Interview: Anti-Semitic Elements in the New Testament

“The New Testament contains some anti-Semitic passages. One finds these only in the latest documents. The main example is in the Gospel of John. It was written after the split between Christians and Jews had occurred. The anti-Jewish sentiment permeates the whole book, and it contains the most anti-Semitic verse in the New Testament.

“John has Jesus distance himself completely from the Jewish people. He lets him speak about the Jews, their laws and festivals, as if he himself is no longer one of them. Worst of all, in a dispute between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, John has him say: ‘You have the devil as your father.’ In later Christian literature, that expression is picked up.”

Professor Pieter van der Horst studied classical philology, literature and theology. He was a Professor of Jewish Studies and other subjects at Utrecht University.

“This fatal short remark has had lethal consequences over two millennia. It cost tens of thousands of Jewish lives in later history, especially in the Middle Ages. This verse was taken by Christian Jew-haters as a license to murder Jews. These murderers believed: ‘If Jesus said that Jews have the devil as their father, we should eradicate them as best as we can.’

“All New Testament scholars agree that this is not Jesus’ position, but that of John. When one religious group breaks away from its mother religion, it has to create its own new identity. The sociology of religion teaches us that, in its first phase, the new group always begins to attack the old religion fiercely.

“The most effective demonization is calling the Jews ‘Children of the devil’ and having Jesus say this himself. Unfortunately however, the Gospel of John is one of the most popular books in Christianity.

“The anti-Jewish texts in the Gospel of Matthew fit into a picture that is not in itself anti-Semitic. Only in this Gospel’s narrative of the passion of Jesus does one find that Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, says ‘I do not see anything evil in this man.’ Pilate then washes his hands as a token of his wish to have nothing to do with Jesus’ execution. Pilate’s wife says, ‘I had a dream about this man. Don’t touch him because he is completely innocent.’.

“Everything we know from other sources tells us that Pilate was thoroughly unscrupulous and ruthless. The idea that he would save a person from capital punishment because he thought him innocent is not historical, and almost ridiculous.

“Mathew’s text has to be understood in the context of his time, around the 80’s of the first century. In the middle of the 60’s CE, under the Emperor Nero, the first persecutions of Christians had begun, followed later by further minor persecutions on a local level. This frightened the Christians.

“For political reasons, Matthew was keen that his writings should give the Romans the impression that Christians were not a danger to them. If Pilate, a highly respected Roman magistrate, says about Jesus ‘This man is completely innocent,’ it implies that Romans do not have to fear Christianity. This in turn leads to the story of the Jews supposedly shouting, ‘Let his blood come over us’—which means, ‘We take the responsibility for his death.’

“Shifting the responsibility for Jesus’ death to the Jewish people is at odds with what Matthew says in the earlier parts of his Gospel to the effect that Jesus enjoyed immense popularity with the masses, that is, with the majority of the common Jewish people.

“There is also an isolated case of an anti-Jewish outburst by the Apostle Paul. In one of his letters to the Thessalonians, the Christian community in the Greek town of Thessalonica, he reports that the Jews strongly opposed his preaching. Paul then works himself into a fury and says, ‘These Jews killed Jesus and the prophets and for that reason they displease God and are the enemies of all mankind.’

“This is the only text in the New Testament that says the Jews are the enemy of the rest of mankind. This motif derives from pre-Christian pagan anti-Semitism, where it appears many times. It stands in complete opposition to what Paul says at length about the Jewish people in his Epistle to the Romans. In three chapters— 9, 10, and 11—Paul paints a far more positive picture of the Jewish people. There is no mention of their being the enemy of humanity; nor is there any in Paul’s other letters.

“In his later letter to the Romans, Paul said, ‘We Christians should realize that the olive tree is the people of Israel and we are only grafted into this olive tree.’ His one case of an anti-Jewish outburst seems to be that of someone who did not always control his emotions.”

“Only in later centuries did Christianity attack the Jewish religion as fiercely as it could, including by demonization.”