Antisemitism in Early Christianity - New Testament

New Testament

Main article: Antisemitism in the New Testament See also: Persecution of early Christians by the Jews

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A. Roy Eckardt, a pioneer in the field of Jewish-Christian relations, asserted that the foundation of antisemitism, and the responsibility for the Holocaust, lies ultimately in the New Testament. Eckardt insisted that Christian repentance must include a reexamination of basic theological attitudes toward Jews and the New Testament in order to deal effectively with antisemitism. There is only one recorded act of violence in the New Testament against a Jewish synagogue leader, Sosthenes, when Greeks in Corinth rose up and beat him on their own initiative. When the Jews had brought charges against Paul to a Roman court, Gallio, the deputy of Greece, was angered at the Jews for what he perceived as judging matters of Jewish law.

The general message that scholars such as Eckardt are trying to convey is that, using the New Testament as its authoritative source, the Church has stereotyped the Jewish people as an icon of unredeemed humanity; they became an image of a blind, stubborn, carnal, and perverse people. According to this view, thisdehumanization is the vehicle that formed the psychological prerequisite to the atrocities that followed.

According to Rabbi Michael J. Cook, Professor of Intertestamental and Early Christian Literature at the Hebrew Union College, there are ten themes in the New Testament that are the greatest sources of anxiety for Jews concerning Christian antisemitism:

1. The Jews are culpable for crucifying Jesus – as such they are guilty of deicide
2. The tribulations of the Jewish people throughout history constitute God's punishment of them for killing Jesus
3. Jesus originally came to preach only to the Jews, but when they rejected him, he abandoned them for Gentiles instead
4. The Children of Israel were God's original chosen people by virtue of an ancient covenant, but by rejecting Jesus they forfeited their chosenness – and now, by virtue of a new covenant (or "testament"), Christians have replaced the Jews as God's chosen people, the Church having become the "People of God". According to the author of I John 2:22-23, anyone, including the Jews, who denies that Jesus is the Son of God does not have the favor of God the Father, and that the Jews have become spiritually illegitimate because of their refusal to believe that Jesus is the Messiah whose coming according to Christians was prophesied in several passages from the Old Testament.
5. The Jewish Bible ("Old" Testament) repeatedly portrays the opaqueness and stubbornness of the Jewish people and their disloyalty to God.
6. The Jewish Bible ("Old" Testament) contains many predictions of the coming of Jesus as the Messiah (or "Christ"), yet the Jews are blind to the meaning of their own Bible.
7. By the time of Jesus' ministry, Judaism had ceased to be a living faith.
8. Judaism's essence is a restrictive and burdensome legalism.
9. Christianity emphasizes excessive love, while Judaism maintains a balance of justice, God of wrath and love of peace.
10. Judaism's oppressiveness reflects the disposition of Jesus' opponents called "Pharisees" (predecessors of the "rabbis"), who in their teachings and behavior were hypocrites (see Woes of the Pharisees).

Cook believes that both contemporary Jews and contemporary Christians need to reexamine the history of early Christianity, and the transformation of Christianity from a Jewish sect consisting of followers of a Jewish Jesus, to a separate religion often dependent on the tolerance of Rome while proselytizing among Gentiles loyal to the Roman empire, to understand how the story of Jesus came to be recast in an anti-Jewish form as the Gospels took their final form.

Some scholars assert that critical verses in the New Testament have been used to incite prejudice and violence against Jewish people. Professor Lillian C. Freudmann, author of Antisemitism in the New Testament (University Press of America, 1994) has published a study of such verses and the effects that they have had in the Christian community throughout history. Similar studies have been made by both Christian and Jewish scholars, including, Professors Clark Williamsom (Christian Theological Seminary), Hyam Maccoby (The Leo Baeck Institute), Norman A. Beck (Texas Lutheran College), and Michael Berenbaum(Georgetown University).

Occasionally, these verses have also been used to encourage anti-Christian sentiment among non-Christians. Christian apologists argue that by taking isolated verses out of context, people distort the message of Christianity. Some Jews consider certain passages of the New Testament, especially those blaming Jews for Jesus' execution and those suggesting that Christianity supersedes Judaism, as antisemitic. A number of elements of the New Testament may be considered antisemitic given a certain interpretive approach. Among them are:

• the explication of the Jewish role in the Passion of Jesus. This is exemplified by I Thessalonians 2:14-15:

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men.

• the assertion that the Jewish covenant with God has been superseded by a New Covenant.
• criticisms of the Pharisees.
• criticisms of Jewish parochialism or particularism.

These elements of the New Testament have their origins in 1st-century history. Christianity began as a revision of Judaism. Many of Jesus's followers during his life were Jews, and it was even a matter of confusion, many years after his death, as to whether non-Jews could even be considered Christians at all, according to the way some interpret the Council of Jerusalem.

Although the Gospels offer accounts of confrontations and debates between Jesus and other Jews, such conflicts were common among Jews at the time. Scholars disagree on the historicity of the Gospels, and have offered different interpretations of the complex relationship between Jewish authorities and Christians before and following Jesus's death. These debates hinge on the meaning of the word "messiah," and the claims of Early Christians.