ANTI-SEMITISM
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Shmuel
Golding
In
recent years, many books have been written on the subject of
anti-Semitism. Most of those books blame the church for its hostile teachings
which encouraged ignorant devotees to harass, and even to violently assault
Jews in the name of Christ and his church. Many Christian writers have
openly acknowledged this fact and have called upon the church to make amends.
Yet,
apologize as they may, none of them attack the root cause of Christian
anti-Semitism, which in my opinion lies in the New Testament itself. One
writer from the gentile camp, who dares admit to this in his book “The Misery of Christianity,” is a
former pastor by the name of Joachim Kahl. A
writer from the Jewish side, Jules Isaac wrote a book entitled “Jesus et
Father
Gregory Baum states that when he read Isaac’s book it shattered him, and so he
set about on a task to counter-refute such claims, yet in the introduction he
has to admit that at face value certain passages of the New Testament do appear
to be anti-Semitic, but says Father Baum all such verses can be explained.
Maybe
they can be explained, the scriptures can be stretched this way and that way to
make them say almost anything, but my bone of contention is that whilst those
statements remain in print in the form of a holy book, men will use them to
feed their hatred and the Jew will continue to suffer. Let history itself
be our witness, and let history be the judge as to whether or not the roots of
Christian anti-Semitism lie within the New Testament.
It
will not be hard to prove that the roots of anti-Semitism lie in the New
Testament and that its fruits have been plucked and digested by Christians from
the earliest times until the present day.
Bible-intoxicated
Christians through the ages have thrown in the teeth of the Jews the demonic
charges of “Christ-killers” and have fanned the flames of Jew-hatred using the
New Testament for their justification.
There
are numerous verses found in the New Testament which have caused the blood of
countless Jews to be shed throughout history. We will examine these
verses and compare them with words said, and deeds committed against Jews by
the church and its leaders.
These
anti-Semitic statements were and still are the principal cause of all
persecutions, oppressions and pogroms in which Jews have suffered. These
anti-Semitic accounts in the New Testament have taught mankind to hate the
Jew. As long as the New Testament continues in print (at least in its
present form) the Jew will be hated. Here are but a few verses from where
Christianity borrowed its anti-Semitic sentiments.
“The
children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8.12)
“O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often
would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left
unto you desolate.” (Matthew 23.37,38) Then answered all the people (Jews) and
said, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). 1 “But take heed to yourselves:
for they shall deliver you to councils, and in the synagogues ye shall be
beaten” (Mark 13.9)
“He
that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16.16)
“Ye
are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a
murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaketh
of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it. And because I tell you
the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth
me of sin? And I say the truth, why do you not believe me? He that
is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them
not, because ye are not of God” (John 8.43-47)
“Stiff-necked
and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as
your fathers did, so you do. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed
before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers
and murderers” (Acts 7.51-53)
“It
was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but
seeing you put it from you and judge yourself unworthy of everlasting life, we
turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13.45-51)
“For
there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the
circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching
things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake ... wherefore rebuke them
sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; not giving heed to Jewish fables
and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.” (Titus 1.10-14).
“The
Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have
persecuted us; and they please not God and are contrary to all men: forbidding
us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins
always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” (l Thessalonians
2.14-16)
“Who
is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the
Christ? He is an antichrist, that denieth the
father and the son. Whoever denieth the son,
the same hath not the father” (l John 2.22,23)
“I
know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the
synagogue of Satan ...” (Revelation
2.9,10)
“Behold
I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not
but do lie; behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet...”
(Revelation 3.9)
These
vicious and treacherous New Testament verses, have given the impression that
the Jews in the time of Jesus were degenerate and cruel and that they are a
deicide race. They have been spread by the church for the last two
millennia, and have not been rooted out of Christian thinking to the present
day. Even those fundamentalist lovers of
Moses
Bazes, author of “Jesus
the Jew, the Historical Jesus,” after examining the anti-Semitic statements
in the New Testament writes:
“I believe that because of the anti-Jewish narratives of the New
Testament, the Jews were hounded from one country to another, denied to live as
human beings, denied to work as other people worked, denied to play as others
played, were in no country at peace, in no era at peace and finally persecuted
and massacred. This was all because of the Christian bigotry and hatred
in the name of Jesus. Obviously it cannot be possible to regard Jesus as
none other than the scourge of God for the Jews. The tragic existence of
the Jews during 1900 years in the Diaspora, the hatred they experienced, the
pogroms, persecutions, murders and the destructions they suffered, must be
mainly attributed to anti- Jewish statements in the New Testament.
Christianity introduced contempt for the Jew and is thus responsible for what
happened in the Second World War at the
We
will now examine the words of some Christian “saints” and leaders and notice
how their anti-Jewish expressions are based on New Testament verses listed
earlier in this article.
Origen:
“Their rejection of Jesus has resulted in their present calamity and
exile. We say with confidence that they will never be restored to their
former condition. For they have committed a crime of the most unhallowed
kind, in conspiring against the saviour.”
St. Gregory:
“ Jews are slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies of God,
haters of God, adversaries of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith, advocates
of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men of darkened minds,
leaven of the Pharisees, congregation of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners
and haters of goodness.”
St. John Chrysostom: “I know that many people hold a high regard for
the Jews and consider their way of life worthy of respect at the present
time... This is why I am hurrying to pull up this fatal notion by the roots ...
A place where a whore stands on display is a whorehouse. What is more,
the synagogue is not only a whorehouse and a theater; it is also a den of
thieves and a haunt of wild animals ... not the cave of a wild animal merely,
but of an unclean wild animal ... When animals are unfit for work, they are
marked for slaughter, and this is the very thing which the Jews have
experienced. By making themselves unfit for work, they have become ready
for slaughter. This is why Christ said: “ask for my enemies, who did not
want me to reign over them, bring them and slay them before me’ (Luke 19.27).”
St. Augustine:
“Judaism is a corruption. Indeed Judas is the image of the Jewish
people. Their understanding of the Scriptures is carnal. They bear
the guilt for the death of the saviour, for through
their fathers they have killed the Christ.”
St. Thomas Aquinas: “It would be licit to hold Jews, because of the
crimes, in perpetual servitude, and therefore the princes may regard the
possessions of Jews as belonging to the State.”
The teachings of Martin Luther:
“Know,
0 adored Christ, and make no mistake, that aside from the Devil, you have no
enemy more venomous, more desperate, more bitter, than a true Jew who truly
seeks to be a Jew... a Jew, a Jewish heart, are hard as wood, as stone, as
iron, as the Devil himself. In short, they are children of the Devil,
condemned to the flames of hell.”
“O
Lord, I am too feeble to mock such devils. I would do so, but they are
much stronger than I in raillery, and they have a God who is a past master in
this art; He is called the devil and the wicked spirit.. They have transformed
God into the devil, or rather into a servant of the Devil, accomplishing all
the evil the Devil desires, corrupting unhappy souls , and raging against
himself: in short, the Jews are worse than the devils.”
“What
then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?
First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up
should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to
see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honour of God and of Christianity, in order that God may
see that we are true Christians. Secondly, their homes should be likewise
broken down and destroyed. Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayerbooks and talmuds in which
such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught. Fourthly, their
rabbis must be forbidden under threats of death to teach anymore.”
“Now
whoever wishes to accept venomous serpents, desperate enemies of the lord, and
to honor them, to let himself be robbed, pillaged, corrupted and cursed by
them, need only turn to the Jews. If this is not enough for him, he can
do more: crawl up into their...... and worship the sanctuary, so as to glorify
himself afterwards for having been merciful, for having fortified the Devil and
his children, in order to blaspheme our beloved lord and the precious blood
that has redeemed us. He will then be a perfect Christian, filled with
works of mercy, for which Christ will reward him on the-day of judgment with
the eternal fire of hell (where he will roast together with the Jews).”
“In
truth, the Jews, being foreigners, should possess nothing, and what they do
possess should be ours.”
“...Cursed
goy that I am, I cannot understand how they manage to be so skillful, unless I
think that when Judas Iscariot hanged himself, his guts burst and
emptied. Perhaps the Jews sent their servants with plates of silver and
pots of gold to gather up Judas’ piss with the other treasures, and then they
ate and drank his offal, and thereby acquired eyes so piercing that they
discover in the scriptures commentaries that neither Matthew nor Isaiah himself
found there, not to mention the rest of us cursed goyim..”
“If
I find a Jew to baptize, I shall lead him to the
“I
hope I shall never be so stupid as to be circumcised; I would rather cut off
the left breast of my Catherine and of all women.”
“If
we are to remain unsullied by the blasphemy of the Jews and not wish to take
part in it, we must be separated from them and they must be driven out of their
country.”
These
anti-semitic words uttered by popes, priests, pastors
and laymen, were put into action by unruly Christian mobs and later by Hitler’s
followers.
Adolf Hitler:
“I believe that I am today acting according to the purposes of the Almighty
Creator. In resisting the Jew, I am fighting the Lord’s battle.”
Now
let us apply these sayings to deeds committed by Christians who took their New
Testament literally.
The
crusader’s sword found its justification in the words of Matthew 10.34, “I have not come to bring peace on earth but
a sword.” The Inquisitor’s fire found its justification in the words
of John 15.6, “If a man abide not in me,
he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast
them into the fire and they are burned.” The cancellation of debts
owed to Jews, found its justification in the parable recorded in Luke 16. The
first blood libel was made by Jesus himself where in Matthew 23.35, he states “that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel
unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye
slew between the temple and the altar.”
Rev William Hull
At the time of the World Pentecostal Conference in
German Christians under Hitler
Paul Althaus, a Lutheran theologian of renown in
Many
times Althaus explained to Christians his preference
for the Third Reich over the former
In
a document signed by many Christian theologians it was stated, “We as believing
Christians thank God our Father that he has given to our people in its time of
need the Fuhrer as a pious and faithful sovereign, and that he wants to prepare
for us in the National Socialist system of government, good rule, a government
with discipline and honor. Accordingly, we know that we are responsible before
God to assist the work of the Fuhrer in our calling and in our station in
life.”. (“Ansbacher
Ratschlag,” p. 145)
Another
high ranking Christian theologian, Leutheuser,
believed that the Holy Spirit moves where it chooses, and stated that, “more
spirit of religion has come to Germans through Hitler, than through many of the
churches.” (Julius Leutheuser.
“Die deutsche Christusgemeinde,”
p. 18,19) This same Christian leader asserts that “
The
At
a Church conference, Hitler affirmed that the Catholic Church has always
regarded Jews as evildoers and had banished them into ghettos. He (Hitler) is
only doing what the Church had been doing for fifteen hundred years.. (ibid, p.
79)
In
fact the Catholic youth organisation of
In
a speech to Polish Catholics, Hitler declared: “I as a German Catholic, ask
only what is permitted to Polish Catholics. To be antisemitic
is not to be un-Catholic. The Church used every weapon against the Jews, even
the Inquisition. Christ himself was a pioneer in the fight against Judaism.” (ibid,
p. 146)
An
interesting quotation appears in the Encyclopedia
Britannica under “German Christians:”
“Protestants
who attempted to subordinate church policy to the political exigencies of Nazi
Germany. The German Christians’ Faith Movement, organized in 1932, was
nationalistic and so anti-Semitic that extremists wished to repudiate the Old
Testament and the Pauline Letters because of their Jewish authorship. In July
1933 the state territorial churches merged to form the
Are
present day Christian attitudes towards the Jews any better? Liberals say
they are, and they continue to call for tolerance and understanding. But
the fundamentalists are hindering and harming the progress that has been made
in Christian-Jewish relationships. By their desire to convert the Jew,
they prove themselves to be the most anti-Semitic of all Christian groups, for
the whole idea of conversion is anti-Semitic.
Christian
missionary love for the Jew is a kind of hatred. It loves the Jew, yet
hates him for being what he is. It sees him as blind and in need of being
changed into a believer. When missionary efforts failed, or are foiled,
the love for the Jew quickly turns to hatred and contempt.
We
are not deceived by the ‘new Christians’ of today’s hand-clapping
fundamentalists. They teach the same anti-Semitic doctrines as the church
of yesteryear. Their tactics are different but we know that the message
is the same. Any Jew who can pay homage to the New Testament or allow
himself to believe in it, is, in my opinion in the same category as a Jew who
tries to justify Hitler’s Mein Kampf or, as one who
covers up for the deeds of the Nazis.
More
Jews have been affected, hurt or killed, in the name of Christ and his church
during the last two thousand years than those massacred by the Nazis. Yet
there are Jews, who being so alienated from their own people, have overlooked
this fact and have joined themselves to the church with its built-in
anti-Semitism.
To
imagine that this Jewish self curse and curse on their children (Matthew 27:25) was
actually uttered by any group of Jews is a violation of respect for the human
intellect and a travesty. Because of the depth and spread of this Christian
belief – and the evil it has wrought – it is most necessary to refute and
discredit Matthew 27:25 beyond any shadow of doubt.
The
Jewish child is the ‘hero’ of the Brith Milah (Circumcision): the Bar-Mitzvah and nowadays the
Bat-Mitzvah (Confirmation of male and female children as Subjects of the
Commandment); the Passover Seder (Feast of Mazot);
and the Pidyon ha’Ben
(Redemption of the First-born son)...
There
is scarcely a single religious rite of the Jew that is complete without the
participation of the child. An entire chapter of the Holy Scriptures,
“Proverbs,” is devoted to the proper upbringing of the Jewish child - its first
seven chapters are addressed to “My Son”. Even after the Jew’s passing
from his life the connection between parent and child is perpetuated through
the son’s recital of the Kaddish prayer in memory of
the departed parent. Thus, from birth to after death in a never-ending
cycle, the Jew and his child are inseparable. It has always been so since
Judaism began and it will always be so...
As
for the “Blood curse” (Matthew 27:25), oceans of ink have been expended by
bible scholars Christian and Jewish - starting two centuries ago, to
demonstrate that this self-curse and curse on the children of Israel could
never have been uttered. Despite this, rivers of Jewish blood have been spilled
by a blind and unbending fanaticism that persisted, and still persists, in
perpetuating the fiction that the self-curse was actually voiced. Since the
Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestant sects consider every word in the
New Testament to be the “Word of God,” Matthew 27:25 is a dogma of the church.
They
care because they know that Adolf Hitler’s mendacious claim: “I believe that I
am today acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by
defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord…” has
Matthew 27:25 at its base. (A. Hitler, MEIN
KAMPF, pg. 65; cf. E.H. Flannery, op. cit. pg. 2 1 0).
Harenberg continues: “It was Rudolf Bultmann who stated in 1921, with the help of the form
critical method which he had developed, that this curse was never spoken” (c.f R. Bultrnann, History of the Synoptic Tradition,
Harper, 1963, pg. 282).
The
French historian Charles Guignebert wrote in 1935
about Matthew 27:25 directly, and of other passages of the same ilk in the New
Testament, as follows: “Few of the
sayings of the Gospels have done more harm than these, and yet they are only
the invention of a redactor”. (C. Guignebert, Jesus, op. cit., pg. 470) Hitler used
Jesus’ name quite glibly to justify his unspeakable crimes.
It
was the evangelist Matthew, not a redactor, who “invented” verse 27:25, but no
matter, the damage is the same regardless of who the ‘inventor’ really
was. The pity of it is that all anti-Semitic monsters use (and have used)
the “poison” that is found in Christianity’s Holy Book as propaganda to further
their nefarious ends. Hitler was but one of many.
A
million of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were children.
Footnotes:
1. To
imagine that this self curse and curse on their children (Matthew 27:25) was
actually uttered by any group of Jews is a violation of respect for the human
intellect and a travesty. Because of the depth and spread of this
Christian belief – and the evil it has wrought – it is most necessary to refute
and discredit Matthew 27:25 - beyond any shadow of doubt.
2. Adolf
Eichmann was a Nazi SS official in charge of deporting European Jewry.