Theologian Andrew Wilson writes:
- Ask most Jews what they honestly think about Jesus, and you will find a deep bitterness. Jesus was the starting-point for the painful history of Christian anti-Semitism. Centuries of Christian violence against Jews: mob violence, pillaging, rape, confinement to ghettos, forcible abduction of children to be baptized as Christians, expulsions from many nations and finally the Holocaust, have poisoned the minds of Jews from being able to appreciate the goodness of Jesus Christ. Christian anti-Semitism, and the resulting Jewish resentment of Christianity, remains a spiritual weight, the congealed pain of tens of millions of people who lived and died through that persecution. It is a continuing factor in hindering the Jewish-Christian relationship. [1]
During the past 1800 years, many Christians had anti-Semitic attitudes. Many historians hold that for most of its history, most of Christianity was openly anti-Semitic. The severity, type and extent of this anti-Semitism have varied much over time; the earliest form was theological anti-Semitism, but we should note that anti-Semitism existed well before Christianity and continued to be part of paganism after Christianity appeared. The pagan Romans, for example, considered the Jewish sect to be anti-social and the Jews to be religious fanatics. The Jews were nearly unique in the Roman world in insisting that their God was the only one. Romans in general were very tolerant of each region's religious practice and did not understand why first Jews, and then Christians, insisted that their religion was true and all other religions false and evil.
Many New Testament passages criticise the Pharisees, according to some the most influential Jewish group of its day. Christians have historically read these passages as attacking Jews in general. These passages have shaped the way that Christians viewed Jews; like most Bible passages, they have been interpreted in a variety of ways:
Some have argued that anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament are not really targeting Jews as a whole, as the Pharisees were just one of several Jewish groups (with the Saducees, Samaritans, and Essenes, for example). They argue that the fact that in the time of Jesus the Pharisees were the largest and most dominant group of theologians and religious leaders does not prove that Jesus' words were aimed at every individual Jew, nor at Jews as a people. (In any case, Jesus himself was a member of the Jewish people and practised the Jewish religion.)
As the canon of the New Testament was slowly settled, the other Jewish sects disappeared, leaving only Pharisaic Judaism (later known as rabbinic Judaism). Thus, almost all Jews today are heirs of the Pharisees. (Members of the Samaritan community still extant do not refer to themselves as Jews.) As such the New Testament passages about Pharisees have been read by the Christian community as being about Jews in general.
Another way to explain some passages that criticise "Jews", is that the Greek word Ioudaioi could also be translated "Judaeans", meaning specifically the Jews from Judaea, as opposed to Jews from Gallilee or Samaria for instance. If this explanation is correct, Christian anti-Semitism has in part been a tragic error arising from the fact that the New Testament writers did not choose a less ambiguous word for "Judaean", perhaps because they did not expect their words to be read for so many years and in such different cultures.
In recent years some theologians within liberal 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. Others disagree, pointing out that the passages as written do not condemn individuals, but target the Jewish people as a whole.
As time passed, the split between Christians (specifically, the followers of Paul and the other Apostles, all of whom were Jews) and Jews became more significant. By the time the Gospels came into their final form, they included points of view that, if said by Gentiles to Jews, would certainly be considered anti-Semitic by the Jews. This may be where the real problem began - Christianity reached out to Gentiles, and accepted them as eligible to become Christian without their first becoming Jewish. This was a direct result of a decision by the Christian leadership (who were predominantly Jewish) in Jerusalem. Thus a large number of non-Jews came into Christianity, and they read many verses as attacking Jews in general. It is clear that this interpretation of the New Testament was more commonly used after 1000 A.D. when used as proof that God hated the Jews. Until about 1000 A.D., there was an active Jewish component of Christianity. Lutheran Pastor John Stendahl has pointed out that "Christianity begins as a kind of Judaism, and we must recognize that words spoken in a family conflict are inappropriately appropriated by those outside the family."
The following statements have been used to justify persecution of Jews. Many of the following people were recognized as saints by the Church; none of them explicitly advocated physical violence or murder, sometimes arguing, like Augustine, that the Jews should be left alive and suffering as a perpetual reminder of their murder of Christ. We also should remember that the tolerance, moderation, and respect for diversity of modern secular Western states would not have been regarded as virtues in the early Christian church.
Anti-Semitism in the New Testament
Main article: Jews in the New TestamentThe Church Fathers
Catholic Encyclopaedia entry on Ambrose
Augustine deems this scattering important because he believes that this is a fulfillment of certain prophecies, thus proving that Jesus was the Messiah. This is because Augustine believes that the Jews who were dispersed were the enemies of the Christian Church. He also quotes part of the same prophecy that says "Slay them not, lest they should at last forget Thy law".
- Ephraim the Syrian wrote polemics against Jews in the fourth century, including the repeated accusation that Satan dwells among them as a partner. These writings were directed at Christians who were being proselytized by Jews and who Ephraim feared were slipping back into the religion of Judaism; thus he portrayed the Jews as enemies of Christianity, like Satan, to emphasize the contrast between the two religions, namely, that Christianity was Godly and true and Judaism was Satanic and false. Like John Chrysostom, his objective was to dissuade Christians from reverting to Judaism by emphasizing what he saw as the wickedness of the Jews and their religion.
- In his Dialog of Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, with Trypho, a Jew, the Christian scholar Justin Martyr advanced arguments for the truth of Christianity and wrote to his imaginary Jewish opponent: "You think that these words refer to the stranger and the proselytes, but in fact they refer to us who have been illumined by Jesus. For Christ would have borne witness even to them; but now you are become twofold more the children of Hell, as He said Himself."[1]
- Saint Jerome (374-419 CE) - He denounced Jews as "Judaic serpents of whom Judas was the model." In his The Jews in the Roman Empire (Les Juifs dan L'Empire Romain) [Is this really a work by Jerome, or a modern history?] he wrote: "The Jews seek nothing but to have children, possess riches and be healthy. They seek all earthly things, but think nothing of heavenly things; for this reason they are mercenaries."
- Saint John Chrysostom (ca 344 - 407 CE) - wrote of the Jews and of Judaizers in eight homilies Adversus Judaeos, Against The Jews (or Against the Judaizers) [1]. These quotes are translations from the original Greek posted by Paul Halsall: other researchers give slightly different translations.
- Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe (467-533 CE) - In his "Writings", written about 510 CE, he states "Hold most firmly and doubt not that not all the pagans, but also all the Jews, heretic and schismatics who depart from the present life outside the Catholic Church, are about to go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." (See also: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.)
Later Christian Writers
- Thomas of Monmouth, a monk in the Norwich Benedictine monastery, wrote a detailed anti-Semitic tractate holding that Jews tortured to death Christian children during Passover. His tractate was called The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, 1173.
- Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) preached that the Jewish people were damned because they had slain Jesus, and the only way they could be saved was to renounce their faith and be baptized as Christians.
- Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400) wrote in "The Prioress's Tale" of his Canterbury Tales of a devout little Christian child who was murdered by Jews affronted at his singing a hymn as he passed through the Jewry, or Jewish quarter, of a city in Asia:
- Martin Luther, founder of Protestant Christianity, was at first very friendly towards the Jews, believing that the evils of Catholicism had prevented their conversion to Christianity. When he discovered that Jews did not find the Protestant form of Christianity any more congenial, he became very hostile to them instead and preached, in his book On the Jews and their Lies, that they were "venomous beats, vipers, disgusting scum, canders, devils incarnate. Their private houses must be destroyed and devastated, they could be lodged in stables. Let the magistrates burn their synagogues and let whatever escapes be covered with sand and mud. Let them force to work, and if this avails nothing, we will be compelled to expel them like dogs in order not to expose ourselves to incurring divine wrath and eternal damnation from the Jews and their lies."
- Pope Clement VIII (1536-1605). "All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit. They have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty, especially the farmers, working class people and the very poor. Then, as now, Jews have to be reminded intermittently that they were enjoying rights in any country since they left Palestine and the Arabian desert, and subsequently their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen to live."
Reverend Jerry Falwell gave a statement (January 14, 1999) that caused concern in the Jewish community. He stated that "the Anti-Christ is probably alive today and is a male Jew. Is he alive and here today? Probably. Because when he appears during the Tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ. Of course he'll be Jewish. Of course he'll pretend to be Christ. And if in fact the Lord is coming soon, and he'll be an adult at the presentation of himself, he must be alive somewhere." Falwell later expressed astonishment at the idea that Jews would find this anti-Semitic, and offered an apology for hurting anyone's feelings, but stood by his position. He was making these statements according to a view of Christian eschatology called premillennial dispensationalism, which anticipates the appearance of a false Messiah. They expect this anti-Christ to deceive the world by at first seeming more perfectly than Jesus to fulfill the scriptural promises of a coming prophet and king of the Jews. The same view of eschatology teaches that the curse of God will come against anyone who curses the Jewish people, and that of all people in the world the Jews alone will not be deceived by the anti-Christ. Nevertheless, the majority of Jews, both religious and secular, feel that such claims are hostile to them.
Edward I of England expelled all the Jews from England in 1290 (only after ransoming some 3,000 among the most wealthy of them).
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. It is arguable whether this constitutes anti-Semitism in the racist sense, since it was directed at the religion of Judaism.
Christian anti-Semitism has its roots in religious intolerance. Jews that converted to Christianity were accepted. Nazi anti-Semitism on the other hand was racist and directed towards all Jews, whether religious or secular. Many historians hold that Nazi anti-semitism was based in traditional Christian anti-Semitism. The following are examples of Christian beliefs towards Jews that became Nazi policy.
There was little in the way of organized resistance to the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies by any Christian group during the 1930s in Europe, whether Catholic, Orthodox Christian, or Protestant. However, there were many individual Christian clergy and laypeople of all denominations who publicly and actively opposed the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies. One Lutheran pastor who did was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though in the end his opposition cost him his life. By the 1940s, fewer Christians were willing to oppose Nazi policy publicly, but many secretly helped save the lives of Jewish people. There are many sections of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Museum, Yad VaShem, dedicated to honoring these "Righteous Among the Nations".
The isolation of Jews as a special case may be a partial cause of both beneficial and detrimental special treatment of the Jews. This special case treatment can be seen from very early times, into the present in both, politics and religion.
Christianity did not arise as a political ideology, and lacks the tools, internally, which are necessary to rule. Instead, where it rises to dominance, Christianity borrows those tools from the cultures into which it has been insinuated; and this was the case of the New Roman Empire. Old Roman principles of state were patched onto the new religious assumptions of Christianity, after the Edict of Milan. One principle which arises directly from Christian teaching, for example, is that, to know God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ is eternal life: "No other name under heaven is given among men, by which they must be saved". To the service of this exclusivist religious motive, Christian rulers adapted and applied the same tools of Empire under which Christians had formerly, occasionally suffered as a persecuted minority. The Christian rulers argued that those who take away the possibility of eternal life should be prevented by force; especially apostates from the Christian faith or those who drew converts away from the Church, since this would be worse than murder or any purely temporal evil. Therefore, at times, no public displays of any non-Christian religion were allowed, and proselytizing to convert people away from Christianity was also forbidden: sometimes purely for reason of Empire, sometimes more directly arising from the power and authority of the Church. These intolerant practices have had mixed results throughout Christian history. Many religions faded away in the regions where the Christian Empire dominated, but others simply retracted their public presence, or asserted themselves covertly within the Christian context.
However, a special case had always been reserved for the Jewish religion. Christians have believed that the Jewish practices were prefigures of the Christian ones, and that they may not be forcibly stopped (although Christians never ceased from attempting to convert Jewish people). This singling out of Jews had the negative side-effect of isolating Jews into a special class, as a group excluded from the general rule.
For example, Christian law forbade Christians to lend money and reclaim it with interest; Jewish law likewise had the same restrictions. But during the middle-ages, European Christian nobility often forced Jews to take on this role; over time, some Jews naturally played an important role in the economies of the Middle Ages. On many occasions, when their high-powered debtors decided they did not want to pay back their debts, they relied on the "Christ's murderers" tradition to expel the Jews and default on their obligations. To many, this would appear to be a case of misuse of Scripture and tradition to justify actions that would otherwise be condemned.
An almost automatic respect is often accorded to a Jewish convert to Christianity, which goes hand in hand with a special contempt for Jewish apostasy from Christianity. Especially strong fascination with Jews and Judaism, both positive and negative, has typified Christianity from the beginning. No family lineage has the significance to Christianity that belongs to every Jew, simply by being born Jewish. Special interest in their history and religion has occasionally produced among Christians a special interest in winning their conversion; the dark side of which, is that an especially virulent disdain has been reserved for ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity who practice Judaism after conversion to Christianity, or revert to Judaism. Jewish rejection of Christian claims has been felt with unique disappointment, sometimes erupting into hatred and violence toward them, for reasons that would not even remotely apply to any other ethnic group. This has been the important cause of Christian anti-semitism for centuries, and especially during the Inquisition.
As with any other religion, Christianity is transmitted through the voices of men. The shape of anti-Semitism in the Christian world has changed so much according to place and time that, on nearly anyone's account, it is unfair to say Christians per se have taught anti-Semitism. But again, on nearly anyone's account, it can certainly be said that Christian anti-Semites have often turned to Christian scripture to justify their actions.
Anti-Semitism in some Eastern European countries still remains a substantial problem. The entry on Religious freedom in Poland discusses the current state of religious tensions in predominantly Catholic Poland. Anti-Semitism exists to a lesser or greater degree in many other nations as well, including: Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Germany, and Syria. While in a decline since the 1940s, there is still a measurable amount of anti-Semitism in the United States of America as well, although acts of violence are quite rare. The 2001 survey by the Anti-Defamation League reported 1432 acts of anti-Semitism in the United States that year. The figure included 877 acts of harassment, including verbal intimidation, threats and physical assaults ([1]).
It has been the viewpoint of Evangelical Christians that all people must accept Jesus Christ as their Savior in order to find salvation. It follows that from their point of view all people should be given the chance to convert to Christianity, regardless of race, colour or current creed. Not to evanglize Jews would be tantamount to discrimination.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the U.S., has explicitly rejected suggestions that it should back away from seeking to convert Jews, a position that critics have called anti-Semitic but that Baptists see 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.'"
Many other Evangelicals agree with the SBC position, and some have similarly been supporting efforts specifically seeking Jews' conversion. Among the controversial groups that has found support from some Evangelical churches is Jews for Jesus, which claims that Jews can find their Jewish faith become "complete" by accepting Jesus as the Messiah.
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. They do continue their evangelism more generally among non-Jews. Most Jews see evangelism directed specifically at Jews as anti-Semitic.
The Christian Identity movement, the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacy groups claim to be very strongly Christian in nature; they are vehemently anti-Semitic, as well as racist. The Klan is also demonstrably anti-Catholic. A racial belief common among these groups, but not universal, is an alternative history doctrine, sometimes called British Israelism. In some forms this doctrine absolutely denies that modern Jews have any racial connection to Israel of the Bible. Instead, according to extreme forms of this doctrine, the true racial Israel and true humans, are the Adamic (white) race.
In recent years there has been much to note in the way of reconciliation between some Christians groups and the Jewish people. Most of this reconciliation has occurred between the Jewish community and the Catholic Church, and some liberal Protestant Christian organizations. See the article on Christian-Jewish reconciliation for more details
See also:
20th century Christian statements
The Jews' expulsion from England
The Jews' expulsion from Spain
Church teachings and Nazi Germany
Christian opposition to the Holocaust
Reasons that anti-Semitism continued
Anti-Semitism in modern-day nations
Current attempts to convert Jews to Christianity
The "White Power" Movement
Reconciliation between Judaism and Christian groups
External links
Research material
