Part I: The Generative Model of âthe jewsâ One
âThe jewsâ in Christian Theology and Myth
As theology and myth pay unequal attention to events and personages within one religious system, the importance of references to âthe jewsâ in creeds may vary by writer, but the actor called âthe jewsâ is central to the Christian myth. The narrative structure of this myth shapes oneâs idea of âthe jewsâ even without exposure to theology, permitting the imageâs survival in post-Christian cultures. The Christian myth originates in Paulâs doctrine, which combines Jesusâ deification with the view of his death as a cosmic sacrifice whereby Evil tries to defeat Good, unwittingly causing a salvific event (I Cor. 2:8). In this myth, âthe jewsâ commit deicide, âkilling the Lord Jesus [. . .] and opposing all menâ (I Thes. 2:14â16). In other words, âthe jewsâ are cast in the stock mythic role of a power that brings about the necessary redemptive death of a deity. Pairing Jesus and âthe jewsâ in a deicidal relationship, the Christian myth continues the tradition of such pairs in world mythology (compare Osiris and Set, Baal and Mot, Balder and Loki, and so on).
As Jesusâ persecutors, âthe jewsâ serve Satan, whose narrative role is transparent in his very nameâthe Hebrew
stn and the Greek
diabolos both have the root meaning akin to that of the English
opponent. Such identification with a narrative function makes the motives of âthe jewsâ as an
actor quite incidentalânarrative logic overshadows motivation. Indeed, as Frank Kermode shows, the basic Christian story is driven by
actants, not
actors. In Kermodeâs estimate there was no Judas in the earliest accounts of Jesusâ death. Judas materialized only gradually, reflecting the Christian mythâs fusion of the figure of betrayal, committed by all the apostles who did not share Jesusâ fate, with that of ritual sacrifice.
1 Judas is chosen as Satanâs proxy in the basic Christian story
because his hellenized name derives from the patriarch and tribe of Judah, making him a symbol of âthe jews.â This etymology is still evident in the homonymous relationship of the terms
(Jews) and
(Judas) in east Slavic folklore and early modern Russian drama, which often combine them into one phrase:
(Judas-Jew),
(Jews-Judases).
2 In the Gospels, âthe jewsâ are a negative signifier referring to the Jewish religious community as a symbol of all that resists Christ. Lukeâs âjewsâ deliver (3:13), deny (3:13â14), betray (7:52), condemn (13:27), kill (2:23; 7:52; 10:39; 13:28), and crucify (2:23; 2:36; 4:10; 5:30; 10:39) Jesus, while the Romans are exonerated (3:13; 13:28). In John, this usage implies that âthe jewsâ as a people oppose Jesus, clamor for his blood (19:14f.), and execute him (19:16). Matthew, likewise, suggests that not just their leaders but âthe jewsâ as a whole wish Jesus dead: âAll the people answered, âHis blood be on us and on our children!ââ (27:25). Like Luke, John exculpates the Romans. His Pilate refuses to crucify Jesus under Roman law, but âthe jewsâ insist that he die under their own law of blasphemy. The intimidated and aggrieved Pilate gives Jesus âto them to be crucifiedâ but has Jesusâ title, âKing of the Jews,â affixed to the cross in confirmation of his messianic claim (19:6â22). The same exculpation of the Romans marks the apocryphal gospels and European folklore. East Slavic traditions see âthe jewsâ as the only persecutors of Jesus, unlike the Romans, who either appear as his helpless friends or become indistinguishable from âthe jews.â Thus, Pilate figures in the popular imagination as âa Jewish princeâ and âa Jewish bishopâ (compare âthe rich Jew named Pilateâ of English ballads) flanked by âthe Pilate-Jewsâ (zhidy-pilatyri, zhidy-stropilaty).3
Algirdas Greimasâs view that an actor can personify several actants is especially pertinent for the narrative functions of Helper and Opponent. Secondary by definition, both functions are contingent on the Subject, being the projections of the Subjectâs desire to act (Helper) and of the Subjectâs doubt vis-Ă -vis this desire (Opponent).4 Such narrative logic informs the basic premise of the Christian myth: since Jesusâ death is paramount to universal redemption, his slayers play simultaneously the Helper and the Opponent. Paul deals with this axiological paradox, wherein the executioner is both a villain and a benefactor, by arguing that Jesusâ foes act unwittingly, as âGodâs enemies for your sakeâ (Rom. 11:28). His view enables Luke (7:52), Matthew (26:54), and Mark (14:49) to present the crime of âthe jewsâ as an act that both challenges Godâs authority and follows Godâs plan. This logic also goes into explaining Satanâs actions as part of the divine plan to strengthen the true faith (Helper) by putting it to test (Opponent).5 Using Greimasâs schema of narrative functions, the structure of the basic Christian story can be represented as follows:
Immanent level (actants)
Subject
Object
Sender
Receiver
Opponent
Helper
Apparent level (actors)
Jesus
Redemption
God
Humanity
Satan, Judas, âthe jewsâ
God, Mary, Joseph, Apostles, Followers, Romans, Satan, Judas, âthe jewsâ
The Evangelistsâ appointment of âthe jewsâ as an actor embodying two opposite functions is dictated by Christianityâs paradoxical dependency on its rejected ancestor-faith. Judaism is so crucial to the Christian self-image that even the hatred its practitioners allegedly nurture for Jesus and his religion serves to reassure Christians in their identity. This hatred shows that âthe jewsâ pay unremitting attention to Christianity, fearing and therefore confirming its righteousness. âJudaism defines itself in opposition to Christianity. [. . .] The Jews are not and cannot be indifferent to Christianity,â intones Sergei Bulgakov, projecting his obsession with the false cult of âthe jewsâ on the Jewish tradition, whose attitudes toward Christianity historically range from complete indifference to defensive polemics in the periods of increased Christian attacks.6 In Rosemary Ruetherâs view, Christian anti-Judaism expresses a need to legitimize the new religion in Jewish terms by insisting that Christological reading reveals the true meaning of the Jewish Scriptures. As long as the practitioners of Judaism do not share this reading, the validity of Christianity remains problematic. Such a role makes âthe jewsâ a repository of religious doubt. âIn this sense,â writes Ruether, âthe Jews do indeed âkill Christâ for the Christian, since they preserve the memory of the original biblical meaning of the word Messiah which must judge present history and society as still unredeemed. For Judaism, Jesus cannot have been the Messiah, because the times remain unredeemed and neither he nor anything that came from him has yet altered that fact.â7 Let us qualify this statement by adding that even if Judaism had ceased to be actively practiced, Christianity would still have needed its hermeneutic âjewsâ to deal with its basic aporia, namely, that Christâs coming did not restore humanity to its prelapsarian state. But in the context of Judaismâs coexistence with Christianity, the deicide charge indeed articulates the awareness that Jewish disbelief challenges Christian belief. Consequently, the quality of âthe jewsâ as a theological scapegoat reinforces their narrative role, since the Opponent is little more than the destination for the Subjectâs displaced doubt about the attainment of the Object.
The scapegoat is a repository for the negative part of the human psyche, which it helps to purify by making evil visible (conscious) and therefore removable. John Chrysostom articulates this scapegoat function of âthe jewsâ when he refers to their worship as polluted and diseased.8 But if theology projects on âthe jewsâ the doubt about its own validity, the Christian myth sends their way the guilt of all those who implicitly benefit from Jesusâ death, which has all the trappings of a human sacrifice, as confirmed by Johnâs chronology, where this death coincides with the slaying of the Passover Lamb (19:32â36). As key participants in this human sacrifice, âthe jewsâ act out the mythical role described by Hyam Maccoby as âthe sacred executionerâ and by RenĂ© Girard as âthe secondary scapegoatââthey perform a socially required yet reprehensible task, assuming the blame for the slaying, which benefits the society at large.9
Like the mythical Sacred Executioner, âthe jewsâ are both untouchable and degraded. This degradation is expressed by the metaphysical dispossession that strikes âthe jewsâ as divine punishment for their deicidal crime: Godâs covenant with Abraham passes onto Christians, who become the new and true Israel. As a result, the Christian revision of Jewish sacred history focuses on the polemical appropriation of the Jewish tradition and pushes the problem of authenticity to center stage. The correct (authentic) interpreter of the Jewish Scriptures is also the rightful heir to Godâs promises. Thus hinging on the metaphysical dispossession of âthe jews,â Christian identity is firmly anchored in the logic of a family feud over inheritance, a feud in which âthe jews,â in their quality of the carriers of the ancestor-faith, are alternately imagined as a parent-figure and an elder sibling.
This imaginative dynamic of filial strife was especially urgent in cultures that valued patrilineal heritage, considering that the mystery of Jesusâ birth was far from universally accepted in early Christianity. Repressed doubt about the authenticity of Jesusâ claim to divine parentage is echoed in the ambiguous status of God the father in the Christian myth. Godâs insistence on the death of his son to expiate the sins of humanity is a figure of anxiety at the unutterable thought that he is rejecting Jesusâ filial claim and with it the Christian claim to the status of the verus Israel. This anxiety is taboo in Christian theology, which speaks instead of Godâs love for humanity as manifest in the sacrifice of his son. As a result, the taboo apprehension and animosity toward a cruel and rejecting God the father are displaced on his devotees and ever-suspected favorites, âthe jews.â Dominated by the male imagination, the basic Christian story thus furnishes the dramatis personae to animate the private oedipal psychodramas of its recipients. A Christian male, encouraged to identify with Jesus, can associate God the father with âthe jewsâ as Christianityâs parent-figure, given that ambivalence toward parents, expressed in simultaneous gratitude and resentment, is mirrored in the dualism of the narrative role of âthe jewsâ as Christâs Opponent-Helper.10
Take, for example, the memoirs of Russiaâs grand duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich Romanov, who wrote, recalling his childhood:
Before coming into contact with the official Church, I associated the word Jew with the figure of the old smiling man who used to bring chickens, ducks, and other poultry to our Tiflis palace. I felt sincere affection for his kind, wrinkly face and could not have thought that Judas had been his forefather. My catechism teacher, however, told me daily about the suffering of Christ. He corrupted my infantile imagination until I saw every Jew as killer and torturer. He impatiently rejected my timid appeals to the Sermon on the Mount: âYes, Christ told us to love our enemies,â father Georgii Titov would say, âbut this must not change our view of the Jews.â11
Ostensibly, this is an account of formal religious instruction. But the author must have had prior exposures to the basic Christian story, being aware of Judas as the forefather of âthe jews,â who are described here in tune with their mythical statusâan aged paternal figure that both nourishes and slays (the fowl has been or will be killed). Furthermore, there is no proof, other than the writerâs assumption, that the purveyor of poultry was actually Jewish. The claim is doubtful in light of the Russian imperial courtâs intense Judeophobia and its consequent fear of âjewishâ pollution. It is probable that the child saw the purveyor as âjewishâ because he had the qualities that the young Christian associated with âthe jews.â
Such examples of the place of âthe jewsâ in the oedipal imaginary of male Christians are aplenty. We find one in Johann Wolfgang Goetheâs memoirs, Dichtung und Warheit (Poetry and truth, 1811). The author recalls his childish horror of âthe jewsâ imagined as a parent-figure whose âcruelty toward Christian childrenâ he knew from the ritual-murder mural in Frankfurtâs bridge tower. Another example hails from Nikolai Leskovâs unfinished autobiographical sketch whose young hero, living far from the Pale of Settlement, is acutely aware of the danger posed by âthe jewsâ to Christian children. It may not be an accident that the oedipal role of âthe jewsâ was first laid bare and parodied in art by a woman. Resentful of his fatherâs sacrifice of paternal duties to âthe affairs of the nationâ (compare Godâs sacrifice of his son to the greater good), the young hero of Maria Edgeworthâs novel Harrington (1817) is given to hysterical fits at the sound of âjewishâ old-clothes men under his windows. After his mother bribes one such trader to make him disappear, âthe jewsâ arrive en masse to seek similar rewards, until it turns out that they are actually Christian beggars dressed up âas like [. . .] a malicious, revengeful, ominous-looking Shylock as ever whetted his knife.â12
The initial rationalization for the actorial appointment of âthe jewsâ is provided in the New Testament and patristic literature. By the fifth century, the Church doctrine about Judaism and its practitioners was in place. Scattered in literature from Paul to Augustine and never set forth in one document, this doctrine nevertheless shapes ecclesiastical teaching about Judaism and civil legislation concerning Europeâs Jewish communities.13 Moreover, this doctrineâs principal themes furnish the invariant situations and rudimentary lexicon to describe âthe jews.â These situations and vocabulary, in turn, sow the seeds of the homiletic, artistic, and folk narratives in which âthe jewsâ receive further imaginative development through analogical thinking informed by psychological archetypes, animal symbolism, and human stereotypes. The principal themes of the Church doctrine about Judaism and its adherents include: the substitution of Judaism by Christianity; the inability of âthe jewsâ to understand their own Scriptures; the deicidal nature of âthe jewsâ; the divine punishment visited upon them; and the role of âthe jewsâ as witnesses to the truth of Christianity.
Examining these themes with an eye on their narrative and descriptive potential, we must keep in mind that the transformation of the theological abstraction called âthe jewsâ into the eponymous actor of homiletic, popular, and artistic narratives follows two basic principles: the realization of metaphors through the literalist application of symbolic language, and the possibility of a dual interpretation for each quality attributed to âthe jewsââa duality engendered by the actorâs narrative function of the Helper-Opponent.
The Replacement and Supersession of Judaism by Christianity
Christian substitution theology holds that at the time of Jesus Judaism was a deg...