Luke and the Jews: A Conundrum
Wrestling with Luke-Acts, as one periodically does in teaching and writing, means trying to figure out some of the peculiar problems that Luke throws up for us in his two-volume work.
This time around it is Luke and the Jews. In a nutshell, is Luke guilty of a vicious anti-Judaism?
On the one hand, Jesus is clearly a Galilean prophet, a messianic leader, who ministers among the Jewish people, bringing them the salvation they have long desired. Plus, the apostles are all Jews, they do not invent a new religion, and they operate as a messianic sect within Judaism. In fact, the early church could be described as Christ-believing Judaism, a Jewish community that believed that the Jewish hopes for salvation in the Jewish Scriptures had come upon them.
But on the other hand, the Lucan Jesus engages in vicious polemics against the Pharisees, scribes, and priests. Then, later, in the Book of Acts, there is a big emphasis on the culpability of the Jews for Jesus’s death and blame is heaped on the Jews for various riots and social disturbances. Remember that in Acts 28, describing the Jewish reaction to Paul’s arrival in Rome, the book ends with a quotation of Isa 6.9-10 to the effect that Jewish unbelief is because they are dull of mind and hard of heart. Some scholars believe that Luke has contributed to a type of supersessionist theology whereby the Jews are rejected for their unbelief and replaced by the Gentile church. Indeed, such a view of Luke–Acts has been common for centuries, that Luke exonerates the church by excoriating the Jews, that Luke believes that Israel’s light has been extinguished and instead God has lit his messianic lamp among the Gentiles.
What do we say to that?
There are some complex issues going on here, but I do think there are some factors that mitigate Luke’s apparent anti-Judaism!