Thursday. September 13,1990 ~ THE BULLETIN — 29
CHRISTIAN ANTiSEMiTiSM: \\ jstKe betrayal ofJesus the Jew
By WILLIAM NIGHOLLS
Ahtisemiirsm is causeless hatred. It catnrot be accounted for by any beliefs or actions of Jews themselves. Whatever reasons are given for it, they ^e always rationahzations. The antisemite intends them as a justification for a hatred he or she already feels. Rationalization makes it possible to harbor a passion which, if recognized as causeless, might have to be surrendered.
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for antisemitism historically, we do not explain or justify it. We only show how itgrew up and how it was explained by the antisemites themselves.
The main cause of antisemitism in the West is the way Jews are depicted in Ghristian tradition. Jews experienced hostility from their neighbors well before Christianity came into the world, as we learn from the Scroll of Esther, among other sources. Haman thus came to stand symbolically for all tyrants who have ever been enemies of the Jews. Such anti-Judaic hostility is certainly much older than Christianity, but the Older pagan anti-Judaism lacks the dem-onizing intensity of hatred that characterizes Christian antisemitism.
Christian antisemitism centres on the myth of the Jew as the Christ-killer. Pagan hostility to Jews can be regarded as a particular instance of xenophobia, disHke of the foreigner, for which there are many parallels. Ghristian anti-Judaism, along with the modern successor, secular anti-semitism, is unique.
The inherited hostility doubtless made pagan converts more receptive to the anti-Jewish elements in the Christian myth. Pagan hostility ta Jews was rooted in anger at their refusal to join the ecumenical consensus, which equated the gods of different
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peoples with each other. Thus, Olympian Zeus was recognized 4a4)e the same as Jupiter Capitolinus. But the Jews refused toadmitjhat YHiVY could be identified with any other god known to man. Eicentually, the Romans gave
now coming to the conclusion that the Christian myth is also a myth in this' more usual sense, atleast as far as the role of the Jews is concerned.
TheJews did not kill Jesus. They had no reason to dp so. He did not bring a new and
William Nicholls is Professor Emerittts of Religious Studies at University Of JBritish Columbia. Founder of the Department, he was Heiid froih 1964 until 1983. He shared with Dr. Ian Kent, who practices psychiatry in this city, injhe authorship of f VlMness: thedis-coraiy of fheSe/rBeydndfha £90, pubii8hed4n1972. More rec^ he ediiwi Modernity and Religion (1987), papers from an intema-tionar symposium he chaired at UBC. This article is based on portions of a book: he has been working on since his retirement.
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NICHOLLS
in,and recognized Judaism as a lawful national religion, and from 212 C.E. Jews were Roman citizens.
In the Christian myth, the Jew appears prominently as the enemy, as the betrayer and killer of the divine Jesus. According to the myth: the Son of G-d came to earth to bring a new covenant, to be sealed in his own blood, to replace the covenant that had been broken by the Jews. He came in the form of the Messiah they had been expecting^ but they did not believe in him, rejected the higher spiritual teaching about love and forgiveness which he brought, and conspired to kill him. They condemned him in their highest religious court for blasphemy, on account of his claim to be the Son of G-d, and manipulated the Romans into putting him to death on a political charge, although their own motives were religious.
Because of this, G-d has taken away the Covenant , from the Jews, and given it to a new people gathered from among the Gentiles, while he has punished the Jews with extfe. Jews are essentially Christ-killers, and even before the coming of Jesus they had always been unbelieving and disobedient. Whenever the Christian story is told, it cannot avoid emphasizing the role of the Jews as the enemy. The part they play can never be forgotten.
Traditional Christian anti-Judaism is based on central elements of the Christian myth. 1 use the word myth here in a technical sense employed by students of the history of religions. We mean by it something every religion possesses, a story which constitutes the character oTIden-tity for the group. It tells them who they are and how their religion came into being, about G-d and his purposes for human beings, and what their response should be.
In everyday speech, the word myth has another meaning: it refers to something which is untrue and has been exposed as such. Historians who study Christian origins, including theologians, are
higher teaching, for his teaching was nothing more nor less than a profoundly spiritual interpretation of the Torah, in the tradition of the prophets before him and of many sages and devout men after him. Jesus did not teach anyone that the Torah had been superseded. He kept it himself to his last breath^ In modern terms, he was an Orthodox Jew. _
How do we know all this? Recent study of the way the gospels came to be written,
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