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The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity
This revisionist reading of early anti-Judaism offers a richer and more varied picture of the Jews and Christians of antiquity.
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First published January 1, 1983
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September 1, 2017
When this book was published in 1983, anti-Semitism was not on my radar. I was a survivor of the youth revolution of the 60’s and, as far as I was concerned, all of these old “religious” problems were no longer relevant. They were dead and buried with the era of the 50’s.
My wife, children and I attended a UU (Unitarian-Universalist) Congregation. In my imagination, this was the new way forward: a church for all religions. The old traditional barriers had been razed and we were now free to build a new spirituality based on the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people. In retrospect, my naïve idealism would be comical if it hadn’t resulted in so much painful growth.
That growth began when I realized some of the problems of UU-ism. The most obvious problem is the superficial nature of the faith embodied in UU-ism. This phenomenon is well described in Dr. Davidson Loehr’s 2005 UU Assembly address titled, “Why Unitarian Universalism is Dying.” Davidson was a UU minister in Austin Texas and he raises many issues in this essay. The issue of superficiality is captured in his characterization of the seven sacred principals of UU, “known in some circles as the Seven Banalities or the Seven Dwarfs.”
To be fair many people in UU hold deep and profound beliefs. But the questions raised by Davidson went to the core issue of a community’s statement of belief and it’s principles for Justice. Many UU’s would not agree with him, but his essay struck a chord with me. I had been brought up in a Christian tradition and educated in a version of existential Christianity which emphasized the deep nature of spirituality.
But this awakening led me to explore the faith tradition of my youth and I began to attend a Methodist Church. My wife, who was brought up in the Jewish tradition and who had already lost interest in UU-ism, joined me. With her help I began to hear the anti-Jewish subtext in the traditional Christian message.
When I first read John Gager’s book in 2010, I had already Read Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll. So I didn’t need to be convinced that Christianity bore much of the blame for anti-Semitism. It’s a very short step from anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism. What Gager accomplishes in this book is nothing less than sharpening the focus on the historical events and debates that led Christianity to develop and sacralize the anti-Jewish message. It is a great companion to Carroll’s book.
Nevertheless, it comes as a shock that Gager begins with the historical criticism of Christianity as an anti-Jewish and even anti-Semitic religion. The author ends chapter 1 by summarizing Rosemary Ruether’s scathing indictment of Christianity in Faith and Fratricide (1974):
Adding to the condemnation, he also quotes supporting sociological evidence from Charles Glock and Rodney Stark in Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (1969):
Chapter 2 deepens the debate by looking at Ruether’s critics. There are five general areas of criticism but Gager only shines the historical spotlight on the fifth one: the presence of pre-Christian anti-Semitism. For if Christianity can deflect the blame to the pagan culture, then it is absolved for the origin of anti-Semitism if not for the ongoing support of it.
As Gager will show in the middle chapters, there is no basis for such a conclusion. He will later say that we inherited this notion of pre-Christian anti-Semitism from the anti-Religious philosophers of the enlightenment whose agenda was to undermine all religious faith beginning with the source of both Christianity and Islam. They did so by cherry-picking texts from the likes of Cicero, Tacitus, and Seneca.
In his analysis of Gentile-Jewish relations, Gager looks primarily at 2 periods of history: the Hellenic period to 50 BCE and the conflict period, 50 BCE to 135 CE. Although Judea did not become a Roman Provence until 63 BCE, Jews had lived throughout the Empire since ancient times. Regarding Hellenism, the earliest writings portray Judea in similar fashion to the Greeks as a nation of philosophers.
The first signs of tension appear during the period following the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE) as his successors fought for domination. The struggle for dominance was particularly relevant between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. Judea was situated between the two and each side looked for alliances in Judea to help in their struggle for power against the other. Gager highlights the sixth war between the two for special attention. After all, the ruler of Syria at that time was Antiochus IV Epiphanes who attempted to force Greek culture and values on the Jews. Antiochus IV suffered a loss in the resulting revolt (167—160 BCE) led by Judas Maccabee. Gager could have improved this section by adding more detail.
Gager’s conclusion for this period, however, is solid:
A big change takes place around 30 BCE however. The event that triggers this change is the loss by Egypt during the Roman Civil War. Anthony had allied himself with Cleopatra against Octavius who would win and become Caesar Augustus. The problem was that many Jews lived in Egypt, particularly in Alexandria, and they generally supported Octavius against Anthony and Cleopatra. After all, Judea had been a Roman province for only 30 years or so and things had gone pretty well. Judeans had a long history of dealing with Egypt and the prospects based on that history were dubious at best if Egypt had won.
So after the victory by Octavius, the Jews of Alexandria had to live with a political liability. According to most Egyptians they had favored the wrong side in the war. Rome didn’t help. They levied a tax on all those living in Egypt except Greek citizens. Now, one could become a Greek citizen through the institution of the Gymnasium which offered training in Greek culture and practice. Both Egyptians and Judeans living in Egypt attempted to do this but Rome objected, of course. Nonetheless the tensions over the issue of Greek citizenship, tax liability and political favoritism boiled over in 38 CE as violence toward the Jewish community in Alexandria.
It seems that King Agrippa had visited Alexandria in 38 CE and the visit was seen as politically motivated. Agrippa, after all, had been a friend to Gaius Caligula. He even suffered imprisonment for supporting the future Emperor by expressing a wish for Tiberius’ death. When Caligula rose to power in 37, he freed Agrippa. The visit was ill-timed at best because the people of Alexandria were preparing an appeal to Rome over the political issues between Jews and Egyptians in Alexandria.
The Alexandrian riots are sometimes referred to as the first historical evidence for anti-Semitism. Under Gager’s telling, the riots can viewed as an undesirable outcome of political maneuvering by the Egyptian leaders in Alexandria. By the time an appeal can be made to Rome in 41 or 42, Caligula had been assassinated and Claudius was Emperor. Claudius attempted to take an even-handed approach which was largely successful. It is noteworthy that one of the ambassadors to Rome on the Egyptian side was Apion who wrote a slanderous treatise on the Jews which Josephus later rebutted.
I have spent a significant portion of this review telling the story of the Alexandrian revolt because it is often seen as the first evidence for Jew hatred in history. But it was also a template for other conflicts. The social-political pattern of citizenship change occurs as a significant issue over and over in Gager’s book. The Roman Empire consisted of a collection of ethnic provinces. Each one stood in a different and distinctive relation to Rome. Rome was justifiably proud of its collection of peoples but each group came into the Empire under different circumstances and with different benefits and liabilities. The Roman army was invited into Judea in 63 BCE to quell a potential civil war. The Jews were granted exemptions for Sabbath observance and military service. They were valued for their ancient “philosophical” traditions.
In contrast, Gaul had fought with Rome over many centuries. When Rome was finally victorious in 50 BCE under Julius Caesar, Gaul entered the Empire with a significant liability. As Brigitte Kahl makes abundantly clear in her book, Galatians Re-Imagined (2010), the Gauls and Galatians are always portrayed in art and monuments as a vanquished people:
The different status of Judeans and Galatians will come into sharp focus in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Kahl’s book provides ample explanation as to why the Galatians would want to Judaize to improve their status. Gager focuses attention on Paul in the last third of the book, but in the 1980’s he did not have the benefit of Kahl’s analysis.
In the middle part of Gager’s book, the issue of status change or citizenship change occurs over and over, whether with Romans or with Christians. There were clear incentives for changing one’s status to become a Judean and when that became politicized, there would inevitably be those on the other side of the issue who would demonize the attempt with satire, polemic or slander. Rome objected to citizenship changes because it undermined their rule of law and may have had tax consequences. Christian leaders objected because of their disadvantageous position in arguing before Rome that Christians were the rightful inheritors of the ancient Jewish customs and traditions. The Christian leaders sought clear boundaries between nascent Christianity and Judaism which they hoped would phase out.
Oddly, Gager does not attach much importance to the Roman response to the Judean revolts in 66-73 CE and in 132-135 CE. Clearly, the destruction of the Judean Temple in 70 CE was important to Christian leaders who used it a proof of God’s disfavor with the Jews. Gager says that Rome fell silent on the matter after 135. But just because Rome appeared to solve its Judean problem by renaming the province Syria Palestina does not mean that the Roman propaganda during the conflicts did not have significant impact on the attitudes of pagans. Martin Goodman makes just this argument in Rome and Jerusalem (2007) by associating the rise of Christian anti-Judaism with the Roman propaganda against the Jews during this period. Other than this point about the source of anti-Judaism, Goodman’s book largely supports Gager’s analysis of the relationship between Jews and pagans prior to the revolts.
Perhaps the most formative of the Christian debates that led to anti-Jewish polemic was the decades-long struggle with Marcionism. Given the contentious debates over Judaizing and the relationship between Jews and Christians, Gager asks a fundamental question: why not cut the tie to Judaism completely? Christianity could then seek legitimacy as a unique kind of philosophical school like Stoicism or a cult like Mithraism. The answer, of course, is that this option was proposed by Marcion (85—160 CE) and soundly defeated.
Unfortunately, none of Marcion’s writings survive except as quoted by his critics, especially Tertullian (155—240 CE). For those not already familiar with Marcionism, it was an attempt to recast Christianity without the Hebrew Scripture (Christian Old Testament). In doing so, Marcion hypothesized that the God of the Old Testament was an evil demon who created the world with all of its torments and illusions. The old god was an angry, vindictive god, but the new God of Jesus was a loving, merciful God who revealed the truth about life in the evil world. Only through the God of Jesus could one find salvation.
This approach was unacceptable to many, but Tertullian gives the strongest argument against Marcion. Tertullian’s argument is worth understanding precisely because it was instrumental in forming the early Christian view of Judaism. Essentially, Tertullian ‘salvaged’ the Old Testament God by providing a new myth for Christians that God had abandoned the Jews. The problems with the Old Testament God were recast as problems with the Jews.
Tertullian strongly objected to Marcion’s two gods. This so-called “gnostic” view severed the claimed connection to Judaism’s ancient traditions and hence nullified the argument before Roman authorities that Christianity was the rightful inheritor of those traditions and benefits. It also opened the door to polytheism.
Tertullian’s argument against Marcion begins with the argument that the Mosaic Covenant was not unduly harsh, but was necessary to “hold in check” a “stiff necked people.” He argued that the cancellation of the old covenant was predicted in the scriptures and was not proof of a separate god. In short, God has abrogated the old covenant because of the disobedience of the Jews. This argument is the essence of replacement theology whereby Christianity has displaced Judaism. One can still hear the echoes of this argument today.
Finally Gager turns to the problem of Paul in the last third of the book. The transition from Marcion to Paul might be surprising except that Paul was Marcion’s favorite witness. Tertullian even calls Paul “The apostle of the heretics.” However, Marcion thought Paul’s letters had been modified by Judaizers to include references to the Hebrew Scriptures, so he deleted those passages from his copies of the letters. He also favored the Gospel of Luke and was the first to propose a “New Testament” canon.
Paul is often considered the co-founder of Christianity. His impact is so important that half the New Testament is either directly written by him, or by his friends, or is about him as is half the book of Acts. Some scholars even find his influence in the Gospels. So how did Paul go from “Apostle of the heretics” to co-founder of Christianity?
The short answer is that his authentic writings were re-interpreted so that they fit the emerging proto-orthodoxy of the church. This was possible because Paul’s authentic letters are so difficult to understand. As A. N. Wilson says of Paul in The Mind of the Apostle (1997), quoting a writer from the 1880’s, “No one has ever understood Paul, and the only one who did understand him, Marcion, misunderstood him.”
The attempts to re-interpret Paul and domesticate him have only made matters worse. Beginning with Tertullian’s attack on Marcion and his recasting of the Jews as history’s perennial villain, the story of Paul has been retold as a story of Paul’s conversion to Christianity from unworthy Judaism. In this new telling, Paul’s problem with Judaism was “the law”, or Torah, as readers of the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) would have known. Judaism was portrayed as a religion of “works righteousness” which was an attempt by Jews to get close to God by fulfilling minute details of the Torah. Today, it is practically impossible for Christians or post-Christians to read Paul without invoking this narrative.
The recovery of the authentic Paul has taken decades. Scholars don’t know quite what to call it: the “New Perspective,” the “Radical Paul,” the “Real Paul,” and so forth. Beginning with Krister Stendahl (“The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, 1961) and E. P. Sanders (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 1977), academics have forged a new approach toward understanding what Paul wrote. This approach has been anchored in a new consensus about the nature of second Temple Judaism and the nature of Paul’s domestication by the nascent Christian Church.
First of all, Judaism was not a religion of “works righteousness.” Neither ancient Jews not modern Jews believe that fulfilling details of the Torah, by itself, leads one to God. Second, the realization that the Christian interpretation of Paul was incoherent has led to a profound conundrum. (For example, the word “law” cannot be read with a consistent meaning of “Torah”). Either Paul was intentionally inconsistent or he was an unreliable witness. Neither option is acceptable.
The approach to recovering Paul appears to be one of insisting that Paul was writing to Gentiles about Gentile issues and was not writing about Judaism at all, except as it exists in the Gentile imagination. This is consistent with the tradition that Paul was the apostle to the uncircumcised. Stanley Stowers points out in A Rereading of Romans (1994), that Paul’s explicitly identified audience is always a gentile audience.
A second aspect of the new approach is to read Paul’s objections as objections to Gentile Judaizing and not to Judaism as such. This is consistent with what Gager has pointed out repeatedly in the first part of the book: the main issue is a change of status or citizenship change. Paul thinks that is unnecessary since the main point of his gospel is that such a change was not needed to bring Gentiles into a true relationship with God. A citizenship change might improve one’s worldly condition, but why worry about that when the end of the age is approaching?
However, Paul’s understanding of the new age was very different than what history has provided and that has left us moderns with deep puzzles about ancient writings. Gager has provided a necessary step toward a new understanding of Paul. For those wanting the condensed version, I would suggest his book, Reinventing Paul (2000).
In conclusion, the Christian Church cannot escape responsibility for either the origins of anti-Semitism or for the ongoing teachings about Judaism as an inferior faith. This has to be one of the most profound ironies in history since Christianity originated in that faith. Some have called anti-Judaism, Christianity’s “original sin.” It exists as a profound contradiction at the heart of the religion and led some to wonder whether Christianity can survive. Many Christians and post-Christians don’t see the connection, but all it takes is to listen to today’s Christian preaching and teaching with Jewish ears. And read Constantine’s Sword!
My wife, children and I attended a UU (Unitarian-Universalist) Congregation. In my imagination, this was the new way forward: a church for all religions. The old traditional barriers had been razed and we were now free to build a new spirituality based on the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people. In retrospect, my naïve idealism would be comical if it hadn’t resulted in so much painful growth.
That growth began when I realized some of the problems of UU-ism. The most obvious problem is the superficial nature of the faith embodied in UU-ism. This phenomenon is well described in Dr. Davidson Loehr’s 2005 UU Assembly address titled, “Why Unitarian Universalism is Dying.” Davidson was a UU minister in Austin Texas and he raises many issues in this essay. The issue of superficiality is captured in his characterization of the seven sacred principals of UU, “known in some circles as the Seven Banalities or the Seven Dwarfs.”
To be fair many people in UU hold deep and profound beliefs. But the questions raised by Davidson went to the core issue of a community’s statement of belief and it’s principles for Justice. Many UU’s would not agree with him, but his essay struck a chord with me. I had been brought up in a Christian tradition and educated in a version of existential Christianity which emphasized the deep nature of spirituality.
But this awakening led me to explore the faith tradition of my youth and I began to attend a Methodist Church. My wife, who was brought up in the Jewish tradition and who had already lost interest in UU-ism, joined me. With her help I began to hear the anti-Jewish subtext in the traditional Christian message.
When I first read John Gager’s book in 2010, I had already Read Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll. So I didn’t need to be convinced that Christianity bore much of the blame for anti-Semitism. It’s a very short step from anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism. What Gager accomplishes in this book is nothing less than sharpening the focus on the historical events and debates that led Christianity to develop and sacralize the anti-Jewish message. It is a great companion to Carroll’s book.
Nevertheless, it comes as a shock that Gager begins with the historical criticism of Christianity as an anti-Jewish and even anti-Semitic religion. The author ends chapter 1 by summarizing Rosemary Ruether’s scathing indictment of Christianity in Faith and Fratricide (1974):
. . . she passes well beyond her predecessors both in her assertion that anti-Judaism “constantly takes social expression in anti-Semitism” and her denial that anti-Judaism in an accidental byproduct of historical circumstances. She rejects the possibility of separating anti-Judaism from historical Christianity. “For Christianity, anti-Judaism was not merely a defense against attack, but an intrinsic need of Christian self-affirmation. Anti-Judaism is part of the Christian exegesis.”
Adding to the condemnation, he also quotes supporting sociological evidence from Charles Glock and Rodney Stark in Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (1969):
. . . not only is anti-Semitism very characteristic of Christian church members but all of these aspects [beliefs, feelings, actions] of anti-Semitism were found to be strongly correlated with our model of the religious sources of anti-Semitism.
Chapter 2 deepens the debate by looking at Ruether’s critics. There are five general areas of criticism but Gager only shines the historical spotlight on the fifth one: the presence of pre-Christian anti-Semitism. For if Christianity can deflect the blame to the pagan culture, then it is absolved for the origin of anti-Semitism if not for the ongoing support of it.
As Gager will show in the middle chapters, there is no basis for such a conclusion. He will later say that we inherited this notion of pre-Christian anti-Semitism from the anti-Religious philosophers of the enlightenment whose agenda was to undermine all religious faith beginning with the source of both Christianity and Islam. They did so by cherry-picking texts from the likes of Cicero, Tacitus, and Seneca.
In his analysis of Gentile-Jewish relations, Gager looks primarily at 2 periods of history: the Hellenic period to 50 BCE and the conflict period, 50 BCE to 135 CE. Although Judea did not become a Roman Provence until 63 BCE, Jews had lived throughout the Empire since ancient times. Regarding Hellenism, the earliest writings portray Judea in similar fashion to the Greeks as a nation of philosophers.
The first signs of tension appear during the period following the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE) as his successors fought for domination. The struggle for dominance was particularly relevant between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. Judea was situated between the two and each side looked for alliances in Judea to help in their struggle for power against the other. Gager highlights the sixth war between the two for special attention. After all, the ruler of Syria at that time was Antiochus IV Epiphanes who attempted to force Greek culture and values on the Jews. Antiochus IV suffered a loss in the resulting revolt (167—160 BCE) led by Judas Maccabee. Gager could have improved this section by adding more detail.
Gager’s conclusion for this period, however, is solid:
We may now speak of a new consensus on the nature of relations between Jews and Gentiles during most of the Hellenistic period. As Hengel comments, not even the bitterness arising from the Maccabean revolt failed to dampen the sense of “amazement at the founder of the Jewish religion and the original teaching of Moses.” When contrasted with the years 30 B.C.E to 135 C.E., the Hellenistic period is striking not just for the absence of anti-Semitic actions and the low level of anti-Semitic beliefs but for the indications of active interest in Jewish history and religion. Those who would assess this period differently must do so on shaky grounds.
A big change takes place around 30 BCE however. The event that triggers this change is the loss by Egypt during the Roman Civil War. Anthony had allied himself with Cleopatra against Octavius who would win and become Caesar Augustus. The problem was that many Jews lived in Egypt, particularly in Alexandria, and they generally supported Octavius against Anthony and Cleopatra. After all, Judea had been a Roman province for only 30 years or so and things had gone pretty well. Judeans had a long history of dealing with Egypt and the prospects based on that history were dubious at best if Egypt had won.
So after the victory by Octavius, the Jews of Alexandria had to live with a political liability. According to most Egyptians they had favored the wrong side in the war. Rome didn’t help. They levied a tax on all those living in Egypt except Greek citizens. Now, one could become a Greek citizen through the institution of the Gymnasium which offered training in Greek culture and practice. Both Egyptians and Judeans living in Egypt attempted to do this but Rome objected, of course. Nonetheless the tensions over the issue of Greek citizenship, tax liability and political favoritism boiled over in 38 CE as violence toward the Jewish community in Alexandria.
It seems that King Agrippa had visited Alexandria in 38 CE and the visit was seen as politically motivated. Agrippa, after all, had been a friend to Gaius Caligula. He even suffered imprisonment for supporting the future Emperor by expressing a wish for Tiberius’ death. When Caligula rose to power in 37, he freed Agrippa. The visit was ill-timed at best because the people of Alexandria were preparing an appeal to Rome over the political issues between Jews and Egyptians in Alexandria.
The Alexandrian riots are sometimes referred to as the first historical evidence for anti-Semitism. Under Gager’s telling, the riots can viewed as an undesirable outcome of political maneuvering by the Egyptian leaders in Alexandria. By the time an appeal can be made to Rome in 41 or 42, Caligula had been assassinated and Claudius was Emperor. Claudius attempted to take an even-handed approach which was largely successful. It is noteworthy that one of the ambassadors to Rome on the Egyptian side was Apion who wrote a slanderous treatise on the Jews which Josephus later rebutted.
I have spent a significant portion of this review telling the story of the Alexandrian revolt because it is often seen as the first evidence for Jew hatred in history. But it was also a template for other conflicts. The social-political pattern of citizenship change occurs as a significant issue over and over in Gager’s book. The Roman Empire consisted of a collection of ethnic provinces. Each one stood in a different and distinctive relation to Rome. Rome was justifiably proud of its collection of peoples but each group came into the Empire under different circumstances and with different benefits and liabilities. The Roman army was invited into Judea in 63 BCE to quell a potential civil war. The Jews were granted exemptions for Sabbath observance and military service. They were valued for their ancient “philosophical” traditions.
In contrast, Gaul had fought with Rome over many centuries. When Rome was finally victorious in 50 BCE under Julius Caesar, Gaul entered the Empire with a significant liability. As Brigitte Kahl makes abundantly clear in her book, Galatians Re-Imagined (2010), the Gauls and Galatians are always portrayed in art and monuments as a vanquished people:
As we will see, Galatia, a Greek term widely used in the ancient sources as synonymous with Latin Gaul, is not a neutral geographical or ethnic description. . . . From a Roman point of view, it was the region populated by the Celtic "counternation," that is, a peculiar species of "universal barbarians" who, after centuries of struggle, had at last been forced into compliance with the "world-saving" power of Roman victory, at the threshold of the era of Jesus and Paul.
The different status of Judeans and Galatians will come into sharp focus in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Kahl’s book provides ample explanation as to why the Galatians would want to Judaize to improve their status. Gager focuses attention on Paul in the last third of the book, but in the 1980’s he did not have the benefit of Kahl’s analysis.
In the middle part of Gager’s book, the issue of status change or citizenship change occurs over and over, whether with Romans or with Christians. There were clear incentives for changing one’s status to become a Judean and when that became politicized, there would inevitably be those on the other side of the issue who would demonize the attempt with satire, polemic or slander. Rome objected to citizenship changes because it undermined their rule of law and may have had tax consequences. Christian leaders objected because of their disadvantageous position in arguing before Rome that Christians were the rightful inheritors of the ancient Jewish customs and traditions. The Christian leaders sought clear boundaries between nascent Christianity and Judaism which they hoped would phase out.
Oddly, Gager does not attach much importance to the Roman response to the Judean revolts in 66-73 CE and in 132-135 CE. Clearly, the destruction of the Judean Temple in 70 CE was important to Christian leaders who used it a proof of God’s disfavor with the Jews. Gager says that Rome fell silent on the matter after 135. But just because Rome appeared to solve its Judean problem by renaming the province Syria Palestina does not mean that the Roman propaganda during the conflicts did not have significant impact on the attitudes of pagans. Martin Goodman makes just this argument in Rome and Jerusalem (2007) by associating the rise of Christian anti-Judaism with the Roman propaganda against the Jews during this period. Other than this point about the source of anti-Judaism, Goodman’s book largely supports Gager’s analysis of the relationship between Jews and pagans prior to the revolts.
Perhaps the most formative of the Christian debates that led to anti-Jewish polemic was the decades-long struggle with Marcionism. Given the contentious debates over Judaizing and the relationship between Jews and Christians, Gager asks a fundamental question: why not cut the tie to Judaism completely? Christianity could then seek legitimacy as a unique kind of philosophical school like Stoicism or a cult like Mithraism. The answer, of course, is that this option was proposed by Marcion (85—160 CE) and soundly defeated.
Unfortunately, none of Marcion’s writings survive except as quoted by his critics, especially Tertullian (155—240 CE). For those not already familiar with Marcionism, it was an attempt to recast Christianity without the Hebrew Scripture (Christian Old Testament). In doing so, Marcion hypothesized that the God of the Old Testament was an evil demon who created the world with all of its torments and illusions. The old god was an angry, vindictive god, but the new God of Jesus was a loving, merciful God who revealed the truth about life in the evil world. Only through the God of Jesus could one find salvation.
This approach was unacceptable to many, but Tertullian gives the strongest argument against Marcion. Tertullian’s argument is worth understanding precisely because it was instrumental in forming the early Christian view of Judaism. Essentially, Tertullian ‘salvaged’ the Old Testament God by providing a new myth for Christians that God had abandoned the Jews. The problems with the Old Testament God were recast as problems with the Jews.
Tertullian strongly objected to Marcion’s two gods. This so-called “gnostic” view severed the claimed connection to Judaism’s ancient traditions and hence nullified the argument before Roman authorities that Christianity was the rightful inheritor of those traditions and benefits. It also opened the door to polytheism.
Tertullian’s argument against Marcion begins with the argument that the Mosaic Covenant was not unduly harsh, but was necessary to “hold in check” a “stiff necked people.” He argued that the cancellation of the old covenant was predicted in the scriptures and was not proof of a separate god. In short, God has abrogated the old covenant because of the disobedience of the Jews. This argument is the essence of replacement theology whereby Christianity has displaced Judaism. One can still hear the echoes of this argument today.
Finally Gager turns to the problem of Paul in the last third of the book. The transition from Marcion to Paul might be surprising except that Paul was Marcion’s favorite witness. Tertullian even calls Paul “The apostle of the heretics.” However, Marcion thought Paul’s letters had been modified by Judaizers to include references to the Hebrew Scriptures, so he deleted those passages from his copies of the letters. He also favored the Gospel of Luke and was the first to propose a “New Testament” canon.
Paul is often considered the co-founder of Christianity. His impact is so important that half the New Testament is either directly written by him, or by his friends, or is about him as is half the book of Acts. Some scholars even find his influence in the Gospels. So how did Paul go from “Apostle of the heretics” to co-founder of Christianity?
The short answer is that his authentic writings were re-interpreted so that they fit the emerging proto-orthodoxy of the church. This was possible because Paul’s authentic letters are so difficult to understand. As A. N. Wilson says of Paul in The Mind of the Apostle (1997), quoting a writer from the 1880’s, “No one has ever understood Paul, and the only one who did understand him, Marcion, misunderstood him.”
The attempts to re-interpret Paul and domesticate him have only made matters worse. Beginning with Tertullian’s attack on Marcion and his recasting of the Jews as history’s perennial villain, the story of Paul has been retold as a story of Paul’s conversion to Christianity from unworthy Judaism. In this new telling, Paul’s problem with Judaism was “the law”, or Torah, as readers of the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) would have known. Judaism was portrayed as a religion of “works righteousness” which was an attempt by Jews to get close to God by fulfilling minute details of the Torah. Today, it is practically impossible for Christians or post-Christians to read Paul without invoking this narrative.
The recovery of the authentic Paul has taken decades. Scholars don’t know quite what to call it: the “New Perspective,” the “Radical Paul,” the “Real Paul,” and so forth. Beginning with Krister Stendahl (“The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, 1961) and E. P. Sanders (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 1977), academics have forged a new approach toward understanding what Paul wrote. This approach has been anchored in a new consensus about the nature of second Temple Judaism and the nature of Paul’s domestication by the nascent Christian Church.
First of all, Judaism was not a religion of “works righteousness.” Neither ancient Jews not modern Jews believe that fulfilling details of the Torah, by itself, leads one to God. Second, the realization that the Christian interpretation of Paul was incoherent has led to a profound conundrum. (For example, the word “law” cannot be read with a consistent meaning of “Torah”). Either Paul was intentionally inconsistent or he was an unreliable witness. Neither option is acceptable.
The approach to recovering Paul appears to be one of insisting that Paul was writing to Gentiles about Gentile issues and was not writing about Judaism at all, except as it exists in the Gentile imagination. This is consistent with the tradition that Paul was the apostle to the uncircumcised. Stanley Stowers points out in A Rereading of Romans (1994), that Paul’s explicitly identified audience is always a gentile audience.
A second aspect of the new approach is to read Paul’s objections as objections to Gentile Judaizing and not to Judaism as such. This is consistent with what Gager has pointed out repeatedly in the first part of the book: the main issue is a change of status or citizenship change. Paul thinks that is unnecessary since the main point of his gospel is that such a change was not needed to bring Gentiles into a true relationship with God. A citizenship change might improve one’s worldly condition, but why worry about that when the end of the age is approaching?
However, Paul’s understanding of the new age was very different than what history has provided and that has left us moderns with deep puzzles about ancient writings. Gager has provided a necessary step toward a new understanding of Paul. For those wanting the condensed version, I would suggest his book, Reinventing Paul (2000).
In conclusion, the Christian Church cannot escape responsibility for either the origins of anti-Semitism or for the ongoing teachings about Judaism as an inferior faith. This has to be one of the most profound ironies in history since Christianity originated in that faith. Some have called anti-Judaism, Christianity’s “original sin.” It exists as a profound contradiction at the heart of the religion and led some to wonder whether Christianity can survive. Many Christians and post-Christians don’t see the connection, but all it takes is to listen to today’s Christian preaching and teaching with Jewish ears. And read Constantine’s Sword!
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January 31, 2010revamped the terms in which i talk about jews and judaism. cautiously bold terminiology. also for historiography class.
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