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Early Christian Anti-Judaism LeonardRutgers Early Christian Anti-Judaism Iwould like to start my reflections with aquotefrom Isaac Asimov.Inthe first of his Foundation novels, this Russian-born American biochemist and science fic- tion writer has one of his characters remark that “violence is the lastrefugeof the incompetent.”¹ It is akeen observation—one that,Ibelieve, can be of use when studying the anti-Jewish sentiments that surface frequentlyinearlyChris- tian literature of first few centuries of the Common Era.² Now,ofcourse, it goes without saying that it would be wrong genericallyto qualify the emergence of the advanced literary culturethat accompanies the rise of Christianityand that,infact,isone of its defining characteristics,asasign of incompetence. Even so, there is no denying that there is something deeplyunset- tling about this literature all the same, specificallyinthe wayitdealswith others in general, and with Jews and Judaism in particular. EarlyChristian discussions in this area raise fundamental questions. Such questions do not just concern the rationale for the invectivesthatemerge over the course of earlyChristian discus- sions that deal with Jews and Judaism. They also prompt us to reflect on the larg- er mechanisms that underlie these debates,aswell as on the social ramifications of the rhetoric strategies that characterize earlyChristian thinking on the Jews. Before trying to highlight what Ibelievetobethe crucial features in all of this, let me begin by stating that in this paper my thinkingonthese matters I. Asimov, Foundation (New York: Bantam Dell, 1951), 71,90, 117. See further e.g. R. R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: TheTheologicalRoots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury,1979); J. G. Gager, TheOrigins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1983); R. L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews:Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century,vol. 6ofTheTransfor- mation of the ClassicalHeritage,ed. P. Brown (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1983); G. I. Langmuir, Toward aDefinition of Antisemitism (Berkeley:University of California Press,1990); C. A. Evans and D. A. Hagner, Anti-Semitism and Early Christianity:Issues of Polemic and Faith (Minneapolis:Fortress, 1993); K. R. Stow, Alienated Minority:The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1992);W.Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: AHistoryof Hate (Lanham: J. Aronson, 1993); I. Yuval, TwoNations in Your Womb:Perceptions of Jews and ChristiansinLate Antiquity and the Middle Ages,trans. B. Harshavand J. Chipman (Berkley:Uni- versity of CaliforniaPress, 2006); L.V. Rutgers, Making Myths:Jews in Early Christian Identity For- mation (Leuven: Peeters, 2009); D. Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: TheWestern Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014); R. Chazan, From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of JewishHistory (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2016); R. S. Kraemer, TheMediterranean DiasporainLate Antiquity:WhatChristianity Cost the Jews (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). OpenAccess. ©2021 LeonardRutgers, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-003 32 LeonardRutgers has been fueled by avery simple realization: namelythat aggression, in either its verbalorphysical manifestations, is almostnever an expression of strength. Rather,aspsychiatrists have pointed out time and again, anger,aswell as the acts of aggression that resultfrom it,are typicallybrought about by two factors that at first blush mayseem to be quite alien to it but that,inreality,are at the very coreofsuch emotions, namely,painand fear.³ It is this understanding of human behaviorthat bringsmetothe question I would like to address:ifanti-Jewish ideas and verbal abuse of the Jews are such arecurrent feature in earlyChristian literature, what was it that Christian writers weresoafraid of and why? What sortofpaindid they experience and whydid they feel the need to take it out on the Jews?And, last but certainlynot least, how did the emotional turmoil in which earlyChristian writers transparently found themselves, affect Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity more gener- ally? What werethe more structural and long-term effects of their incompetence to movebeyond feelingsofpain and fear in this particulararea? Before trying to find an answer to these questions, let us not getahead of ourselves, however,and start at the beginning.Ifwewant to gain adeeper un- derstandingofanti-Jewishsentiments within earlyChristianity at large,literary sources are our most importantguide. When we look at this literature and at the ways in which it dealswith Jews and Judaism, one can discern at least the fol- lowing four salient characteristics.⁴ First of all, ideas thatwerenot all congenial to Jews emerge from the very start,thatis, they mayalreadybefound in the earliest layers of the New Testa- ment,atwhich point they become astandard feature in earlyChristian literature to the extent that they rear their ugly head again and again, all the waydown the end of antiquity and beyond.⁵ Even when there are large tracts in earlyChristian literaturethat do not talk about Jews and Judaism at all, one encounters anti- Jewishsentiments in the writingsofmanyfathersofthe earlychurch, that is, Cf. e.g. L. Berkowitz, “Pain and Aggression: Some Findingsand Implications,” Motivation and Emotion 17,no. 3(1993): 277–93. Cf. e.g. S. G.Wilson, ed., Separation and Polemic,vol. 2ofAnti-Judaism in Early Christianity,ed. P. Richardson and S. G. Wilson (Waterloo:Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986); A. L. Williams, Adversus Judaeos:ABird’s-Eye View of Christian ApologiaeUntil the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2012). Cf.e.g.A.R.Eckhardt, Elderand YoungerBrothers: TheEncounter of Jews andChristians (New York:Scribner, 1967); S. G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews andChristians70–170C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress,1995); J. D. Dunn, “TheQuestionofAnti-Semitism in theNew TestamentWritingsofthe Period,” in Jews and Christians:The Partingofthe Ways, A.D. 70 to 135,ed. J. D. Dunn (Michigan: Eerdmans,1999),177–212; T. L. Donaldson, Jews andAnti-Judaism in theNew Testament: Decision Points andDivergent Interpretations (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010). Early Christian Anti-Judaism 33 in the works produced by major as well as by minor figures.⁶ Besides and no less importantly, such ideas can surface anytime, even when we,asmodern readers, feel thatthe largercontext in which such remarks suddenlypop up, does not warrant it all at.Inshort,inearlyChristian literature anti-Jewishsentiments are like whitenoise, that is, asound that,evenwhen it is scarcelyaudible, is al- ways there, humminginthe background constantly. Second, from aliterary perspective,anti-Jewish ideas come in all shapes and sizes. They appear in virtuallyall literary genres,from exegetical commentaries and sermons to historiographical works and treatises designed specificallytoen- gage and combat the Jews. Giventheir pervasiveness it hardlycomesasasur- prise to note that the phraseologies thatwereused in these variegated literary contexts run the full gamut too, from occasional and off-hand observations that occur when one least expects them, to systematic reflections and elabora- tions, as in such cases whereearlyChristian thinkers went through theirthinking processinastep-by-step fashion, producing fully-fledgedmonographic treat- ments about the Jews and Judaism in the process. Third, and along similar lines, earlyChristian anti-Jewishthinking seems to have been spread fairlyevenlythrough the Greco-Roman world in geographical and culturalterms,with such ideas surfacing in Syria, Egypt,orAsia Minor as well as in France or Spain and in virtuallyall the lands in between, and with the respective sources being composed in avariety of languages including Latin, Greek, and Syriac. Clearly, the ventilation of anti-Jewish ideas on the part of earlyChristians was farfrom being reserved to asingle culturalgroup, set of theologians,orone or more specific, clearlydelineated geographical areas.Yet,perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of all is the fourth one. As scholars have consistentlyargued over the last twenty to thirty years, the Jews thatappear in the writingsofthe fathersofthe earlychurch are frequently not flesh and blood people at all. Instead, the Jews we encounter in patristic literature are the direct outcome of the fathers’ engagement with the texts of the Bible, meaning the Hebrew Bible as well as the New Testament.Asaresult of this,the Jews that emerge over the course of this process are not historical personalities but figments of scriptural imagination, which is whythey are oftenappropriatelycalled “hermeneutical Cf. e.g. O. Limor and G. G. Stroumsa, eds., ContraIudaeos: Ancientand Medieval Polemics be- tween Christians and Jews (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996); H. Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.–11.Jh.) (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1990). 34 LeonardRutgers Jews.”⁷ It is exactlyincontexts where such literary inventionsand artificial con- structs surface that earlyChristian thinking on “the Jews” expands most dramat- icallyinterms of the verbal aggression and abuse that gets formulated thenand there. If it is true, then, that much of the evidence at our disposal is textual in na- ture to the point thatcrucial passages
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