20 July 2014
Christianity and Antisemitism: Conclusion


But if he is a bad servant and says to himself, "The master is a long time coming," and begins to bully the other servants and to eat and drink with his drunken friends, then the master will arrive on a day that servant does not expect, at a time he does not know,    (Matthew 24:48-50)

and will cut him in pieces. Thus he will find his place among the hypocrites, where there is wailing and grinding of teeth.    (Matthew 24:51)


I guess that jarring contrast is kind of familiar by now. The first verses above are at the end of a passage from the secondary layer of the Q Gospel. The first part (Matthew 24:43-47) described the qualities of a servant who can be trusted when his master is not around. In the alternate possibility, where the master comes home to find a drunk in charge, the uncertainty about the result seems to have once again represented a moral void someone found too hard to bear. So he filled that void.

Assuming a search for bodies is impractical at this point, what else might we consider in light of this investigation?

One thing we might think about is how the writings of a man who seems to have had mental problems have at least influenced if not shaped some of our ideas and attitudes. And not just some anger issues, which could be understandable in any number of contexts, but a mind that dwelt on violence and the inflicting of pain. And not just any old writings any old where, but words and phrases, ideas and arguments embedded within a religious text, having the utmost value and meaning in the greatest possible sense for a vast, vast audience for hundreds and hundreds of years. Held sacred, in other words, as having come directly from God, as His Word.

If the result is that we can see Jesus as the embodiment of how God so loved the world that He stood ready to torture and cut into pieces anyone who gets out of line, that might be a pretty good indication of where the problem lies. It's not a case of theological theorizing about whether God is more of a father figure than a teacher who gives hard lessons. It's something more along the lines of taking Communion after some roaring maniac took a piss on the wafers.

Of course, it's also important not to overstate things. The textual contributions of this man might not be immense in themselves, and there may be no sure way of knowing how much or how little they were overall. Probably more important is the problem of distinguishing his input from what preceded and surrounded it since it could have amounted to little more than what stood out in the first place: a sentence or phrase here and there, appended to what someone else had written (usually at the end), expressing ideas that were brief, stupid and cruel. Verse 51 above wouldn't be hard to break down into its most basic form, arguably reflecting "the level of civilization" of someone recently taught how to write. (Enemies = hypocrites. Bad place = wailing and grinding of teeth (out in the dark, Hell). Master sees bad servant -- master cuts bad servant to pieces.) So it may not be as simple as how someone with the mind of a serial killer got his hands on the text of a Christian Gospel.

That man was not solely responsible for the problem of antisemitism in Christian beliefs and attitudes, but his bloody-minded rhetoric had an unhealthy share in it. The greater responsibility has been well laid out by John Dominic Crossan in Who Killed Jesus? Originating from in-fighting among Jewish groups and their propaganda against each other, it included the conflicts that Paul had with the "Mother Church" in Jerusalem (basically over whether people had to be Jews before they could become Christians). More developed ideas about Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus would become codified in the Passion-Resurrection accounts, then in the complete Gospels themselves, and finally in influential writings of the early Church Fathers. All of them arguing in effect that since Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah, the guilt for his untimely demise was on their shoulders -- despite the fact that even as the Gospels tell us that, they show us Roman officials and soldiers in charge of everything involved in the circumstances of his death.

Something to think about, especially if it suggests that someone might have wanted to slant a story to remove responsibility from Romans and put it onto Jews, but were unable to get rid of the cast of characters and their roles, passed down to them in a story as related from the memories of those who were there.






Postscript One
22 July 2014

When I had finished writing these essays, I suddenly realized that I hadn't even mentioned the most prominent example (where one's topic is "Christianity and Antisemitism"): the account of a crowd of Jews insisting on the crucifixion of Jesus (Matthew 27:20-26). Apart from the absent-mindedness that comes with getting older, my excuse is that scholars consider the accounts of Jesus' arrest, trial, and execution in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke to be from an original independent source, separate from other sources used in writing those Gospels. My initial focus had been on John the Baptist, and the presentations of him in the Q Gospel and the Gospel of Mark led to my marking off passages in Matthew's Gospel. The result was an identification of a writer with a very odd mindset, but my exploration of that didn't extend further into the Passion-Resurrection section of the Gospel of Matthew.

As a general rule, I'd say that anything unique to Matthew's Gospel -- that is, found nowhere else but Matthew -- needs close examination as to what type of mind the writing reflects. Whether that's relevant to the following is not a question I can answer.
'Then what am I to do with Jesus called Messiah?' asked Pilate; and with one voice they answered, 'Crucify him!' 'Why, what harm has he done?' Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, 'Crucify him!'

Pilate could see that nothing was being gained, and a riot was starting; so he took water and washed his hands in full view of the people, saying, 'My hands are clean of this man's blood; see to that yourselves.' And with one voice the people cried, 'His blood be on us, and on our children.'    (Matthew 27:22-25)

Pilate's soldiers then took Jesus into the Governor's headquarters........    (Matthew 27:27)

I can, however, point out (in case it's not clear enough) that Pilate's soldiers have Jesus in custody from start to finish. And they would seem to be bringing him back into Pilate's headquarters after that nice talk out on the balcony with all those Jews who were so clearly the ones really behind everything. Good ol' Pilate! -- always kind enough to perform the dirty work when roving crowds of Jews appeared, demanding crucifixions and the like ...... and also a performer of magic tricks: "see to that yourselves" -- "Guards! Crucify this man!!"




Postscript Two

I mentioned in Part One that my postings in the thread I started at The Education Forum led to an exchange between another member and myself. His post and my response (originally on 27 May 2007) still seems to hold up well enough in covering the topic and providing a summary of my opinions.
QUOTE (Norman Pratt)
One or two historical points occur. How far were the Nazis, how far were the German people in general, influenced by the Scriptures to be anti-semitic? How much was the influence of Luther a factor? My own feeling, if I may be Devil's Advocate so to speak, is that European anti-semitism in the Middle Ages had much to do with economics, perhaps with early stirrings of nationalism, and very little to do with biblical authority, while in the 20th century anti-semitism seems to be connected with the rise of nationalism.

There is a danger here of looking at 1st Century anti-semitism through a 20th century lens. The Roman authorities in the 1st century occasionally turned on the Jews, but didn't in general seem to have used ethnic tensions as a tool in policy. Nation states as they emerged in Europe in the 19th and 20th century, on the other hand, were very racially conscious, and by the time of the Treaty of Versailles the idea that every people was entitled to a homeland had taken over. This, it seems to me, was the background to European anti-semitism in the 20th Century.

Matthew, whoever he was or they were, lived in a world where the singling out of a racial group for criticism didn't instantly spark off racial riots. A more typical example of racial attitudes would be in the later Roman Empire when Roman patricians famously lamented the introduction of trousers – a Germanic fashion.

Even if a later editor of Matthew's Gospel wanted to make the Gospel more gentile-friendly his target was clearly (admittedly not so clearly in the case of Matthew 27 v.25) some of the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem, not the entire Jewish race. QUOTE OFF


....Your second question (Luther's influence) is not something I can comment on, as I've not read much on Martin Luther. Beyond the excerpt from Shirer's book, in which Luther is briefly quoted as to some of what he had to say about Jews in Germany, I'm only aware of Erich Fromm's analysis of Luther and John Calvin in Escape from Freedom, which has nothing to say about their attitudes toward Jews or influence on antisemitism per se.

But I think this is linked to your first question, which is the very reason for starting this thread; it has less to do as such with Nazism much less the German people than with all of us in Christian culture or civilization -- i.e., how far are any of us influenced to believe things in anti-Jewish terms? As I remarked [earlier], the antisemitic preacher of my second post [Wesley Swift] was not exactly "misquoting the Bible." And while it might be nice to think that only some vindictive rhetoric here and there resulted in some isolated incidents of violence (or discrimination, persecution, etc.), the simple fact of the matter to me is that the "official" Christian belief system is formative in creating and encouraging anti-Jewish beliefs and attitudes. Simply put, how are we supposed to feel and what are we supposed to think about Jews as such and in toto when exposed for a couple thousand years to a refrain of the-Jews-"rejected"/murdered-the Savior/God Incarnate?

You might agree that possible results of the Roman-Jewish War of the 60's and 70's AD would have been certain negative attitudes (in Roman "good society") toward Jews (a rebellious people) and some distancing of themselves from Jews on the part of Christians. At some point polemical battles among first century Jews might tend to veer sharply in the direction of the canonical Gospels' apologetic stance of "Rome/Romans are innocent in our drama," if understood as forms of self-censorship in the interests of self-preservation. (This was later in the drama, and it's reasonable to assume that once Christianity had spread to literate society there might have been some falling away from the examples of courage displayed by the Founder.) But if things like that occur, and become combined with overarching theological polemics and perspectives (the Jews rejected their Messiah/King), I believe the stage is set for Jews becoming a focus for much in the way of slander, suspicion, discrimination, persecution and slaughter.

Economics, nationalism, politics, "scientific racial theories," etc. are incestuously linked in all this, but the question at bottom is how much is the overall belief system and not just some of the rhetoric conducive to or formative for overall anti-Jewish attitudes, beliefs, actions? If you take the Gospel accounts as Gospel Truth, you could conceivably make a movie and depart from the (Gospels') script by depicting some of Jesus' followers pleading with Roman soldiers to save Him from the hands of the Jews after He was arrested, and having the wife of Pontius Pilate offer the Virgin Mary a towel to wipe off the blood from the Body of her Son (the Son of Man and the Son of God). And you could make an awful lot of money off a movie like that, particularly if you indulge people's voyeuristic fascination with cinematic depictions of extreme violence (although your people are ironically to be "shielded" from seeing too much "real-life" violence in the news, particularly when it results from your own government's policies). I think it's important for people to have a better awareness and appreciation of the extreme forms of brutality Jesus was subjected to (as in "The Passion of the Christ"), but when the argument is made or suggested that although Romans were actually in charge of all the inflicting of violence it was really Jews who were behind it all, then we are confronted with issues of conscience that go beyond questions of historical inaccuracy or even simple dishonesty.

And so I believe there's less of a danger of our "looking at 1st Century anti-semitism through a 20th century lens" than in continuing to obscure our sacred literature's formative influence in creating and encouraging antisemitic beliefs and attitudes for all these centuries and on into the 21st century.

Today, and for the past century, some have had the luxury of cloaking antisemitism in a reasonable opposition to Zionism and the policies of the Israeli nation-state. But the Zionist movement came in response to antisemitic pogroms occurring in central and eastern Europe and was given an immediate push from the Dreyfus affair, when Jewish people had to recognize that even in France (the supposed representative of culture and civilization in a good sense) there were certain realities about "the status of Jews" that had to be faced. The Zionists came to the conclusion that the only secure option was a "national homeland" for the Jewish people. That this might become an instance of western colonialism or imperialism (i.e., "white people" going to Palestine and taking land away from "natives") obviously and unfortunately was not much of a consideration for Zionists at the time. And that a better option would have been assimilation of Jews in multicultural societies sounds great, but this had occurred to any significant degree only in "Anglo-Saxon" countries or those which were developing some adherence to principles of liberal democracy (the Low Countries). All very complicated, of course, but one of the more objectionable phenomena of today is that in Arab and Islamic cultures antisemitic ideas are being encouraged and even inculcated among the young; this did not come from Islam or the Qur'an or the Prophet Muhammad (far from it) -- its origins lie in our own culture and is being encouraged by extremists in our own societies. In essence, people of "the Third World" are now feeding on our own intellectual sewage....

In closing I would say I think the issue of whether Jewish people are defined as following a different creed or as somehow being a different race begs the question when we're essentially talking about "minority groups" and how they are treated or "tolerated" by dominant populations in any society. Recognition of that may help people to be able to criticize bigotry and "majority-population-supremacy" in general (much including Israeli attitudes toward and treatment of Arabs), without getting lost in intellectual arguments and potentially being forced into positions of serving as dishonest apologists.



Postscript Three
21 July, 2014

During this exploration of antisemitism, the nation of Israel yet again decided to put its very heavy foot down on the people of Gaza. That makes me feel great about what I just completed here, as it might be assumed that my work can be associated with typical American apologetics for the policies and actions of Fascist Israel.

Initially, I thought to add a postscript to my Conclusion, noting that unfortunately it was not the place to try to give a full account of my opinions on the subject, and closing by saying I'm tired of seeing that the only time anyone notices the dog in its cage is when its master goes in there to beat it some more.


Under the circumstances, that wouldn't have been enough.

Instead, I'll repeat what I said years ago to people whose arguments always had contemporary policies of Israel to rely on to help obscure their own bigoted agendas:


I regard Israel as a semi-fascist state wherein militarism, chauvinism and promotion of the "organic unity" of the State as the highest value is rampant. Ironic for a nation established as a direct result of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. Also ironic is Israel's subjugation of Palestinians for the past generation, as it would seem quite a betrayal of ideals and moral values implicit in the defining experience of the Jewish people -- being freed from bondage in ancient Egypt.

If Israel holds people under military rule, it is a betrayal of what all Jews must hold in common as the most meaningful foundation of their identity, the Exodus. And if Israelis have learned to think of themselves as superior relative to Arabs regarded as inferior, while also adhering to values of militarism, chauvinism and allegiance to the State, then what has Israel become -- except the very damn thing one would think it should never have become.

What Nazi Germany attempted to impose on Europe was no "aberration" in the history of western civilization -- it was the ultimate logical result of the darkest heritage of that civilization. And all the dead bodies, all the human lives snuffed out as if they were no more than bugs, could just as well have been Africans or Native Americans or Aborigines as they were Jews and Gypsies and Slavs.

The modern nation of Israel is only keeping that dark tradition alive. I can't think of a more blasphemous insult to all those who died in the Holocaust.




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