Abstract

Anti-Jewish Interpretations of Hebrews: Some Neglected Factors

Highlights

  • The purpose of this article is to complicate the anti-Jewish interpretations of Hebrews

  • This is distinguished from the early Christian hostilities, for which he adopts the term “anti-Judaism,” which is a variegated “matter of religious and theological disagreement.”[17]. In tracing the role of Christianity in the origins of anti-Semitism, Gager maintains that the early intra-Christian debates over the presence and extent of Judaism in Christianity produced a body of literature that was selectively preserved in accordance with the anti-Jewish tendencies of the eventual victors, and subsequently interpreted in anti-Jewish ways

  • Wilson argues that, like Barnabas, Hebrews sets forth a radical statement of supersession in which Christians have replaced the Jews as the new people of God. According to Wilson, the theology of Hebrews “routinely and starkly contrasts Christianity and Judaism to the detriment of the latter”; certain heroes from Israel’s past are portrayed positively, “Israel is castigated and superseded.” Wilson believes that this radical supersessionism was provoked by Gentile Judaizers who set the author on a course of intra-Christian selfdefinition over and against Judaism

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Summary

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to complicate the anti-Jewish interpretations of Hebrews. By the Fourth Century CE the anti-Jewish interpretation of Hebrews was wellestablished, and is plain to see in Chrysostom’s influential commentary. Since the law has a shadow (σκιάν) of the good things to come, not the actual reality of these things, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, complete those who approach. Unlike some English translations, I have endeavoured to avoid augmenting the antiJewish potential of these verses, but it remains clear that assessments of Hebrews as a “discourse of anti-Judaism,”[2] as one recent author put it, are not without basis This perspective is the predominant one and has a long lineage. The other two are chosen because one (Kim) is the first (and currently only) full-length analysis of the issue in Hebrews, and the other (Bibliowicz), written from a Jewish perspective, is the most recent

Rosemary Ruether’s “Faith and Fratricide”
John Gager’s “Origins of Anti-Semitism”
Stephen Wilson’s “Related Strangers”
Lloyd Kim’s “Polemic in the Book of Hebrews”
Abel Bibliowicz’s “Jews and Gentiles in the Early Jesus Movement”
Conclusion
73. Sheffield
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