An Honest Debate/Whoeveristhirsty.com

Several years ago, Ruth R. Wisse, who was a professor of Yiddish literature at McGill University at the time, called anti-Semitism, “the most durable and successful ideology of the ideology-besotted 20^th century.”  I agree with this; but I would add that anti-Semitism is one of the most durable and successful ideologies of all time.  The success of anti-Semitism over the last 2000 years can be seen in a simple statistic cited by George Will a few years ago, “If the percentage of the world’s population that was Jewish in the era of the Roman Empire were Jewish today, there would be 200 million Jews. There are 13 million.”

Those who study anti-Semitism have noted several strains of the virus. For example, there was a pagan anti-Semitism that predated Christianity, and there was the racial, or blood anti-Semitism of the Third Reich, and there is the Islamic strain, but the most virulent form of the disease, and the one which has done the most harm, is Christian anti-Semitism.

This is odd considering the fact that we worship a Jew whom we believe to be the Jewish Messiah and the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures. This is odd, considering the fact that all of the apostles were Jewish. This is odd, given the fact that we accept the entire Jewish Bible as our Old Testament. This is odd, given the fact that all but two books of the New Testament were written by Jewish men.  This is odd, that we have persecuted the Jews, nevertheless it is true.  Most of the damage done to the Jewish people in the last 2000 years has been done by Christians in the name of Christ–Christians, who call themselves the New Israel, persecuting those who had the audacity to continue to claim the name of Israel for themselves.

So, where did this hatred come from?  The answer to this question has to begin with an acknowledgment that there has been hostility between these two great religions from the very beginning. It should also be noted–and I say this with much caution–the Jews drew first blood.

I say this with caution because I anticipate some of my readers may be Jewish, and I understand their sensitivity to the often repeated accusation that they have somehow provoked their own persecution. I am not, and will not be making this charge. But if we are going to locate the causes of Christian anti-Semitism we are going to need to start at the beginning, because the seeds of hatred were sown in those early years. And if there is a need for Christians to face up to their past sins–and I passionately believe that there is–then it is also necessary for the Jews to face up to an unpleasant chapter in their own history, and unfortunate fact that the hands of neither religion are completely clean.

The Jewish people understandably resist any suggestion that their leaders were directly involved in planning and carrying out the crucifixion of Jesus. We would be sensitive to this charge if we had been accused of deicide too.  But while Jewish apologists propose other explanations for the execution of Jesus,  Jewish involvement in the persecution of the early church is harder to get around, because the record is clear; long before Christians were in a position to persecute the Jews, Jews were persecuting Christians.

The most well known and influential Christian of the first century was Saul of Tarsus (Paul). He was a Jew and proud of it. In fact, he never called himself a Christian, but on a number of occasions he boldly declared, “I am a Jew.” He was also the driving force behind the earliest pogrom against Christians, and this pogrom was authorized and approved by the highest echelons of the Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem. So if the case can be made that these same men had nothing to do with the crucifixion of Jesus, it’s harder to maintain that that they had nothing to do with the persecution of His followers because one of their own turned state’s evidence.

This is Paul’s own confession to his part in the pogrom: “I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lockup many of the saints in prison, having received authority from the chief priests [emphasis added], but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.” Thus, it was no coincidence that Paul found himself on the road to Damascus, with “the authority and commission of the chief priests” when he had his conversion experience.

But while Paul spearheaded the first Jewish persecution of Christians, it would not be the last. Another example is the execution of James the brother of Jesus. This persecution, recorded by Josephus, was orchestrated by the then high priest, Ananus, and ordered by an illegally called meeting of the Sanhedrin. And so the instigation and participation of the religious leaders of Israel in the first persecution of the followers of Jesus (all of whom were Jews themselves), and the subsequent involvement of this same leadership in similar activities, lends a certain credibility to the New Testament’s charge that these same men were complicit in the crucifixion of Jesus.

These charges are especially compelling in light of the fact that Paul was not the only one to turn state’s evidence. We know, for example, of Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea, both of whom would have had first hand knowledge of the inner workings of the Sanhedrin.  In addition to these two named witnesses, Luke tells us, “A great number of priests were obedient to the faith.”  In light of all of this we have to at least make an honest examination of the New Testament’s charge that the leadership of Israel was in large part responsible for the arrest, torture, and crucifixion of Jesus. We will do this in our next post.