism was a product of the 19th century, but the foundations were laid with Christian anti-Judaism. As Europe became much more secular following the Age of Enlightenment, irrational Christian dogma became replaced with pseudo-science and irrational conspiracy theories. We should note at this point the Enlightenment produced different reactions in different societies. In America, Holland, and England, it help produce the American Revolution and wide religious tolerance while fostering a secular state that retained much of its religious character. It also fostered the French Revolution and its violent and anti-religious secularism and beheadings. In Germany it fostered a lot of pseudo-science and strange metaphysics.
Christian "Self Defence"
When Jews resist conversion to Christianity, too often the reaction is that of Martin Luther. We also have to consider another fact that Jews unlike pagans and heretics were allowed to survive by Christians while all others were slaughtered. The Jews could have easily gone the way of the Arians, Gnostics, Ebionites, etc. Just another extinct belief system we read about in the history books.
But seeking converts is what Christians do to everyone. They prey on non-Christians and they prey on each other all the time. No matter how twisted they are in their thinking, they really think they are doing the rest of us a favor. But why is a religion based on claims of God's so-called "love" of humanity that further claims that same God sent His "only begotten Son" to die a horrible death on a cross for the sake people that so often disobey the very teachings of that Son? How can they justify violence when they fail to convince others to follow?
Christianity claims that all people must know God as revealed only through Jesus Christ. That's the only way one can avoid damnation and obtain life in Heaven. After Christianity merged with the Roman Empire, Jesus took second place to the Church. The secular state became a new instrument of judgment (and punishment) outside God. They further argued that those who take away the possibility of eternal life should be prevented by all mean including force. This is especially true for heretics and apostates from the Christian faith or anyone else who drew converts away from the Church. This would be spiritual murder so they claimed a kind of "right of self defence" of the soul. All things take a back seat to self defence and anything is justified including killing. So murder that is so clearly prohibited with Jesus Himself and the Ten Commandments becomes not murder but self defence.
Because of this, no public displays of any non-Christian religion were allowed, and proselytizing to convert people away from Christianity was also forbidden, because this threatened the power and authority of the Church. In the end all thinking of any kind was forbidden or limited to the clergy. Not only did this apply to other faiths and heretics, but any science or philosophy that threatened the Church as well. Millions of books went up in flames and even owning or reading a Bible at times was outlawed. Salvation wasn't through Christ so much as through the institution of the Church itself, Christ' earthly representative.
The Early Church
Pauline Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) is mainly what survives today. Most of what survives as Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism descended from the Pharisees. But by the second century C.E., both Judaism and Christianity were trying to distinguish themselves from the other in the eyes of Rome and define themselves as well. There in fact were several Christian churches and two broad forms of Judaism: Hellenistic Judaism (the vast majority in the Roman Empire that didn't revolt) and the Pharisees all that survived from the Jewish Revolts. Judaism had attained legal status in the Roman world as a religion and did not want Christianity, with its loyalty to a King other than Caesar to be associated with it. The now largely Gentile church also wanted to obtain the same legal status in the eyes of Rome so that it would not be identified with the Jews rebels who had revolted under Bar Kochba. (135 CE?) It was clear to Rome that Christianity wasn't a sect of Judaism, thus was no longer under the protective legal status of Judaism.
With the establishment of Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century, the Church soon began to attack Judaism. The new "Christian" empire began to enact legal changes such as:
- The removal of former religious and governing privileges.
- The curtailment of Rabbinical jurisdiction.
- Prohibition of missionary work.
- Jews were no longer allowed to hold high offices or have military careers (e.g. legislation in 537 C.E. which prohibited local Jewish people from serving on municipal bodies).
- Banning Christians from having contact with Jews
- Forbidding of the reading of the Torah exclusively in Hebrew (553 C.E.)
- Confiscation of Jewish property and the prohibition of the sale of Christian property to Jews (545 C.E.).
The Justinian Code was an edict of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527-564). A section of the code negated civil rights for Jews. Once the code was enforced, Jews in the Empire could not build synagogues, read the Bible in Hebrew, gather in public places, celebrate Passover before Easter, or give evidence in a judicial case in which a Christian was a party. Other decrees by the early Catholic Church: (partial list)
- Synod of Elvira (306) prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, and prohibited them from eating together.
- Councils of Orleans (533-541) prohibited marriages between Christians and Jews and forbade the conversion to Judaism by Christians.
- Trulanic Synod (692) prohibited Christians from being treated by Jewish doctors.
- Synod of Narbonne (1050) prohibited Christians from living in Jewish homes.
- Synod of Gerona (1078) required Jews to pay taxes to support the Church.
- Third Lateran Council (1179) prohibited certain medical care to be provided by Christians to Jews.
- Fourth Lateran Council (1215) required Jews to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians.
- Council of Basel (1431-1443) forbade Jews to attend universities, from acting as agents in the conclusion of contracts between Christians, and required that they attend church sermons.
It's ironic that these codes would be adapted later on by Islam and used against both Christians and Jews. This would also be adapted by the Nazis as well.
The above also presents some troubling questions. If Jews did nothing but revolt as in the case in 66-70 AD and bar Kochma, why did the Roman state give Judaism legal status? This would be like the United States giving legal status to communists in the 1950s. One problem is the Gospel accounts focus on a very narrow area, Israel. We hear about Egypt, various foreign powers, and Paul's adventures in Greece, etc. in passing, but nearly all of the focus is on Israel.
What the typical Christian with their nose stuck in the Bible fails to understand is Christianity was based on the Hellenist Paul and a Greek convert (Gnostic) named John. Christianity was a product of the Greek world interpreted by Gentile church fathers. The various creeds, dogma, etc. would be decided elsewhere often hundreds of years later. All of the New Testament books were in Greek and Philo of Alexandria, another Hellenist, combined Greek philosophy with Judaism and was a huge influence on the Church Fathers.
So why would Justinian and others come up with laws to forbid Jewish missionary work or to keep Christians away from Jews? Open Judaism is a threat to both Christians and even Orthodox Jews. Jews as a minority would tend a to assimilate while exposure to Judaism raises critical questions for Christianity. The reality would be a larger but different form of Judaism neither Christian or Jewish as we know it and in fact was the reality before being wiped out. We call it heresy which the penalty under the Christian church was death.
The fact is that many early Christians, pagans and Jews lived together in peace and conversions went both ways. While the Christian Bible focuses only on the events in Judea and Paul's missionary works in several Greek cities, a second Judaism at odds with the Rabbis and Christians made up the vast numbers of Jews/Christians of the Roman Empire. To quote Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, Volume One, (p 107-8)
...there was a Judaism in the Diaspora, for the consciousness of which the cultus and ceremonial law were of comparatively subordinate importance; while the monotheistic worship of God, apart from images, the doctrines of virtue and belief in a future reward beyond the grave, stood in the foreground as its really essential marks. Converted Gentiles were no longer everywhere required to be even circumcised; the bath of purification was deemed sufficient. The Jewish religion here appears transformed into a universal human ethic and a monotheistic cosmology...Theocracy as well as the messianic hopes of the future faded away...the Prophets were made use of mainly for the purpose of proving the antiquity and certainty of monotheistic belief...The specific Jewish element, however, stood out plainly in the assertion that the Old Testament, and especially the books of Moses, were the source of all true knowledge of God, and the sum total of all doctrines of virtue for the nations, as well as in the connected assertion that the religious and moral culture of the Greeks was derived from the Old Testament, as the source from which the Greek Poets and Philosophers had drawn their inspiration. These Jews and the Greeks converted by them formed, as it were, a Judaism of a second order without law, i.e., ceremonial law, and with a minimum of statutory regulations. This Judaism prepared the soil for the Christianizing of the Greeks, as well as for the genesis of a great Gentile Church in the empire free from the law; and this the more that, as it seems, after the second destruction of Jerusalem, the punctilious observance of the law was imposed more strictly than before on all who worshipped the God of the Jews...
These Hellenistic Jews transformed what was a national or tribal god into a universal god for all people. Just as many Jews and Gentiles intermarry in America today and exchange ideas, the same thing happened before both Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism alike attacked it. Rabbis sought to insulate themselves from outsiders while Christians struggled to gain converts from Jews of various kinds (rejected by the rabbis and declared heretics by Christians) who were also gaining converts. Both wanted an end to Jewish missionary work which is why the laws were passed. Both felt anything outside their control was a one-way ticket to damnation. The Apostle Paul was one of these Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora.
Both religions as did later Islam sought to force people apart and to isolate and control their followers. All three can be very cult-like and when in political power dangerous. Jews would force others out, Christian and Muslims force others to convert. The result was always tyranny, paranoia, and a rejection of reason.
But Christianity was in a bind. If the Jews were wiped out, their promises of a second coming which involved Jews would fall apart. But Jews were also a threat because if Judaism was right and thinking Christians looked too closely, Christian dogma would be threatened. So the suggestion of Saint Augustine would be followed:
"the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue to till the ground of an earthly circumcision, an earthly Sabbath, an earthly Passover, while the hidden strength or virtue of making known Christ, which this tilling contains, is not yielded to the Jews while they continue in impiety and unbelief, for it is revealed in the New Testament. While they will not turn to God, the veil which is on their minds in reading the Old Testament is not taken away... the Jewish people, like Cain, continue tilling the ground, in the carnal observance of the law, which does not yield to them its strength, because they do not perceive in it the grace of Christ"
Jews would be marginalized, isolated and persecuted, but allowed to live only in misery. This evil was justified by claims of deicide.
Who killed Jesus?
How does one kill God? An even better question, if this was preordained by God that Jesus was to die on the cross, were not those that carried out the act in fact operating in God's behalf? Is God responsible? Why would Pilot, a man known for cruelty who represented the most powerful world empire of that time, allow himself to be pushed around by a bunch of Jews he could order slaughtered with a single word. These questions should be troubling to Christians.
We have to look to the Gospel accounts which are also unclear and a religion where it's demanded of followers not to question and even asking a question today brings charges of "secular." It's hard to reason with those that reject reason.
It's obvious the Romans killed Jesus. Crucifixion is a Roman punishment for rebellion as where stoning is the method used by Jews. During Jesus' lifetime, the Sadducees were the dominant Jewish faction and operated the Temple often as Roman puppets. At the time of his execution, the Sadducees were just one of several Jewish groups such as the Pharisees, Zealots, and Essenes. Arguments by Jesus and his disciples with fellow Jews were almost certainly examples of disputes among Jews and internal to Judaism that were common at the time. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, however, The Sadducees were wiped out and the Pharisees emerged as the principal form of Judaism (also called "Rabbinic Judaism"). Jews are especially sensitive to criticisms of "Pharisees" as a group. The later gospel writers (written after 70 CE) tended to use Pharisees.
At the same time that the Pharisees came to represent Judaism as a whole after about 500 CE, Christianity came to seek, and attract, more non-Jewish converts than Jewish converts. Within a hundred years or so the majority of Christians were non-Jews without any significant knowledge of Judaism. Many of these Christians read these passages not as internal debates among Jews but as the basis for a Christian rejection of Judaism and Jews. By this time, Christians were theologically rejecting any and all groups who rejected the Christian claim that Jesus was God, which of course included the Jews, along with Greeks and Romans who worshipped the traditional Greek and Roman gods, most Gnostics, and Jewish Christians. Pharisees likewise reject those Jewish groups that didn't "tow the line."
Moreover, it was only during the Rabbinic era that Christianity would compete exclusively with Pharisee Judaism (along with heretic Jews and Christian Gnostics) for converts and over how to interpret the Hebrew Bible . Some scholars have argued that some passages of the Gospels were written (or re-written) at this time to emphasize conflict with the Pharisees. These scholars observe that the portrait of the Pharisees in the Gospels is strikingly different from that provided in Rabbinic sources, and suggest that New Testament Pharisees are a caricature and literary foil for Christianity. At a time when Christians were only seeking converts, and had no political power in the Roman Empire. Once Christianity was established as the religion of the Empire, and Christians enjoyed political domination over Europe, this caricature could be used to incite or justify oppression of Jews.
Some suggest that the Greek word Ioudaioi could also be translated "Judaeans", meaning in some cases specifically the Jews from Judaea, as opposed to people from Galilee, Samaria or the vast majority in the Diaspora. In a few Christian denominations have begun to teach that readers should understand the New Testament's attacks on Jews as specific charges aimed at certain Jewish leaders of that time, and upon attitudes.
The sad fact is that the Paulist Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism of today do not reflect the diverse majority of Jews and Christians that often lived in peace with pagans. Most of those groups were exterminated by the 5th century and most of those that survived outside the clutches of the early Christian church (such as in Arabia and Persia) got exterminated by Islam.
Still under construction 10-5-04
Below are 3 pages, the first Christian, outlining the actions of the church fathers. Below I present an article from an Orthodox Christian explaining his view. In a way he doesn't get it. While explaining (correctly) that some church fathers weren't attacking "Jews"as much as pagans, Jewish Christians, and Christians friendly with Jews, it was still used to justify murder rightly or wrongly. No matter how hard he tries to say otherwise, Christianity is covered in blood. I present Stephen to balance my views.
Anti-semitism and Orthodoxy
by Stephen Methodius Hayes
The 20th century will be remembered for many things, good and bad, but one of the worst things it will be remembered for will be genocide -- the attempt to exterminate a race of people. In chronological order there were the German attempt to exterminate the Hereros in 1906, the Turkish attempt to exterminate the Armenians 10 years later, the German attempt to exterminate Jews in the 1940s, and genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. The list is not exhaustive, but of those the German attempt to exterminate the Jews stands out as the biggest, and the most deliberate.
What drove the Nazi rulers of Germany to genocide was antisemitism, hatred of Jews, that was propagated as an ideology from the middle of the 19th century, and popularised by the Nazi government of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
Antisemitism is a form of racism. It is hatred of Jews as a race of people. Jews are defined by both race and religion. People who do not practice the religion of Judaism may still regard themselves as Jews by descent. And antisemitism, certainly the Nazi variety, concentrated on descent. Jews who had abandoned Judaism were still likely to face discrimination, arrest, and even death, and many did.
The scale of the genocide in Nazi Germany, and the vehemence of the antisemitism that caused it, have led people, since the end of the Second World War, to try to find the sources of antisemitism. And some have concluded, as a result of their investigations, that Christianity itself is the cause of antisemitism. They say that Christianity is inherently antisemitic. They assert that the roots of antisemitism are to be found in the earliest Christian documents -- the New Testament, and that all subsequent antisemitism grew and developed from that. The line is traced through the Church Fathers -- St John Chrysostom coming in for particularly heavy criticism -- with the Spanish Inquisition, Martin Luther and pogroms against Jews in Tsarist Russia being mentioned along the way.
St John Chrysostom and the pogroms, in particular, have led to Orthodox Christianity being tarred with the antisemitic brush, at least in the minds of these researchers, and, by extension, in the minds of many of their readers. Is it true? Is Christianity, and in particular Orthodox Christianity, inherently antisemitic?
It is not possible to give a full answer to such a question in a short article like this. The most I can do is give a few pointers, and some suggestions for further reading, and appeal to Orthodox historians to do some research into the subject and perhaps write something more adequate.
Christianity and Judaism - the common roots
Both Christianity and modern Judaism sprang from Second-Temple Judaism, which came to an end in AD 70, with the suppression of the Jewish revolt by the Romans. Second-Temple Judaism was not monolithic. There were several different parties and sects, of which the best known were the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots. By the end of the first century AD there were in effect only two - Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, both of which sprang largely from the Pharisees. Much of the New Testament was written about the time that Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism were going their separate ways, and to some extent it reflects the theological polemics of the split. For example, the gospels report on Jesus' disputes with leaders of the Pharisee and Sadducee parties. There is very little mention of the Zealots (other than that one of Jesus' disciples belonged to them - Luke 6:15) and none of the Essenes.
In some ways Jesus could be seen as a Pharisee reformer, critical of some of the leaders of the group for their vanity and hypocrisy, but generally sympathetic with their theology. In English we often use the term "Pharisaical" as if it were a very bad thing, but if we read the gospels, the complaint of Jesus was not that the Pharisees were too Pharisaical, but that they were not Pharisaical enough. They were playing the role, acting the part, but the reality was missing (the word "hypocrite" means "actor").
Those who say that Christianity was fundamentally antisemitic point to the Gospel according to St John, where Jesus debates not so much with the Pharisees as with "the Jews", and the Jews are made to seem the villain of the piece. St John even has Jesus say that the Jews were children of the devil (John 8:44), and you can't get much more antisemitic than that! If Jews are children of the devil, then they must be fair game, and the gas chambers of Auschwicz are too good for them.
Another verse used to support the thesis that Christianity was antisemitic from the beginning is Matthew 27:27, when the crowd demand the death of Jesus. When Pilate hesitates, the crowd shout that they will accept responsibility: "His blood be on us and on our children." This verse, the critics say, was intended to justify Christians in hating Jews as "Christ-killers", and to perpetuate this hatred for all generations.
Two questions arise from this:
1. Do these verses really indicate "antisemitism" on the part of the NT writers?
2. Can they legitimately be used by Christians to justify antisemitism?
I believe that the answer to both questions is "No".
What is antisemitism?
Antisemitism, the hatred of Jews as a race is a phenomenon of the 19th century. Antisemitism was part of a wider movement of racism that intensified towards the end of the 19th century, and led to several attempts at genocide in the 20th century. To read it back into the first century, or even the 4th century, is anachronistic. It is bad history.
Is the "antisemitic" interpretation valid?
Apart from the question of anachronism, there is also the question of a faulty reading of the New Testament text. Who are the "Jews" that are referred to in the gospels? Jesus was a Jew by religion, as were most of his disciples. But the Greek word that is translated into English as "Jews" is actually "Ioudei", and could just as easily (and in many contexts more accurately) be translated as "Judaeans". Jesus and his disciples were Jews, but not Judaeans. They were not normally resident in Judaea, but in Galilee, which was under a different political authority, and they spoke with a different accent (Mt 26:73). When Jesus debated with the Judaean Pharisees (Jn 8), they said he was a Samaritan (Jn 8:48). Samaritans were regarded as heretics. The woman of Samaria recognised Jesus as a Jew (Jn 4:9) and Jesus does not dispute this. Surely if John were antisemitic, and intending to promote antisemitism, he would have suppressed such evidence? The Samaritan woman also recognises the theological differences (Jn 4:20). By calling Jesus a "Samaritan", therefore, the Judaean Pharisees imply that he is a heretic, and perhaps his northern accent sounds to them as though it could just as easily be Samaritan as Galilean (Samaria was geographically between Judaea and Galilee, and Jesus had passed through it on his way to Judaea).
I believe that those who maintain that the Gospel according to St John is "antisemitic" have failed to distinguish between Jews and Judaeans, and that by assuming that "Ioudei" meant "Jews" in every case, they have read antisemitism into the text where none exists.
I do not dispute that some of these passages of scripture have later been used by Christians, including some Orthodox Christians, to justify antisemitism, but I believe that those who have done so were mistaken, and were misinterpreting the text. So I believe that using the text to justify antisemitism is twisting it, whether it is done by those promoting antisemitism, or by those promoting antiChristianity by claiming that Christianity is inherently antisemitic.
What about the "antisemitic" writings of St John Chrysostom?
In the fourth century St John Chrysostom wrote a polemical work "against the Jews". He was trained in the schools of classical rhetoric and he pulled no punches. His language was harsh, intemperate and at times crude and insulting. It would certainly not pass the standards of polite or scholarly discourse today.
Many of those who cite St John Chrysostom as a source of antisemitism, however, have not read this work or any other by him. They know nothing of the setting, and many have seen nothing but a few of the nastier insults quoted out of context. I sometimes get the feeling, reading such critiques (which are several generations removed from the scholarly originals, so that tentative suggestions made by scholarly researchers have become indisputable facts in the minds of those looking for something to bash Christianity with) that somewhere there is a collection of Patristical excerpts, containing all the things that the Church Fathers have said against women, or Jews, or other groups, all collected in one convenient place for reference by modern polemicists, who use this as a source to avoid having to read the original texts in their proper context.
St John Chrysostom was not really writing against Jews, but against Judaising Christians. There were Christians who would attend Jewish services and prayer meetings, and adopt Jewish customs, and say how superior they were to Christian ones. He rejects their approach, and compares Jewish theology and practice with Christian, trying to show the superiority of Christian beliefs and practices, and their incompatibility with each other.
It is quite clear that he thinks Christianity is superior to Judaism, and that Christians should therefore not attend Jewish services and prayer meetings or adopt Jewish customs. But is this "antisemitic", or does it justify antisemitism? Again, I would say it is not and it does not. Theological disagreement is not antisemitism, even when expressed in very rude language. And theological differences do not justify either pogroms or genocide.
One could also look at the thing from the other side. In our day there are still Judaising Christians, and there are also Christianising Jews. These Jews call themselves "Messianic Jews". They have grown up as Jews, and call themselves Jews, but they believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They continue to call themselves Jews, but like to call themselves "completed Jews". Orthodox Jews regard them as apostates and heretics, and some of the web sites that denounce them as such use rhetoric that differs little from that of St John Chrysostom against Judaising Christians in the 4th century.
When we look at St John Chrysostom's writing, we should also look at the setting. Where was he writing from, and what were things like in those days?
Wilken (1983:30f) says:
Paganism and Christianity were not on equal footing in Antioch. Hellenism set the tone, undergirded the institutions and inspired the art and literature. In the schools the 'air one breathed' was Greek, not Christian. It is commonly thought that by the end of the fourth century, especially after the conversion of Constantine and the accession of an Orthodox Christian emperor, Theodosius I, to the imperial throne in 379, the Christian religion had come to dominate the society. From the perspective of later history such an interpretation is understandable, but to those living through this period, things did not appear this way. In the opening paragraphs of his work 'On those who oppose the monastic life', written most likely after 379, John (Chrysostom) bemoans the treatment of Christian monks while an orthodox Christian sat on the imperial throne... John did not expect that the emperors would always be Christians or that the policies of the present emperor would necessarily continue.
It is easy to say, with hindsight, that from that time on Christianity went on to become more secure in Antioch, a condition that would last for at least two more centuries. But Theodosius was the first emperor since Constantine to be sympathetic towards Orthodox Christianity, and could, as far as St John Chrysostom knew, quite easily be replaced by one who wasn't. There were possibly some still alive who had suffered under the persecution of Diocletian, or who at least remembered those days. Other emperors had favoured Arianism, and in Antioch itself Arianism was still as influential, if not more so, than Orthodoxy.
To take a text written in such a setting, and use it to justify hatred of Jews today, is the worst kind of demagoguery.
Where do we go from here?
So what should be the attitude of Orthodox Christians to Jews today?
I believe that we will continue to have deep theological differences with Jews. We believe that the Messiah has come; Jews do not. We believe that Jesus was not only the Messiah, but God incarnate. Jews do not. As long as there are Jews and Christians in the world, we will continue to disagree over such things. The differences won't go away. If Jews become Orthodox Christians, then they must become Orthodox Christians, and not something in between like "Messianic Jews". And Orthodox Jews will regard them as apostate, just as Orthodox Christians will regard as apostate a fellow Christian who becomes a Jew. Orthodox Christians will follow St John Chrysostom's exhortation in not celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles in Jewish fashion, as some Judaising Christians advocate today, and I suspect that in that some Orthodox Jews at least would be the first to agree.
Yet, despite these differences, there are many ways in which Orthodox Jews and Orthodox Christians share a common heritage and even similar outlooks on life that can allow us to respect one another, even if we do not agree on theology.
Can we regard Jews as "Christ-killers" and on that ground justify hating, oppressing or persecuting them? I believe that if Orthodox Christians do such a thing, that is a sin that we must confess and forsake. When it comes to the death of Christ, the only guilt that we need to consider is our own. We pray every day in Lent, "Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother". That is the spirit of true Orthodoxy. Nothing could be further from it than antisemitism.
From Palm Sunday to Pentecost we read in the scriptures about the Jerusalem mob. They were Judaeans and Jews from other nations (Ioudei. On Palm Sunday, we are told, they shouted "Hosanna!" as Jesus rode into Jerusalem. A few days later, they were shouting "Crucify him!" and "His blood be on us and on our children". And Jesus, we are told, said "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." If we, as Christians, refuse to forgive those whom God has forgiven, we deny Christ, and we place ourselves among the crowd who called for his death, and put ourselves out of the range of God's forgiveness by denying it to others. On the day of Pentecost, seven weeks later, we are told that St Peter spoke to the same Jerusalem mob, who had clearly witnessed the events of Palm Sunday and Great Friday. He said, "God has made this same Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Ac 2:36). And the crowd asked "What shall we do?" And St Peter replied, "Repent and be baptised, every one of you for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children.
To claim, as some have done, that the words of the curse "His blood be on us and our children" justify Christians in hating Jews, supposing them to be descendants of people who actually shouted that, is in fact to crucify Christ afresh. If Christ said "Father forgive them" who are we to refuse to forgive them or their supposed descendants, for a wrong done not to us, but to him? The crowd is us. When we hear those events from Palm Sunday to Pentecost, we are the ones who shout "Hosanna" one day, and crucify him the next. Ours is the avarice of Judas. Lord, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother. Lord, have mercy.
What is the status of this article?
Throughout this article I have qualified my statements by saying things like "I believe..." and "I think...". I have not said "The Church teaches..." These are personal opinions. They are the opinions of an Orthodox Christian, but they are not the teaching of the Church. As I said at the beginning, I hope it may stimulate church historians and theologians to write more fully and more authoritatively on this matter, because I believe it is an important one.
For further reading:
The following books deal with the history of Jewish-Christian relations, especially in the first four centuries of the Christian era. They are not exhaustive, and none of them is written by an Orthodox Christian, so they cannot be taken as indicating an Orthodox point of view. They do, however, give useful background information.
Braham, Randolf L (ed). 1986. The origins of the Holocaust: Christian anti-Semitism. Boulder: Social Science Monographs. Dewey: 261.260924
Neusner, Jacob. 1987. Judaism and Christianity in the age of Constantine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dewey: 292.3872
Shanks, Hershel (ed). 1992. Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: a parallel history of their origins and early development. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society. Dewey: 261.2609015
Wilken, Robert L. 1983. John Chrysostom and the Jews: rhetoric and reality in the late 4th century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dewey: 261.2609394
More Things to Ponder
Atheism
Islam
Antics of the Christian Right
Christian Cults and the End Times
Deism
Early Christian History
16th century Christianity
Anti-Semitism
|