The Anti-Jewish New Testament

 

 

I.            Introduction

 

Jewish people, who have read the New Testament throughout the history of Christianity, became well aware of the numerous passages of vicious and defamatory anti-Jewish polemic within it.  On the other hand, Christians, in general, have been insensitive to the offensive nature of these texts and to the damage that their usage has done to the Jewish people throughout the Common Era.  When the Emperor Constantine became a Christian in the fourth century C.E. and installed Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, Jewish people became a primary target of persecution by "The Church"

 

Although the Holocaust, which caused the murderous annihilation of two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, was in some ways different from previous historical acts of mass persecution and genocide of the Jewish people, it shared the motive of its precursors, the Crusades and Inquisition, and the many pogroms and expulsions.  Each of these events was fueled by anti-Semitism, the hatred of Jewish people, and was aimed at their murder and plunder.  The Holocaust distinguished itself from the other events in the scope of its genocidal goals and the fact that it did not offer its victims the "option" of conversion to Christianity – there was no escape from death.

 

An increasing number of Christian scholars have concluded that the root of anti-Semitism in the Christian world community is ultimately found within the New Testament.  In his book, Elder and Younger Brothers, the late Prof. A. Roy Eckardt [former Professor of Religion at both Lehigh University (PA) and Oxford University (UK), and an ordained minister], asserted that the foundation of anti-Semitism, and the responsibility for the Holocaust lie ultimately in the New Testament.  In another  book, Your People, My People, Eckardt insisted that Christian repentance must include a reexamination of basic theological attitudes toward Jewry and the New Testament in order to deal effectively with the problem of anti-Semitism and its prevention.  The general message 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.  This dehumanization is the vehicle that formed the psychological prerequisite to the atrocities that followed.

 

Rather than speculate about and explore the reasons why the New Testament contains the racist defamatory anti-Jewish rhetoric, this essay will consider some examples of such New Testament passages that appear in Christian lectionaries.  Lectionaries are collections of Scriptural passages from Christian Bibles that are read during regular weekly Catholic and Protestant church services, and which are repeated on some cyclical schedule.  As such, these lectionaries are widely used by many millions of Church-going Christians, and they are somewhat similar to Jewish prayer books, such as a Siddur. 

 

The material found in the lectionaries is, of course, only the "tip of the iceberg", but it suffices to demonstrate the plausibility of the assertion that anti-Semitism among Christians is rooted in the New Testament.

 

II.            Anti-Jewish Polemic in the New Testament

 

Much of the information in this essay has been extracted from the article[1] Removing Anti-Jewish Polemic from our Christian Lectionaries: A Proposal by Prof. Norman A. Beck[2], who is a New Testament scholar and Professor of Theology and Classical Languages at Texas Lutheran University.  In his article, Prof. Beck deals with what he calls in some of his published books "… the specific texts identified as most problematic …", texts found in six of the 27 books that comprise the New Testament.  Prof. Beck also identifies the offensive passages in the New Testament and indicates the instances in which all or portions of these texts are included in major lectionary series.

 

1. Gospel of Matthew

 

The Gospel of Matthew contains approximately 90 verses of defamatory anti-Jewish polemic.  These are shown in Table II.A-1.

 

Table II.A-1 – Anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of Matthew

 

* Key to Lectionary Codes:

--- - Not included in a major lectionary series.

H - The "Historic Pericopes"[3] used by the majority of Christians prior to 1969.

M - The Roman Catholic Lectionary for Mass used during the 1980s.

L  - Lutheran adaptations of the Lectionary for Mass, printed in the Lutheran Book of Worship.

R - The Revised Common Lectionary, 1992.

 

2. Gospel of Mark

 

The Gospel of Mark contains approximately 40 verses of defamatory anti-Jewish polemic.  These are shown in Table II.B-1.

 

Table II.B-1 – Anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of Mark

 

* Key to Lectionary Codes:

--- - Not included in a major lectionary series.

M - The Roman Catholic Lectionary for Mass used during the 1980s.

L  - Lutheran adaptations of the Lectionary for Mass, printed in the Lutheran Book of Worship.

R - The Revised Common Lectionary, 1992.

 

3. Gospel of Luke

 

The Gospel of Luke contains approximately 60 verses of defamatory anti-Jewish polemic.  These are shown in Table II.C-1.

 

Table II.C-1 – Anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of Luke

 

* Key to Lectionary Codes:

--- - Not included in a major lectionary series.

M - The Roman Catholic Lectionary for Mass used during the 1980s.

L  - Lutheran adaptations of the Lectionary for Mass, printed in the Lutheran Book of Worship.

R - The Revised Common Lectionary, 1992.

 

4. Gospel of John

 

The Gospel of John contains approximately 130 verses of defamatory anti-Jewish polemic.  These are shown in Table II.D-1.

 

Table II.D-1 – Anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of John