Why Do Christians and Muslims Hate Jews? Part 2

In part 1 of this article, I left off with the move of the leadership of the Christian Church to the city of Pella on the east side of the Jordan River in 69 C.E. I also posited that the early persecution of Christians by the Jews was what sowed the seeds of later anti-Semitism by the Christian Church(es).

But why did the Jews persecute the Christians? For that, we must look at the history of the Jewish people and religion. Throughout the history of Judaism, from the very beginning of written history, Jews have been an insular people. What do I mean by that?

Jews have always segregated themselves from other peoples. They didn’t encourage inter-marriage with non-Jews and often forbade it entirely. They have always had their own customs like circumcision, monotheism, dietary rules, purity rules, observation of the Sabbath, and festivals that seemed odd to other cultures.

Also, they’ve always maintained that they were the chosen people, first choice of the greatest of the gods, and later of the ‘only true God’. This often put them at odds with their polytheistic pagan neighboring cultures. Quite often they lived in towns and cities with other cultures, but always remained separate.

Even when there came a time when some Jews would move away from the dietary laws, purity laws and festivals, they still considered themselves to be Jews. And those Jews who remained more devout might think of the other Jews as impious renegades, but they still considered them to be Jews.

Now, let’s recall that not only was Jesus a Jew by birth and claimed descent from the House of David (or it was later claimed for him). All of his apostles were Jews. The writers of the New Testament were almost all Jews. The entire Jesus movement was initiated and spread by Jews to other Jews prior to the movement to Pella. And the early leaders of the movement like Peter and Paul still practiced Jewish traditions in addition to proclaiming the teachings of the Christ. Jesus even told his followers to observe Jewish law.

So, why did the Jews begin to persecute the Jewish followers of Jesus? First, as noted in Part 1, followers of Jesus claimed that he was the long-awaited Messiah. For traditional Jews, this was blasphemy and apostasy. Further, the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead was in opposition to Jewish teachings of final resurrection.

Jesus and his disciples preached about the kingdom of God on earth. That was politically dangerous, as anything about a new ‘kingdom’ might anger the Roman rulers. In fact, Jesus was crucified by the Romans.

Christians also preached that Jesus was the ‘suffering servant’ predicted in Isaiah, who was tortured and killed for the sins of the nation (Israel), then resurrected by God to share his throne. This was considered more blasphemy by the Jews.

Finally, Christians began to worship Jesus as an equivalent to God. Though there would be centuries of argument by Christians as to the divine nature of Jesus and when it occurred, it was always believed that he was divine after he rose from the tomb. The Jews saw this deification of Christ as more blasphemy against the nature of the ‘one true God’.

For all these reasons, traditional Jews considered followers of Jesus to be traitors to both their religion and their ethnic group. The last straw seems to have been when the Christians began to accept Gentiles into their ranks. In the past, conversion to Judaism, even to any of the different sects of Judaism, required that the Gentile be circumsized and adhere to Jewish law. But at the Council of Jerusalem, Jesus’ brother James, who was the first leader of the Jesus movement, proclaimed that Gentiles didn’t have to convert to Judaism in order to be accepted into the church. We saw what the Jews did to James in Part 1.

Once the Christian leadership moved from Jerusalem to Pella, the conversion of Gentiles continued. Eventually the Christian Church was more Gentile than ethnic Jew. It was during this change that Christians came to consider themselves a separate religion rather than a continuation of Jewish tradition.

Now that we’ve seen how the seeds of Christian hatred for Jews were sown. It’s time to look at how they were cultivated by the early Christians and grown into the mighty crop that exists to this day.

The various historical and biblical sources are hazy on the actual years and period of Christ’s ministry. According to all of the sources I could find, his ministry took place somewhere between 26 C.E. and 33 C.E. and lasted anywhere from 2 to 3 ½ years.

The most pernicious of the reasons that Christians hate Jews is that they hold the Jews responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. My research has shown that this is incorrect for several reasons. So, let’s take a look at Christ’s ministry and the events leading up to the execution of Jesus before we go further.

• First, it must be remembered that Jesus himself, his family, and virtually all of his followers prior to his execution were Jews.
• Second, during the short period of his ministry, he built a following of thousands who followed him and gathered to hear him preach and teach. And all of those followers were also Jews.
• Third, the Jewish people, in general, had no motive for killing him. At the time, the Jewish people were divided into several different sects (Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees and other smaller groups), yet none of them advocated the death of the leaders of other sects.
• Fourth, Jesus, himself, was a faithful and devout Jew. He and his apostles observed all of the Jewish religious customs — observing the Sabbath, saying morning prayers, keeping kosher dietary laws, observing all the fasts and festivals, and preached the laws of the Torah.
• Fifth, Jesus specifically said, multiple times, that his ministry was not starting a new religion, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17).”
• Sixth, the week before his execution, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. He entered the city, riding a donkey, with the road inward from the gate lined with adoring crowds who threw palm fronds on the road for his steed to walk on (the origin of Palm Sunday).
• Seventh, there is no evidence that I could find anywhere that Jews ever used crucifixion as a method of execution, especially not during the time of Jesus’ ministry.
• Eighth, the Jews were not allowed, by their Roman masters, to execute anyone — period. It was forbidden.

In the five days between that Sunday when he entered Jerusalem, and the Friday when he was executed, does it sound feasible that all those adoring crowds of Jews who welcomed Christ suddenly turned against their adored Rabbi? Not very likely.

However, there is plenty of evidence that the leadership of the Jews in Jerusalem, the priests and members of the Sanhedrin, felt threatened by the popularity of the upstart preacher. He was so popular with the masses that the Jewish leaders were afraid to arrest him during Passover.

“It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people’.“ Mark 14:1–2.

So, it would seem that Jesus was killed because he was loved by the Jewish people, not because they hated him or wanted him dead. Indeed, it was the leadership who saw him as a troublemaker — the priesthood and Sanhedrin who wanted him dead because they were afraid he would diminish their power over the people. That’s a theme that’s repeated over and over throughout the history of mankind — political and/or religious leaders willing to do anything to maintain their wealth and power.

The evidence shows that the Jewish leadership were also afraid that, if they didn’t deal with the upstart and his followers, the Romans, finding the popular leader a threat to their rule, would do so in their usual brutal fashion and many Jews would die. John 11: 47–50 quotes some of the priests saying,”If we let him thus alone, the Romans shall come and take away both our place and our nation.” To which the High Priest, Caiaphas replies, “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”

That said, they got Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and supplied Judas with his ‘thirty pieces of silver’ to identify Jesus to the soldiers. They had him brought to where the Sanhedrin was gathered at the home of Caiaphas for a covert trial. There they convicted him of blasphemy (the apparently predetermined result).

However, the Roman rulers did not allow the Jewish leadership to sentence anyone to death. This is why they brought him before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Prefect (governor) who ruled Judea for the Roman Emperor Tiberius, to be tried by the Romans and sentenced to die.

History is also rather murky as to what the Jewish leaders accused Jesus of when presenting him before Pilate. The Sanhedrin convicted Jesus of blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Jewish god wasn’t a crime against Rome. So, they had to figure out something else to accuse him of to get the Romans to execute him. They apparently settled on a charge of sedition against Rome; although some sources say they accused him of being a ‘magician’.

Pilate is a controversial figure in history. His administration in Judea was known to be cruel, characterized by “corruption, violence, robberies, ill treatment of the people”. At the point when Jesus was tried by the Sanhedrin, Pilate was supposedly already on thin ice with the emperor.

A closer look at how Pilate handled the trial before him (he was the ultimate judge, being governor) shows that Pilate was conflicted. After questioning Jesus and other witnesses, he couldn’t find anything that Jesus was guilty of. He even said so multiple times during the trial (Luke 23:4, 14–15, 22).

Cruel as Pilate is claimed to have been, he didn’t want to execute an innocent man. So, knowing that it was customary for the Roman Prefect to pardon a criminal during the Jewish Passover, he supposedly presented Jesus and a criminal named Barabbas to the people and let them choose which one got pardoned.

Enter the supposedly bloodthirsty crowd screaming for the death of Jesus. We saw previously that Jesus had become beloved by the Jewish people. Again, it’s doubtful that they had begun to hate him in such a short time, especially when they probably didn’t even know about the secret trial by the Sanhedrin or the subsequent trial by the Romans.

The priests were so afraid of the reactions by the people that they held their trial at night on a feast day, both of which were against Jewish law. They also held it in secret, at the home of Caiaphas rather than in the council chamber where it belonged. And it’s doubtful that they suddenly let it be known, after keeping the whole operation covert, that they were taking Jesus before Pilate for trial. So, where did the ‘crowd’ come from?

It’s likely that the ‘crowd’ consisted of the 71 members of the Sanhedrin along with Caiaphas and other priests. They were the only ones who had any reason to want Jesus dead. The stories in the Bible about the ‘crowd’, its size, and its thirst for the blood of Jesus get progressively worse as time goes by, like stories often do.

What it comes down to is that Jesus was executed by the Romans at the behest of the priests and political leaders in Jerusalem. It wasn’t all or even most Jews who wanted him dead. So, why did it become such a pervasive belief by Christians?

Photo by Vladimir Srajbe via Pexels

As we know, virtually all first and second and most of the third generations of the followers of Jesus were Jews. They still considered themselves to be Jews. So, when Jews that didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah began to persecute them, it seems that the members of the Jesus sect (still not a separate religion) began to resent their persecutors for not acknowledging that Jesus was the Messiah and converting to their new sect.

When the leaders of the new sect moved their base to Pella, this resentment, both of the persecution from orthodox Jews, and the failure of other Jews to accept that Jesus was the Messiah (his divinity and when he became divine were questions that had not yet been settled at this point) grew. This was the planting of the seed that would grow to full hatred.

Initially, and up to the end of the first century (even after the move to Pella), the followers of Jesus were considered just another Jewish sect within the Roman Empire. However, once the church started accepting Gentiles and not requiring them to follow Jewish laws and rituals, the separation of the Jesus sect into a new and separate religion began.

As we saw in part one of this article, the first use of the term Christian was in the city of Antioch which was a large and thriving Roman city in what is now Syria. No one knows who coined the term, but it may have been used, disparagingly, by the large Jewish population to refer to those belonging to the Jesus sect. It seems that those followers accepted the name and used it themselves as an act of defiance, initially.

By the mid Second Century C.E., as the sect grew and accepted more Gentiles, it began to coalesce into a separate religion with its own identity. The first known, non-Biblical accusation of Jewish deicide (god murder) that I could find was from Justin [the] Martyr (later St. Justin) in his ‘Dialogue with Trypho’ written sometime between 155 & 160 C.E. In the Dialogue, Justin tells Trypho (a Jew, probably fictional) while describing the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the collapse of the Jewish struggle for freedom, “All this has happened to you rightly and well, For ye slew the Just One (Jesus) and His prophets before Him, and now ye reject, and … dishonor those who set their hopes on Him (Jewish persecution of Christians), and God Almighty and Maker of the universe who sent Him …” (Dialogue. 16:3–4).

In fact, Justin’s entire Dialogue is a justification of Christianity and a criticism of those Jews who have not converted to Christianity. Trypho’s part of the Dialogue is a lot of weak sounding attempts to justify the reasons those who remain orthodox Jews haven’t converted.

So, the Dialogue serves two purposes. First, it helps justify the establishment of Christianity as a new and separate religion, no longer linked to Judaism through anything but history. Second, it’s a critique of Jews who don’t convert — a way to show that they’re in the wrong. And what better way of showing that the Jews are on the wrong side of the religious question than to accuse them of murdering god? After that, everything else is minor.

The second earliest accusation of Jewish deicide comes from Melito, Bishop of Sardis (near the modern city of Sart in Turkey). In his Peri Pascha (On the Passover), written sometime between 160 and 170 C.E., and probably delivered as an Easter Sermon, Melito gives a long (and confusing because he says the Crucifixion took place in the middle of Jerusalem) and detailed sermon in which he accuses the Jews of being those who perpetrated the murder of Jesus. As Melito himself is thought to be a Jewish convert to Christianity, this may have been as much to justify his own conversion as it was to illustrate the separation of Christianity from Judaism.

From this point, in the middle Second Century, the charge of deicide was used, increasingly, first to justify the creation of Christianity as a new religion and second, to justify and emphasize anti-Semitism as punishment for not converting. As time went on, the Jews became a focal point to use as a unifier in Christianity by having a target that it was justifiable to discriminate against and, often in later centuries, use as a target for the people’s rage that diverted them from the tyranny of their own church and of the governmental systems that their own church supported.

And, once again, I’m over 2600 words and find that there’s a whole lot more to write on this subject. So, I’m going to publish this and move on to writing Part 3.

Sources:

1. The Gospel Coalition, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/the-parting-of-the-way-a-survey-of-the-relationship-between-jews-and-christians-in-the-first-and-second-centuries-ce/

2. World History Encyclopedia, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1785/the-separation-of-christianity-from-judaism/ ;

3. Compelling Truth, https://www.compellingtruth.org/length-Jesus-ministry.html

4. The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-690095

5. My Jewish Learning, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/who-killed-jesus/

6. BBC — Bitesize — The Death of Jesus, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z6b96v4/revision/4

7. Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/justin-martyr-x00b0

8. Bible Study Tools, https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/why-did-pontius-pilate-allow-jesus-to-be-crucified.html

9. Encyclopedia.com; https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/melito-sardisdeg