Helen Fry
Is Christianity Irredeemably Antisemitic, Part 2

Dr. Helen Fry - Is Christianity Irredeemably Antisemitic, Lecture 2

- Yes, that’s great. Wendy, thank you very much. Yes, save your questions. I think you’ll be getting an email as to how to send your questions in. And then Trudy Gold and myself next Thursday will have a really special get-under-the-skin of some of these issues in more detail. And so what I want to do is just very briefly in the first part of this is to recap very, very briefly on some of what I talked about yesterday because this is absolutely crucial. I think one of the difficulties when we are looking at the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and the very difficult anti-Jewish history which tips into Christian anti-Semitism, is that sometimes we get involved in the detail of the verses and the texts. So this one’s tricky, and Matthew wrote that, and Paul said that. What I want to do, I mean, we can tease out that, Trudy and I, next week, some of those difficult sayings. But what I want to give you is a historic backdrop that I want you to go away at the end of these four-part series understanding something which I didn’t understand growing up. And that was the diversity of first-century Judaism such that we call it Judaisms is more accurate. But also as we’ll see this evening, today, there was a diversity within early Jewish Christianity. And that was something, I’m not talking about by the time we get to the church fathers about end of the first century, I’m talking about immediately after the death of Jesus, very quickly we get a diversity within Jewish Christianity, and it’s far more realistic to see the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity is a partings, plural, of the ways between different groups. It’s slow in some areas, it takes longer in others, and in some cases, it’s really, really fractious and polemical. And that’s when it starts to tip into anti-Judaism.

And we’re going to understand why did that happen, and I hope you’ll find that really, really helpful. So as I’ve put there to start with the partings of the ways helps us to understand where this comes from, the origins of Christian anti-Judaism, which tips into antisemitism, and really perhaps to tease out with Trudy a bit more is Christianity and the diversity of Christianities today. Irrevocably antisemitic. I think it’s a big question, and what do we do about that against the backdrop of what’s going on in the world today? So big topics, but I hope the historical study today, next slide please, will help you form a basis for that. And what we concluded yesterday was that firstly, Jesus probably was a pupil of Hillel. So he’s, ministry, a prophetic teacher, Jesus is teaching to the people of Israel. He’s not got a mission to the gentile world. He’s preaching within what was then Palestine of his day under Roman occupation, great oppression, heavy taxation. They are looking forward to liberation. Liberation from oppression. And that’s really, really important because he believes that that’s coming soon, and the disappointment when that doesn’t happen after his death, we’ll talk about that shortly. And we also talked about how not only Jesus, but the Hillel who stood within the Pharisaic tradition, the tradition of the Pharisees, clashed with the Sadducees who were basically the powerful, well seen as collaborators, with the Roman oppressors. So we’ve got all this going on in the background, and we also have to understand that Jesus is working out of the diversity even within the Pharisaic tradition.

We have Hillel and Shammai, and now we can, I would argue, add Jesus to that. These are interpretations that are developing. It’s all part of developing oral Torah. And Jesus was part of that early debate of developing oral Torah. So it could have been a very different ending, couldn’t it? But there we go. So both, then, Hillel and Jesus are teaching in Jerusalem. Jesus has accepted the sacrificial system, and he’s worshipping in the Temple. Again, I think it’s really important to state that overtly. Next slide, please. We also talked about four of the main, I didn’t go into the Zealots, but they end up holed up at Masada. Of course, this is after Jesus’s death. But there were four main sects or groups within first-century Judaism: The Essenes, Sadducees, Pharisees, and Zealots. And each, in their own way, they are reacting to Roman occupation. The Essenes who shut themselves away in the desert at Qumran, and those wonderful texts that worth the several seminars in themselves, actually, from a Qumran scholar. If you know of anyone, Trudy, Wendy, I think your audience would love that. I’m fascinated by those Qumran scriptures, and the imagery that’s in those. Some of it parallels what Jesus was teaching. So we are not taking Jesus out of his Jewish context. We’re trying to understand what form, what aspect of Judaism, of that day, of the diversity, does he fit into. Because I think too often, certainly in Christian tradition, Christians have seen him as having this kind of message from God, and almost dislocating him from his historical backdrop.

And I would say, as I said yesterday, understanding his Jewishness. For me, just to say Jesus was a Jew is not enough. I think we need to understand which part of that period of the first century does Jesus sit within. And yeah, definitely within the tradition of Hillel. Next slide, please. Qumran, then, as I said, it is a reaction to the Roman occupation. They are a sect which sees other parts of Judaisms of the day, particularly the Sadducees, absolutely horrified by their wickedness, if you like. This comes through their texts. And so they see themselves as an alternative. They are very much based on this whole idea of purity and cleansing. And to do that, they’ve shut themselves away in the desert. And it’s no surprise because they’re a nonviolent sect. Unlike the Zealots, when the approaching Roman armies come, the Jewish revolt, they flee, and as we heard yesterday, hide their texts in a number of 11 caves in that region, which were discovered by a shepherd boy. I mean, what a wonderful discovery in 1947. Next slide, please. So the Sadducees, yeah, we saw yesterday based around the Temple, they are quite comfortable to collaborate with the Roman occupiers, they are seen as the powerful, the Sadducees are seen by the rest of Judaism of the day as powerful. Almost like there’s a kind of aristocracy who just look after their own means, but they are obviously essential in that time. But questions start to be raised by some groups about their legitimacy. Next slide, please. So what we’re understanding then, while we move into today’s new material, is, and I’ll repeat this again until you’ll be fed up with me, saying this, but it is so crucial, I believe, to understanding the history of anti-Judaism within Christianity. That we understand that Judaism was diverse in this period, and that what’s emerging is a much more complex relationship. Now, if you think yesterday was quite complex, we’ve got a little bit more, so bear with me.

We’ve got a bit more today to understand the complexity of Jewish Christianity before it becomes Christianity with Paul. And I will get to the Apostle Paul. So the differences that we’re seeing in the early strands of Jesus’ teaching are really part of that debate within Pharisaic Judaism. It was totally normal, and the prophets, and teachers, and rabbis of the day developing oral Torah. And so I think understanding, next slide, please, this diversity helps us to understand where it went wrong, ultimately. So I’m going to move to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Now, we’re not talking about… Resurrection is ultimately a matter of faith. Faith for those who saw it at the time, and faith for Christian believers today. So I’m not going to debate whether they really did see the risen Jesus, whether it was, you know, what that was. I think we’re going to work on the premise that Jesus’s disciples, some of them, had an experience that they believed was the resurrected Jesus. Whether we think that’s historical or not, that was their experience. Historical facts, and again, this hinges on the anti-Jewish traditions which emerge, and Trudy and I, I think, I know can discuss Herod and all of that around the death of Jesus. But he died on a cross as a common rebel at the hands of the Romans. So this we will speak at in more depth about the Jews are not responsible, clearly, categorically, not responsible for the death of Jesus. None of those groups, for all the fraction that’s going on at that time, even with the Sadducees, not responsible. Ultimately Jesus’ message, his urgency, the Kingdom of God is coming imminently. Anytime now, he’s got to sway the followers.

He’s going around the country with his powerful message, which is seen as potentially dangerous to the Roman occupiers. You could have civil war here. You know, you could have the the uprising. And so Jesus dies at the hands of the Romans. Jesus’ disciples claimed resurrection, that he had been raised from the dead three days later. As I said, historically that may or may not be a reality, but they believed he had been raised from the dead. And it’s that which starts to cause a chink of disagreement. Quite a major disagreement between what I’ve called there The School of Hillel, Hillel is dead by now of course, but his school remains, and the School of Jesus. So you now have followers that disagree over the facts of the School of Hillel. They don’t believe, whatever Jesus was doing, they don’t believe that he’s been raised from the dead. Jesus’ disciples, however, next slide please, do believe that he’s been raised from the dead. And Mary Magdalene, we’re going to come to her properly because she’s fascinating in all of this history. Her testimony is, I mean it’s amazing that her testimony even survives in the New Testament because her tradition was largely suppressed.

And in another session we can talk about in the new year, hopefully at some point in the new year, about whether she was Jesus’ wife, and all the imagery, the negative imagery that surrounded her. But just some salient points here because her tradition, she’s part of the diversity that begins to emerge in the period after Jesus’ death when the early church, and church is used loosely here, it’s not like any formalised church as develops within the hundred years after his death. But the early church has a diversity of groups including those surrounding Mary Magdalene, and some of the women in the early church were leaders. But I’m not going to go down that route today. But to underline, so firstly, she’s not officially a disciple in the sense that she’s the closest to Jesus, but she’s not one of those 12. And there are, of course, depictions of the last supper where she’s there. And it’s highly likely that historically, she was at that last supper, whether that was a Passover or not. Again, is not relevant for today. She’s present at the crucifixion along with Jesus’ mother, and the other Mary. She’s the first person to the empty tomb, and the first person to witness the resurrection.

That’s really important because if the early Christians could have suppressed that, a woman, you know, being the one who has first seen the resurrected Jesus is significant. The tradition at this time was so powerful it couldn’t be suppressed. So you still have that in Mark’s gospel and John’s gospel, but her legacy would very quickly be suppressed. Next slide, please. So early Jewish and Christian Identity. So this is again very, very important and I hope you can take this away from what I was saying yesterday without me repeating the argument. It’s actually not beliefs about whether Jesus was a Messiah or not, or the resurrection that caused the parting of the ways between Jews and those early Christians. So yes, there was a disagreement between the School of Hillel and the School of Jesus in that first period after the death and resurrection of Jesus as a disagreement. But they’re still both functioning within the Judaisms of the day. The partings of the ways has not happened. And traditionally, again I think people think that, “Oh, it’s the messiahship of Jesus, which is actually separated.” No, it was perfectly possible for Jesus’ followers to believe that he’s the Messiah. It’s just that Hillel, Shammai, the like, those schools disagree. There were lots of false messiahs. “He’s just another false Messiah.” It doesn’t take them out of Judaism. And the early Christians, and this again is in the New Testament, they still go to the Temple. They can still quite happily reconcile their belief that somehow, you know, Jesus has been raised from the dead.

The end is definitely near. This is an endorsement, in their view, that Jesus was the messianic figure, the anointed one, who’s about to usher in the end times. This is this whole apocalyptic belief at this time. Which of course there were parallels in the Qumran community. So none of this is new, is special. It’s part of reacting and understanding against the backdrop of Roman occupation. But also what does Jesus’ death and resurrection mean for those that experienced it in those first days after his death of crucifixion? And it is precisely that. They believe that this endorses the fact that he was the Messiah. Whether he, again, there’s debate whether he claimed it for himself within scholarship circles, but the early believers certainly believed he’s the Messiah figure. He’s about to, this is going to usher in those end times, the end of Roman occupation, we’re about to be liberated. Well of course, that doesn’t happen, and there’s a whole adjustment that begins to develop in the following decades. The whole idea of a second coming, which we’ve still got today. Christians are still waiting. That joke, isn’t there, that, “The Jewish community’s waiting for the first Messiah, we’re waiting for the Messiah to come again.” So yeah, you know, what about those false hopes, next slide, please, when it doesn’t happen, the end times don’t happen? Jesus’ resurrection has not inaugurated that, we’ve got a second coming. Yes, you know, he’s going to come back again, and there’ll be a physical rising of the dead. So that’s where you get all that kind of thinking. So just to recap slightly, what’s marked Jesus’ followers as different from the other Judaisms of the day? I mean, okay, there are lots of other views that we discussed yesterday, but at this point now, it’s their belief that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

So the early Christian mission, if you like, the message is purely and simply, if you look in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, and in these early traditions, it’s bound up with a belief that Jesus has been raised from the dead. There’s no hint in the early, early part of any question about Jesus being divine. And we’re going to come back to that. And that’s important because, of course, the Christian Church, that’s central to Christian belief, and caused a lot of problems between the churches and the church fathers for generations trying to understand what it meant. And then we’ve got a whole kind of trinity theology that developed from that. But that’s not part of our discussion. But important to realise that those early Christian believers, the disciples, including Mary Magdalene, did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. They believed in his resurrection, and he’s going to inaugurate the last days. And importantly, I’m going to say it again, they could still remain within Judaism. There is nothing at this point which takes them outside Judaism. And you know, that’s a really, really important point to have on board. They’re still functioning. Nothing that’s been said or believed takes them outside Judaism. Next slide, please. So those early Christians saw no reason to break with Judaism. Why would they? They’re still accepted within that diversity, that fluidity of developing oral tradition. But clearly they disagree over the messiahship of Jesus and the resurrection.

Doesn’t take them outside the boundaries. They are observing, again, very important, all the Jewish laws and Jewish practises. Temple is still a focal point of worship, right? They’re not worshipping Jesus. Really important. Again, and I know some of this might sound obvious, but I can’t stress enough that an understanding of this could be helpful, I’m going to argue, later on. But you know, the attraction of Judaism, this was something which is going to be a theme which runs through later today and next Tuesday, Judaism would remain attractive even though those early Christians had a different message about Jesus’ death and resurrection. So they fully expected, Jews, the majority of the Jewish population then would follow this message. And they went out preaching about it. “Don’t forget the end is coming.” But you know, there just was no real response. So there’s this debate which opens up about identity, and it is in the end identity which begins the gradual partings of the ways and the fracture. And within this period within the early Christian Church, we have a new group emerging who were known as Judaizers. And these we’re, as I’ve put, their followers, who insisted that Gentiles must be circumcised before becoming Christian. And the Jewish religion remained really attractive to Gentiles. But of course Judaism wasn’t, by and large, apart from a very brief period a proselytising religion. You know, it doesn’t want converts, but it remained attractive, that monotheism remained attractive to the Gentile world. And you’ve got the occasional Gentile interested in this message of the early Christians about Jesus’ death and resurrection, and those within that early community saying, “Hang on a minute, if these Gentiles want to believe in Jesus, and be part of us, they’ve got to be circumcised first.” Next slide, please.

So early Jewish Christians, excuse the typo there, met in houses for prayer, reflected on Jewish scriptures interpretation. They are developing oral Torah of their own, and they’re trying to understand Jesus within the context, and they see him very firmly within the line of the prophets. No overt mission to the Gentile world. Even though they had some Gentiles, a small number of Gentiles who begin to be interested in their message, they have no, this is so, so important, no overt mission to the Gentile world. They are also tolerated within the Judaisms of their day. And yes, they have this practise of baptism, and it’s a sign of acceptance into that group. They are not joining a new religion. There is no new religion, there is no new Christianity. We talk about Jewish Christians. Christianity has not been established at this point. Next slide, please. Ah, yes. So we’ve got to come to Paul, haven’t we? Well, I’m going to be, well not about controversial, but within Jewish and Christian scholarship, I’m going to raise a question now. Was he really the culprit in all of this history? So quite a controversial thing to ask potentially. Next slide, please. But again, you know, throughout my own study when I was doing my degree and my PhD, the new scholarship excited me and challenged some of our preconceptions. So what do we know about Paul? Well I’ve given you his dates there, known as Saul of Tarsus, a diaspora Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. So he’d lived outside the boundaries of Jesus. He’d never met Jesus, never met the real historical Jesus. He’s a citizen of Rome. He is influenced by Greco-Roman world in which he’s operating.

He’s one of the earliest Christian missionaries. He’s not the earliest, but he’s one of. Again we tend to think of him as being the earliest missionary to the Gentiles, and I’m going to challenge that. So between 30 CE… So after the death of Jesus, and into the 50s, he founded several churches in Asia Minor, and a lot of his letters to the Romans, the Galatians, the Corinthians, are dealing with issues that each of those communities are facing. And we’re not going to go into depth about that today because I want to focus a bit more on Paul but rather than the struggles of those communities. And they each have different responses to the Christian message, or the Jewish Christian message. And important, next slide, please, important to say what does Jesus, sorry, what does Paul describe himself as? “Circumcised of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. A Hebrew of the Hebrews as to the law a Pharisee.” So he is very much within the same tradition as Jesus. He very much identifies himself. Yes, he’s living in diaspora, but he sees himself as adopting the Pharisaic tradition. So he stands within that and was part of that discussion. Highly educated. Next slide, please. As I said, never met the historical Jesus, but there is that whole revelation, if you like, the road to Damascus experience where he claims whatever it was he saw, he claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. And he was blinded by this, the story says, and he’s later healed by Ananias.

And that, for him, because he had been persecuting the Jewish Christians, you know, he didn’t believe in their message, but this is the turning point for him. But at this point, he remains, that experience, that conversion doesn’t turn him into a Gentile-seeking missionary. He’s still very firmly, next slide, please, within a conservative Jewish backdrop. So he, in the very, very earliest days after his conversion, that will change, but after his conversion, he remains a pretty conservative Jewish Christian. There are some missing years. Three years in the desert, question mark. And he does travel on three occasions to meet with James, the brother of Jesus. And they are particularly conservative. James, the brother of Jesus is the head of the Jerusalem church. Church, not like we would understand church today, but still within the Judaisms of the day. And around 45 CE, Paul has an important mission to Antioch. Nothing here to say that the Temple should not exist. The Temple is still functioning. Paul has no problem with that. But he would go on to provide the first, and this is important too, theological rationale for the Gentile mission. And the Gentile mission, as we’ll see shortly, was actually founded by unknown missionaries, and it’s Paul that would go on to provide the religious framework, the theological rationale, for that. Next slide, please.

But before we look at that, I want to sort of clear up something. I hope we can get our head around this ‘cause it took, yeah, certainly when I was doing my degree, it was quite an undertaking. So trying to get your head around this whole theology of what’s of expiation. So what is Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ death? This is in crucial for the whole idea of the covenant. He does not see, in this early part, Jesus as replacing Judaism. His death, his resurrection, he’s quite a conservative Jewish Christian at this point, does not see Jesus in any way as replacing Judaism. So the covenant is still valid. But also he refers to an interesting passage, the the servant passage in Isaiah 53 where the death of God’s servant here is understood in sacrificial terms, and that atones for the sins of the nations. You can probably see where this is heading because of course Christianity is very much focused on the atonement that Jesus’ death in some way atones for the sins of a person, of a nation, but particularly of individuals. But Paul is his views and he’s explaining particularly to the Romans, in his letter to the Romans, he uses the word expiation, and he’s functioning within a prophetic form of Judaism that can trace its line back to Isaiah. There is nothing new in seeing Jesus’ death as in some way atoning for the sins of the nation at a difficult time when he too, next slide please, disagreed with the Saddusaic thought pattern. For him, Jesus’ death does not replace Judaism, It belongs in the whole train of Jewish martyrdom texts.

So for Paul, Jesus in a sense is a martyr, and in a sense that the death of a righteous person restores and cleanses a nation. And that does not replace the Temple system. Does not replace the Temple system. We have examples in Jewish history where the Maccabees, were coming to the book of Maccabees, where Jewish martyrs can in some sense atone for the sins of a nation, But that the Temple is still ongoing, Passover, still ongoing, and that sat quite comfortably. I’m not saying it was mainstream, but it did sit quite comfortably, did not take… So Paul, believing this, that Jesus somehow atones through his death, is not at this point taking him outside of Judaism or Judaisms. Next slide, please. So the book of Maccabees, Jewish text written in Hebrew, survives only in the Septuagint today. And in this period, of course, again one of oppression, which I’m assuming you all know about Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanes tried to suppress Jewish law. It was a horrific time. Time of slaughter, too. And it led to the Maccabean Revolt, first and second Maccabean Revolts. Next slide, please. And the book of Maccabees belongs to the Jewish-

• [Speaker] Wendy, do we do seem to be having some technical issues and I don’t think we’ll be able to continue the last 20 minutes of the session.

• [Wendy] Okay. So lucky enough, we’ve got 15 minutes left, so I think maybe we should sign off, say sorry everybody. But thanks for joining us today, and we will certainly make this up. I’m sure Helen will just add a few extra minutes at the back end of each lecture. Alright, everybody, enjoy the rest of your day or evening. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Judes.

• [Judi] Thank you. Bye-bye.

• [Wendy] Bye-bye.