Anti-Judaism in the New Testament

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As anti-Judaism in the New Testament (NT) negative statements about the people of Israel or "the Jews" are summarized in the NT (for example Mt 27.25  EU ; Joh 8.44  EU ; 1 Thess 2.15  EU ). These positions, their origin, purpose and function became a special research topic in the 20th century. It is discussed whether and to what extent they collectively reject Judaism and express hostility to Jews in principle .

Since the 2nd century, Gentile Christians have justified substitution theology with such anti-Jewish NT statements , which asserted the loss of salvation for all unbaptized Jews. Churches , Christian governments and the majority of the population used this to justify the discrimination , exclusion and persecution of Jewish minorities. Christian anti-Judaism prepared modern anti-Semitism ; both made the Holocaust of European Jews possible.

Because of this history of effects, anti-Jewish passages of the NT have been increasingly explained from their historical origins since 1945. It is emphasized that most of the NT authors were Jews themselves, saw themselves as part of the chosen people of God and, precisely because of the common tradition of faith, distinguished themselves from other, then prevailing tendencies of Judaism. The situation-related negative statements are contrasted with the positive basic statement of the NT on the uncontrolled Israel Covenant as an indispensable requirement of the Christian message of salvation (for example Jn 4,22  EU ; Rom 11,2  EU ).

New Testament findings

Paul's letters

In 1 Thess 2,15f  LUT.EU there is the accusation of the murder of the prophet. It is associated with anti-Jewish stereotypes that were known from ancient texts of ostracism and were also reflected in the Tanach, for example Est 3.8ff  LUT . Paul justifies these stereotypes with the obstacle the Jews place in the preaching of Jesus' word:

“For, brethren, you have become imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea in Christ Jesus, because you too suffered the same from your own countrymen as they suffered from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets have persecuted us and do not please God and are hostile to all people, in that they - in order to always fill their standard of sin - resist us from speaking to the nations so that they may be saved; but the anger has finally come over them. "

- Paul

The parable of the vine gardeners

The murder of the prophets also occurs in the synoptic Gospels in the parable of the vine gardeners ( Mt 21,33–46  LUT ; Mk 12,1–12  LUT ; Lk 20,9–19  LUT ). The parable is already explained in the text as an accusation of murder and is immediately followed by Jesus' demand that the verses of the Psalter “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was done by the Lord and is a miracle before our eyes ”( Ps 118 : 22-23  EU ).

The theological motive of the "rejection" of the whole people of God was derived from the closing words of the parable:

“But they, the vine gardeners, said to one another: 'This is the inheritance; come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours! ' And they took him and killed him and threw him outside the vineyard. - What will the master of the vineyard do now? He will come and kill the vine gardeners and give the vineyard to others. "

- ( Mk 12.8  EU ; Lk 20.15  EU )

which was interpreted as the loss of the election of Israel and its handover to the new people of God, because the vineyard is already often used in the Old Testament as a metaphor for the chosen people in their relationship with God.

Exegetes have interpreted the passage as the announcement of "the judgment over Israel" and the "passage of the promise to others" and in the same series with analogous judgment statements (in the Gospel of Matthew 8.11ff. LUT ; 12.41f. LUT ; 19.28 LUT ). Such statements are directed against the entire Jewish community, not just against its leaders.

From a non-theological point of view René Girard has the expulsion in the parable of the vine gardeners and Ps 118  LUT with the "stumbling block" in Isa 8,14-15  LUT ; 28: 16-17 LUT and the " scandal " of the Gospels in connection:

What counts as a rejection of the Jewish people or their religious leaders is, in Girard's view, nothing more than the revelation of the bloody character of the sacrificial religion, which occurs so often in the Gospels and in the Old Testament. The eternal obstacle ( scandalon ) of idolatry for the people of Israel is followed by the condemnation of the sacrificial cult by the prophets and the revelation of the sacrificial mechanism by Jesus, who takes on the role of the sacrifice in full view: the disclosed mechanism becomes a "nuisance" ( scandalon ), because it no longer works and only produces bloodshed. In this sense, the closing verses of the passage “And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whom it falls, he will grind ”( Mt 21,44  LUT || Lk 20,18  LUT ) not as a curse, but together with Mt 11,6  LUT || Lk 7,23  LUT to read: "And blessed is he who does not take offense in me".

The blood curse

In Matthew's Gospel , Pilate's self-exoneration from guilt for the death of Jesus is followed by the self-incriminating the crowd: "And the whole people answered and said: 'His blood be on us and our children!'" (Mt 27:25) As in the answer , which follows the parable of the vine gardeners in the Gospel of Matthew ( Mt 21:41 LUT ), there is also a self- condemnation  in this text.

Applied to all descendants of Israel, the sentence immigrated as a fixed stereotype in the Adversus Iudaeos literature of the church fathers . He shaped Christian popular piety and accompanied the marginalization and bloody persecution of Jewish communities in Christianized Europe since the 4th century . The pogroms , often triggered in the context of church passion plays , were then passed off as the fulfillment of the "curse". With this the guilt of Christianity for the suffering of the Jews was projected back onto them.

Today's exegetes turn to the text under the impression of this history of impact. Some have seen in this passage Matthew's intention to indict the “real culprits” of the murder, Pilate and the “high priests and elders”, by showing how they put responsibility on the Jewish people. Others have emphasized that in the passage the evangelist used the "deadly rejection of the innocent" to emphasize this innocence and not the guilt of the people. The assumption of guilt also serves to mark the turn in healing history from the old to the new people of God. According to Klaus Haacker, the passage in the Gospel of Matthew should not be interpreted as a curse for judicial murder : The sentence only emphasizes the conviction of the crowd that Jesus deserved death. The inclusion of "children" in the self-curse expresses a traditional view that unatoned injustice triggers disaster in the next generation.

The woes against scribes and Pharisees

The Pharisees appear in the Gospels mostly as a unified group and representatives of a strictly orthodox observance of the law. They often appear together with the “scribes” as opponents of Jesus who take offense at his teaching. In disputes, they take on the role of subtle questioners who want to corner Jesus in order to find a reason for his condemnation. Nevertheless, the NT preserved the historical closeness of the Pharisees to Jesus and the first Christians: In Jerusalem in particular they appear as his interlocutors who agreed to his interpretation of the Torah ( Mk 12: 28-34  LUT ) and the then famous teacher of the scribes and Rabban Gamaliel came after Acts 5 , 34–39  LUT in the Sanhedrin as an advocate of the early Christians.

The colloquial equation of Pharisees with “hypocrites” is based on the so-called woes against the Pharisees in Mt 23 : 13-36  LUT ; Lk 11,38-52  LUT back. You will be using the formula

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites ..."

introduced and lead to the accusation of the murder of the prophet ( Mt 23,29-31  LUT ):

“For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the tombs of the righteous and say: If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been guilty of the blood of the prophets. In this way you bear witness to yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. "

This criticism follows the sacrifice criticism of the prophets, e.g. B. Isa 1,11-16  LUT ; Jer 6.20  LUT ; Hos 5,6  LUT ; 6.6 LUT ; 9.11-13 LUT ; At 5.21-25  LUT . According to R. Girard, Jesus is not accusing a specific group of the Jewish people, but rather the religious bloodshed common to all humanity:

Mt 23:35: "... all righteous blood that was shed on earth ..."
Lk 11.50: "... the blood of all prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world ..."

According to Dagmar Henze, the Pharisees only served the evangelists as a backdrop to ward off behavior that they encountered among Christians in their own congregations.

Gospel of John

The use of the overall term “the Jews” in the Gospel of John to denote the opponents of Jesus who refuse his revelation is explained by Judaism in the New Testament historical-critical exegesis on the basis of the separation of Christian communities in Asia Minor - from whose tradition the Gospel of John originates. This does not reveal a general condemnation of Judaism, but a current situation.

One of the passages in the Gospel of John that is explicitly accused of anti-Semitism is a speech in which Jesus denounces the murderous intentions of his opponents:

“Why don't you understand my language? Because you can't hear my word. You are of the father, the devil , and you want to do the desires of your father. The former was a murderer from the beginning and was not in the truth because there is no truth in him. If he speaks the lie, he is speaking from his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I'm telling the truth, you don't believe me. "

- Jn 8, 43-45

Even if Jesus expressly emphasizes Israel's election to the people of God ( Jn 8:37  LUT ) - and the primacy of the Jewish faith is also affirmed in other passages of the Gospel of John (e.g. Jn 4:22) - the sentence appears to be Judaism To condemn the brood of Satan and fix it as a diabolical opponent of Jesus. This contradicting reading is superfluous in the interpretation of the text as a reference to the connection between murder, lies and Satan , which has been suggested by René Girard.

Acts of the Apostles

Some texts of the New Testament are particularly often classified as anti-Jewish. In these texts a bundle of motifs is expressed, which are grouped around the murder of the prophet and the collective guilt for this murder. The subjects that appear there have seldom been the subject of research outside of biblical exegesis and Christian theology, and have sometimes been interpreted as indicative of an anti-Semitism inherent in Christianity.

In some NT texts, in which the people of Israel are assigned collective guilt for the death of Jesus, this death is classified in the internal Jewish tradition of the murder of the prophets. This was known in the Tanakh as a penitential sermon from Jews to other Jews for centuries (e.g. 1 Kings 19.10  LUT ; Jer 2.30  LUT ; Neh 9.26  LUT ; Ezra 9.11  LUT ). The addressees of such accusations are the Jewish people (1Thess 2,15f), the Synedrium (4.10 LUT ; 5.30 LUT ; 7.52 EU ) and Jerusalem's inhabitants ( Acts 2.23.36 LUT ; 3.13–15  LUT ; 13,27-29 LUT ), who are also claimed as witnesses of injustice ( Acts 2,36  LUT ; 4,10 EU ).

In all Passion Reports, however, the unanimity of all those involved in the murder of Jesus - from the political leadership to the people and Jesus' followers himself - is emphasized. In 1 Cor 2,7f  EU , responsibility for the death of Jesus is placed on the "rulers of this world", behind whom Satan stands. This can be seen as a background foil for the “triumph of the cross” ( Col 2.14f  EU ).

Research since 1945

In view of the lasting impact of Christianly motivated anti-Judaism, Christian exegesis and theology have undergone a profound rethinking in recent decades. Anti-Judaistic prejudices that have been practiced for centuries when interpreting the New Testament are considered to be obsolete: Increased emphasis is placed on exposing the original meaning and context of the statements in the New Testament that were perceived as anti-Jewish and, if necessary, criticizing them theologically.

The work of Jules Isaac

The work of the French historian Jules Isaac made an important contribution to the profound rethinking within the Christian churches - especially the Catholic ones - after the Second World War . In his book Jésus et Israël , Isaac analyzed the Gospel texts and formulated his conclusions in 21 arguments that, in summary, rule out that there was any contradiction, rejection or condemnation in the relationship between Jesus and his people. In the exegetical consideration of this relationship, “the flowing, blurred tradition without dogmatic or 'normative' character, always goes beyond the wording of the Gospel, interprets it arbitrarily and tendentiously. It breaks down into a series of myths, in which individual truths are mixed with a multitude of untruths. "

The interreligious dialogue

The rethinking initiated has helped to create the conditions for the renewal of the dialogue between Christians and Jews . In the area of ​​the Evangelical Church in Germany , this dialogue has intensified since the church congresses of the 1960s: While Christian historians and theologians  explained the New Testament preaching more strongly from the Old Testament - now also known as the First Testament, the Jewish side also wanted to bring the Rabbis ( Torah teacher) introduced Jesus of Nazareth into Judaism.

While on the Catholic side the Second Vatican Council in 1965 established a new turn to Israel and a discussion of the Christian guilty share in the Holocaust, on the Protestant side the Rhenish Synodal Resolution of 1980 set a milestone for the revision and clarification of church doctrinal statements. A number of Protestant regional churches in Germany as well as the Evangelical Church in Germany have now followed this process. The core message is the commitment to the “uncancelled covenant”: Israel is and will remain the chosen people of God, which as such is the root of the church. Only on this basis may the message of Jesus Christ be grace for all peoples. The effects of this theological clarification on all church areas of responsibility as well as state religious instruction and the general religious dialogue cannot yet be foreseen.

René Girard's anthropological approach

The Catholic literary scholar and anthropologist René Girard has made the Old and New Testament texts the object of his anthropological research in many of his books. In his work, Girard thematized the aspects of biblical revelation that are either not considered or explicitly rejected by modern research: the figure of Satan, the collective and peaceful murder, the collective guilt for the murder. According to Girard, a traditional reading of the corresponding texts has become established that is at the mercy of anti-Judaism because it ignores the actual anthropological object of biblical teaching.

Of course one could suspect the New Testament accusations of anti-Judaism, but only as long as one reads them separately from one another and does not perceive the disclosure of the scapegoat mechanism as a guide for all these texts. But this is a fateful vicious circle:

“If the true meaning of these texts is still misunderstood, it is precisely because of the anti-Jewish interpretation that is assumed to them ... The Gospels are not anti-Jewish, but as long as one understands the meaning of the fundamental murder in the texts that make up Christian anti-Semitism nourishing, is not universally recognized, many Christians will continue to feel compelled to choose between an anti-Semitic gospel and the gospel in general. One must not accuse the Gospels of the narrow anti-Jewish reading to which they are subjected. The accusers of the Gospels consider it beyond doubt that the traditional reading is the correct and only possible reading. Their negative conservatism washes the Christians completely of their own anti-Semitism, which, mind you, is extremely real. "

- R. Girard

Only if one gives up the anti-Judaistic "traditional reading" - according to Girard - one can perceive the true meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus and thus recognize the inevitable universal scope of all biblical accusations of murder: The biblical-Christian revelation would not have the value it is recognized, if it had been directed against a certain group of people.

See also

literature

  • Ingo Broer: Anti-Judaism in the New Testament? Attempt to get closer based on two texts (1 Thess 2:14 and Mt 27:24). In: Ingo Broer: Hermeneutics in History: Case Studies. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 3-8471-0277-X , pp. 169–202
  • Zsolt Keller : The Blood Call (Mt 27.25). A history of Swiss impact. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-55328-2 .
  • Gerald Sigal: Anti-Judaism in the New Testament. Xlibris, 2004, ISBN 1-4134-3306-5
  • Rainer Kampling : "Now this thing is in the Gospel ...". On the question of the beginnings of Christian anti-Judaism. 2nd edition, Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-506-74253-1 .
  • Klaus Haacker: Reconciliation with Israel. Exegetical contributions. Neukirchener Verlag , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2002, ISBN 3-7887-1836-6 .
  • William R. Farmer (Ed.): Anti-Judaism and the Gospels. Trinity Press International, 1999, ISBN 1-56338-270-9
  • John Dominic Crossan: Who Killed Jesus? The origins of Christian anti-Semitism in the Gospels. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44553-5 .
  • Dagmar Henze, Claudia Janssen, Stefanie Müller, Beate Wehn: Anti-Judaism in the New Testament? Basics for working with biblical texts. Christian Kaiser, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-579-05149-0 .
  • Lillian C. Freudmann: Antisemitism in the New Testament. University Press of America, 1994, ISBN 0-8191-9294-5 .
  • Rainer Kampling: New Testament texts as building blocks of the later Adversos Judaeos literature. In: Herbert Frohnhofen (ed.): Christian anti-Judaism and Jewish anti-Paganism: their motives and backgrounds in the first three centuries. Steinmann & Steinmann, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-927043-13-3 , pp. 121-138.
  • Gerd Theißen : Aporias in dealing with the anti-Judaism of the New Testament. In: Erhard Blum, Christian Macholz, Ekkehard W. Stegemann (eds.): The Hebrew Bible and its twofold post-history. Festschrift for Rolf Rendtorff on his 65th birthday. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1990, ISBN 3-7887-1353-4 , pp. 535-553.
  • Felix Porsch: “You have the devil for your father” (Jn 8:44). Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John? In: Bibel und Kirche 44/1989, pp. 50–57.
  • Rosemary Radford Ruether : Fratricide and Charity. The theological roots of anti-Semitism. (1978) Christian Kaiser, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-459-01131-9 .
  • Shalom Ben-Chorin : Anti-Jewish elements in the New Testament. In: Evangelische Theologie 40, 1980, pp. 203-214.
  • Reinhold Leistner: Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John? Presentation of the problem in the recent history of interpretation and investigation of the history of suffering. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-261-00940-3
  • Jules Isaac: Genesis of Anti-Semitism. Before and after Christ. Europa Verlag, Vienna 1969, DNB 457077727 .
  • Willehad Paul Eckert, Nathan Peter Levinson, Martin Stöhr (eds.): Anti-Judaism in the New Testament? Exegetical and systematic contributions. Christian Kaiser, Munich 1967, DNB 454586930 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ René Girard emphasized in relation to the question “What will the Lord of the vineyard now do?” That - unlike in the Gospel of Mark and Luke - in Mt 21.40-41  LUT it is not Jesus but the people who answer “He will kill those evildoers badly, and he will lease the vineyard to other growers ”. R. Girard, The End of Violence , pp. 193–194. W. Wiefel, The Gospel according to Matthew , p. 373, saw here a reference to David's answer to Nathan in 2 Sam 12,5–7  LUT .
  2. ↑ Cf. W. Wiefel, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus , 369ff and (quoted there) G. Bornkamm / G. Barth / HJ hero tradition .
  3. ↑ In: Livre III ; in Des choses cachée depuis la fondation du monde ; the third book is missing in the German translation The end of violence
  4. ^ Theo C. de Kruijf: Antisemitism: In the New Testament in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Volume III (1978), p. 126.
  5. ↑ W. Wiefel, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus , pp. 471 and 474. For the theological reflection on this topic and the criticism of the concept of "self-curse" see the literature cited there.
  6. ↑ See u. a. 1 Kings 22  LUT ; 2 Kings 1  LUT ; 9 LUT ; Est 7.10  LUT ; 9,6-14 LUT .
  7. ↑ From Rabbi Gamaliel the Talmud narrates the same criticism of the hypocrisy that the Gospels put into Jesus' mouth: "Do not allow any pupil (disciple) who is not internally what they are externally to enter the house of teaching." (Berakot 28a).
  8. ↑ R. Girard, The question of anti-Semitism in the Gospels , in: The misunderstood voice of the real , p. 115
  9. ↑ D. Henze, Anti-Judaism in the New Testament? Basics for working with biblical texts
  10. ↑ In this section Jesus reveals the meaning of the murderous intentions of his opponents. The murders of the prophets and the murder of Abel in the Synoptic Gospels appear here only as human murder, as the result of the lie of sacrificial ritual violence, if one identifies the "human murderer from the beginning" with the principle of sanctifying power, like every reference to Satan, found in the New Testament suggests. See The Devil in Contemporary Religious Reflection ; R. Girard, I saw Satan fall from the sky like lightning .
  11. ↑ J. Isaac, Genesis of Antisemitism , 14.
  12. ^ Evangelical Church in Germany Church Office: Christians and Jews: I - III; the studies of the Evangelical Church in Germany 1975-2000 . Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002, ISBN 3-579-02374-8 .
  13. ↑ R. Girard: The misunderstood voice of the real ; Pp. 127-128