The New Testament's Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic

Abstract

The scurrilous language used about Jews in the earliest Christian writings is a hurdle neither Jew nor Christian can easily surmount. It is a source of shame (finally) to Christians, and a well-grounded source of fear to Jews. A few remarks on my approach to this delicate subject may be helpful.' First, I am not doing theology or making a direct contribution to Jewish-Christian relations. I do not worry about what to do with this language so much as about what the language was doing. My examination is historical and literary. Second, I do not attempt to solve any specific textual problems. I suggest instead a perspective for viewing a whole series of texts. I may appear to move too quickly over troubled terrain, but my object is to reach a high place from which to view that terrain and assess its troubled condition. Third, I am not dealing with subtle issues. I do not engage the question whether any truth claim (particularly a religious truth claim) necessarily involves hostility to other truth claims or hatred of the people who make them. I do not ask whether any Christology, for example, is intrinsically anti-Semitic,2 or whether a supersessionist theology leads inevitably to the holocaust?