Christian anti-Judaism Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by
- •
- Antisemitism (Prejudice), Ancient Judaism, Christian anti-Judaism, History of Antisemitism

Jules Isaac est entré dans l’histoire comme celui qui a joué un rôle crucial pour la mise à l’ordre du jour d’un texte sur les juifs au Concile Vatican II. Nombre de ses propositions inscrites dans Jésus et Israël ont trouvé leur réponse dans les différents textes du Magistère. On peut affirmer que l’Église catholique a délibérément rejeté aujourd’hui l’enseignement du mépris. Jules Isaac appartient-il donc maintenant au passé ou bien aurait-il encore quelque chose à dire pour la théologie chrétienne du Judaïsme.

Der 2004 verstorbene Judaistik-Professor Hyam Maccoby liefert in seinem Werk eine „anthropologische“ (Maccoby 2019, 177) Analyse der Entstehung des Antisemitismus. Der anthropologische Zugang, so Maccoby, befasst sich mit Mythen und Bräuchen vornehmlich vormoderner Gesellschaften in vergleichender Perspektive. Im Zentrum stehen dabei Opferkulte und Kastenstrukturen, die herangezogen werden, um die Spezifik der Judenfeindschaft zu untersuchen. Die vergleichende Perspektive führt Maccoby dazu, gegen postkoloniale Nivellierungen oder bloße Xenophobie-Theorien (177, 219), die Spezifik des Antisemitismus herauszuarbeiten, die ihm zufolge in der einmaligen Kombination auch anderweitig anzutreffender Elemente besteht, nämlich des bestimmten Usurpationsmythos einer siegreichen Mehrheit, eines theologisch-gesellschaftlich begründeten Pariastatus einer Minderheit und des Mythos vom „Heiligen Henker“. (216)

The Jewish life of Jesus (Toledoth Yeshu) constitutes one of the most important Jewish anti-Christian literary traditions. Its development can be followed in the long run of Jewish-Christian relations and polemics from late antiquity to the modern period. Toledoth Yeshu presents us with a Jewish account of Christianity, mocking Jesus as an illegitimate child and a charlatan, and describing his disciples as a bunch of violent rogues. A “best-seller” among medieval Jews, Toledoth Yeshu was also discussed by Christian scholars with a view to expose the alleged Jewish hatred of Christianity in their own anti-Jewish polemics. In the Enlightenment context, Toledoth Yeshu came to be subverted by authors such as Voltaire, with the intention to foster their critique of religion and question the historical status of the biblical narrative.
Whereas Toledoth Yeshu has most often been studied from a text-critical perspective, the present conference aims to go beyond philological debates and explore the place and function of Toledoth Yeshu within the different historical and cultural contexts in which it surfaces and circulates. This conference will thus connect recent inquiries into this text to wider issues pertaining to the historical construction, transformation, and preservation of religious identities, and their inherent discourses on gender, ethnicity, and religion.

- by Elias H. Füllenbach
- •
- Christian anti-Judaism, Wittenberg, judensau
- by Ruth Karras
- •
- Jewish Studies, Translation Studies, Medieval History, Medieval Studies

Because later polemics established Jews and Christians as binary opposites, distinguished largely by their views on God’s body, scholars have not sufficiently explored how other Jews in the early Roman period, who stood outside the Jesus movement, conceived of how the divine could become embodied on earth. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria often operates as the quintessential representative of a Jew who stressed God’s absolute incorporeality. Here I demonstrate how Philo also presents a means by which a part of Israel’s God could become united with human materiality, showing how the patriarchs and Moses function as his paradigms. This evidence suggests that scholarship on divine embodiment has been limited by knowledge of later developments in Christian theology. Incarnational formulas, like that found in John 1:14 were not the only way that Jews in the first and second century CE understood that God could become united with human form.

- by Deborah Forger
- •
- Divination, Jewish Mysticism, Embodiment, Philo of Alexandria

This article offers a new way to explore the category of “Jewish Christians,” by examining how two fourth-century Syrian authors, namely John Chrysostom and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilist, each respectively made sense of Jesus’s harsh treatment of a suffering Roman Syrian woman, first recounted in Mark 7:24–30 and Matthew 15:21–28. In the biblical retellings of the story, when a distraught gentile mother approaches Jesus to solicit his aid in alleviating the torments of her demon possessed daughter, Jesus does not respond with the alacrity one would expect. Instead, he utterly humiliates her, insinuating that she was less than a human, no better than a dog. My analysis reveals that while the former distanced Jesus’s actions from his Jewish ethnicity, the latter suggests the woman received Jesus’s aid only after she becomes a “Jew” herself. Since the two authors lived in chronological and geographical proximity to one another, I suggest that their different exegetical responses shed light onto the dynamic manner in which Christian and Jewish identity formation played out in the Roman Syrian context, thereby complicating past assumptions that the parting of the ways between these two religions occurred in a manner that was unilinear in character and global in scope. The evidence suggests instead that, in Roman Syria at least, efforts to draw the boundary between who was a Jew and who was a Christian constituted a long and involved process, insinuating that—at least in this geographical context—these two designations were not fixed entities even as late as the fourth century CE.

- by Stephen Cooper
- •
- Marcion, Christian anti-Judaism, Marcionitism
- by Jay Michaelson
- •
- Law, Shakespeare, Legal History, Antisemitism (Prejudice)

The role of the Jews in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale extends well beyond the few direct mentions of them. A focus on representations of Jews, both explicit and implicit, in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale reveals new connections between the Pardoner’s sinfulness, his sexuality, and his relics. The essay begins with analysis of the tale’s allusion to the figure of the Wandering Jew through the figure of the Old Man. I argue for the Wandering Jew as a type of relic and for the encounter between the rioters and the Old Man as an exploration of what Caroline Bynum calls the “dynamic of seen and unseen” that animates medieval Christian materiality. The essay extends this examination of the relationship between anti-Judaism and Christian materiality to the Pardoner’s own “relics,” the prevalent oaths in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, Chaucer’s depiction of the Pardoner’s body, and, finally, to the bitter concluding exchange between the Host and the Pardoner. Through this analysis, I show how anti-Judaism both permeates and shapes Chaucer depiction of the Pardoner and the Pardoner’s tale.

In the narrative of the Fourth Gospel, Adele Reinhartz recognizes three major tales: the historical, the ecclesiological and the cosmological. In each of these tales, the collective “Jews” are generally portrayed as violent opponents to the narrative’s hero, Jesus. Throughout history, Christians have read the Fourth Gospel as anti-Jewish and used it to justify anti-Semitic violence. By reading the Fourth Gospel in light of the anthropological insights of mimetic theory, a new tale emerges that recounts the ministry of a prophet dismantling systems of scapegoating and blame by exposing the false gods of religious and political violence and revealing the true God as one who sympathizes with society’s victims. I call this the “anthropological tale” and, just as Reinhartz used the above tales as keys for interpreting Johannine symbols, I will use the anthropological tale to interpret the symbols of day, night, blindness and vision; symbols which the Johannine Jesus employs in his response to the disciples’ compulsion to blame in John 9. This reading will demonstrate how Jesus reveals the scapegoat mechanism in which an innocent victim (the man born blind) is blamed and expelled by violent victimizers. However, rather than blaming the victimizers and perpetuating the cycle of exclusion, Jesus continues to engage with the characters who appear to be villains.
I will demonstrate how this reading reveals the problematic nature of the ecclesiological tale which initially emerged as an attempt to explain the anti-Judaism in John by situating it within an intra-Jewish conflict. By connecting the healed man’s expulsion from the synagogue with the Birkat Ha-Minim, the ecclesiological tale ends up holding the first-century Jews responsible for John’s anti-Jewish language. So in an attempt to rescue the Fourth Gospel from the claws of anti-Jewish rhetoric, scholars have unwittingly given readers more reason to scapegoat and blame innocent victims by holding the Jews responsible for the Gospel’s anti-Judaism and thus have unwittingly done the very thing that Jesus refuses to condone in 9:3 when he says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” The ecclesiological tale, therefore, offers fuel for a way of thinking that, I will argue, John 9 ultimately seeks to dismantle.
Finally, I will demonstrate how the narrative invites the reader to identify with the narrative’s villains and victimizers in order to realize the ways that she or he is trapped in systems of scapegoating and blinded by blame.

The Prague pogrom of 1389 is considered the largest outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Bohemia prior to the World War II. Its extent can be ascertained also by the fact that this event triggered composition of numerous texts - in Latin, Czech and German, but also in Hebrew - which captured the experience of the pogrom from different perspectives. Six of such textual compositions exist in Hebrew and may be compared and contrasted in terms of the treatment of the event. They are anchored in various medieval Hebrew literary traditions, ranging from liturgical poetry (Et kol Ha-Tela of rabbi Avigdor Kara) to genuine historiography (Cemach David of David Ganz), and thus use distinct symbolic languages to describe the trauma of the pogrom. The same is true for the compositions in Latin and Czech, particularly for a corpus of five literary texts known as Passio Iudeorum Pragensium, which employs the Christian narrative models. Although the two sets of texts - in Hebrew and in Latin - emerged from distinct, even contradictory narrative traditions, they cannot be perceived as independent or unrelated. Rather, they are parts of a single discourse on the nature and purpose of the pogrom violence and strive to contain such a event, traumatic both for the Jews and the Christians. There are many examples of how the two sets of texts mutually interact, whether more indirectly, by employing the conflicting narrative traditions, or more directly, by referring one to another. I will introduce the Christian and the Jewish literary compositions pertaining to the pogrom of 1389 and examine their discursive interaction, showing where they conflict or overlap, and what may be deduced from such an interaction.

- by Evina Stein
- •
- Jewish Studies, Medieval History, Jewish - Christian Relations, Jewish historiography
- by Dr. Carolyn Sanzenbacher
- •
- Jewish - Christian Relations, Holocaust Studies, Holocaust, Antisemitism
- by Dr. Carolyn Sanzenbacher
- •
- Jewish - Christian Relations, Antisemitism, G.K. Chesterton, Jews
- by Allan Nadler
- •
- Christian anti-Judaism, History of Antisemitism

Il titolo del saggio "Una benedizione in mezzo alla Terra" riprende un passo del profeta Isaia, ed è connesso col suo piano spirituale, mentre il sottotitolo con quello teorico e tecnico. Da questo punto di vista, si tratta di uno studio specialistico, ma redatto con stile divulgativo, che partendo dalla ricerca dell'identità profonda di quel che oggi s'intende con il termine "Occidente" definisce alcuni dei nuovi elementi alla base del concetto di Sacro nella nostra società attuale. Ripercorrendo la storia fin dalle radici cristiane e al contempo eredi delle culture precedenti, cioè pagane, l'opera arriva a svelare come e perché nella civiltà cosiddetta occidentale si sia passati da una diffusa giudeofobia alla descrizione sempre più frequente come di una civiltà "giudaico-cristiana". La presa di coscienza di questo processo, dato non scontato e spesso frainteso anche a livello accademico, rivela infatti l'evoluzione, la percezione di sé e le prospettive stesse della suddetta civiltà. Passando quindi per la decodifica delle diverse dinamiche religiose e parareligiose connesse, comprese quelle che lo sono insospettabilmente come il neopaganesimo o il multiforme fenomeno new age, si fanno delle ipotesi sui possibili sviluppi futuri che riguardano non solo quella che fu un tempo la Cristianità ma anche le altre tradizioni che con questa sono in rapporto, a cominciare da quelle ebraica e islamica.

- by Erika Tritle
- •
- Jewish Studies, Medieval History, History of Christianity, Medieval Studies
- by David D. Navarro and +1
- •
- Anti-Judaism, Christian anti-Judaism, Isidoro De Sevilha

This book charts the history and influence of the most vitriolic and successful anti-Semitic polemic ever to have been printed in the early modern Hispanic world and offers the first critical edition and translation of the text into English. First printed in Madrid in 1674, the Centinela contra judíos (“Sentinel against the Jews”) was the work of the Franciscan Francisco de Torrejoncillo, who wrote it to defend the mission of the Spanish Inquisition, to call for the expansion of discriminatory racial statutes and, finally, to advocate in favour of the expulsion of all the descendants of converted Jews from Spain and its empire. Francisco de Torrejoncillo combined the existing racial, theological, social and economic strands within Spanish anti-Semitism to demonize the Jews and their converted descendants in Spain in a manner designed to provoke strong emotional responses from its readership.

- by François Soyer
- •
- Early Modern History, Inquisition, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Jewish History

This article contributes to the scholarly discussion of anti-Jewish rhetoric present in Orthodox Christian hymnography by providing an exegetical and theological contextualization of the problematic hymnographic material. I argue that the core Christological interpretation of Old Testament theophanies is present in hymns in which anti-Jewish rhetoric is absent, and that the anti-Jewish overtones are therefore not essential to the theological message of the hymns. In itself, the amendment of Orthodox liturgical texts and observances is neither wrong nor unprecedented; however, any attempts at liturgical reform should be mindful of the Christological proclamation of the hymns that give voice to a venerable and widespread early Christian exegesis of Old Testament theophanies.

In this paper I explore the way John Chrysostom uses emotions in his anti- Jewish polemics. This approach allows us to grasp the mechanisms – rheto- rical and psychological – which John exploits in order to convey his message. As all religious groups, Christian communities were also “emotional com- munities”, that is groups that share the same rules of emotional expression and attach (or do not attach) importance to the same feelings. By studying these sermons I try to answer the following questions: what kind of emotions did Chrysostom mobilize against the Jews? What did he mean while speak- ing of ? How did Chrysostom’s public react to his discourses? My hypothesis is that his sermons witness an emotional divide between John and his public, as well as a certain resistance by the audience to accept Chrysostom’s instructions. The emotional regime he wants his public to abide to, does not coincide with the emotions the public actually feels. In other words, the emotional community imagined by Chrysostom diverges from the emotional community he addresses.

According to the author of this article, there is no objective evidence that supports the theory of the Arian pro-Judaism, a theory that has become a myth in the course of time. Neither the Arian emperor nor the king favoured Judaism. The association of Arianism with the Jewish religion developed out of the anti-Arian polemics of the Catholic authors of the 4th and 5th centuries. The falsehood of this myth is confirmed by the existence of an anti-Jewish controversy reflected in the Arian literature that has been preserved.

Reflection on Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18

- by Ellen T Charry
- •
- Biblical Theology, Biblical Interpretation, Biblical Exegesis, Gospel of John

This paper examines repentance as a practice of transformation that not only improves relations between the Jewish and Christian traditions but generates dynamics of change within Christian theology itself. As a Lutheran theologian, I am drawing on the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance and the Jewish ritual observance of teshuvah for their clearly outlined set of obligations that provide texture and structure in contrast to the often bland language of grace, reconciliation, and justification.

- by Katharina von Kellenbach
- •
- Jewish - Christian Relations, Reconciliation, Antisemitism, Repentance

Luther's heritage of severe antijudaism had not been without effect to the rise of antisemitism in the pre-Nazi time and to the steps that led to the holocaust. The terrible anti-Jewish advises he wrote down in his "The Jews and their Lies" (1543) had been carried out about 500 years later. Luther's theology, rightly inspiring for generations of theologians and the Church in many ways, has to be interrogated concerning the structures of his theological thinking that were responsible for his attitude to the Jews.

- by Ulrich Laepple
- •
- Christian anti-Judaism

L’attribution à Anastase le Sinaïte de la Dispute contre les juifs de l’Abbé Anastase éditée dans la PG 89 a suscité de nombreux débats. Le présent article reprend systématiquement les arguments proprement philologiques invoqués de part et d’autre et s’appuie sur l’ensemble de la tradition manuscrite connue pour montrer qu’aucun indice ne permet de dater cette composition d’avant le 9e siècle. Si cette oeuvre contient du matériel anastasien, celui-ci fut presque certainement transmis par l’intermédiaire des Dialogica (olim Dialogue de Papiscus et Philon); le reste fut emprunté à d’autres sources pour former une composition originale qui ne constitue pas une collection de fragments du traité antijudaïque perdu d’Anastase.

- by Bastien Dumont
- •
- Philology, Authorship Attribution, Christian anti-Judaism, Adversus Iudaeos

Please note that I have withdrawn this research paper from the Reformation conference in Nuremberg in July 2017.

In Exegeting the Jews: The Early Reception of the Johannine "Jews", Michael G. Azar analyzes the rhetorical function of the Gospel of John’s "Jews" in the earliest surviving full-length expositions of John in Greek: Origen’s Commentary on John (3rd cent.), John Chrysostom’s Homilies on John (4th cent.), and Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on John (5th cent.). While scholarship often has portrayed the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the Gospel’s “Jews” as simply and uniformly anti-Jewish or antisemitic, Azar demonstrates that these three writers primarily read John’s narrative typologically, employing the situation and characters in the Gospel not against contemporary Jews with whom they regularly interacted, but as types of each patristic writer’s own intra-Christian struggle and opponents.

- by Lars Fischer
- •
- Lutheranism, Baroque Music, Johann Sebastian Bach, Anti-Judaism

Gli autori suggeriscono che a seppellire Gesù sia stato Il Sinedrio (Giuseppe di Arimatea avrebbe seppellito Gesù per incarico del Sinedrio insieme ad una squadra di persone normalmente incaricata della sepoltura dei crocifissi ebrei). Gli autori riprendono il loro libro: "La morte di Gesù" (MIlano, Rizzoli: 2014), pp. 133-159. L'antiebraismo cristiano ha trasformato Giuseppe di Arimatea in un seguace di Gesù e ha impedito di comprendere come le cose siano andate.

- by Mauro Pesce
- •
- Anti-Semitism, Historical Jesus, Christian anti-Judaism

Martin Luther's attack on the supposed “enemies of God” in his final sermons was part of the reformer's concerted effort to announce his last will and testament for evangelical Christianity. Chiefly, the article defines what made Jews and “papists” distinct from other enemies in Luther's view. Jews and papists both had possessed Scripture since ancient times; yet they remained unreceptive—for reasons Luther struggled to explain—to the Word therein.

- by Vincent Evener
- •
- History of Christianity, Reformation Studies, Martin Luther, Anti-Judaism
- by Jonathan F Kearney
- •
- Christianity, History of Christianity, Jewish - Christian Relations, Judaism
- by Richard Cole
- •
- Old Norse Literature, Snorra-Edda, Myth, Snorri Sturluson
- by Simeon Burke
- •
- Origen, John Chrysostom, Gospel of John, Cyril of Alexandria
- by Lars Fischer
- •
- Church Music, Music History, Baroque Music, J S Bach