Notes CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Inferno, 34: 61-3, from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1, tr. John D. Sinclair (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 423. 2. Jews are conspicuously absent from Dante's hell. Although Caiaphas makes a brief appearance in canto XXIII, Dante's description of usurers in canto XVII is without explicit references to Jews. This is especially surprising given that "[b]y the twelfth century the terms 'Jew' and 'usurer' were synonymous .... " Ueffrey Richards, Sex, Dis­ sidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1991), 113.] 3. Hyam Maccoby, Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 117. 4. "Jews and Devils: Anti-Semitic Stereotypes of Late Medieval and Renaissance England," Journal of Literature and Theology 4:1 (March, 1990), 15-28; 25. 5. See Chapter 5 6. I am concerned that my treatment of Christian Holocaust Theology may lead some readers mistakenly to infer hostility on my part toward radical attempts to reformulate Christian thought in the post­ Holocaust environment. I want to say explicitly, therefore, that my critique reflects not disapproval of the task Holocaust Theologians have undertaken, but my opinion that too many Christian responses to anti-Judaism have sought to redress this problem by carelessly reiterating mythical forms. 7. My concern with the phenomenon of ambivalence has forced me to keep the relatively positive aspects of Christian mythical thinking constantly in view. If this is interpreted by some readers as a subtle apologetic for this type of thinking, I can only respond that this is not my intent. 8. From Le Cru et le cuit, cited in Terrence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (London: Routledge, 1977), 41. My discussion of Levi­ Strauss and Barthes is indebted to Hawkes' excellent introduction to their work. 9. The Restorationist teaching was not a consistent part of witness­ people thinking until the seventeenth century. While Augustine did not believe the Jews would return to their land, many fathers of the church did not rule out such a return. On Restorationist and anti­ Restorationist thinking in the first few centuries of church history, especially as it relates to Julian the Apostate's unsuccessful attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple in 363 CE., see Edward H. flannery, "Theological Aspects of the State of Israel," in John Oesterreicher, ed., The Bridge, Vol. 3 (New York: Pantheon, 1958), 301-24; 306ff. 185 186 Notes 10. See "Myth Today" in Roland Barthes' Mythologies, tr. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972). 11. Ibid., 113. 12. See Ibid., 115. CHAPTER 2: THE WITNESS-PEOPLE MYTH AND ITS ALTERNATIVES 1. See, for example, Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theo­ logical Roots of Anti-Semitism (Minneapolis: Seabury, 1974), ch. 2. 2. See Gavin I. Langmuir, History, Religion and Anti-Semitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 282. 3. See Langmuir, History, Religion and Anti-Semitism, 282-3; and Ruether, Faith and Fratricide. 4. See "Response to Rosemary Ruether," in Eva Fleischner, ed., Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? (New York: Ktav, 1977), 97-107. 5. See Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Origins of the Holocaust: Christian Anti-Semitism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 6. See Moments of Crisis in Jewish-Christian Relations (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989). 7. This is Marc Tanenbaum's term. See Braham, ed. The Origins of the Holocaust: Christian Anti-Semitism, 55. 8. See Eugene Fisher, "The Origins of Anti-Semitism in Theology: A Reaction and Critique," in Braham, ed., The Origins of the Holocaust: Christian Anti-Semitism, 22. 9. Yerushalmi, "Response to Rosemary Ruether." 10. See Arthur Hertzberg, "Is Anti-Semitism Declining?", New York Review of Books Oune 24, 1993, 51-7), where the author delineates recent competing trends in understanding the sources of anti­ Semitism. 11. John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 15. 12. Gager, Origins, 16. 13. The Teaching of Contempt, tr. Helen Weaver (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964). 14. The Crucifixion of the Jews: The Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, Rose Reprints (Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 1986), 2. 15. "Rethinking Christ," in Alan T. Davies, ed., Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 167-87; 168. 16. Trachtenberg writes in a tradition of Jewish historiography of anti­ Semitism pioneered by Heinrich Graetz. See also Jacques Danielou's Dialogue With Israel [tr. Joan Marie Roth (Baltimore: Helicon, 1968), 92], where the author claims anti-Semitism is a popular phenomenon, bound to the lowest, "inferior" forms of religious sentiment, and thus a product of "religious fanaticism." Notes 187 17. The Devil and the Jews, 3. 18. Ibid, 4. 19. History, Religion and Antisemitism, 267. 20. Ibid., 285. For Langmuir, "anti-Judaism is a nonrational reaction to overcome nonrational doubts, while anti-semitism is an irrational reaction to repressed rational doubts", 276. 21. Ibid., 302, 304. 22. Ibid., 305, 346. The apparent continuity here between Christian and Nazi attitudes toward Jews is somewhat misleading. Langmuir notes that "in contrast with Christian antisemitism, Nazis were obsessed with the alleged physical characteristics of Jews ... Nazism was a physiocentric religion, not a psychocentric one, and the difference was lethal," (344-5). See Langmuir's discussion of "physiocentric antisemitism" inch. 16. 23. See Fred Gladstone Bratton's The Crime of Christendom (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), where the author anticipates Ruether in seeing the root of the problem of anti-Semitism in the body of Christological doctrine which has remained intact since the fourth century. 24. Faith and Fratricide, 246. 25. See Gager, Origins, 19, 20. For all her pessimism about historical Christianity's anti-Judaism, Ruether believes that this could be over­ come if the church returned to its original orientation in the life and message of Jesus the messianic prophet. 26. In addition to Gager's book, see Davies, ed., Anti-Semitism and the Foundations of Christianity; and Gregory Baum's introduction to Reuther, Faith and Fratricide. 27. Yerushalmi, "Response to Rosemary Ruether," passim; For a more recent critique of Ruether's view of the relationship between Chris­ tian anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, see Isabel Wollaston, "Faith and Fratricide: Christianity, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in the Work of Rosemary Radford Ruether," Modern Churchman 33:1 (1991), 8-14. 28. Yerushalmi, "Response, "103. 29. This discussion of Maccoby's views is based on his "The Origins of Anti-Semitism," in Braham, ed. The Origins of the Holocaust: Christian Anti-Semitism, 1-14. See also Maccoby's "Theologian of the Holo­ caust," Commentary (December 1982), 33-7. For a similar view of the centrality of the deicide charge, but with an appreciation for the con­ comitant ambivalence toward Jews, see J. L. Talmon, "European History- Seedbed of the Holocaust," Midstream 19:5 (May 1973), 3-25; 6. 30. He speaks, for example, of the "strange mixture of loathing and awe that characterizes anti-Semitism" ("The Origins of Anti-Semitism," 4). The theme of ambivalence is more prominent in his book The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt (London, Thames & Hudson, 1982), but even here it is symbolic of Maccoby's undialectical view that his chapter on "The Church and the Jews" includes only one paragraph on Augustine. 31. See also Maccoby's recent book, Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil. 188 Notes 32. Ibid., 8. 33. Maccoby, "Theologian of the Holocaust," 36. 34. Ibid., 5. 35. Ibid., 9. See also Maccoby's book The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1986). 36. Ibid., 12. 37. Ibid., 14. 38. Ibid., 11. 39. No examples of millenarian sects are given in "The Origins of Anti­ Semitism," even though millenarianism is identified there as linking Christian and Nazi Jew-hatred. 40. Eugene J. Fisher, "The Origins of Anti-Semitism in Theology: A Reaction and Critique," in Braham, ed., The Origins of the Holocaust, 17-29; 24-5. 41. Ibid., 19. 42. Fisher locates in the development of the Passion Play in the thirteenth century the first occasion in which Judas functioned as the "epony­ mous representative of the Jewish people" (Ibid., 23). CHAPTER 3: THE WITNESS-PEOPLE MYTH IN HISTORY 1. All Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. 2. See J. Christiaan Beker, "The New Testament View of Judaism," in James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jews and Christians: Exploring the Past, Present and Future (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 60-9; 61. 3. For a useful survey, see David Rokeah, "The Church Fathers and the Jews in Writings Designed for Internal and External Use," in Shmuel Almog, ed., Antisemitism through the Ages, trans. Nathan H. Reisner (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), 39--69. 4. For the discussion that follows I am indebted to Clark Williamson, Has God Rejected His People? Anti-Judaism in the Christian Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982), ch. 5. 5. According to Edward Flannery, Lactantius first adumbrated the witness-people theory. The theory gained no currency, however, until Augustine elaborated it in his writings. 6. To my knowledge, the only scholar to use the term "witness-people doctrine" with reference to Augustine's theology is Edward Flannery in The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty- Three Centuries of Antisemitism. (New York: Atheneum, 1985). In addition to Augustine's works cited in this section, see also Sermones 200:2; £narrationes in Psalmos 58:21-2; 59:18- 19, and Tractatus Adversus Judaeos. 6. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews, 53. 7. Ibid. 8. See Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 124ff. Clark Williamson suggests that Melito of Sardis (late second century) was the originator of the notion of deicide (Has God Rejected His People?, 93) Notes 189 9.