by Harry BuererWe’ve seen how the New Testament, as well as the Hebrew scripture, views the Jewish people as God’s chosen people. Jesus was seen as the culmination of the prophetic expectations of the Jewish people and God’s covenants with them. Non-Jews could, like Ruth of old, become identified with the covenant community by embracing its God and its people.
This was the view that was held during apostolic times. Paul warned the Gentile believers in Rome not to be arrogant in regard to the Jews, because they were metaphorically grafted into the Jewish olive tree. They did not support the root, but the root supported them. (Romans 11:18-20)
Unfortunately, as the number of Gentile believers grew in the first few centuries, the bulk of believers began to identify their faith as “Christianity”, a faith separate from, and even opposed to, Judaism. The people with whom they were made fellow citizens through Christ’s death (Eph. 2:19) were now considered to be hated enemies. There were several reasons for this turn of events that we will consider in later posts. But we need to realize that nascent Christianity embraced an anti-Jewish, anti-Torah theology within the first few centuries of its life, in contrast to the New Testament viewpoint.
In 325 C.E. the emperor Constantine called a council at Nicea. One of the purposes of this council was to establish a way of calculating the date for Easter that had nothing to do with Passover. In his letter to the churches after the council, Constantine writes, “Let us then have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews… Let us withdraw ourselves… from that most odious fellowship… that we may have nothing in common with the usage of these parracides and murderers of our Lord.” In this letter Constantine essentially ordered the churches to ignore the biblical dating of the 14th of the lunar month of Nisan for the basic reason that it was Jewish, and therefore evil.
These anti-Jewish views appeared even earlier in the history of the church, including in the Epistle of Barnabas and the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Marcion in the second century.
During much of its history, the church was one of the foremost persecutors of the Jews, which was no doubt responsible for the fact that few Jews acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah. This persecution was especially strong during the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.
The Reformation, though it brought some positive results, did not significantly affect the view within Christianity regarding Jews. Martin Luther was one of the strongest Jew-haters. Toward the end of his life, he published a pamphlet titled, “Concerning the Jews and Their Lies”, in which he urged people to burn synagogues and destroy Jewish dwellings. His writings in many ways anticipate the actions taken during the Nazi Holocost in the 20th century.
Much of current Christianity does not hold such negative views of Jews, but these views are not hard to find. It’s a far cry from a Jesus and Paul who lived and taught entirely within 1st century Judaism and thought of their faith as a branch of Judaism. (Acts 24:14) It is so ironic that God’s people, who received the covenants that believing Gentiles were invited to share, came to be regarded as a hated enemy. May God forgive us.