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Published: 1st April 1993
ISBN: 9780876683989
Number Of Pages: 528
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Published: 1st June 1995In Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate, Professor William Nicholls, a former minister in the Anglican Church and the founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, presents his stunning research, stating that Christian teaching is primarily responsible for antisemitism. As Nicholls states, these conclusions "can now be fully justified by the most up-to-date scholarship, Christian as well as Jewish."
Nicholls writes, "Many Jewish writers have said, quite simply that the Nazis chose the Jews as the target of their hate because two thousand years of Christian teaching had accustomed the world to do so. Few Christian historians and theologians have been sufficiently open to the painful truth to accept this explanation without considerable qualification. Nevertheless, it is correct."
Christian Antisemitism traces, over two millennia, the growing domination of Western culture by the Christian "myth" (as Nicholls calls it) about the Jews, and shows how it still exerts a major influence even on the secularized "post-Christian world." Nicholls shows, through scrupulous research and documentation, that the myth of the Jews as Christ-killers has powered anti-Judaism and antisemitism throughout the centuries. Nicholls clearly illustrates that this myth is present in the New Testament and that "it has not yet died under the impact of modern critical history."
Also included in this remarkable volume is Nicholls' research regarding the Jewishness of Jesus. He writes, "Historical scholarship now permits us to affirm with confidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a faithful and observant Jew who lived by the Torah and taught nothing against his own people and their faith...the Romans, not the Jews, were the Christ-killers."
In Part I, "Before the Myth," Nicholls explores the life of Jesus and his teachings as found in the New Testament. Was Jesus the founder of Christianity? Did he offer teachings against his people? Did he believe himself to be the Messiah? In Part II, "The Growth of the Myth," Nicholls looks at the impact made by Paul and documents the slow but steady relegation of the Jews to a position of hatred and victimization and their role as scapegoat. Also included in this section of the book is a close look at the development of the notion of the Jew as a player in Christian theology. In Part III, "The Myth Secularized," Nicholls observes the "secularization" of antisemitism, from the age of Napoleon to the present. His conclusion is a pessimistic one, noting that "the Holocaust has not brought an end to anti-semitism. It still pervades European and North American culture."
Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate is an extraordinary document of historical research. It is also a moving statement by a former Christian theologian who has come face-to-face with the most painful aspects of the religious tradition in which he was raised.
Professor Nicholls' history of the Christian origins and perpetuation of, and the church's continuing responsibility for, the antisemitic myth--including that myth's secularized and racist forms--is a marvel of contemporary historical and moral scholarship. We are given a comprehensive, definitive accounting of Christian hate for Jews from its beginnings to today--all in some 500 pages--together with compelling proposals for religious and theological reform and renewal. This historical exposition extends as well to the many moral, theological, political, and psychoanalytic dimensions of the question of antisemitism. We may expect this work to remain authoritative for a long time. It is a gem.--A. Roy Eckardt, University of Oxford
| Preface | |
| Introduction | |
| Before the Myth | |
| Jesus the Jew: 1. Founder of Christianity? | p. 3 |
| Myth and History | |
| Criticizing Myths | |
| Biblical Criticism | |
| Jesus and his Own People | |
| Jesus the Jew | |
| The Real Jesus | |
| Did Jesus Found Christianity? | |
| The Methods of Biblical Criticism | |
| The Synoptic Problem | |
| The Oral Tradition | |
| Albert Schweitzer's Challenge | |
| Redaction Criticism | |
| Checks on Authenticity | |
| Consistent Judaism or Consistent Skepticism | |
| The Diversity of Early Christianity | |
| Did Jesus Found Any of Them? | |
| Jesus the Jew: 2. Rejected by His People? | p. 45 |
| Judaism in the First Century | |
| Roman Rule | |
| Jesus and the Judaism of His Time | |
| Jesus' Mission and Message | |
| God's Kingship | |
| God's Nearness | |
| Dimensions of Nearness | |
| Jesus and the Torah | |
| The Sermon on the Mount | |
| The Sermon as an Interpretation of the Torah | |
| Jesus and the Sinners | |
| The Prodigal Son | |
| The Pharisee and the Publican | |
| Jesus and the Pharisees | |
| Eating with Sinners | |
| Jesus' Criticism of Other Jews | |
| Jesus' Opponents | |
| Jesus and the Zealous | |
| Jesus' Real Offense | |
| Jesus Imitated God | |
| "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead" | |
| "Hating" One's Family | |
| Did Jesus "Die for the Gospel"? | |
| Jesus the Jew: 3. Crucified Messiah? | p. 83 |
| Jewish Messianic Expectation | |
| How Christology Was Anti-Jewish | |
| Language and Society | |
| The Development of Early Ideas about Christ | |
| Jewish Objections to the Christian Doctrine | |
| Jesus and Jewish Expectation | |
| What Did Jesus Himself Say about His Mission? | |
| Was Jesus Mistaken? | |
| What Did Others Believe of Him? | |
| Reading Back the New Concept into the Story | |
| Peter's Acclamation of Jesus as Messiah | |
| The Three Accounts Compared | |
| The Origins of Christian Messianic Belief | |
| The Son of Man | |
| Jesus' Entry into Jerusalem | |
| Jesus and the Temple | |
| The "Trial" of Jesus | |
| Why Do the Gospels Falsify History? | |
| The Romans Were the Christ-killers | |
| Why Did Jesus Die? | |
| The Growth of the Myth | |
| Paul and the Beginning of Christianity | p. 113 |
| The First Days of Christianity | |
| Resurrection Visions | |
| The Bible Reread | |
| The Texts | |
| Sectarian Theology | |
| The Crucial Break | |
| Mythmaking | |
| Paul, the First Major Thinker of Christianity | |
| The Traditional Interpretation | |
| What Is Wrong with the Traditional View? | |
| The Vision Fades | |
| A Jewish Apostate? | |
| Paul's Actions | |
| Who Was a Jew? | |
| Becoming a Jew | |
| Paul's Conversions | |
| What Did Paul Intend? | |
| Paul's Self-reversal | |
| Receiving the Holy Spirit | |
| The Gospel for the Jews | |
| A Double Covenant? | |
| Paul and James | |
| Peter and the Emissaries from James | |
| Different Views in the Early Church | |
| The True Israel: Battle for the Bible | p. 153 |
| Paul in the Early Church | |
| The Break with Judaism | |
| Measures against the Heretics | |
| The Rabbis and Gentile Christianity | |
| Editorial Bias in the Gospels | |
| The Trial of Jesus in the Gospels | |
| Mark's Creation of the Trial | |
| Matthew's Version | |
| Luke's Non-trial | |
| John's Anti-Judaism | |
| The New Testament and Anti-Judaism | |
| The Letter to the Hebrews | |
| The Letter of Barnabas | |
| The Theology of Supersession | |
| Issues between Jews and Christians | |
| Other Second-century Writers | |
| Marcionism, a Rejected Possibility | |
| Tertullian on the Inferiority of the Jews | |
| Jews in a Christian World | p. 189 |
| The Christian State and the Jews | |
| Laws against Jews | |
| Theodosius and His Code | |
| The Code of Justinian | |
| The End of the Western Empire | |
| Ambrose the Bishop and Theodosius I | |
| The Canon Law of the Church | |
| Theological Anti-Judaism in the Church Fathers | |
| Contrasted Pairs: the Church Supersedes Israel | |
| The Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament | |
| Gregory the Great and the Jews | |
| Popular Paranoia | p. 225 |
| Abelard's Picture of the Jews | |
| The Crusades: Bernard and the Jews | |
| Jews as Lenders | |
| Serfs of the Royal Chamber | |
| Creditors Massacred | |
| The Blood Libel | |
| Charges of Desecration of the Host | |
| The Jews and the Devil | |
| The Fourth Lateran Council | |
| The Trial of the Talmud | |
| The Black Death | |
| The Franciscan Assault on the Jews | |
| The Origins of the Calumnies | |
| New Pressures on the Christian Psyche | |
| Unconscious Rage and Rebellion | |
| Displacing the Object | |
| Eating Christ's Body | |
| Paranoid Projection | |
| The Transmission of Paranoid Systems | |
| Inquisition and Reformation: The Turning of the Tide? | p. 261 |
| The Fate of Spanish Jewry in the Fifteenth Century | |
| The Council of Trent: A Catholic Turning Point? | |
| The Reformation and the Jews | |
| The Humanists | |
| The Myth Secularized | |
| The Napoleonic Bargain: "Frenchmen of the Mosaic Persuasion" | p. 277 |
| The New Societies of Modernity | |
| The Jews in the Modern World | |
| Liberal Anti-Judaism | |
| The Enlightenment and the Jews | |
| Frenchmen of the Mosaic Persuasion | |
| Enlightenment Views on Religion | |
| Nathan the Wise | |
| Nonconformity and Toleration | |
| Jewish Apologetics | |
| Anti-Judaism among the Philosophers | |
| The French Revolution | |
| The Napoleonic Bargain | |
| The Infamous Decree | |
| The Congress of Vienna | |
| Progress toward Fuller Emancipation | |
| Secular Antisemitism | p. 313 |
| The Left-Wing Hegelians | |
| Karl Marx and Antisemitism | |
| The New Racial Doctrines | |
| French Racial Antisemitism | |
| The Dreyfus Affair | |
| Russian Antisemitism | |
| Antisemitic Parties in Germany and Austria | |
| The Matrix of Nazism | |
| The Churches in the Twentieth Century | p. 351 |
| During the Holocaust | |
| After the Holocaust | |
| The Silence of Pius XII | |
| The Rescuers | |
| The Postwar Catholic Response | |
| The Catholic Church and the Jews in the 1990s | |
| The World Council of Churches | |
| New Theologies | |
| Antisemitisms Old and New | p. 385 |
| The Survival of Traditional Antisemitism | |
| Left-Wing Antisemitism | |
| Mutant Antisemitisms | |
| Denial of the Holocaust | |
| Anti-Zionism | |
| Media Reporting of the Middle East Conflict | |
| Liberal Antisemitism | |
| Antisemitism in the Black Community in the U.S. | |
| The Influence of Christian Liberalism on Jewish Intellectuals | |
| Ending Antisemitism? | p. 409 |
| Casting off Internalized Antisemitism | |
| The Non-Jewish World | |
| Criticizing Christian History | |
| Theology and Action | |
| The Auschwitz Commandment | |
| Theological Repentance | |
| Removing Anti-Judaic Accretions | |
| Returning the Jewish Bible to the Jewish People | |
| Rethinking the Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament | |
| Paul and Jesus | |
| Earliest Christianity | |
| Can the Church Still Claim that Jesus Was the Messiah? | |
| Theology and History | |
| The Alternatives for Christians | |
| Jesus or Christianity? | |
| Could the Synagogue Receive the Church? | |
| Final Thoughts | |
| Appendix: The Three Accounts of Peter's Acclamation of Jesus as the Messiah | p. 439 |
| Notes | p. 441 |
| Bibliography | p. 479 |
| Index | p. 483 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780876683989
ISBN-10: 0876683987
Audience:
General
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 528
Published: 1st April 1993
Publisher: JASON ARONSON INC
Country of Publication: US
Dimensions (cm): 23.52 x 16.18
x 4.6
Weight (kg): 0.88
Earn 429 Qantas Points
on this Book
