The Bible, Israel, and Antisemitism: Part 10: The God-Killers
[Pilate] took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27.24-25)
Matthew here portrays the Jewish crowd accepting responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, and Peter (Acts 2.22-23; 3.13-15; 4.10), Stephen (Acts 7.52) and Paul (1 Thessalonians 2.14-15) all blame the Jews for Jesus’ death.
The Jewish mob cried out in the heat of the moment, never thinking there would be serious consequences for crucifying a rabbi from the backwoods of Galilee. He would be crucified as so many other troublemakers had been and life would go on.
But Jesus had predicted that the entire nation would experience the wrath of God for rejecting Him: the Temple would be destroyed (AD 70), the Jewish state dismantled (AD 136), and the Jews dispersed from their ancient land to wander among the nations without a land of their own (e.g. Luke 21.24).
In the last half of the second century, Melito, bishop of Sardis, preached an Easter sermon (105 paragraphs long) in which he blamed the Jews for deicide (i.e. killing God). Melito says explicitly in paragraph 96:
The One who hung the earth in space, is Himself hanged; the one who fixed the heavens in place, is Himself impaled; the one who firmly fixed all things, is Himself firmly fixed to the tree. The Lord is insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel. (Melito, Peri Pascha, paragraph 96)
When Melito preached this, Christianity, still illegal, had little direct impact on Roman political practice. But as Christianity gained favor, being legally recognized by Emperor Constantine (AD 325) and then being made the official religion of the Empire by Emperor Theodosius I (AD 380), Christians braided together the strands I have mentioned in this blog series to generate a powerful brand of antisemitism.
A virulent example of this Christian antisemitism was Martin Luther’s pamphlet “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543). Luther’s hatred of the Jews as Christ-killers has been cited by some scholars as a forerunner of the German antisemitism of Hitler and the Nazis.
The rationale of this antisemitism was simple: since God judged the Jews for being God-killers (or Christ-killers), Christians should be suspicious of Jews and have a right to mistreat them.
This antisemitic rationale is flawed at two key points. First, although the Jewish leadership and the mob took responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus and brought divine judgment on the Jewish state, Scripture never says, nor does it logically follow, that every Jewish individual through the ages bears that responsibility or is individually cursed by God. “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18.20).
Second, God’s judgment upon a nation doesn’t give others a right to commit evil against that nation. God raised up both Assyria (Isaiah 10.1-6) and Babylon (Jeremiah 25.8-14) to judge Israel and Judah for their sins. But then God turned around and judged those nations for the arrogance and cruelty with which they carried out those judgments (Assyria in Isaiah 10.7-19 and the entire book of Nahum; Babylon in Jeremiah 50.29-51.24 and the entire book of Habakkuk).
God also warned His own people several times that being the instrument of God’s judgment doesn’t exempt YOU from judgment for your own bad behavior (e.g. Hosea 2; Amos 2).
Despite these two truths, for centuries European Christians, using this rationale and believing they were doing nothing wrong, demonized, ostracized, and cruelly mistreated the wandering Jews.
This religious antisemitism served as the foundation of the more secularized European antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries. More on that in the next blog…
Matthew here portrays the Jewish crowd accepting responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, and Peter (Acts 2.22-23; 3.13-15; 4.10), Stephen (Acts 7.52) and Paul (1 Thessalonians 2.14-15) all blame the Jews for Jesus’ death.
The Jewish mob cried out in the heat of the moment, never thinking there would be serious consequences for crucifying a rabbi from the backwoods of Galilee. He would be crucified as so many other troublemakers had been and life would go on.
But Jesus had predicted that the entire nation would experience the wrath of God for rejecting Him: the Temple would be destroyed (AD 70), the Jewish state dismantled (AD 136), and the Jews dispersed from their ancient land to wander among the nations without a land of their own (e.g. Luke 21.24).
In the last half of the second century, Melito, bishop of Sardis, preached an Easter sermon (105 paragraphs long) in which he blamed the Jews for deicide (i.e. killing God). Melito says explicitly in paragraph 96:
The One who hung the earth in space, is Himself hanged; the one who fixed the heavens in place, is Himself impaled; the one who firmly fixed all things, is Himself firmly fixed to the tree. The Lord is insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel. (Melito, Peri Pascha, paragraph 96)
When Melito preached this, Christianity, still illegal, had little direct impact on Roman political practice. But as Christianity gained favor, being legally recognized by Emperor Constantine (AD 325) and then being made the official religion of the Empire by Emperor Theodosius I (AD 380), Christians braided together the strands I have mentioned in this blog series to generate a powerful brand of antisemitism.
A virulent example of this Christian antisemitism was Martin Luther’s pamphlet “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543). Luther’s hatred of the Jews as Christ-killers has been cited by some scholars as a forerunner of the German antisemitism of Hitler and the Nazis.
The rationale of this antisemitism was simple: since God judged the Jews for being God-killers (or Christ-killers), Christians should be suspicious of Jews and have a right to mistreat them.
This antisemitic rationale is flawed at two key points. First, although the Jewish leadership and the mob took responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus and brought divine judgment on the Jewish state, Scripture never says, nor does it logically follow, that every Jewish individual through the ages bears that responsibility or is individually cursed by God. “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18.20).
Second, God’s judgment upon a nation doesn’t give others a right to commit evil against that nation. God raised up both Assyria (Isaiah 10.1-6) and Babylon (Jeremiah 25.8-14) to judge Israel and Judah for their sins. But then God turned around and judged those nations for the arrogance and cruelty with which they carried out those judgments (Assyria in Isaiah 10.7-19 and the entire book of Nahum; Babylon in Jeremiah 50.29-51.24 and the entire book of Habakkuk).
God also warned His own people several times that being the instrument of God’s judgment doesn’t exempt YOU from judgment for your own bad behavior (e.g. Hosea 2; Amos 2).
Despite these two truths, for centuries European Christians, using this rationale and believing they were doing nothing wrong, demonized, ostracized, and cruelly mistreated the wandering Jews.
This religious antisemitism served as the foundation of the more secularized European antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries. More on that in the next blog…