THE GOSPELS AND ANTI-SEMITISM

And the people, to a man, shouted back, 'His blood be on us and on our children'. (Matthew 27:25)

Are the Gospels partly responsible for Anti-Semitism?

Such a suggestion has brought an angry response from Paul Weaver, Anglican representative on the NSW Council of Christians and Jews.

In a letter to the editor of the Christian and Jewish Scene, No 60 Sept/Oct 2004, Weaver objects to some comments published previously in a review of the book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel John Goldhagen published in New York in 2002.

Goldhagen claims that the New Testament contains many Anti-Semitic verses and these have led to the notion that Jews are Satan's children and Christ-killers who have voluntarily cursed themselves and their descendants.

Weaver writes that he objects to references to 'lies perpetrated by the Gospels of the New Testament' and the suggestion that 'Gospel truth' relies on 'a metaphor of truth based upon a falsehood'.

'The big issue,' writes Weaver, 'is the misuse and indeed the abuse of the New Testament: taking particular statements out of their context and applying them in ways that were never envisaged by the New Testament writers.

'I acknowledge that the Gospels implicate Jewish people in the death of Jesus: given the claims he made about himself, the attacks he made on the "establishment", and the tensions of those times, it is not surprising that the Jewish leaders decided that he should be executed.

'The New Testament does describe tensions and even violence between the early church and the Jewish people: to most Jews, the claims of Christians were heretical and blasphemous.

'These tensions were exacerbated because the early Christians, many of whom were Jews, sought actively to persuade their Jewish brothers and sisters, as well as other people, that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah, and that the Christian gospel fulfilled the hopes and promises of the Torah and the prophets. Tensions were inevitable, and these would have increased with the followers of Jesus.'

Weaver says he finds no justification in the New Testament for hatred or violence. He says Paul and others made it clear that Christians were to show conviction, humility and patience, but to make no attempt at retaliation. He says that by the time most of the New Testament books were written, the broader threat of persecution came from the Roman Empire. But the principle was the same.

Weaver continues: 'As far as the Jewish involvement in Jesus' death is concerned, the New Testament emphasis is very different. Christians are to see the crucifixion as the supreme expression of God's love: through this event, God identifies with the human race and deals with the reality of evil, to bring about forgiveness of sins and the fullness of salvation.'

'When I think of who was involved in the death of Jesus, I am reminded of the old spiritual,"Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" 'My answer - and that of the New Testament - is "Yes. I played my part in his death."

'I make my own contribution to the sin of the world, for which Jesus died. How then I blame any particular race or group of people for their involvement?

'As a Christian I am appalled by the violence and hatred perpetrated by established churches and individual Christians against Jewish people throughout the last 2000 years. I have no doubt that Jesus is also disgusted by these acts, which are totally contrary to all that he stood for. The shameful acts of the church's history cannot be undone, but they must be faced honestly, acknowledged humbly, and lessons learned for the future.'

Writing about the background to the four Gospels, in the context of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, the Catholic bishop of San Jose, California, Patrick McGrath commented that these sacred books are not historical accounts of the historical events which they narrate.

In a column in the San Jose Mercury (republished in Christian and Jewish Scene in the same issue as Weaver's letter) McGrath says:

'They are theological reflections upon the events that form the core of Christian faith and belief.

'The reader can easily misunderstand the gospels when they are viewed through the lens of contemporary conceptions, attitudes and prejudices, as well as those of intervening millennia. The attribution of anti-Semitism to the gospel narratives is one such misunderstanding.

'It is a distortion by Christians who forget these facts: Jesus was a Jew, the apostles were Jews, the writers of the New Testament (as well as the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Scriptures) were Jews, and the audience for which the Old and New Testaments were written was primarily Jewish.

'It was not until several generations after the writing of the gospels before Jewish Christians (the first believers in Jesus) began to consider themselves not to be Jews.

'It is an inescapable fact that first-century Jewish writers would depict the drama of the passion of Jesus in the light of their own perceptions. We, however, have a responsibility to history as well as to the present to bring about a different understanding to our relations with one another.

'Unfortunately, this understanding has not always motivated Catholics in relations with their Jewish brothers and sisters. History relates periods of Christian persecution of Jews, and the direct effects of this persecution still touch us today.

'I want to apologise for the Church's actions.

'Soon after I became bishop of San Jose, I went to Temple Emanu-El to apologise for the Catholic Church's actions that incited or in any way encouraged anti-Semitism.

'An elderly man approached me and related how, when he was a young boy some 70 or 80 years earlier, he had been attacked by other boys who called him "Christ killer".

'Even after all of the years, this man broke down in tears at recounting the story. All I could do was offer him a personal apology and to embrace him as a brother.

'This most tragic part of our not so distant past was addressed at The Second Vatican Council by the Roman Catholic bishops of the world in the 1965 document, Nostra Aetate:

"Humanity forms but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created... The Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this follows from holy scripture. Indeed the Church reproves every form of persecution against whomsoever it may be directed...it deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism levelled at any time or from any source against the Jews."

'In the nearly 40 years since Nostra Aetate, the relationships between Catholics and non-Christians - including but not limited to Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists - have grown. We see ourselves as sisters and brothers, coworkers and friends.

'In solidarity with Pope John Paul II, who asked for forgiveness during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 2000, I apologise to all my brothers and sisters of any faith tradition which has felt prejudice. Let us not allow the mutual respect that has developed to be threatened by an unenlightened reflection on an artistic rendering of the events of 2000 years ago.'

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