anti-judaism Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Anti-Judaism in the Gospels: A Blast From the Past

Four years ago now I offered up the following response to a question about whether the Gospels of the New Testament are anti-Semitic. Here's the post! ****************************************************************** QUESTION: It is in my understanding that it is of common scholarly opinion that the Gospel writers (at least Matthew, Luke, and John) were rather anti-Semitic in nature. Correct? How would you respond to that claim? After reading “The Origin of Satan” by Elaine Pagels, it is a subject that deeply interests me, and I would love to hear your professional opinion on the matter. RESPONSE: This question actually ties into some of the things I’ve been thinking about with respect to the stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and so it seems appropriate to answer it now rather than in a separate blog. I won’t deal with the question on the very broadest level, but will consider one feature of the Gospels that shows that with the passing of time they become more and more anti-Jewish. I should say at the outset that I do not think [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:01:41-04:00October 14th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

The Myth of the First Christmas

Over the years I’ve been asked to write short articles on the meaning of Christmas for various news magazines. Looking back at some of these articles makes me realize how many different views of the season seem to be competing with each other inside my head. Or maybe I’ve just been in different moods! I thought I would reproduce a couple of these articles on the blog. The following is one I wrote a few years ago for the British journal The New Statesman. I called it “The Myth of the First Christmas.” (Apologies to those with better memories than mine: I just checked after posting this article and see that I did so earlier -- three years ago! But no matter, I didn't remember what was in it, and so probably you won't either!) ****************************************************************** Once more the season is come upon us. At its heart stands a tale of two-thousand year vintage, the Christmas story. Or perhaps we should say the Christmas myth. When Post-Enlightenment scholars turned their critical tools on the tales [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:58:18-04:00December 23rd, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of Luke

In my previous post I argued that in the narrative of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has to die for a rather specific reason. In Luke, more than in his predecessor Mark, Jesus is portrayed as a great prophet (like Samuel, like Elijah, etc.), and in Luke’s understanding, that is why Jesus had to die. The Jewish people, in his view, always reject their own prophets sent from God. Jesus was the last of the great prophets. He too had to be rejected and killed at the hands of the Jewish people. Some scholars have argued that because of this denigration of the Jewish people for always rejecting the prophets and Jesus, Luke is probably to be seen as an “anti-Jewish” Gospel. In my judgment there is a lot to be said for this view. The only Jews that the Gospel appears to approve of are the ones who recognize Jesus as a great prophet and son of God (his mother, Symeon and Anna, John the Baptist, his own disciples, etc.). The other Jewss seemed to be [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T13:16:28-04:00October 8th, 2015|Canonical Gospels|

Yale Shaffer Lectures 3 of 3 – Christ Against the Jews

Here is the third of my Shaffer Lectures delivered almost exactly ten years ago. This final one has to do with textual variants and apocryphal texts that show evidence of Christian anti-Judaism. I call this one: Christ Against the Jews. It is a topic that I continue to be interested in, and on which I plan to write a book for a general audience, at some time in the next few years (not about textual variants, but about the rise of Christian opposition to Jews and Judaism.) Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition. Quality is lacking since this is a VHS to 720p uprez:

BDEhrman2017-12-14T15:50:14-05:00September 21st, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|

More on Jews, Christians, and the Battle for Scripture

In yesterday’s post I indicated that my next trade book, to be written in a couple of years, would deal with the question of Jews and Christians, centered on the question of why Christians kept the Old Testament and how doing so led to controversies with Jews. The following is how I set up the issue that I will be addressing. The second-century Christian theologian Marcion maintained that the Old Testament was the Scripture of the Jews. Christians, however, were not Jews; they were followers of Jesus. Moreover, the loving God of Jesus was not the wrathful God of the Jews. For Marcion, Jews and Christians had nothing in common except in a negative sense: the Jews represented everything the Christians rejected, including the inferior, legalistic God who chose the Jewish people and gave them their Scriptures. Christians have their own beneficent and salvation-bringing God, and their own Scriptures. For Marcion, the Old Testament is not part of the Christian Bible. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:29:41-04:00May 27th, 2013|Book Discussions, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

The Next Trade Book: Jews and Christians

QUESTION: I was wondering if someday you will write a book on the rise of anti-Judaism in early Christian circles ? If you were to write such a book, what would the title and the subtitle be ? RESPONSE: As it turns out, that is indeed to be the topic of my next trade book, which I plan to write in a couple of years. As I have said on this blog before, I try to alternate the kinds of books I write: trade books for a general audience, textbooks for college students, and scholarly books for the six people in the world who really care. Now that I am putting the finishing touches on my trade book How Jesus Became God, I am getting ready to work on my next scholarly book. This will be a heavy-hitting scholarly commentary on the early Christian Greek Gospel fragments from the early second century, including most notably the Gospel of Peter, Papyrus Egerton 2, the Jewish Christian Gospels (Gospel according to the Hebrews; Gospel of the Nazareans; [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:29:49-04:00May 26th, 2013|Book Discussions, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Why Was Barnabas Attributed to Barnabas: Part 2

In my last post but one, in starting to talk about why the anonymous Letter to Barnabas was attributed by early Christians to Barnabas, best known as a one of the closest companions of Paul, I talked mainly about the mid-second century philosopher/theologian-eventually-branded-arch-heretic Marcion. You may have wondered why. In this post I’ll tell you why. VERY brief review. Recall, the letter of Barnabas is stridently anti-Jewish, claiming that the Jews never were the people of God because they had broken the covenant as soon as God had given it to them on Mount Sinai (by worshipping the Golden Calf); they misunderstood the law, taking it literally, when it was meant figuratively. Even though Jews never realized it, the OT was not a Jewish book but a Christian book, that not only anticipated Christ but proclaimed the Christian message. END of review…. The first explicit reference to this anonymous letter is in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200 who quotes it and claims it was written by Barnabas, who, he indicates, was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-18T14:20:20-04:00January 1st, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

Melito and arly Christian Anti-Judaism

I AM IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING THE PENULTIMATE EDITS ON MY MY BIBLE INTRODUCTION. TODAY I HAD TO REVIEW AN EXCURSUS ON EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS IN WHICH I DISCUSS THE RISE OF ANTI-JUDAISM IN THE EARLY CHURCH, IN CLUDING THIS BIT ON MELITO OF SARDIS. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE WORTH POSTING HERE. ******************************************************************************************************************** Melito was a bishop of the city of Sardis in Asia Mino in the mid to late second century. Today he is best known for a sermon he wrote that lambasts the Jews for the role they played in the death of Jesus. In it we find the first instance of a Christian author claiming that since the Jews killed Jesus, and since Jesus was God, the Jews are guilty of deicide – the murder of God. This charge was used, of course, to justify all sorts of hateful acts of violence against Jews over the centuries. In part, the rhetorical eloquence with which the charge was sometimes leveled has contributed ot the emotional reaction that it produced. Consider Melito’s [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-01T01:33:26-05:00December 2nd, 2012|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Public Forum|

Anti-Judaism in the Gospels

QUESTION: It is in my understanding that it is of common scholarly opinion that the Gospel writers (at least Matthew, Luke, and John) were rather anti-Semitic in nature. Correct? How would you respond to that claim? After reading “The Origin of Satan” by Elaine Pagels, it is a subject that deeply interests me, and I would love to hear your professional opinion on the matter. RESPONSE: This question actually ties into some of the things I’ve been thinking about with respect to the stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and so it seems appropriate to answer it now rather than in a separate blog. I won’t deal with the question on the very broadest level, but will consider one feature of the Gospels that shows that with the passing of time they become more and more anti-Jewish. I should say at the outset that I do not think that the Gospel writers, or anyone else in their time, was “anti-Semitic.” The idea and reality of anti-Semitism are modern, and are based on modern sense of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:18:27-04:00October 16th, 2012|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

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