Jews and Gentiles in the Early Jesus Movement

An Unintended Journey

A. Bibliowicz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349448036, 9781137281098
• eBook ISBN: 9781137281104
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

This volume offers new insights on Jewish-Gentile relations and the evolution of belief in the early Jesus movement, suggesting that the New Testament reflects the early stages of a Gentile challenge to the authority and legitimacy of the descendants of Jesus' disciples and first followers as the exclusive guardians and interpreters of his legacy.

Chapter 1

The Anti-Jewish Strand in the New Testament

The anti-Jewish strand that we encounter in the New Testament has two manifestations:

1. Segments that contain language that disparages Jews, Judaism, or Jewish beliefs and traditions. The segments in this chapter include some of the best-known instances of anti-Jewish bias in the New Testament. The charts that follow are my summary of 233 segments identified by N. Beck as reflective of anti-Jewish textual bias¹; 44 segments are redundancies that originate in the Synoptic phenomenon. They do, however, contribute independently to the anti-Jewish impact of the texts.

2. Themes, motifs, and theological constructs that disparage Jews, Judaism, or Jewish beliefs and traditions. These will be introduced in the chapters ahead.

The anti-Jewish strand is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon that has six main sources:²

1. Polemic by the Jewish followers of Jesus against the Judean establishment.

2. Polemic by Gentile believers against the Jewish establishment of the Jesus movement, its beliefs, and traditions.

3. Appropriation Theology—The claim that Pauline-Lukan believers in Jesus replaced the Jewish followers of Jesus as the New Israel, as God’s chosen.

4. Supersession Theology—The view that the Pauline-Lukan interpretation of Jesus’s legacy replaced and annulled the beliefs and traditions of Jesus’s disciples and first followers.

5. Decontextualization and subversion of the Judean tradition of self-criticism and prophetic anti-establishment censure.

6. Loss of context, fusion, confusion, and misinterpretation of these rhetorical layers resulting in their projection onto Judaism.

Throughout the texts we will survey, these sources will surface, and resurface, in a variety of configurations. Intertwined, layered, appropriated, projected, retrojected, subverted, or de-contextualized they will challenge our ability to understand and discuss the emergence and the evolution of the anti-Jewish strand. This layered trajectory created the puzzling collage of anti-Jewish polemic that we encounter in the New Testament texts. Disputes among Jews about Jesus (was Jesus the messiah or not), disputes among differing followers of Jesus (was Jesus human, divine, or both), and disputes about what theological worldview should be adopted (Jewish, Pauline, or Gnostic) lay fused and intertwined in the authoritative texts.

Here are some of the better known examples of the anti-Jewish strand in the New Testament:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matt. 3:7–10)

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to people, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? (Matt. 23:27–33)

Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some of whom you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation. (Matt. 23:34–36)

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. (Matt. 23:37–38)

Jesus said to them [i.e., the “Jews”], “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is due to the fact you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, due to the fact there is no truth in him . . . He who is of God hears t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Foreword  Norman A. Beck
• Foreword  Clark M. Williamson
• Personal Introduction
• Preview
• The Protagonists
• Timeline
• Acknowledgments
• 1  The Anti-Jewish Strand in the New Testament
• 2  The Anti-Jewish Strand—The First Years
• 3  The Anti-Judaic Strand in Paul
• 4  The Anti-Judaic Strand in Mark: The Need to Explain
• 5  The Anti-Judaic Strand in Matthew: The Saga of the Jewish Followers of Jesus
• 6  The Anti-Judaic Strand in Luke/Acts: Yearning for Respectability
• 7  The Anti-Judaic Strand in John: Estrangement
• 8  The Anti-Judaic Strand in Revelation: Judaism within
• 9  The Anti-Jewish Strand—The Embryonic Stage Summary
• 10  Supersession
• 11  The Anti-Jewish Strand in Hebrews
• 12  The Anti-Jewish Strand in Barnabas
• 13  The Second-Century Protagonists
• 14  The Anti-Jewish Strand in Ignatius
• 15  The Anti-Jewish Strand in Justin: The Dialogue with Trypho the Jew
• 16  The Anti-Jewish Strand in Melito
• 17  The Anti-Jewish Strand in Chrysostom
• 18  Recapitulation
• Appendix I: Paul in Modern Scholarship
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Thematic Index