Preface
For 2000 years, the lives, peace, and property of the world Jewish Community has been attacked by a force known as anti-Semitism, more appropriately designated as anti-Judaism. That Jewish community, even in its best days with its Christian neighbors, has been viewed and treated by them as a racially marginalized underclass, responsible for the death of the Christian God Jesus.
Jews are not a proselytizing people. They do not attempt to change the religion of others, but recognize the right of all people to find God in their own way. Even when persons wish to voluntarily adopt the Jewish faith, they are required to engage in extended study, purification and commitment before admission.
Admittedly, many Jews have difficulty with the notion that a god, Creator of the Universe, arrived on this earth through the birth canal of one of his creations. Or, that the existence of God who is both omnipotent and eternal may be terminated by human agency.
There is a well-known Christian thesis that Jesus died for the sins of those who believe in him. The thrust of that thesis is that his death was not an accident, but the gift of a truly generous and voluntary act. Indeed, seeking to place blame for his death on any individual or group denies the credibility and generosity of his gift.
While the life of Jesus was cruelly and unmercifully taken by Roman crucifixion, all four gospels, in their last five or six pages, somehow contain recitations that blame the Jews (then under the domination of Rome) for the death of Jesus. The text of this paper will examine whether that blame was an interpolation into the Gospels by the church or the Romans to exculpate Rome from fault in the death of Jesus and allow Rome to make Christianity its state religion.
One of the main sources of historical and current anti-Semitism can be found in several of the four Gospels of the New Testament, which were canonized in 383 CE during the Councils of Hippo. Purportedly, the Gospels have remained unaltered except for occasional interpolations identified by Christian scholars. This paper will identify and examine the vile and insidious accusations against the Jews, which the 383 CE New Testament Gospels place in the mouth of Jesus, who died on or about 33CE. Sadly, and finally, you will see the tragic effect of 2000 years of Gospel libels against the Jewish people, whose very survival could occur only by the will and love of a gracious God.
The Birth of Christianity
Christianity arose from a Jewish sect in Judea dedicated to Yeshua ben Yosef’s (aka Jesus) commitment to the poor, the infirmed and the underprivileged. It occurred while the Jews were laboring under the domination and control of the Roman Empire.
Early adherents of that sect included: John the Baptist (Jesus’s cousin), Jesus’s mother and father, 12 youthful Jewish apostles, several of Jesus’s brothers, and many Jewish admirers. During the three years of his life in which Jesus lectured and ministered, he became well-known and admired in the Galilee, in Samaria and in Judea.
In 33 CE (the exact year is in dispute because of calendar errors), Jesus was crucified upon the order of Pontius Pilate, then the Roman governor of Judea (further reference to that event, below).
There came a time, several years after Jesus’s death, when Saul of Tarsus, also known as Paul, a Jew, joined the Jewish sect. Over the objection of several of the apostles, Paul dedicated himself to the inclusion of the Gentile membership in the sect. Paul’s efforts were successful and many Gentiles responded. He demonstrated the advantages of life under the structured laws of the Old Testament while, at the same time, granting Gentiles freedom from the observance of Jewish festivals, dietary obligations and circumcision.
Eventually, Gentile membership in the sect became far greater than that of the Jews. Unbridled Gentile leadership took the Sect in a new direction by declaring that its new official policy was that Jesus was the son of God, thus making Jesus a diety.
The vast majority of Jews, mindful of their commitment to monotheism (one God) and the injunction of the 10 Commandments, which provides “thou shall have no other gods before me,” withdrew from sect membership.
Eventually, the sect itself became painfully aware of its new polytheistic posture (God the father and Jesus, God the son) and adopted an oblique doctrine called “the Trinity.” That doctrine prescribed that Jesus, as God the son, plus God the father, plus the Holy Ghost, were really one. Even from its onset, that doctrine did not receive universal Christian acceptance. In the middle of the Second Century CE, the Gentile Christian sect evolved into a movement to establish itself as an independent religion. To do so, it saw the need for its own holy text.
Given the era, and the state of public literacy, there was no one official recorded history of Jesus that went back more than 100 years. A call went out from Irenaeus, a Greek bishop, to anyone who possessed Gospels, private memorabilia of Jesus’s life. Several Gospels (defined as good news about Jesus) were received and four were selected. The names of the authors were not provided, either because they were unavailable, withheld by the authors themselves, or the church. They were ultimately given random names of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John so that they could be individually identified. They eventually constituted the four Gospels of the New Testament.
In the early days of Christianity, Rome was its biggest nemesis. Christians were blamed for a major fire that ravaged Rome, and hundreds, if not thousands of Christians were slaughtered by the Romans. Included among them were St. Paul (Saul of Tarsus), beheaded in Rome between 62 CE-64 CE., and St. Peter (Simon Peter), crucified in Rome in 64 CE. Then again, compassion was not a strong element in the early Roman character. In 107 CE, about the time of the completion of the Gospel of John, St. Ignatius was taken to the Roman Colosseum and fed to hungry lions to the delight of a Roman audience. Hungry animals were the fate of many Christians. With that penchant for cruelty, the early Romans maintained dominion over their empire.
However, by 312 CE, the Roman attitude towards Christians began to change. Constantine, who was then the Emperor of Rome, motivated by his mother’s devotion to Christianity, and the sign of a cross that appeared in a victorious battle, converted to Christianity. He then became significantly involved in the development of Nicaean Christianity. In 313 BC, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan affirming Roman tolerance of Christians. Thereafter, he supported the church financially, built basilicas, granted privileges and exemptions to Christian clergy, promoted Christians to high-ranking officers and returned property formally confiscated from Christians.
In 325 CE, Constantine convened the first Council of Nicaea of Christian Bishops in order to confirm the divinity of Jesus as the son of God. Then, in 337 CE, Emperor Constantine died. Despite 25 years of intense personal dedication to Christianity, the Emperor of Rome, the most powerful person on the face of the earth, did not declare Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. He had the power, dedication, commitment and opportunity to do it, but did not do it. To understand why he might have been reluctant, it is necessary to turn our attention to the six days that Jesus spent in Jerusalem, culminating in his death.
In 33 CE, as Passover approached, Jesus and his 12 apostles, following both Jewish law and custom, headed for the temple in Jerusalem. Astride a donkey, Jesus’s entrance was both modest and triumphant. As he entered the city, hordes of Jewish admirers who knew of his reputation threw palm fronds and clothing in his path as a sign of respect to welcome him and made other gestures of admiration (the Christian holiday of Palm Sunday is still celebrated in honor of that occasion). They greeted him with shouts of Hosanna (Hebrew Hoshea Nah, which means save us, or rescue us). Others called out Messiah (Hebrew Moshiach, which means One who is anointed and who comes to help or rescue). Finally, there was the most significant outcry of all, “King of Israel” (Hebrew Melech Yisrael).
To understand the origin of those shouts it is helpful to recall that Israel was invaded by Rome and conquered in 63 BCE. Jesus arrived in Jerusalem 70 years after the Roman invasion and occupation. The Jews were dog tired of the Roman client King, his administration and Jewish submission. What Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea, saw that day was the appearance of a rabbi, followed by 12 men of military age, who was admired and exalted by a large portion of the Jewish population of Jerusalem as a Savior, King, and adversary of Roman rule, i.e., a zealot.
To protect the Roman Empire and its domination of Judea, Pontius Pilate arrested Jesus under a charge of treason and condemned him to crucifixion.
The death of Jesus was not handled like any criminal capital offense such as robbery or murder. This was a man who Pontius Pilate thought was the head of opposition to Roman rule in Judea, “King of the Jews.” Roman legionnaires were never known for their compassion, but what they did to Jesus tested the bounds of humanity. The soldiers marked Jesus as King of the Jews by putting on him a purple robe (to signify Royal station). A crown of thorns was forced on his head, according to the Gospel of John. Pontius Pilate took Jesus and had him tied to a post and flogged. He was marked by the Roman soldiers as King of the Jews. His cross bore the inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” His painful journey down the Via Dolorosa ended at Golgotha, where his hands and legs were nailed to a cross and left to die a slow and painful death.
A Very Serious Question
Roman warriors were fierce and frightful, but how can any human being who is the product of creation kill the omnipotent God who created him? One would think that it was a bit above the pay grade of the Roman legionnaires.
What was needed by Rome before it could consider making Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, was a remake of history regarding the death of Jesus. After all, Christianity was the celebration of the essence of his divine life, parables and teachings.
To simply make Jesus God of the Romans by rendering Christianity the state religion of Rome after having abused, debased and killed Jesus in such a cruel manner, would render Rome the laughingstock of the entire civilized world.
The Romans could not change the facts on the ground as to how Jesus died. Presumably, all of that was well-known. What they could do, however, was to try to exculpate Rome by making it look more like a professional executioner into whose hands the condemned person was delivered in order to carry out his sentence. To do that, however, they would have to provide a civil or religious source that condemned Jesus. Who then, but the religious Jewish community of Jerusalem? To bring the plan to fruition, Rome would need the cooperation of the Christians whose Gospels would undoubtedly require some modifications. But why would the Christians do that? How about the benefit of the exposure to Christianity of the 60 million residents of the Roman Empire?
The suggestion of a scenario of such an attempt to transfer the blame and exculpate Rome appears on the final pages of each of the four Gospels. Each of the four Gospels describes a crowd of chief priests, scribes and elders wielding clubs and swords and led by Judas, who places a kiss on Jesus in order to identify him. Jesus is taken into custody by the group with the express hope of finding evidence that will lead to his death (Mark 14:55). One has to wonder why the 30 pieces of silver were given to Judas when so many of the Jews in Jerusalem knew Jesus by sight through his celebrated entry into Jerusalem and from his teaching at the temple. (See Gospels of: Mark 14 (43-72) and 15 (1-47), Mathew 26 (47-75) and 27 (1-50), Luke 22 (47-71) and 23 (1-49), John 18 (1-40) and 19 (1-37).
Circumstantial Evidence of a Gospel Interpolation
Sadly, sworn notarized affidavits of occurrences during biblical times and before are rather hard to find. Archaeologists facing similar problems generate credible histories of the past by studying shards of ancient pottery, fragments of documents in long-lost languages, unearthing foundations of destroyed buildings, and contemplating the meaning of crude paintings on cave walls. It is a form of reaching legitimate conclusions from the remnants of the past. It is a form of historical circumstantial evidence, i.e. evidence that is inferred from the facts that you find. Lawyers have a Latin expression for that process, “res ipsa loquitur,” which means the facts speak for themselves.
In the beginning of the fourth century in Roman controlled Judea, as noted, Emperor Constantine did a 180-degree turn and Rome went from Lions to Lionizing (exalting) Christians and Christianity. Rome was ready to abandon its 12 fanciful gods in an era when monotheism was becoming the spiritual order of the day. The Christian church would have loved to have acquired millions of new church members had Rome made it the state religion of the Roman Empire. It would be a windfall for both if a civil or religious authority could find Jesus guilty of a capital offense and mandate his person to the custody of the Romans to carry out his sentence.
The Jews under the domination of Rome were subject to Roman rule, but its religious authority remained intact at the temple. If the Gospels could reflect a trial by Jewish religious authority and a conviction that would result in capital punishment of Jesus, that would certainly do the trick. As a subjugated people in their own country, the Jews were not permitted to carry out death sentences. Of necessity, that had to be done by Roman authorities. That would certainly exculpate the Romans from moral fault in the death of Jesus, and would allow a religious union between Christianity and Rome.
Ironically, such a Gospel segment, can be developed from the pages of all four of the Gospels included in the New Testament, as finally canonized during the Councils of Hippo in 393 CE. It appears to be written without knowledge of Jewish law, or customs. The real issue is whether those segments of each of the Gospels were present in the Gospels at the time they were selected by Irenaeus or were a later interpolation in order to accommodate an understanding between the church and Rome.
In accordance with Jewish law, Passover falls on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nisan. That day commences on sundown of the 14th day of Nisan and ends on sunset of the 15th day of Nisan. The Jewish rule that a day starts in the evening before and ends at sunset of the designated day originated with Genesis. As part of the compliance with the rules of Passover, the first day and the last day of Passover have the same constraints as that of the Sabbath (one cannot work, carry, light fires). According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus was crucified on Passover day (Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23). That means that the Passover started on sundown the evening before, at which time Jesus and his apostles celebrated the Passover Seder, known within Christianity as the Last Supper.
Thus, according to the Gospel segments that would also have been the time that a number of high priests, scribes and Jews left their family Passover Seder, carrying swords and clubs, on Passover eve, to take possession of Jesus. As priests, scribes and support persons, these individuals would have been very religious Jews, and would not have undertaken such activity during a religious festival day.
According to the Gospel segment, they then were out during the entire Passover night interrogating Jesus and then delivered him, on Passover morning, to Pontius Pilate for execution.
Even with the lesser Sanhedrin, they would have been obligated to assemble 23 appointed Judges, who would have had to have left their families on Passover eve to sit in solemn conclave at the Hall of Hewn Stones, the Sanhedrin forum building built into the northern wall of the Temple Mount.
As related by the gospel of Luke (Luke 22:54), they led Jesus to the home of the high priest. They mocked him, and when Passover morning came the chief priests and scribes led him away to their council. Luke 22:66-71. They said, “if you are the Christ, tell us.” But he said to them, “if I tell you, you won’t believe.” They then asked, “are you the son of God?” and he said to them, “you say I am.” They then responded, “what further testimony do you need, we have heard it ourselves from his own lips.” Note, his response is not an admission, but simply an acknowledgment of the accusation against him. Purportedly, it was sufficient, in the segment, to demonstrate the alleged desire of the Jews to take his life and to hand him over to Pontius Pilate for execution. A similar scenario occurs within the other Synoptic Gospels. In all four Gospels, Pontius Pilate is portrayed as a compassionate, honest judge who found no guilt in Jesus, but, as an accommodation to the subordinate Jews in his domain sentenced Jesus to a horribly cruel death, culminating in crucifixion.
Jews do not even allow the taking of lives of food animals with any form of cruelty, so when in the Gospel of John, the Jews were authorized by Pontius Pilate to execute Jesus in accordance with their law, the Gospel says the Jews declined.
The next day, when Jesus is condemned, there appeared a new form of Roman generosity to honor “Passover”. One prisoner was to be let free at the will of the people. Pilate describes it as a choice between Jesus and Barabus. The Gospel segment reports that the Jews shouted “Give us Barabus”. That is more than a bit strange for two reasons. The Gospel of John reports that there were four other individuals crucified with Jesus. I wonder why it was inconvenient to include them in the opportunity to be saved by the public.
Why would the Jews who expressed their love, respect and admiration for Jesus just a few days earlier reject him in his time of need?
If, in fact, Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea, offered a chance for freedom to the acclaimed King of the Jews in honor of the Jewish festival of Passover, he might well have found himself in a Roman Coliseum, facing a ferocious lion.
Admittedly, there is a desire to parse the “facts” in this Gospel segment of the four Gospels, until one realizes that they may not be facts, but a creature of interpolation. This writer could find no reference to direct evidence of interpolation, but the facts themselves as related in the Gospel segments imply a different scenario.
The only fact that could create an issue with the Jewish community of Jerusalem was Jesus’s displeasure at the commercialization of the money changers at the entranceway of the holy temple and turning over several of their stands. It was an act of respect for the temple sanctity and hardly a capital crime. Neither the relevant Gospel segment of each of the four Gospels, nor the balance of the Gospels themselves, provide any understandable justification for a dramatic change from love and respect for Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, to one who the Jews believed deserved Roman crucifixion.
Incidentally, a fact that does not prominently appear on the face of the Gospels is that Pontius Pilate, as Governor, had the right to appoint the High Priest (Hebrew Cohain Gadol) and he officially controlled the vestments of the high priest in the Antonio fortress. Pilate retained Joseph Ben Caiaphas for Pilates’ entire term, which ended when he was recalled to Rome for violently suppressing an armed Samaritan movement on Mount Gerizim (the Samaritans were the direct lineal descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, sons of Joseph. Small numbers exist even today in Israel where they are accepted as Jewish citizens). With regard to the relationship between Pontius Pilate and the High Priest, and its effect on the Gospel segments, I am content to leave that to your imagination.
On reflection, if the church agreed to an interpolation of its Gospels to accommodate the exculpation of Rome in the death of Jesus, then it made a bad bargain. Certainly, it acquired a huge increase in membership, but what it lost, was everything.
From the very first pope after the completion of the New Testament, Pope Anastasius I, Rome took the governing body of the Catholic Church (The Catholic See) 2500 miles away to Rome where it exists to this very day. Like a war trophy, it was taken from its home in the holy land where its god, Jesus, lived and preached, where the church developed, and where many of its martyrs died. Except for 70 years, starting in 1309, where it sojourned in France to avoid an insurrection, its situs has been in Rome. Even to this day the church is called the Roman Catholic Church.
World Anti-Semitism
The invidious accusation of Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus in the Gospels does not stand alone. Accompanying it, are the most vile and slanderous accusations against the Jews placed in the mouth of Jesus himself, many years after his death.
In Matthew 23 (drafted on or about 70 CE), it placed in the mouth of Jesus a screed against all Pharisees and all scribes, accusing them of:
- not practicing what they preach
- being showy, and loving to be called Rabbi
- being hypocrites
- being the sons of those who murdered the prophets
- being serpents
- being a brood of vipers
- making inquiry as to how the Pharisees and the scribes can escape from being sentenced to hell
If that were not enough, in the Gospel according to John 8 (44 – 47) they have Jesus (himself a Jew) saying to the Jews:
- You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.
- He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.
- When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
- The reason that you do not hear me is that you are not of God.
Imagine, if you can, Jesus making statements like the foregoing, which would apply to his mother, father, all of his brothers and sisters, his disciples, John the Baptist, and all the Jews who adored him.
Is there any wonder why the “Jesus Seminar,” a group of mainline biblical scholars and associates in the 1990s, after six years of voting on authenticity in the Gospels, ruled out a significant number of words attributed to Jesus?
The Gospels, especially that of John, contain other instances of patently anti-Jewish statements.
The foregoing slanders of Jews placed in the mouth of Jesus, himself, a religious Jew, decades after Jesus’s crucifixion is a sad story. How can they put in the mouth of the one they call sweet Jesus such a vile, ugly form of self-hatred? How can they teach this to their children, packaged as a form of religious ideation? What kind of a dark cloud does this place on the verity of the Gospels, which are deemed divinely inspired?
The following numerical data was obtained from public resources.
- There are in excess of 2 billion 600 million Christians in the world today.
- There are 37 million Christian churches in the world today.
- There are 14.8 million Jews in the world today, fewer than the 16 million which existed before the Hitler regime.
- While these numbers obviously varied over the 2000 years of coexistence of Judaism and Christianity, a ratio might be useful for any given time period.
- The Gospels are the most fundamental element of the New Testament and of the Christian faith, and portions are read during daily, weekly and on special occasion Masses. When the anti-Jewish Gospels are read, they are received by the congregation, not only as information, but with the authority of religious conviction.
Treatment of Jews as a Vulnerable and Targeted Underclass
In the not-so-distant past, Jews in Europe lived in isolated communities known as ghettos, which were locked at night to avoid fraternization with the Christian community. Frequently, these ghettos were invaded by mobs of Christians who took the lives and property of the Jewish inhabitants while shouting as justification “Christ killer” or “you killed our God.” Intermarriage between a Christian and Jew was often prohibited and punished by the host Christian country. The ownership of land by Jews, an originally agrarian people, and the right to hold public office, were denied. Because Jews had no homeland of their own, they were treated as an underclass. Yet, they counted themselves lucky as they recalled some of the other treatment they received at the hands of members of the Christian population.
1) The death of thousands of Jews that resulted from the call of Pope Urban II, in 1095, to recapture the holy land from the Muslims (The Crusades). Mobs of ill-equipped and ill-supplied Christians crossed Europe, raiding and killing thousands of Jews in Jewish communities, to steal enough supplies for the next day’s journey, and to sharpen their skills as warriors.
2) Being blamed as a scapegoat for the bubonic plague in the 14th century, and suffering the wrath of the Christian community for the devastating illness that took Jews, as well as Christians. It is estimated that 100,000 Jews were burned alive for this and other false accusations, including the blood libels.
3) In 1492, Queen Isabella of Spain issued an edict requiring all Jews to convert to Catholicism in order to remain in their home in Spain. Their other alternatives were to leave Spain (the home of their families for over a thousand years) with virtually nothing, or to remain on pain of death. Of those that remained and converted to Christianity, approximately 35,000 were burned at the stake in Spain and in the New World upon suspicion that they had reverted to their own religion.
4) Martin Luther, the Christian community leader of the German Protestant Reformation, urged his followers to set fire to synagogues or Jewish schools. He counseled that Jewish houses should be razed and destroyed, and that Jewish prayer books and writings should be taken from them. Luther also urged that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them. See Martin Luther’s pamphlet published in 1545 and entitled “Jews and their Lies.” The Nazis reprinted the pamphlet in 1935.
Consider also the following excerpted reports from:
Wikipedia’s article on “Anti-Semitism in Christianity”:
As early as April 26, 1933, in a meeting with Roman Catholic Bishop Wilhelm Berning, Hitler reported that he had been attacked because of the handling of the Jewish question. He stated that he recognized the representatives of that race as pestilent for the state and for the church, and that perhaps he was doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of the schools and public functions.
Archbishop Robert Runcie (Archbishop of Canterbury) asserted that without centuries of Christian anti-Semitism, Hitler’s passionate hatred would never have been so fervently echoed.
Conclusion
The packaged hate of the Jews in the Gospels is available in any home that has a Christian Bible. It is in multiple copies of the 37 million Christian churches throughout the world. It is available to young Christian children in Sunday school as they learn the rules of their faith. It is available for readings daily, weekly and holidays, at church masses. It is indeed a self-priming pump of anti-Judaism, a perpetual motion machine that makes available anti-Judaic screeds to its 2,600,000,000 members.
It has resulted, during my lifetime alone, as a major factor in the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children at the hands of a country where Christianity has been, and is today, the traditional and dominant faith.
In addition to the devotion to Jesus, Christianity credits the ethos of its faith to love, compassion, empathy, “doing unto others” and virtue. Yet, inscribed in the most sacred of its religious documents, the four Gospels, the pillars of its creed, is violent, hateful language about those Jews that did not accept Jesus as a deity. The language is so diminishing as to suggest that those Jews were altogether beyond redemption.
How ironic it is that from those same disparaged Jewish people, the Gentile community joyfully accepted their Christianity and the person to whom they elevated as God.
Anti-Judaism (Antisemitism) will never end until the vile, invidious, and insidious language is removed from the New Testament.
The Christian community knows what is needed to be done in removing all vile and offensive language against the Jews in the Gospels and where else it appears in the New Testament.
Within 10 years after the Holocaust (which some construed as a mea culpa) the Catholic church issued a document, entitled Nostra Aetate, in regard to the question of Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus. The language of the document was highly contested by the conservative elements within the church, and resulted in a statement to the effect that the death of Jesus cannot be charged against all Jews, certainly not those who became Christians then and since, nor the Jews of today.
While that went a substantial way in alleviating contemporary Jews from fault in the death of Jesus, it did not, as many thought, exculpate the Jews and place the issue of deicide firmly at the feet of Rome.
While the Nostra Aetate was certainly a step in the right direction, the significant contemporary increase in anti-Semitism in the United States and elsewhere in the world teaches us that you cannot treat a cancer by lecturing to it. The cancer of anti-Semitism that is contained in the Gospels can only be treated by excision. That is, the vile language in the Gospels against the Jews taught in the Christian churches must be identified and summarily removed. One would imagine that such an act of purification of religious doctrine would bring joy to those who wish goodwill to all humanity.
The church, however, needs to be mindful that its failure to remove the anti-Semitic language from its Gospels will compel a conclusion that anti-Semitism is the sine qua non (that without which a thing cannot exist) of Christian doctrine.
Douglas Kaplan