The idea that the New Testament is antisemitic is a controversy that has emerged in the aftermath of the Holocaust and is often associated with a thesis put forward by Rosemary Ruether.
[3] Factional agendas underpin the writing of the canonical texts, and the various New Testament documents are windows into the conflict and debates of that period.
Professor Lillian C. Freudmann, author of Antisemitism in the New Testament (University Press of America, 1994) has published a study of such verses and the effects that they have had in the Christian community throughout history.
[14] Paul H. Jones writes:[15] Although Mark depicts all of the Jewish groups united in their opposition to Jesus, his passion narratives are not "overtly" anti-Jewish, since they can be interpreted as falling within the range of "acceptable" intra-Jewish disputes.
How can you escape being sentenced to hell?Certain passages which speak of the destruction of Jerusalem have elements that are interpreted as indications of Matthew's anti-Judaic attitudes.
[29]Douglas Hare noted that the Gospel of Matthew avoids sociological explanations for persecution:[30] Only the theological cause, the obduracy of Israel is of interest to the author.
He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is you are not of God.Although the modern consensus is that the term "Ioudaioi" (Jews) in John refers exclusively to religious authorities,[41] the basis for this statement has been challenged and John's use of the term "Ioudaioi" remains a complex and debated area of biblical scholarship, though it is accepted that it is not a case of antisemitism.
As John wrote his Gospel after these events, for a gentile audience, he spoke generically of Jews, rather than specifying a group within Judaism that no longer existed and that would have been unfamiliar to his readers.
Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God's wrath has overtaken them at last.The text appears somewhat anomalous compared to the general tone of thanksgiving, in that we have a diatribe against persecutors identified as Jews.
Gene Green, Ernest Best, T. Holtz, Amy Downey variously say that it resonates with Old Testament themes, plays on Jewish fears of being the "privileged people of God" and typical of an argumentative style shared by Greeks and Jews alike and thus, in Downey's words, exemplifying an intracultural clash between Paul the Jew and Jewish leaders opposing the propagation of Gospel ideas in both Judea and Thessalonia.
Lillian Freudmann thinks that it in trying to argue the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, it twisted Old Testament passages in a way that transmitted an anti-Torah antisemitism.
John Gager reads it as a polemic against Judaism, not the Jewish people, and regards it as the most important anti-Judaizing text of early Christianity.
[54] The traditional interpretation upheld until recently by a majority of scholars took this to denote Jews hostile to Christians, and specifically to the Jewish communities of Smyrna (2:9) and Philadelphia (3:9).
[55][56][57] In the Smyrna passage, according to Koester, those claiming to be Jews probably bore in their traits the usual markers of kinship, circumcision, dietary restriction and Sabbath observance, but are taken to task for denouncing the Christian community to the Roman authorities to get them arrested.
[citation needed] Unlike the other evangelists who blame Jews for Christ's death, the author of Revelation, drawing on old patterns of late Jewish eschatological imagery, assigns responsibility for his death to Romans and says they are abetted by an internal enemy who feign to be God's people while acting as agents of Satan, a theme also present in the literature of the Qumran sectaries.
David Frankfurter has revived the old argument of Ferdinand Baur by endorsing the view that in fact the members of Satan's synagogue are mostly gentiles, claiming Israel's legacy while rebuffing religious practices that are obligatory for Jews.
Pagels concludes that the evidence weighs in favour of reading the 'synagogue of Satan' as referring to gentile converts to the Pauline version of the Jesus movement, who denominate themselves as 'those of Christ/Christians', a terminology never used by John of Patmos.
[65][66]Norman A. Beck, professor of theology and classical languages at Texas Lutheran University, has proposed that Christian lectionaries remove what he calls "… the specific texts identified as most problematic …".
[67] Beck identifies what he deems to be offensive passages in the New Testament and indicates the instances in which these texts or portions thereof are included in major lectionary series.
Daniel Goldhagen, former associate professor of Political Science at Harvard University, also suggested in his book A Moral Reckoning that the Roman Catholic Church should change its doctrine and the accepted Biblical canon to excise statements he labels as antisemitic – he counts some 450 such passages in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts of the Apostles alone[68] – to indicate that "The Jews' way to God is as legitimate as the Christian way".
[69] The Church of England Faith and Order Commission document God's Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian-Jewish Relations addresses the matter of New Testament texts and connection to antisemitism: "Varying theological emphases within the Church of England regarding the doctrine of scriptural interpretation and authority may have a bearing on how such concerns are addressed.
[71] A. Roy Eckardt, a writer in the field of Jewish-Christian relations,[72] said that the foundation of antisemitism and responsibility for the Holocaust lies ultimately in the New Testament.
[73] Eckardt insisted that Christian repentance must include a reexamination of basic theological attitudes toward Jews and the New Testament in order to deal effectively with antisemitism.