Anti-Judaism and the Easter Story
A Challenging New Book about the Jews, Jesus, and Scandal of the Passion
A new book by J. Christopher Edwards casts an uncomfortable light on the Christian tradition, beginning in the New Testament, of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus.
In Matthew’s Gospel, there is an infamous scene where Pilate declared that he is innocent of Jesus’s blood and he told the Jerusalem priests and their mob to take responsibility for Jesus’s death. Their reply to his charge has become infamous in the history of Christian-Jewish relationships.
So Pilate, when he saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but instead an uproar was developing, took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this man. You see to it!” And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children!” Then he released Barabbas for them, but after he had Jesus flogged, he handed him over so that he could be crucified (Mt 27:24-16, LEB).
In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians there is a troubling passage where Paul accuses the Jews of killing the prophets, killing Jesus, and persecuting the church. So troubling is it, that many wonder if it is a later interpolation.
For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last! (1 Thess 2:14-16, ESV).
Sadly, such passages have been used to accuse the Jewish people in total of being “Christ-killers” and even “deicide,” killing their own God. Such words have been used to justify persecution, forced-conversions, and even the massacres of Jewish communities all over Europe.
This brings us to J. Christopher Edwards’ book which tells the story of the beginnings and development of the tradition of shifting the blame for Jesus’s death from the Romans to the Jews.
Edwards notes that NT scholars and historians of early Christianity generally agree that Jesus was executed by the order of a Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and at the hands of Roman soldiers who carried out his crucifixion. However, early Christians encountered the problem of trying to disassociate themselves from the Jews and ingratiate themselves into wider Roman culture. Accordingly, they began to change the story of Jesus's passion in their writings, shifting the blame from the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and his soldiers to the Jewish people. By the second century, many believed that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion. This narrative grew stronger in the fourth century, fueling anti-Jewish sentiments within the emerging Christian empire.
For case in point, Edwards points out that Melito of Sardis, writing in the late second century, is even more jarring since 25% of his Paschal homily is dedicated to the accusation that the Jews killed Jesus.
At one point Melito writes:
The master has been profaned.
God has been murdered.
The king of Israel has been destroyed by an Israelite hand (Pascha 96).
Many Christian authors cited Ps 21:17 (LXX; Heb 22:16): “For a pack of dogs encircled me. A synagogue of evil-doers surrounded me” (MFB trans.) to indicate that Jews from their synagogues were responsible for the death of Jesus.
This is only the tip of the iceberg concerning the propensity of Christian authors in second to fourth centuries to excoriate the Jews and exonerate the Romans for the death of Jesus.
For Edwards, many people are unaware of this historical shift and the idea that early Christians blamed Jews for Jesus's execution. This ignorance is troubling because it obscures a key part of history that contributed to the persecution of Jews by Christians. Additionally, it lets ancient Christian writers off the hook for spreading this harmful narrative. On some level, this misunderstanding may still affect how Christians view Jews and Judaism today.
In a recent interview, Edwards notes:
It is also important to note that Christians who accused the Jews of killing Jesus were not interested in blaming a handful of malevolent Jews of executing Jesus in Jerusalem around the year 30 CE. Rather, they were interested in blaming the execution on Jews of all ages. They understood Jesus’s Jewish executioners to be unified with the monolithic wave of Jews who opposed the prophets, Jesus, and whatever activities existed in their Christian communities. This assumption of Jewish continuity across the ages has enabled Christians across two millennia to assert that the unbelieving Jews they know are one with those who killed Jesus and the prophets. Even more troubling is that in their quest to imitate the sufferings of Christ, Christians sometimes assumed that, like Jesus, their own troubles must be ultimately caused by Jews, the same Jews responsible for the death of Christ. In fact, it was not until 1965, during the Second Vatican Council, that the Roman Catholic Church finally renounced this assumption of the timeless Jew in Nostra Aetate.
It is a good read, but an unsettling one for wrestling with the tragic history of Christian anti-Semitism.
J. Christopher Edwards
Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2023.
Well said J.C Edwards.
There is a definite and long historic causal link from certain early anti Jewish Christians through to the vile anti semitism of Luther (who directly inspired the third reich in Nazi Germany).
Apart from a certain lunatic fringe in US evangelicalism - who have their own nuerotic/ dysfunctional agenda, I am surprised how few Christians are willing to engage on how implicated the Church is in historic anti semitism.
Deep expressions of sorrow and repentance are required here.
It seemed to be a bit of a habit back then. Some authors also tried to blame all women for everything wrong with the world.