Sadly, for millions of Jewish people, the idea that Jesus could be the one
to bring peace and reconciliation seems ridiculous and offensive.
Nikki used to visit a Jewish lady who was born around the beginning of
the 20th century and brought up in a small town in Poland. Her first memory
of the name of Jesus was when her parents told her to hide in a cupboard in
their home because it was ‘Good Friday’ and on that day the Roman Catholics
would come out of their church services into the Jewish quarter to throw
stones at the Jews ‘to avenge the death of Jesus.’ Not surprisingly
it was hard for her to see Jesus as anyone who had an answer to anything.
As far as she was concerned Jesus was ‘someone who hated us and is
responsible for our misery.’
The roots of this hatred go back a long way. John Chrysostom, considered
a saint and church father who lived in the fourth century, wrote:
‘The Jews are the most worthless of all
men. They are lecherous, greedy and rapacious. They are perfidious
murderers of Christ. The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for
killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon.
Christians may never cease vengeance and the Jews must live in servitude
forever. God always hated the Jews. It is incumbent upon Christians to
hate Jews.’ (1).
When Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of the
Roman Empire in 312 he issued many anti-Jewish laws. Jews were forbidden to
accept converts, while every enticement was used to make them forsake
Judaism. At the Council of Nicea in 325 he said,
‘It is right to demand what our reason approves and that we should
have nothing in common with the Jews.’
The links between Christianity and Judaism were broken as the Sabbath was
changed from the seventh to the first day of the week and the date of Easter
was separated from Passover.
As Christianity in its Roman Catholic form became the dominant religion
of Europe those who rejected it became the forces of anti-Christ. The main
group of rejecters were the Jewish people who therefore were considered by
the church to be the ‘anti-Christ’ suffering continual persecution. In Spain
in 613 all Jews who refused to be baptized had to leave the country. A few
years later the remaining Jews were dispossessed and given to wealthy
‘pious’ Christians as slaves.
The first Crusade in 1096 saw fierce persecution of Jewish communities as
the Crusaders began their journeys to the ‘Holy Land’ to ‘liberate’ it from
the Muslims. They said,
‘We are going to fight Christ’s enemies in Palestine (i.e. the
Muslims), but should we forget his enemies in our midst (i.e. the
Jews)?’
12,000 Jews were killed in the cities along the River Rhine alone.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred all the Jews
and Muslims they could find.
In 1215 Pope Innocent III condemned the Jews to eternal slavery by
decreeing,
‘The Jews against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although
they ought not to be killed, lest the Christian people forget the Divine
Law, yet as wanderers ought they remain upon the earth until their
countenance be filled with shame.’
The first ritual murder charge against the Jewish community was in
Norwich in 1144 when the Jews were accused of killing a Christian child at
Passover time to drain his blood in order to make Passover matzos. This
hideous and ridiculous charge has resurfaced time and again, most
recently in the Muslim world, leading to massacres of the Jews. In 1290
King Edward I expelled all Jews from England.
In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was directed against heretics – Jews and
non-Catholic Christians. In 1492 Jews were given the choice of forced
baptism or expulsion from Spain. 300,000 left penniless.
Martin Luther hoped initially that he would attract Jews to his
Protestant faith, understanding that they could not accept the superstitions
and persecutions of Rome. But when they rejected his attempts to convert
them, he turned on them and uttered words of hatred used word for word by
the Nazis in their propaganda:
"What shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of the
Jews? First their synagogues should be set on fire. Secondly their homes
should likewise be broken down and destroyed. Thirdly they should be
deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds.
"Fourthly their rabbis must
be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more. Fifthly passport
and travelling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews.
Sixthly they ought to be stopped from usury. Seventhly let the young and
strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the axe, the spade, the
distaff, and spindle and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their
noses.
"To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains,
if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one, so
that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden –
the Jews.".(2)
In the late 19th century the Russian Orthodox Church instigated the
pogroms, violent attacks on Jewish communities of the kind portrayed in the
film Fiddler on the Roof. They devised a solution to the ‘Jewish
problem’ – one third extermination, one third forcible conversion to
[what they viewed as] Christianity and one third expulsion.
Russian anti-Semites produced the libelous pamphlet,
The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion alleging a Jewish conspiracy to
take over the world. This fiction was treated as a proven fact by the
Nazis and was part of their propaganda effort to prepare people for the
‘Final Solution’, the extermination of 6 million members of European
Jewry in the ovens of the Holocaust. Today the same libel is being peddled
in the Muslim world to whip up hatred for Israel and the Jewish people.
This brief history of Jewish suffering shows the terrible truth that most
of it has been instigated by people who claimed to be Christians. The
main accusations that has been brought against the Jewish people by the
professing church is that ‘the Jews killed Jesus.’
Who says the Jews killed Jesus?
Back in 1978 I was working as a French teacher at the Hasmonean School,
an Orthodox Jewish grammar school in north London. One day I was covering
for an absent teacher, minding my own business while the class got on with
their work. One of the boys put his hand up and said, ‘Please sir, I want to
ask you something. You’re a Christian. Why do you Christians say we killed
Jesus?’
I answered him as best I could, saying that I personally did not say
this, but agreed that much of the professing church had done so, because
they did not really understand the faith they claimed to represent or who
Jesus really was. This let loose an outburst of questions and comments from
the boys on what was obviously an explosive issue to them. News of this
discussion got back to the Rabbis in the school and the next day one of them
came to me and said, ‘Mr Pearce, we know you are a sincere Christian and are
friendly to our people, but please do not mention the founder of
Christianity again in this school.’
As I prayed about it afterwards I realized how much hurt there is in
the hearts of Jewish people over the way they have been persecuted in
the name of Jesus. I also became aware of how much deeper is Jesus’ own hurt
over the cruel misrepresentation which has been given to the Jewish people
by His supposed followers down through the centuries, leading to a massive
wall coming between Him and His own people.
The very first verse of the New Testament tells us of the ‘genealogy of
Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham’ (Matthew 1:1).
Throughout the New Testament His Jewish identity is stressed. He was
circumcised on the eighth day (Luke 2:21), brought up in an observant Jewish
home (Luke 2:41) and learned the Torah (3) from His youth (Luke 2:46-49).
Jesus told a Samaritan woman that ‘salvation is of the Jews’ (John
4:22) and He kept the Jewish feasts (John 7:2, John 10:22). He told His
disciples in their first preaching mission not to go to the Gentiles,
but ‘rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matthew 10:6).
Sure, He had fierce controversies with the religious leaders of His day,
but so did the Hebrew Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and others.
Concerning the crucifixion, the New Testament does not put the blame on
‘the Jews’ and certainly never even hints that succeeding generations of
Jews should be persecuted on account of it. There is a problem with John’s
Gospel in its use of the term ‘the Jews’ to describe the opposition to
Jesus, but an intelligent reading of the text shows that John is talking of
the Jewish religious leadership, not the entire Jewish people.
John 5:18 states:
‘Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not
only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making
Himself equal with God.’
Since the Gospel makes it clear that Jesus
Himself (John 4:9) and the
disciples are Jewish the use of the term ‘the Jews’ in John 5:18
and elsewhere [suggests that it mainly refers to the elite and arrogant] Jewish leadership.
In many ways The Gospel of John is the most Jewish of the Gospels showing
the connection between Jesus’ teaching and Jewish festivals and customs. In
John’s Gospel Jesus makes it clear who is responsible for His death:
"Therefore my Father loves me, because I lay down my life that
I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of
myself and I have power to take it again. This command I have
received from my Father."(John 10:17-18)
The implication of this is clear. Jesus Himself takes responsibility for
His own death. It happens at the time and manner of His choosing, so
that He might fulfill the Father’s will by dying as the sacrifice for the
sins of the world and rising again from the dead to give eternal life to
those who receive Him. No human being, Jewish or Gentile, has the right or
the power to take Jesus’ life from Him against His will.
This fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah 53, which states concerning the
sufferings of the Messiah,
"It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, He has put
Him to grief’." Isaiah 53:10
In chapter 6 we will look at the different
arguments about this prophecy, but taking the view that it is about the
sacrificial death of Messiah fulfilled in Jesus, the responsibility for
Messiah’s sufferings is placed on God Himself. ‘It pleased the Lord to
bruise Him’ means that Jesus was put to death to fulfill the will of God.
The Gospels take up this idea as we see Jesus submitting Himself to the
will of God in order to redeem the world. He prayed in Gethsemane:
"O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me:
nevertheless not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39)
‘This cup’ refers to the suffering which He knew lay ahead. It was
necessary for Him to go through this suffering in order that He might be
‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’" (John 1:29)
According to the Book of Hebrews those who believe come to
"Jesus the
mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks
better things than that of Abel." (Hebrews 12:24) The blood of Abel spoke of
vengeance for Cain’s sin of murder (Genesis 4), but the blood of Jesus
speaks of mercy and forgiveness.
Wrong church teaching however has turned this on its head and used the
verse in Matthew’s Gospel, "His blood be upon us and upon our children"
Matthew 27:25), to claim that the suffering of the Jewish people is the
result of a self inflicted curse, and even that Christians are therefore
justified in persecuting the Jewish people in Jesus’ name.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus Himself prayed from the
cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," (Luke 23:34)
thus expressing God’s will that even those responsible for the death of
Jesus, whether Jewish or Gentile, should find forgiveness through His name.
Do we base our theology on the words of an enraged crowd or on the words of
the Lord Jesus?
The answer to Jesus’ prayer was to be found not long afterwards through
the preaching of the Apostles. Peter did place human responsibility for the
death of Jesus on those who had called for Him to be crucified:
"The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers,
glorified His servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the
presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied
the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to
you, and killed the Prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead, of
which we are witnesses." (Acts 3.13-15)
This was not to say that every Jew alive was responsible, because Peter
himself was Jewish as were all the followers of Jesus at that time. It was
certainly not to say that subsequent generations of Jews who had no
connection with the decision to call for Jesus’ death were responsible. It
was to say that there were people alive, who were actually listening to
Peter speak at that very moment, who were responsible.
But even to them there was a message of hope and forgiveness. Explaining
the meaning of the death and resurrection of the Jesus, Peter said,
"Yet
now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did your rulers. But
those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the
Messiah would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be
converted that your sins may be blotted out." (Acts 3.17-19)
The people who called for the death of Jesus were responsible for the
miscarriage of justice that took place. However they were ignorant of the
spiritual meaning of it, hence Jesus’ words, "They know not what they do."
The purpose of the preaching of the Apostles was to tell them why Jesus died
and rose again and to show them how they too could find forgiveness and
eternal salvation by repenting of their sin and believing in His name.
As all the people hearing this message and the many thousands who
responded to it in the early chapters of Acts were Jews, Jesus’ prayer for
the forgiveness of those who had Him crucified was being answered. It is
clear that the message of the Gospel was from the beginning intended to be
"the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first
and also for the Greek (Gentile)." (Romans 1.16)
Both Jews and Gentiles had to make a choice, whether to believe in the
salvation offered by the Messiah or to reject it. Of course many Jewish
people did reject the Apostles’ message. So did gentiles, Greeks and others
in whatever nation or race they belonged to.
There was a division amongst the Jews of Jesus’ day about Him between those
who were for Him and those who were against Him. We see a
similar division
today among all people of the world wherever the Gospel is
preached.
The statement which really tells us who was responsible for the death of
Jesus is to be found in Acts 4:24-28:
"They (the Apostles) raised their voice to God with one accord and
said: 'Lord you are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all
that is in them, who by the mouth of your servant David have said, ‘Why
did the nations rage, and the people plot vain things? The kings of the
earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against
the Lord and His Messiah.' For truly against your holy servant Jesus,
whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and
the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand
and your purpose determined before to be done.”
In this prayer all categories of people are implicated, Herod and Pontius
Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel. The Gentiles are actually
mentioned before the people of Israel, therefore they have no right to claim
any superiority or judgmental attitude towards the Jews. It is clear that
the physical act of crucifying Jesus was carried out on the orders of the
Roman governor, by Roman soldiers in the Roman way. Strangely no one has
ever suggested that the Italians killed Jesus and should be placed under a
curse because of this!
All this happened "to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined
before to be done", in other words to fulfill the predetermined plan of God.
So again the ultimate responsibility for the death of Jesus rests with God
Himself in order to fulfill His purposes.
Any persecution of the Jews by the churches is a terrible distortion of
the truth and a betrayal of the real Messiah Jesus. Unfortunately the church
did the exact opposite of what Paul taught in his letter to the Romans,
where he spoke of Israel and the Jewish people being the root which supports
the ‘olive tree’.
By this he meant that the Christian faith is based on the
revelation given to the world through the Jewish people in the Jewish Bible
and fulfilled in the Jewish Messiah. His message has been communicated to
the Gentiles by His Jewish disciples who wrote the New Testament. Therefore
if Christians want to have true spiritual life they have to acknowledge the
debt they have to Israel and to repay that debt with love for the Jewish
people.
In Romans 11 Paul makes it clear that whether the Jewish people accept
Jesus or not, they are still "beloved for the sake of the fathers" (i.e. the
patriarchs of Israel and the covenant God made with them). He goes on to say
that "the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:28-9). On
this basis Christians have a responsibility to love the Jewish people and
treat them with justice and kindness, no matter what they believe about
Jesus. Significantly Paul wrote this letter to Christians living in Rome,
the capital of the Roman Empire and the city which was to dominate
Christendom in the following centuries.
What went wrong?
As the church became dominated by large numbers of
Gentiles joining it, Jewish believers in Jesus became a minority. The
Christians began to move away from the pattern of living given them by Jesus
and the Apostles, forming a religious institution which bore little
resemblance to the original model given in the New Testament.
They also
wanted to ingratiate themselves with the Roman authorities who were hostile
to the Jewish people following the failed Jewish revolts against Rome in 70
and 135. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, Roman Catholicism emerged
as the dominant force in Europe, and the Bishop of Rome became the Pope,
taking on much of the power and character of the Roman Emperor (even one of
his titles – Pontifex Maximus). This produced a tragic distortion of the
Christian message dominated by a corrupted clergy with vast wealth at its
disposal, exploiting and corrupting the people of Europe in the name of
Christianity.
How different it would have been if the Roman church had paid attention
to the letter to the Romans! As the church lost its understanding of the
Jewish people it became cut off from its roots. Therefore the fruit it
produced was not the fruit of the Holy Spirit, ‘love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control’
(Galatians 5:22-3), but the works of the flesh manifested in the cruel and
corrupt church of the Middle Ages and beyond.
When I was a student I remember seeing a film of Bernard Malamud’s book,
The Fixer, which made a great impression on me. In this story,
Yakov Bok, a Jew living in Tsarist Russia is wrongly accused of murder and
imprisoned. The case is a typical example of the anti-Semitism rife in
Russia at the end of the 19th century. The authorities involve the Russian
Orthodox Church in their interrogations of Bok, by trying to force him to
convert to Christianity. They give him a New Testament to read, which he
does.
When the Russian Orthodox priest comes to interrogate Yakov to find
out what he has learnt from the New Testament, he states simply, "Jesus is
Jewish. So whoever hates the Jew hates Jesus." This is true, and
hatred for the Jews demonstrates a spirit of force, tyranny and prejudice
which is the opposite of the true spirit of Jesus the Messiah."
(chapter 2 of
The Messiah Factor)
