We have already seen in the last chapters that small
communities of Jews could be found almost anywhere in the Graeco-Roman empire.
Historians have listed nearly 500 cities and towns in the Graeco-Roman Empire
for which a Jewish presence can be documented. (1) Jews were so numerous that
it has been estimated that one tenth of its overall population was Jewish. The
Greek author Strabo (64 BC - 23 AD) is said to have complained: 'They have
invaded all cities. It is hard to find a place in the habitable earth that has
not admitted this tribe of people, and is not overwhelmed by them'. (2)
The Jews of Palestine revolted against the Romans in 66 AD. Roman armies under Vespasian and Titus quelled the rebellion in subsequent years. Galilee and Judea were devastated. Jerusalem was destroyed as Jesus had foretold. (3) From now on the centre of gravity for the Jews shifted decidedly to the Diaspora.
In this chapter we will consider the sad history of the Jewish people, especially how Jews have often been the victims of intolerance and persecution. We will treat this as a case study to understand prejudice better, and to realise the full horror of bias when it is allowed to run its course unchecked.
We will also consider the question of Jewish-Christian relations themselves. What religious reasons did Christians allege for their unacceptable behaviour? We will examine our consciences as Christians to see if we still harbour open or disguised prejudices against our Jewish brothers and sisters.
God chose the Jews as his own people. Jesus Christ was a Jew; and so was Mary his mother and the first disciples. Paul speaks about the Jews with passion.
I feel great sorrow and anguish in my heart.
For the sake of my own people, my flesh and blood,
I could wish to be under God's curse or separated from Christ.
For they are God's people, Israel.
He made them his children.
To them he showed his glory.
He offered his covenants to them and gave them the Law.
They were taught the true worship and received God's promises.
They descended from the patriarchs and to their race, as a human being, belongs Christ, who rules over all, God eternally blessed. ( Romans 9,1-5, freely translated).
How could Christians turn so savagely against their spiritual ancestors?
In the years immediately following on Jesus' resurrection, the distinction between Jews and Christians was not so obvious. Many Jewish Christians felt they were both Jews and Christians at the same time. They kept the obligations of the Law and joined other Jews in the synagogue services. The only difference was that they believed that Christ had brought fulfilment to the words of the prophets.
The Jewish authorities played a decisive part in forcing a clear-cut separation. (4) They initiated the wave of persecutions described in the Acts of the Apostles. Stephen was killed in 36 AD, the Apostle James in 44. Christians were rounded up or driven out of Jerusalem. Missionaries like Paul and Barnabas were handed over by Jews to Roman authorities. They were imprisoned, whipped and finally put to death; Barnabas in Cyprus in 60 AD, Paul in Rome seven years later.
The Jewish Rabbis were mainly concerned about two Christian claims: that the covenant given to Moses had been replaced by salvation through faith in Christ; and that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and the Son of God. There is good reason to believe, however, that Jewish communities in the Diaspora also had political motives to oppose Christians. When Christians started making converts among Hellenists, the Jews feared it might upset the delicate balance of their own relationship with the Roman authorities. To protect themselves they accused Christians of being revolutionaries.
The Jews of Thessalonica dragged some early Christian converts before the city authorities with the charge: 'The people who have turned the whole world upside down, have come here also! They overthrow the decrees of the emperor and proclaim a new king, Jesus. (5) The persecution of the first Christians at Rome under Nero in 64 AD is thought to have been inspired by his wife Poppaea and her Jewish friends.(6) As we can read in some early documents, Christians felt that the Jews were killing them through the hands of the Romans.(7)
After the Jewish uprising and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (66 - 70 AD), the break between Jews and Christians became formal. Everywhere Christians were expelled from Jewish synagogues. To stop any Jews from having leanings towards Christianity, the council of Jabne in 80 AD introduced a curse against Christians in the Eighteen Benedictions, a prayer recited by Jews three times a day.
The text read: 'May the heretics perish in an instant; may they be blotted out from the book of life nor be counted with the just'.(8) The Jewish authorities also sent letters to all synagogues with strict instructions to have no dealings with Christians. They spelled out what the official response was to be: 'Jesus, a charlatan, was put to death by the Jewish authorities. Jesus' disciples, however, stole his body and preached that he was risen. They have begun to worship him as the Son of God.' (9)
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The Christian response was vigorous. Not only did Christians need to explain their roots in the Jewish Scriptures, they felt above all the need to set the record straight about Jesus. The New Testament writings therefore took on strong apologetic overtones.
The Gospel of Matthew, for instance, countered explicitly any Jewish claim that Jesus' body had been stolen by the disciples. (10) But the strongest anti-Jewish arguments can be found in John's Gospel, which was finalised towards the end of the first century when the conflict had reached a climax.
John's Gospel presents Jesus' life and death as a cosmic struggle between the powers of good and evil. (11) The world is the realm of sin, death and darkness. (12) The religious leaders who opposed Jesus are taken to be tools of the 'Prince of this world', that is: Satan. 'You belong to your father, the devil. Your will is to do as your father wants. He has been a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth. For he is a liar. (13)
Unfortunately, in his typically black-and-white language, the author of the Gospel simply speaks of these paragons of evil as 'the Jews'. Thereby he created a dangerous stereotype. Though he did not intend it as such, it would be easy for later Christian generations to read a blanket condemnation of the whole Jewish people into the text. (14)
Even more unfortunate is the Gospels' description of Jesus' trial. Christians had always, rightly, laid the blame for Jesus' crucifixion at the feet of Jerusalem's religious leaders. Peter told them bluntly: 'You have crucified Jesus of Nazareth!' (15) and'You delivered Jesus up and denied him when Pilate was prepared to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for the release of a murderer, and so killed the Author of life. (16) But he added: 'I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. (17)
In the Gospels, however, the impression given is that the whole Jewish people was responsible for Jesus' death.
The Jews cried: 'Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!' (John 19,15.)
Moreover, using a typically Hebrew way of speaking,(18) the Jews are said to have taken the responsibility for Jesus' execution upon themselves.
The people answered: 'His blood be upon us and upon our children!' (Matthew 27,25.)
It is likely that the early Christians looked on the destruction of Jerusalem as God's punishment on the Jewish people for their part in Jesus' death. (19) The phrase 'his blood be upon us and upon our children' was thought to have been fulfilled in that destruction. Though, in the Gospel, it was never meant to imply that God's curse would rest on the Jewish people for all generations to come, this was how later Christians were going to understand it. (20)
It became a notorious rationalisation for discrimination against the Jews.
In the centuries that followed (2nd to 3rd AD), the controversy between Jews and Christians intensified. Both sides developed standard arguments to prove their case. From the patristic writings we obtain a good picture of the prevailing anti- Jewish apologetics. They aimed to show that with the coming of Christ the Jewish people had lost their privileged status. The Church had become the 'new Israel'. And with ever greater frequency the Jews were depicted as 'God-killers'.
Melito of Sardes uses biting language.
'The Lord has been killed.
Where?
In the middle of Jerusalem.
By whom?
By Israel ....
Oh Israel, you have abandoned the Lord;
you were not found by Him.
You have destroyed the Lord,
dreadfully you are destroyed yourself. (21)
During the first three centuries of the Christian era the Christians were the underdogs. They suffered persecution under one emperor after the other while the Jews were allowed to practise their religion freely. Though some Jews gave shelter to Christians, others sided with the oppressors. (22) The result was a twofold ill-fated heritage that would stay with Christians for centuries: a sense of antagonism against the Jews and a virulent anti-Jewish propaganda which included the charge that they 'had killed God'.
At this stage there was no question yet of a truly racial prejudice. Many Christians in fact were Jewish by race. The dispute centered on religion. This is made clear in a document by Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, who writes in 250 AD: 'Jews are able to receive pardon for their sins. All they need to do is to wash away the blood of the murdered Christ by receiving baptism and by joining Christ's Church and obeying his teachings.'(23)
The legacy of distrust and theological rejection would have serious consequences for the relations between Jews and Christians in later centuries. Emperor Constantine gave Christians their freedom in 314 AD. After that it was the Christian community that gained the upperhand in political and social power. The Jews were made to feel the brunt of Christian contempt.
 Jewish servant in 7th century Spain |
The official position of the Church was to be tolerant to the Jews. An influential Pope, Gregory the Great (540-604 AD), offered economic advantages to Jews who were willing to convert; but he did not impose penalties. In Spain King Recared tried to convert Jews forcibly, at first with the active support of Isidore, Bishop of Seville. Later in 633 AD the Church Council of Toledo decreed that Jews be allowed freedom of religion. It was only in the Middle Ages, when the whole of Europe had been thoroughly 'christianised', that the isolation of the Jews led to cruel discrimination.
It is difficult to summarise a long and complex history in a few paragraphs. It is not true to say that the Jews were unfairly treated everywhere and at all times. Often they formed flourishing communities in the countries they lived in. But also quite often they were exploited because of their different belief and life style. And on many a sad occasion they were made the victims of mindless violence and destruction.
A few examples will suffice to paint the general picture.
During the first crusade (1096-1099), the knights who were travelling to the Holy Land to free it from its Muslim conquerors turned on any Jewish settlements they came across. In the Rhineland of Germany houses were plundered and burnt, people killed.
The Jews had only come to England with the Normans in 1066 AD. In 1245 a nine-year old boy, Hugh of Lincoln, was found dead in a well. The neighbours accused the local Jews of having kidnapped the boy, and of having tortured and crucified him. Popular indignation erupted. Ninety Jews were arrested and charged with ritual murder. Nineteen were executed in spite of the lack of proper evidence. Distrust against the Jews rose to such a pitch that they were expelled from England in 1290.(24)
The fourth Lateran Council decreed that Jews should wear a distinguishing badge and should not be employed in public government service (1215 AD). This and other social reasons led to the ghetto system by which Jews were made to live in segregated quarters of cities and towns. (25) Inside the ghetto the Jews were given a great deal of autonomy. They could appoint their own Rabbis and judges and establish charitable and recreational institutions. When they ventured outside, they had to wear a yellow badge.
The ghettoes were usually enclosed with walls and gates that were guarded by Christian watchmen. This was as much to keep an eye on the Jewish community as to protect it. During Christian festivals, especially during Holy Week, the gates of the ghetto would be kept locked for it was on such occasions that Jews or their property were more likely to be attacked. Were they not responsible for crucifying Jesus?
It is incredibly sad, and a burden on Christian conscience, that the Jews throughout those centuries were treated in such a barbaric fashion, and that on religious grounds. It is a classical example of discrimination, namely of treating individuals differently because they belong to a particular group.
Discrimination is the outcome and open expression of prejudice. On account of social prejudice, even people who might personally be more sympathetic, may join in acts of social discrimination.
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Prejudice against the Jews was probably motivated by deep, psychological causes, such as the fear of a close-knit, successful minority group. But rationalisations of a religious kind flourished. In popular stage plays, in sermons from the pulpit, in liturgical celebrations, the Jews were portrayed as people who opposed God and had fallen from his grace. They were thought to have incurred a perpetual guilt of blood by killing God's Son. They were held out as people who deserved contempt and whose only salvation lay in accepting baptism.
In the 18th century, enlightenment and liberalism brought religious freedom to the Jews in most European countries. However, strong social factors came into play to continue the persecution. In Russia and Poland the Jewish populations had grown very numerous. They were feared because of their commercial success and potential political power. Tsarina Catherine II, who also ruled Poland, decreed that Jews be confined to live and work only within certain provinces. These became known as the pale of settlement. It did not stop popular fear and resentment.
In 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Though only one Jew was implicated in the plot, the Jews were held responsible. In more than 200 cities and towns, Russian mobs assaulted Jewish communities and destroyed their properties. Such raids became known as pogroms. (27) Since the government did little to stop them or to punish the culprits, pogroms erupted sporadically until 1917.
The new element that had entered the equation was racism. It was no longer the religious factor that predominated but racial antagonism. With this, true anti-semitism had been born. (28) The Jewish communities were now looked upon, not as people professing a different religion, but as people belonging to a different and inferior race.
Support for anti-semitism came from an unlikely quarter: Western scientists. A good number of them believed that the evolution of species could be demonstrated in the success or failure of various races. The white-European civilization,
Aryans, had proved themselves superior in genetic capability to the other peoples of the world, especially to the Jews. These views were popularised by such writers as Joseph-Artur, the Count of Gobineau, Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Rosenberg. In the 1930s anti-semitism was propagated in France by the Cagoulards, (29) ' in Hungary by the Arrow Cross, in England by the British Union of Fascists, in the United States by the German-American Bund and the Silver Shirts, and - of course - in Germany by the Nazis.
Adolf Hitler, the founder of the Nazi party, was the worst anti-semite of all. He considered the Jews an inferior race, a brood of parasites. Their presence posed a serious threat, he maintained. They sapped all the energy of their host nations. Intermarriage with them led to physical and mental degeneration. (30)
When Hitler came to power in 1933 he began to segregate the Jews. In 1941 he decided on their complete annihilation, a massacre that has become known as the holocaust. (31)
From all the European countries under German control Jews were taken to the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Madjanek and Treblinka. An estimated 6 million Jews, men, women and children, were put to death by the Nazis.
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After Pawel Steller |
Christians cannot be directly blamed for the crimes the Nazis committed against the Jews; after all, the Nazis also persecuted the Christian Churches and imprisoned thousands of priests and religious. In their songs, the Hitler youth proclaimed: 'Pope and Rabbi shall be gone. We want to be pagans again. No more creeping to churches.' And: 'We do not need any Christian virtue. Adolf Hitler, our leader, is our Saviour'. Yet, the classical Christian prejudice against the Jews certainly contributed to the Nazi outrage. (33)
As a result, Christians have been re-examining their consciences. (34)
For our purpose the following six points may be of special relevance.
1. Obviously, the Jews are not an inferior race. I say 'obviously', because racism as such has no genetic foundations but also because the Jews were God's chosen people. And, as Paul so aptly states: 'Christ himself as a human being belongs to their race.'(35)
2. With Jesus' coming God revealed his love for all humankind. He calls all human beings to salvation. It finished Israel's claim to an exclusive position in God's love. However, it does not mean that God has rejected the Jews. Present-day Jews, with their heritage of sacred texts and their religious practices acquired since then, should be loved and respected as should adherents of any other world religion.
3. A lot of prejudices need to be corrected. Among them are such standard misconceptions as: all Pharisees at the time of Christ were hypocrites; all Jews are legalists; or, Jews cannot be trusted with money. Or even: if the Jews were persecuted for so long by so many people, somehow they must carry the blame; what happened to them is their own fault.
4. Most of all, we must utterly rid our minds of the notion that the Jews as a people are responsible for Jesus' death. It is true that some Jewish leaders pressed for Jesus' crucifixion, but it is wrong to blame the whole Jewish nation for the killing of Jesus. Moreover, present-day Jews carry in this respect no guilt at all.
5. If, in the very complex history of Jewish persecution, we may single out one key factor that stands out, it has to be Jewish isolation. (36) The Jews segregated themselves for religious reasons. Isolation from the majority populations led to distrust. The isolation was increased by acts of discrimination and violence. In the end it was isolation that turned social and religious antagonism into full-scale racial prejudice.
The cure for isolation is not total cultural integration. The Jews had, and have, a right to be different. But isolation can be broken on our part by frequent human and social contact.
6. The Jews deserve our special love and attention. We, Christians, share many of our dearest treasures with them, such as the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish customs preserved in our sacraments and liturgical practices. We also need to make up to the Jewish community for the unfair treatment meted out to them by our Christian ancestors. Through contact with our Jewish friends we should engage in genuine Christian-Jewish dialogue.
1. Matthew 27,24-26 describes how the crowd before Pilate's judgment seat demanded Jesus' crucifixion and shouted 'his blood be upon us and upon our children!'.
Explain why you agree, or disagree, with this statement of the Second Vatican Council:
'Even though the Jewish authorities and their followers pressed for the death of Christ, neither all the Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion.' Nostra Aetate, no 4
2. What do you say about this? Julius Streicher was hanged as a criminal at the Nürnberg trials in 1946. He pleaded in justification for his part in the massacre of the Jews that the Nazis had only done to the Jews what the Churches had said ought to be done.
3. In 1934 James Parkes wrote (in The Theological Foundations of Judaism and Christianity):
'The Christian public as a whole, the great and overwhelming majority of the hundreds of millions of nominal Christians in the world, still believe that the Jews killed Jesus, that they are a people rejected by their God, that all the beauty of the Bible belongs to the Christian Church and not to those by whom it was written; and if on this ground, modern antisemites have reared a structure of racial and economic propaganda, the final responsibility still rests with those who prepared this soil and created the deformation of the people'.
What is your response to this indictment?
1. J.JUSTER, Les Juifs dans I'Empire Romain, Paris 1914, vol.1, pgs. 179-209.
2. Quoted by FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, Jewish Antiquities, XIV, 7,2.
3. Luke 21,5-6.20-24.
4. J.ISAAC, Has Anti-Semitism Roots in Christianity?, New York 1961, p.40.
5. Acts 17, 1-9.
6. E.FLANNERY, The Anguish of the Jews, New York 1965, pp. 30 - 31.
7. E.g. JUSTIN THE MARTYR (100 - 165 AD), Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 16; in The Fathers of the Church, Washington 1962, pp. 172 - 173.
8. M.SIMON, Verus Israel, Paris 1964, pp. 144 and 500; J.JOCZ, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, Grand Rapids 1949, pp. 51 - 57.
9. Reconstruction from various sources in J.PARKES, Conflict of the Church and Synagogue, New York 1961, p. 80.
10. Matthew 28,11 - 15.
11. Read John 1,9-13; 12,31; 16,11.33; etc.
12. John 8,23-24; 11,9-10; 12,46; etc.
13. John 8,44-47.
14. R.FULLER, "The 'Jews' in the Fourth Gospel", Dialog 16 (1977) pp. 31-37; S.WILSON, 'Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel? Some considerations', Irish Biblical Studies 1 (1979) pp. 28-50; U.C. von WAHLDE, "The Johannine 'Jews': a Critical Survey", New Testament Studies 28 (1982) pp. 33-60; J.E. LEIBIG, "John and 'the Jews': Theological Antisemitism in the Fourth Gospel", Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20 (1983) pp. 209-234.
| 15. Acts 4,10. | 16. Acts 3,14-15. | 17. Acts 3,17. |
18. 2 Samuel 1,16; 1 Kings 2,33; Jeremiah 51,35.
19. See also Luke 19,41-44; 23,28-31.
20. K.KOCH, 'Der Spruch "Sein Blut bleibe auf seinem Haupt" und die isrealitische Auffassung vom vergossenen Blut', Vetus Testamentum 12 (1962) pp. 396-416; K.H.SCHELKLE, 'Die "Selbstverfluchung Israels" nach Mt 27,23-25, in Antijudaismus im Neuen Testament?, ed. W.P.ECKERT, Munich 1967, pp. 148-156; R.KAMPLING, Das Blut Christi und die Juden, Munster 1984.
21. MELITO OF SARDES, Peri Pascha, no 72-93.99; ed. St.G.HALL, On Pascha and fragments. Texts and translations, Oxford 1979.
22.. JUSTIN: 'You drive every Christian from his property, yes from the whole world. You allow no Christian to live; Dialogue with Trypho, c. 110; PIONIUS: 'I say this to you Jews . . . that if we are enemies, we are also human beings. Have any of you been injured by us? Have we caused you to be tortured? Have we brought you persecution?'; Acta Sanctorum I, pp. 37- 46; TERTULLIAN: 'your synagogues are fountains of persecution'; Scorpiae, C .10-, Anti-Nicene Christian Literature, New York 1905, vol.3, p. 643.
23. J.H.GAGER, The Origins of Anti-Semitism. Attitudes towards Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, Oxford 1985, esp. p. 156; see about this period also: R.L.WILKEN, Judaism and the Early Christian Mind, Yale 1971; A.T.DAVIES, Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity, New York 1979.
24. More in C.ROTH, A History of the Jews in England, Oxford 1978.
25. The name ghetto derives from an iron foundry in a quarter of Venice where the Jews were enclosed. The European ghettoes of the Middle Ages were parts of a city set apart as a legally enforced residence area for Jews.
26. D.BERGER, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, New York 1979.
27. Pogrom is a Russian word for 'riot'. It denotes mob attacks on minorities with open or tacit support of the authorities.
28. The Jews are only one branch in the large family of Semitic peoples. Yet 'anti-semitism' has become an equivalent expression for anti-Jewish feelings and actions based on racial discrimination.
29. Literally the 'hooded men', in French.
30. Hitler exposed his views in 'Race and People', a chapter in Mein Karnpf, English translation by J.Murphy, London 1968, vol. I, pgs 238-276.
31. Classical works on the Holocaust are: N.LEVIN, The Holocaust, New York 1973; P.HILBERG, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York 1985; M.GILBERT, The Holocaust, London 1986.
32. I.GRAEBER and S.H.BRITT, Jews in a Gentile World, London 1942, p.8; J.MARITAIN, A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, London 1939.
33. F.LITTELL, The Crucifixion of the Jews, New York 1975.
34. See, for instance, E.FLEISCHNER (ed), Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, New York 1977; J.T.PALIKOWSKI, The Challenge of the Holocaust for Christian Theology, New York 1977; M.B.McGARRY, Christology after Auschwitz, New York 1977; J.MOLTMANN, The Crucified God, New York 1974. In the Catholic Church a new attitude towards the Jews was asked for by the Second Vatican Council; Nostra Aetate, no 4. See also 'Guidelines on Religious Relations with the Jews', L'Osservatore Romano, 4 January 1976.
35. Romans 9,4-5.
36. The sociological and psychological aspects of anti-semitism are examined at length in G.E.SIMPSON and J.M.YINGER, Racial and Cultural Minorities, New York 1965, pp. 197-238.
37. Some useful books are: G.A.F.KNIGHT (ed), Jews and Christians. Preparation for Dialogue, Philadelphia 1980; E.J.FISCHER, Seminary Education and Jewish-Christian Relations, Washington 1983; L.KLEMICKI and G.WIGODER, A Dictionary of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue, Ramsey 1984; D.COHN-SHERBOCK, A Dictionary of Judaism and Christianity, London 1991.
