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Anti-Semitism and the Gospel of John
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
D. Moody Smith |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Is there a biblical basis for anti-Semitism? The fourth gospel may appear to answer in the affirmative, but theologian D. Moody Smith of Duke University argues that any such reading constitutes a misrepresentation of John's Gospel. |
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| John the Theologian. No one who is Jewish is likely to find the Fourth Gospel congenial reading. In fact, when read aright, it will scarcely comfort most nominal Christians. | |
 he Gospel of John has proved to be a dangerous document, for although it may not itself be anti-Semitic, it has given aid and comfort to anti-Semites. If a text is nothing more than what its community of interpretation makes of it, then the Gospel of John is, or at many points in the history of its interpretation has been, anti-Semitic. It seems to portray the Jews as the mortal enemies of Jesus, who by their forethought and intention do him in. Thus on John's terms Matthew's infamous cry of the Jerusalem crowd, "His blood be upon us and upon our children" (27:25), would seem a proper invocation of doom upon the Jewish people, whether or not the fourth evangelist knew the First Gospel. At the very least, the Gospel of John has lent itself to such a reading. |
John's pressing of the christological issue did not take place in a vacuum. The Gospel reflects the point in the history of at least a segment of the community of Jesus' followers when they had begun to define themselves over against Judaism. Jesus' opponents, the Jews or Pharisees, say to the man born blind, "You are disciples of that man, but we are disciples of Moses" (9:28). Such a statement, while scarcely conceivable at the time, or in the setting of Jesus himself, accurately depicts a state of affairs toward the end of the first century. One had to choose between Jesus and Moses or, as it seems, between Judaism and Christianity. The Apostle Paul already saw that most of his fellow Jews were not accepting the preaching of Jesus as the Messiah (Romans 1-5), but he still resisted the divisive implications of this fact. In this regard, what seemed a threat on the horizon to Paul now appears to be an accomplished fact in the Gospel of John. Christianity and Judaism have now separated, and the hostility appears to reflect the anger engendered on both sides. |
The spread of Christianity
One of the amazing aspects of the New Testament is the way so many of its premises, or promises, have been fulfilled in subsequent history (a fact that has little or nothing to do with the espousal of literal fulfillment of biblical prophecy). If one looks, for example, at the portrayal of the triumphal spread of Christianity through the Mediterranean world in the Book of Acts, there is little reason for surprise, given the success of the church during subsequent centuries and the dawn of the Constantinian era. Yet when Luke wrote, toward the end of the first century, the prospect of the success of Christianity on this scale would not have been obvious to the unprejudiced eye. Indeed, there is little or no reason to think that Luke himself would have imagined such worldly success before the return of Jesus or the culmination of the age. |
By the same token, the division of Christianity from Judaism, so that the two become distinct, although closely related and often mutually hostile, religions, seems to be anticipated, if not an already established fact, in the Gospel of John. Probably most Christians since the end of the first century have read the Gospel in this way, or at least have taken for granted that this is the proper reading of it. Certainly there is ample justification in such a reading, given the conflict and division that obviously underlie, and find expression in, the Fourth Gospel. That "the Jews" appear as the representation of the world, over against Jesus and his disciples, is a fair reading of the Gospel. |
Of course, "the Jews" are, historically, the heirs of the Pharisees, with whom Jesus had considerable conflict according to the Synoptic tradition. Thus they were, in a real sense, a historical given in the time of Jesus as well as in that of the evangelist, although their role had sharpened and changed in the intervening years. But, as we have seen, a close reading of the text reveals that "the Jews" are not all Jewish people, or even all Jewish people contemporary with Jesus or with the Johannine community. Rather, "the Jews" represent the emerging authoritative group, those who are seeking to establish a canonical interpretation of what Judaism is, and, moreover, one that excludes Christians (9:22; 12:42; 16:2). |
It is therefore not coincidental that they are identified with the Pharisees. In John there are plenty of Jewish people who are open to Jesus (3:1; 11:37) and even accept him (chap. 9), but they too may be in danger of being excluded from an emerging Jewish community that is identifying itself in part over against something that will be called Christianity (12:42; cf. Acts 11:26). |
Anti-Jew or anti-Semite?
It is sometimes said that the Gospel of John is anti-Jewish without being anti-Semitic, and there is reason to make such a distinction. Modern anti-Semitism is racist in that it falsely views Jewishness as a racial rather than an historic religious or cultural identity. Thus the Nazis drew a distinction between Aryan and Jewish racial types and did not regard conversion to Christianity as a way of divesting one's self of Jewishness. Certainly the Gospel of John is not anti-Semitic in this sense for this sort of racial anti-Semitism emerged only in modern times. Yet one must face the question of whether or not the Gospel of John is anti-Jewish, and, if so, what does its anti-Jewishness mean for Judaism and Christianity? Does the Gospel, rightly understood, promote anti-Semitism? |
It is all too easy to read later religious developments and hostility back into the Gospel of John, for enough mutual hostility and rejection are reflected there already. To take a prime example, the Gospel of John seems to be thoroughly supersessionist, as is the Epistle to the Hebrews, for it anticipates the displacement of Jews as God's people by Christians and appropriates the Jewish scripture as its own (5:39,45-47). Moreover, "the Jews" themselves disavow the lordship of God by avowing that they have no king but Caesar (19:15) just before Pilate hands Jesus over to them for crucifixion. Interestingly enough, however, it is clear from the Gospel of John itself that Jesus was put to death by a detail of Roman soldiers (19:23-25; cf. 18:3), not by the Jews (who in 19:21-22 seem to be distinguished from the soldiers who appear in the next paragraph). Yet John leaves the impression that "the Jews" did Jesus in. |
Although "Jews" (Ioudaioi) is characteristically, though not always, a term of opprobrium in the Fourth Gospel, "Israel" and "Israelite" uniformly appear in a positive sense. Nathanael, Jesus' disciple to be, is "truly an Israelite" (1:47), and John the Baptist's mission is to reveal Jesus as the Christ to Israel (1:31). Jesus himself is the king of Israel (1:49; 12:13). Moreover, the evangelist knows quite well that Jesus is a Jew, for the Samaritan woman identifies him as such (4:9), while Jesus himself will say to her, "Salvation is of the Jews" (4:22). Although Nicodemus proves woefully ignorant, the fact that he was a teacher of Israel means that he should have been prepared to understand Jesus (3:10). "Israel" and "Israelite," the designations preferred by the Jews themselves, remain entirely positive terms. Perhaps John sees the church as the true Israel and the replacement of fallen Israel, but, as we have already observed, he does not express himself in these terms. |
Conclusion
It is all too easy for Christians to supply what seems to be implied by the Fourth Gospel, and thus to extend and fortify the gulf between Christianity and Judaism, but those who do so should remain aware of what they are doing, namely, coming to conclusions that are not as explicitly drawn in the Gospel of John as may at first appear. John can be said to point in that direction, but such a view of the Fourth Gospel also has much to do with the fact that most Christians can agree that whatever Christianity may be, it is not Judaism--and vice versa. John tends to confirm that perception, which also has some basis elsewhere in the New Testament, particularly in Paul's attitude toward the law. But what is Christianity in John's view, or what would it be if he undertook to define it? What is its distinguishing feature or characteristic? If the most that can be said is that it is not Judaism, that is little enough, too little, to say about it. John has much more to say than that. |
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