The Antisemitism of Ignorance - Le Donne

In the past few days, this blog has generated some very interesting discussion related to Jewish-Christian dialogue and historical scholarship. Without a doubt, the action is in the comments. I have been especially proud of my friend and colleague Chris Keith who continues to model the tone and honesty that one expects from candid exchanges. Little is gained by walking on eggshells and Chris has never met an eggshell that he didn't fear to dance on. At the same time, care and sensitivity is warranted and Chris is a pro.  Friend of the blog and personal friend, Larry Behrendt (when he isn't playing provocateur) continues to make this blog a source of pride for me.  It has been an honor to learn from both men.

In addition to these two fellows, I have learned from many others.  One such person emailed me a couple days ago with a legitimate concern (s/he has given me permission to relay this anonymously). This person is a a committed Christian and a professional historian/theologian.  Moreover, this person is someone I respect a great deal.  My friend writes:

I want to say something privately and in the context of our friendship because you may be able to help me avoid some error here, if I haven't already committed it.

I simply refuse to believe that you, as a historian, would deny some Jewish role in the death of Jesus.  And thus the tone of this entire discussion really bothers me because, in my opinion, it backs anyone who is willing to acknowledge this fact publicly into a corner and paints him/her as an anti-Semite.  Once the rhetoric has been unleashed, you can't be historically responsible without being made to look like Hitler.  For the life of me, I have no idea why one cannot acknowledge the historical reality of Jewish contribution to the events (without claiming categorical responsibilities for categorically all Jews everywhere) without this affirmation being painted as too close to anti-Semitism.

Dr. Keith makes a similar observation:

Why can it not be a socially, theologically, and historically appropriate position for modern Jews, Christians, and non-believers alike to say, "Anti-Semitism is all its faces should be condemned by all parties concerned as should the usage of any of these traditions to promote it . . . and the most likely historical scenario is that the complex of events that led to Jesus' death was a result of various actions by both first-century Romans (Pilate, etc.) and first-century Jews (Jesus, his disciples, Caiaphas and other leaders)."

I quite appreciate these concerns.  What they bring to the table - that the published surveys of the ADL do not - is historical nuance.  When my friend writes of "some Jewish role in the death of Jesus", I know that s/he is not making the mistakes of viewing "the Jews" as a monolithic-ideological-collective will.  Nor do I worry that s/he might be imagining Jesus as something other than Jewish.  However, when I hear the phrase "Jewish role", I immediately want to correct it.  I want to suggest that the descriptor "Jewish" here fails to adequately describe.  Of course, my friend knows this.  Moreover, Dr. Keith's point is important: first-century Jews include Jesus, his disciples, Caiaphas, etc.  Why is this important?

Here is why:

Tertullian (155 - 225 CE): "…though Israel may wash all its members every day, it is never clean. Its hands . . . are always stained, covered forever with the blood of the prophets and of our Lord himself.” From De Oratione, quoted from David Efroymson, "Tertullian's Anti-Judaism and Its Role in His Theology" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1975) 15. 

Hippolytus (170-236 CE): "Now then, incline thine ear to me and hear my words, and give heed, thou Jew. Many a time does thou boast thyself, in that thou didst condemn Jesus of Nazareth to death, and didst give him vinegar and gall to drink; and thou dost vaunt thyself because of this. Come, therefore, and let us consider together whether perchance thou dost boast unrighteously, O, Israel, and whether thou small portion of vinegar and gall has not brought down this fearful threatening upon thee and whether this is not the cause of thy present condition involved in these myriad of troubles." The Anti-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956) Vol. IV, 219. 

Origen (185-254 CE): "On account of their unbelief and other insults which they heaped upon Jesus, the Jews will not only suffer more than others in the judgment which is believed to impend over the world, but have even already endured such sufferings. For what nation is in exile from their own metropolis, and from the place sacred to the worship of their fathers, save the Jews alone? And the calamities they have suffered because they were a most wicked nation, which although guilty of many other sins, yet has been punished so severely for none as for those that were committed against our Jesus." Against Celcus, Ibid., 433.

Ambrose (339-97 CE): In defense of a fellow bishop who burned a synagogue at Callinicum, Ambrose of Milan quipped "who cares if a synagogue - home of insanity and unbelief - is destroyed?" From the 40th and 41st Epistles of St. Ambrose of Milan. 

Constantine (272-337): “[The Jews are] a people who, having imbrued their hands in a most heinous outrage, have thus polluted their souls and are deservedly blind. . . . Therefore we have nothing in common with that most hostile of people the Jews. We have received from the Savior another way . . . our holy religion. . .” Quoted from Robert Wilken, "Insignissima Religio, Certe Licita? Christianity and Judaism in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries," in Jerald Brauer, ed., The Impact of the Church Upon Its Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968) 58. 

John Chrysostom (344-407 CE): "The Jews sacrifice their children to Satan....they are worse than wild beasts. The synagogue is a brothel, a den of scoundrels, the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults, a criminal assembly of Jews, a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, a gulf and abyss of perdition." -- "[Because of their] odious assassination of Christ for which crime there is no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon, and for which they will always be a people without a nation, enduring a servitude without end... " Quoted from Chrysostom’s eight "Homilies Against the Jews" in Patrologia Graeca (Paris: Garnier, 1857-1866) 843-942.

And this is just a taste and not even the worst of it. This weekend, we will remember Martin Luther's birthday.  No person that I know will celebrate this day the way that previous Christians did.  But there is an even more insidious problem with modern Christians.  We continue to be ignorant of the connections between our texts and traditions and our long history of repugnant behavior.  So when Christians blithely speak of "Jewish" involvement in Jesus' arrest, most do so thinking that this is just a neutral fact.  Without care to nuance the identity in question, no fact has betrayed more bias.

No Christian I know is a Nazi (although their ideological heirs are still out there). My friends and colleagues aren't burning synagogues (although I once lived in a Jewish community house in Davis, CA; a few years ago the same house had a swastika spray-painted on it).  But there is almost a greater sin in willful ignorance and inaction.  We don't know our own theological history.  We don't even really know the history of the Holocaust and this event still survives in living memory! Most Christians haven't even considered the connections between Luther's advice and the actions carried out on Kristallnacht.

We don't even know our history well enough to fact check the false assertions made of us. For example:

(pp.90-91 in Arie Zweip's Christ, the Spirit and the Community of God)

This creates a problem for the historian.  Where do we begin?  Must we explain recent history and Church history before we explain the history of Jesus?  How does any single historian become sufficiently well-versed?

How does the historian speak to the factors that contributed to Jesus' death without importing 2000 years of anti-Judaism and centuries of anti-Semitism?  Moreover, how do we have this conversation when most Christians are lamentably ignorant of the basic problem?  Christianity has been anti-Jewish for a long, long time.  This means that we (here I use the historic "we") couldn't help but misunderstand important aspects of Jesus and his contemporaries for a long, long time.  Without some grounding in our own history of repeated sin, we will continue to state "facts" in ways that mislead.

-anthony