This is a subject that many Christians prefer to avoid. It’s easier for them to deny their religion’s unsavory legacy than meet it head-on and admit what it ultimately led to. Unfortunately for them, it’s not a subject that should be avoided. It needs to be examined — deeply — and dealt with in a courageous and mature manner.
The presumed founder of Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth, was a Jew. So too were his followers (i.e. the Apostles), as well as the various people he addressed during his travels (e.g. during the Sermon on the Mount).
Also, the earliest Christians considered themselves Jews and believed they were following Judaism as it ought to be followed (according to Jesus’ teachings). Even Gentiles who joined the various Christian movements tended to view themselves as following Judaism, after a fashion. And early Christians also referred to themselves as “the New Israel.”
So, how can it be that Christianity took on an anti-Semitic attitude? That’s a little harder to explain since some of the earliest extant examples of it show up without much of a context to explain how they got there. It also began to manifest during a time when Christians considered themselves Jews.
The oldest Christian documents are the “genuine” Pauline epistles: Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Romans. Paul portrays himself as a Jewish convert to Christianity, who prior to his conversion had persecuted Christians relentlessly. This inserts some implicit anti-Semitism into the faith.
Also in 1 Th 2:14-15, Paul explicitly complains that Jews “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets.” That in itself is a stern indictment, especially considering that Paul was, himself, a Jew and he is among the many in that time period who considered the nascent faith merely a form of Judaism.
The synoptic gospels narrate that the Romans killed Jesus, but at the insistence or request of Jewish authorities. And according to Mt 27:25, Jews themselves explicitly took the blame for it: “His blood shall be on us and on our children!”
The gospel of John is more clearly anti-Semitic. In it, Jesus accuses Jews of wanting him killed: “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you” (Jn 8:37). Later in the same chapter, Jesus goes on to condemn Jews even further:
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (Jn 8:44)
Acts of the Apostles includes multiple accounts of Jewish hostility toward Christians, including the martyrdom of St Stephen at the hands of Jewish authorities. This story in particular inflamed Christians against Jews.
Other non-canonical works also have something to say about Jews, little of it good. A number of Gnostic texts make clear that YHWH, the god of the Hebrews/Jews, is a usurper and enemy to both God and humanity. The writings of Marcion have much the same to say.
I discuss this at greater length in my article on St Justin Martyr, but it’s fair to point out that his Dialogue with Trypho in the middle of the 2nd century represents a kind of inflection point in the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, just as the account of St Stephen’s martyrdom did, several decades prior.
In one convenient (and lengthy) package, Justin set forth a comprehensive laundry-list of all the things Christians disliked about Jews up to his time, and all of the accusations they’d leveled at them. In particular, he made it clear that it was Jews who’d been responsible for Jesus’ death. He also made it clear that it was unacceptable to Christians that Jews would continue not to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.
From this point on, Christians’ primary complaints about Jews were: 1) They had killed Jesus of Nazareth; and 2) They should have accepted him as the Messiah, but insolently refused to do so.
Among the many works penned by Tertullian the heresy-hunter (and, probably, embracer!), is his Answer to the Jews. It reiterates many of the points made by Justin Martyr but in a more detached manner. Although it’s possible Tertullian may have had Justin’s Dialogue to work from, this treatise structurally resembles his far-longer Adversus Marcionem so it may simply have been an application of the same approach, by Tertullian, with Judaism as its target rather than the Church of Marcion. So Tertullian may have written in ignorance of Justin.
At any rate, given that this was written as long as 50 years after the Dialogue, yet made more or less the same points, shows the thinking that had become entrenched in Christendom by that time. The days when Christians considered themselves just another group of Jews, were clearly over.
Near the end of the 4th century, St John Chrysostom penned a series of homilies about Judaism and Christianity’s relationship to it. Unlike the works of Justin and Tertullian, which are more or less generalized philosophical complaints about Judaism and the insolence of Jews who retained their traditional religion rather than embracing Christianity as its replacement, John’s homilies grew out of his concerns over a Christian practice of his time in the region of Antich.
It appears Christians there were participating in Jewish services, particularly on holidays such as Passover and Rosh Hashanah but in many cases on a regular basis (weekly or biweekly). He condemned this practice on a number of grounds, including that it led to heresy, or quasi-heretical practices (such as men being circumcised).
Although John’s target, in these homilies, were Christians who were associating with Jews, they imply that synagogues might be home to diabolical forces, and that Jews were trying to undermine the local Church of Antioch.
So, while the point of John’s treatises was to critique a Christian practice he thought dangerous for Christians, he couldn’t help but inject insidious accusations against Jews into it. His work influenced later Christian thought about Jews and Judaism.
Around this same time, Epiphanius the bishop of Salamis (on the island of Cyprus) penned a colossal work, known both as Panarion and Adversus Haeresis (the former name is more often applied to it since the latter name is the same as a number of other heresy-hunters’ works). In it, he described 80 heresies, broken out by the traditions from which they evolved, as Epiphanius saw them.
One of the four traditions which he as the source of a number of heresies, was Judaism. Some of the heresies he condemned (such as the Ebionites) were Jewish Christian sects, rather than strictly-Jewish sects that didn’t accept Jesus at all. He had nothing good to say about anything even barely related to Jews or Judaism.
Granted, he railed against many other enemies of Christianity, including the late Christian theologian Origen, as well as a raft of Gnostic sects and other heresies he considered vile and destructive. But a good deal of what he had to say about Jewish Christianity, and Jews, had an effect on the Church as a whole.
A 4th or 5th century treatise supposedly written by Gregory of Nyssa (in Anatolia) — but almost certainly not written by him (it might have been composed after his time) — collected a number of existing Christian anti-Jewish tropes and presented them in a careful list. The main thrust of this work is that Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry, death, and resurrection had been predicted by Jewish scripture, so Jews have no valid reason not to embrace his worship. What’s more, this work purports to prove that Mosaic Law was rendered obsolete by Jesus’ ministry and is no longer in effect.
It's packaged in such a way as to assert that devout Jews who follow the word of YHWH have no reason not to convert to Christianity and give up their traditional religion. It gives no ground to Jews’ desire to maintain their faith and refuses to admit that Jesus might not have been the Messiah and hadn’t been predicted by multiple prophecies.
This also became influential. Many of Pseudo-Gregory’s talking points would be incorporated into later critiques of Jews and Judaism.
All of the above-referenced works, along with others I haven’t mentioned, became the seeds from which a bumper crop of anti-Semitic sentiment, among Christians, grew. That crop would continue to be harvested, increasing in size with each passing generation, eventually unleashing tropes that spawned atrocities beyond the imagination of anything that had been written up to this point.
Among those is the “blood libel,” or medieval accusation that Jews routinely used the blood of Christians (especially children) as part of their profane, if not downright diabolical, religious rites. The “blood libel” has, even now, not died out … it still lurks in the world (both among Christians and Muslims) and has directly caused a massive amount of bloodshed over the past several centuries.
A common defense employed by Christians who wish to deny the anti-Semitic propaganda that has infested their faith since the 1st century, is the question of how can Christians even be called anti-Semites, if they follow a religion founded by a Jew?
This is a question I asked above, but didn’t answer — because there is no answer to it. That Jesus had been a Jew and that Christians follow Jesus the Jew doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not they can be anti-Semitic. The cold fact is that, while the very earliest Christians considered themselves Jews, and even continued to live as Jews (that is, they kept following Mosaic Law), their religion very soon decided it had taken the place of Judaism and, effectively, obsoleted it.
A 21st century analogue is when a software product is pronounced “end of life” by its developer, that decided to replace it with something else. Christians did the very same thing to Judaism: They “end of lifed” it and presumed their own newer faith was to take its place.
That there were people who didn’t go along with that program, and continued to follow Judaism as it had been before Jesus’ time, infuriated many Christians — because it contradicted their own beliefs about their own faith. It was an affront they couldn’t ignore, and in many cases refused to tolerate.
That, in a nutshell, is how Christian followers of a religion founded by a Jew, can so vehemently hate Jews for remaining Jews. The seeds of this hate were sewn within the first few decades of the new Christian religion, and it will be difficult (if not impossible) to remove them.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation.
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