ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Shmuel Golding

 

In recent years, many books have been written on the subject of anti-Semitism.  Most of those books blame the church for its hostile teachings which encouraged ignorant devotees to harass, and even to violently assault Jews in the name of Christ and his church.  Many Christian writers have openly acknowledged this fact and have called upon the church to make amends.

Yet, apologize as they may, none of them attack the root cause of Christian anti-Semitism, which in my opinion lies in the New Testament itself.  One writer from the gentile camp, who dares admit to this in his book “The Misery of Christianity,” is a former pastor by the name of Joachim Kahl.  A writer from the Jewish side, Jules Isaac wrote a book entitled “Jesus et Israel,” in which he maintained that anti-Semitism begins with the New Testament. Apart from two voices, very few have been bold enough to place the blame where it belongs.

Father Gregory Baum states that when he read Isaac’s book it shattered him, and so he set about on a task to counter-refute such claims, yet in the introduction he has to admit that at face value certain passages of the New Testament do appear to be anti-Semitic, but says Father Baum all such verses can be explained.

Maybe they can be explained, the scriptures can be stretched this way and that way to make them say almost anything, but my bone of contention is that whilst those statements remain in print in the form of a holy book, men will use them to feed their hatred and the Jew will continue to suffer.  Let history itself be our witness, and let history be the judge as to whether or not the roots of Christian anti-Semitism lie within the New Testament.

It will not be hard to prove that the roots of anti-Semitism lie in the New Testament and that its fruits have been plucked and digested by Christians from the earliest times until the present day.

Bible-intoxicated Christians through the ages have thrown in the teeth of the Jews the demonic charges of “Christ-killers” and have fanned the flames of Jew-hatred using the New Testament for their justification.

There are numerous verses found in the New Testament which have caused the blood of countless Jews to be shed throughout history.  We will examine these verses and compare them with words said, and deeds committed against Jews by the church and its leaders.

These anti-Semitic statements were and still are the principal cause of all persecutions, oppressions and pogroms in which Jews have suffered.  These anti-Semitic accounts in the New Testament have taught mankind to hate the Jew.  As long as the New Testament continues in print (at least in its present form) the Jew will be hated.  Here are but a few verses from where Christianity borrowed its anti-Semitic sentiments.

“The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8.12)

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” (Matthew 23.37,38) Then answered all the people (Jews) and said, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). 1 “But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you to councils, and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten” (Mark 13.9)

“He that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16.16)

“Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he speaks a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it.  And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.  Which of you convinceth me of sin?  And I say the truth, why do you not believe me?  He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God” (John 8.43-47)

“Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so you do.  Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers” (Acts 7.51-53)

“It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing you put it from you and judge yourself unworthy of everlasting life, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13.45-51)

“For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake ... wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.” (Titus 1.10-14).

“The Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” (l Thessalonians 2.14-16)

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?  He is an antichrist, that denieth the father and the son.  Whoever denieth the son, the same hath not the father” (l John 2.22,23)

“I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan  ...” (Revelation 2.9,10)

“Behold I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not but do lie; behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet...” (Revelation 3.9)

These vicious and treacherous New Testament verses, have given the impression that the Jews in the time of Jesus were degenerate and cruel and that they are a deicide race.  They have been spread by the church for the last two millennia, and have not been rooted out of Christian thinking to the present day.  Even those fundamentalist lovers of Israel, only love the Jews in order to save them from the punishment awaiting them for not having accepted Jesus.  They, as much, if not more than any other Christian today, believe that the Jew is guilty of deicide and that his Judaism is an old worn out rag which they wish to replace with their New Testament.

Moses Bazes, author of “Jesus the Jew, the Historical Jesus,” after examining the anti-Semitic statements in the New Testament writes:

“I believe that because of the anti-Jewish narratives of the New Testament, the Jews were hounded from one country to another, denied to live as human beings, denied to work as other people worked, denied to play as others played, were in no country at peace, in no era at peace and finally persecuted and massacred.  This was all because of the Christian bigotry and hatred in the name of Jesus.  Obviously it cannot be possible to regard Jesus as none other than the scourge of God for the Jews.  The tragic existence of the Jews during 1900 years in the Diaspora, the hatred they experienced, the pogroms, persecutions, murders and the destructions they suffered, must be mainly attributed to anti- Jewish statements in the New Testament.  Christianity introduced contempt for the Jew and is thus responsible for what happened in the Second World War at the Dachau Concentration camp in Germany and at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.  What was started at the Church Council at Nicea in 325 CE was duly completed in the concentration camps and crematories of Christian Germany where six million Jews perished.”

We will now examine the words of some Christian “saints” and leaders and notice how their anti-Jewish expressions are based on New Testament verses listed earlier in this article.

Origen: “Their rejection of Jesus has resulted in their present calamity and exile.  We say with confidence that they will never be restored to their former condition.  For they have committed a crime of the most unhallowed kind, in conspiring against the saviour.”

St.  Gregory: “ Jews are slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies of God, haters of God, adversaries of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith, advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men of darkened minds, leaven of the Pharisees, congregation of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners and haters of goodness.”

St. Jerome: “....serpents, haters of all men, their image is Judas ... their psalms and prayers are the braying of donkeys..”

St.  John Chrysostom: “I know that many people hold a high regard for the Jews and consider their way of life worthy of respect at the present time... This is why I am hurrying to pull up this fatal notion by the roots ... A place where a whore stands on display is a whorehouse.  What is more, the synagogue is not only a whorehouse and a theater; it is also a den of thieves and a haunt of wild animals ... not the cave of a wild animal merely, but of an unclean wild animal ... When animals are unfit for work, they are marked for slaughter, and this is the very thing which the Jews have experienced.  By making themselves unfit for work, they have become ready for slaughter.  This is why Christ said: “ask for my enemies, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them and slay them before me’ (Luke 19.27).”

St.  Augustine: “Judaism is a corruption.  Indeed Judas is the image of the Jewish people.  Their understanding of the Scriptures is carnal.  They bear the guilt for the death of the saviour, for through their fathers they have killed the Christ.”

St.  Thomas Aquinas: “It would be licit to hold Jews, because of the crimes, in perpetual servitude, and therefore the princes may regard the possessions of Jews as belonging to the State.”

The teachings of Martin Luther:

“Know, 0 adored Christ, and make no mistake, that aside from the Devil, you have no enemy more venomous, more desperate, more bitter, than a true Jew who truly seeks to be a Jew... a Jew, a Jewish heart, are hard as wood, as stone, as iron, as the Devil himself.  In short, they are children of the Devil, condemned to the flames of hell.”

“O Lord, I am too feeble to mock such devils.  I would do so, but they are much stronger than I in raillery, and they have a God who is a past master in this art; He is called the devil and the wicked spirit.. They have transformed God into the devil, or rather into a servant of the Devil, accomplishing all the evil the Devil desires, corrupting unhappy souls , and raging against himself: in short, the Jews are worse than the devils.”

“What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?  First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it.  And this ought to be done for the honour of God and of Christianity, in order that God may see that we are true Christians.  Secondly, their homes should be likewise broken down and destroyed.  Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayerbooks and talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught.  Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threats of death to teach anymore.”

“Now whoever wishes to accept venomous serpents, desperate enemies of the lord, and to honor them, to let himself be robbed, pillaged, corrupted and cursed by them, need only turn to the Jews.  If this is not enough for him, he can do more: crawl up into their...... and worship the sanctuary, so as to glorify himself afterwards for having been merciful, for having fortified the Devil and his children, in order to blaspheme our beloved lord and the precious blood that has redeemed us.  He will then be a perfect Christian, filled with works of mercy, for which Christ will reward him on the-day of judgment with the eternal fire of hell (where he will roast together with the Jews).”

“In truth, the Jews, being foreigners, should possess nothing, and what they do possess should be ours.”

“...Cursed goy that I am, I cannot understand how they manage to be so skillful, unless I think that when Judas Iscariot hanged himself, his guts burst and emptied.  Perhaps the Jews sent their servants with plates of silver and pots of gold to gather up Judas’ piss with the other treasures, and then they ate and drank his offal, and thereby acquired eyes so piercing that they discover in the scriptures commentaries that neither Matthew nor Isaiah himself found there, not to mention the rest of us cursed goyim..”

“If I find a Jew to baptize, I shall lead him to the Elbe bridge, hang a stone around his neck, and push him into the water, baptizing him with the name of Avraham!.. I cannot convert the Jews.  Our lord Christ did not succeed in doing so; but I can close their mouths so that there will be nothing for them to do but to lie upon the ground.”

“I hope I shall never be so stupid as to be circumcised; I would rather cut off the left breast of my Catherine and of all women.”

“If we are to remain unsullied by the blasphemy of the Jews and not wish to take part in it, we must be separated from them and they must be driven out of their country.”

These anti-semitic words uttered by popes, priests, pastors and laymen, were put into action by unruly Christian mobs and later by Hitler’s followers.

Adolf Hitler: “I believe that I am today acting according to the purposes of the Almighty Creator. In resisting the Jew, I am fighting the Lord’s battle.”

Now let us apply these sayings to deeds committed by Christians who took their New Testament literally.

The crusader’s sword found its justification in the words of Matthew 10.34, “I have not come to bring peace on earth but a sword.”  The Inquisitor’s fire found its justification in the words of John 15.6, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.”  The cancellation of debts owed to Jews, found its justification in the parable recorded in Luke 16. The first blood libel was made by Jesus himself where in Matthew 23.35, he states “that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.”

Rev William Hull
At the time of the World Pentecostal Conference in Jerusalem in 1961, Hull, a Canadian Missionary, wrote two articles entitled “Christian Analysis of Current Events in Israel for Christian News from Israel (published by the Ministry of Religious Affairs).  In these he analyzed political, cultural and social developments in the country in the light of his unique method of interpretations.  He also discussed the significance of the Eichmann Trial,
2 which was then being held in Jerusalem.  That subject had special interest for him, since at his request he had been appointed by the authorities as Eichmann’s confessor.

Hull visited Eichmann in his cell 14 times, and tried to convert him to a belief in Jesus as the savior, so that he might atone for his actions.  However, Hull’s efforts proved fruitless.  Later he wrote a book describing those conversations with Eichmann, but the content of the talks and certain statements made by Hull subsequent to those talks, evoked a negative reaction in various Jewish circles.  Criticism was directed mainly at the extreme Fundamentalist position, in accordance with which Hull had promised Eichmann that God would forgive his sins if in a written statement he would declare his acceptance of Christ.  In Canada, Hull told the correspondent of a Toronto newspaper that the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis were doomed to perish in hell, and would not enter paradise, because they had not accepted the belief in Christ.  Moreover, he said, Eichmann’s sins were not as great as those of the average man who denied Jesus as the redeemer. (From “American Fundamentalism and Israelby Yona Malachy)

German Christians under Hitler
Paul Althaus, a Lutheran theologian of renown in Germany, warmly greeted the rise of Hitler. He wrote that, “The Protestant churches have greeted the political turning point as a gift and miracle of God”.. (“Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche,” p.5)

Many times Althaus explained to Christians his preference for the Third Reich over the former Weimar Republic. “We Christians know,” he stated, “that we are bound by God’s will to the promotion of National Socialism, so that all members of the people will be ready for service and sacrifice.” (“Kirche and Staat,” p. 29)

In a document signed by many Christian theologians it was stated, “We as believing Christians thank God our Father that he has given to our people in its time of need the Fuhrer as a pious and faithful sovereign, and that he wants to prepare for us in the National Socialist system of government, good rule, a government with discipline and honor. Accordingly, we know that we are responsible before God to assist the work of the Fuhrer in our calling and in our station in life.”. (Ansbacher Ratschlag,” p. 145)

Another high ranking Christian theologian, Leutheuser, believed that the Holy Spirit moves where it chooses, and stated that, “more spirit of religion has come to Germans through Hitler, than through many of the churches.”  (Julius Leutheuser. “Die deutsche Christusgemeinde,” p. 18,19)  This same Christian leader asserts that “Germany has been given a mission from God. The leader and prophet is Adolf Hitler.” (SiegfriedLeffer. Christus im Drittem Reich der Deutschen,” p. 13-18)

The Vatican under Pope Pius XII made a Concordat of collaboration with National Socialism. Hitler’s portrait was placed on all walls of Catholic churches and Sunday schools. Church bells were rang at every Nazi victory, including the arrest and transportation of the last Jew from every town in Germany. The Roman Catholic Church never protested against Hitler’s barbarism including the massacre of a million and a half Jewish children.. (Dictionary of Antisemitism, p. 43)

At a Church conference, Hitler affirmed that the Catholic Church has always regarded Jews as evildoers and had banished them into ghettos. He (Hitler) is only doing what the Church had been doing for fifteen hundred years.. (ibid, p. 79)

In fact the Catholic youth organisation of Germany was combined with the Hitler youth following the signing of the Concordat of Collaboration sponsored by Msgr. Pacelli later to become Pope Pius XII. Together they sang the Horstwessel Lied in the church vestries “Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzed”.. (‘When Jewish blood runs off the dagger,’ ibid, p. 109)

In a speech to Polish Catholics, Hitler declared: “I as a German Catholic, ask only what is permitted to Polish Catholics. To be antisemitic is not to be un-Catholic. The Church used every weapon against the Jews, even the Inquisition. Christ himself was a pioneer in the fight against Judaism.” (ibid, p. 146)

An interesting quotation appears in the Encyclopedia Britannica under “German Christians:”

“Protestants who attempted to subordinate church policy to the political exigencies of Nazi Germany. The German Christians’ Faith Movement, organized in 1932, was nationalistic and so anti-Semitic that extremists wished to repudiate the Old Testament and the Pauline Letters because of their Jewish authorship. In July 1933 the state territorial churches merged to form the German Evangelical Church, and in September the German Christian candidate, Ludwig Muller, became Reichsbishop. Muller’s efforts to make the church an instrument of Nazi policy were resisted by the Confessing Church, under the leadership of Martin Niemoller. After World War II the German Christian Church party was banned.”

Are present day Christian attitudes towards the Jews any better?  Liberals say they are, and they continue to call for tolerance and understanding.  But the fundamentalists are hindering and harming the progress that has been made in Christian-Jewish relationships.  By their desire to convert the Jew, they prove themselves to be the most anti-Semitic of all Christian groups, for the whole idea of conversion is anti-Semitic.

Christian missionary love for the Jew is a kind of hatred.  It loves the Jew, yet hates him for being what he is.  It sees him as blind and in need of being changed into a believer.  When missionary efforts failed, or are foiled, the love for the Jew quickly turns to hatred and contempt.

We are not deceived by the ‘new Christians’ of today’s hand-clapping fundamentalists.  They teach the same anti-Semitic doctrines as the church of yesteryear.  Their tactics are different but we know that the message is the same.  Any Jew who can pay homage to the New Testament or allow himself to believe in it, is, in my opinion in the same category as a Jew who tries to justify Hitler’s Mein Kampf or, as one who covers up for the deeds of the Nazis.

More Jews have been affected, hurt or killed, in the name of Christ and his church during the last two thousand years than those massacred by the Nazis.  Yet there are Jews, who being so alienated from their own people, have overlooked this fact and have joined themselves to the church with its built-in anti-Semitism.

To imagine that this Jewish self curse and curse on their children (Matthew 27:25) was actually uttered by any group of Jews is a violation of respect for the human intellect and a travesty.  Because of the depth and spread of this Christian belief – and the evil it has wrought – it is most necessary to refute and discredit Matthew 27:25 beyond any shadow of doubt.

The Jewish child is the ‘hero’ of the Brith Milah (Circumcision): the Bar-Mitzvah and nowadays the Bat-Mitzvah (Confirmation of male and female children as Subjects of the Commandment); the Passover Seder (Feast of Mazot); and the Pidyon ha’Ben (Redemption of the First-born son)...

There is scarcely a single religious rite of the Jew that is complete without the participation of the child.  An entire chapter of the Holy Scriptures, “Proverbs,” is devoted to the proper upbringing of the Jewish child - its first seven chapters are addressed to “My Son”.  Even after the Jew’s passing from his life the connection between parent and child is perpetuated through the son’s recital of the Kaddish prayer in memory of the departed parent.  Thus, from birth to after death in a never-ending cycle, the Jew and his child are inseparable.  It has always been so since Judaism began and it will always be so...

As for the “Blood curse” (Matthew 27:25), oceans of ink have been expended by bible scholars Christian and Jewish - starting two centuries ago, to demonstrate that this self-curse and curse on the children of Israel could never have been uttered. Despite this, rivers of Jewish blood have been spilled by a blind and unbending fanaticism that persisted, and still persists, in perpetuating the fiction that the self-curse was actually voiced. Since the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestant sects consider every word in the New Testament to be the “Word of God,” Matthew 27:25 is a dogma of the church.

They care because they know that Adolf Hitler’s mendacious claim: “I believe that I am today acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord…” has Matthew 27:25 at its base. (A. Hitler, MEIN KAMPF, pg. 65; cf.  E.H. Flannery, op. cit. pg. 2 1 0).

Harenberg continues: “It was Rudolf Bultmann who stated in 1921, with the help of the form critical method which he had developed, that this curse was never spoken” (c.f R. Bultrnann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, Harper, 1963, pg. 282).

The French historian Charles Guignebert wrote in 1935 about Matthew 27:25 directly, and of other passages of the same ilk in the New Testament, as follows: “Few of the sayings of the Gospels have done more harm than these, and yet they are only the invention of a redactor”. (C. Guignebert, Jesus, op. cit., pg. 470) Hitler used Jesus’ name quite glibly to justify his unspeakable crimes.

It was the evangelist Matthew, not a redactor, who “invented” verse 27:25, but no matter, the damage is the same regardless of who the ‘inventor’ really was.  The pity of it is that all anti-Semitic monsters use (and have used) the “poison” that is found in Christianity’s Holy Book as propaganda to further their nefarious ends.  Hitler was but one of many.

A million of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were children.

 

Footnotes:

1.   To imagine that this self curse and curse on their children (Matthew 27:25) was actually uttered by any group of Jews is a violation of respect for the human intellect and a travesty.  Because of the depth and spread of this Christian belief – and the evil it has wrought – it is most necessary to refute and discredit Matthew 27:25 - beyond any shadow of doubt.

2.  Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi SS official in charge of deporting European Jewry. Germany, 1943. Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to death and was executed by hanging on June 1, 1962.

 

 


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