DEFINITIONS

ANTI-JUDAISM IS DEFINED BY AMY LEVINE AS THE HATRED OF THE RELIGION OF THE JEWS, THERE IS A DEBATE REGARDING THIS FOR IF A JEW CONVERTS TO ANOTHER RELIGION HE IS NO LONGER HATED OR BUT HE IS DISCRIMINATED, THIS BECOMES ANT-SEMITISM. BUT JUDAISM IS AN ETHNO RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION WHICH CAN NOT BE PICKED A PART.

IN OUR EYES ANTI-JUDAISM IS ANTISEMITISM IN A THEOLOGICAL RELIGIOUS FORM

What's Next 2008 Time Magazine Article 10. Re-Judaizing Jesus

Recently a popular blogger — let's call him Rabbi Ben — zinged the scholarship of a man we shall call Rabbi Rob. R. Ben claimed R. Rob did not "understand the difference between Judaism prior to the two Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and later Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism." He helpfully provided a syllabus.

Actually, neither man is a rabbi. (Sorry.) Ben Witherington is a Methodist New Testament scholar, and Rob Bell a rising Michigan megapastor. Yet each regards sources like the Mishnah and Rabbi Akiva as vital to understanding history's best-known Jew: Jesus.

This is seismic. For centuries, the discipline of Christian "Hebraics" consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God's new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that "if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong."

The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus' passionate dedication "to Jewish ideas of his day" on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.

What does this mean, practically? At times the resulting adjustment seems simple. For example, Bell thinks he knows the mysterious words Jesus wrote in the dust while defending the adulteress ("He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," etc.). By Bell's calculation, that showdown occurred at the same time as religious Jews' yearly reading of the prophet Jeremiah's warning that "those who turn from [God] will be written in the dust because they have forsaken [him]." Thus Jesus wrote the crowd's names to warn that their lack of compassion alienated their (and his) God.

A trickier revision for readers involves Paul's Letter to the Romans, forever a key Christian text on sin and Christ's salvific grace. Yet this reading necessitates skipping over what seems like extraneous material in Chapters 9 through 11, which are about the Jews. Increasingly, says Jason Byassee, an editor at the Christian Century,, scholars now read Romans through those chapters, as a musing by a lifelong Jew on how God can fulfill his biblical covenant with Israel even if it does not accept His son. Byassee the theologian agrees. But as a Methodist pastor, he frets that Romans "is no longer really about Gentile Christians. How do you preach it?"

That's not a frivolous query. Ideally, the reassessment should increase both Jewish-Christian amity and gospel clarity, things that won't happen if regular Christians feel that in rediscovering Jesus the Jew, they have lost Christ. Yet Bell finds this particular genie so logically powerful that he has no wish to rebottle it. Once in, he says, "you're in deep. You're hooked. 'Cause you can't ever read it the same way again."

The Wolf and the Lamb: The Rise of Anti-Semitism

An Antropological Approach to the Events of the First Century that gave rise to the development of western culture as we know it. From the Roman conquest of the middle East to the embrace of Jewish theological concepts and their distortion to oppress the masses and hold the empire together.

Excerpt from the Wolf and the Lamb:

During the first century of the Common Era Judaism existed in various forms; the Perushim, Zadukim, Essekim, the rebels known as 'Kanaim' or Zealots and in the coast land a group of Galileans and Nazarites became the sect of 'the Way.' These followers of the Nazarean rabbi, Yehoshua Ha Natzri known as 'Jesus,' were Jews faithful to what is known as Biblical Judaism of that time. Dr. Laurence Schiffman of New York University feels that out of the many Jewish groups of the First Century, 'some of them fed into Rabbinical Judaism and others to Christianity, while the rest died off' (PBS Frontline-From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians, 1998).

To study the rise of antisemitism an anthropological approach must be pursued, it is necessary forus to learn about the cultural diversity of Ancient Israel, before and after the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. As theories of how antisemitism came about are developed by many authors claim that the Gospel writers were Antisemetic, others that editors of the same were Antisemetic, or that even Jesus (who was raised under phareseical influence) was antisemetic himself. These theories come as historians asess original Christianity according to modern day Jewish standards. On the other hand recently scholars have uncovered that Jesus and his disciples were part of the Jewish civilization, and never separated from Israel as a nation. As Jews they were subjugated and persecuted by the Roman Empire in the same way than the rest of their countrymen. It is undeniable that this community of Jews has had an strong historic impact in the values and beliefs of millions of people of many nations throughout the centuries...

This Project is based on the work of Juan Marcos Gutierrez-Masters in Judaic Studies

A Sephardic Jew from Dallas, Texas. He completed his master's degree at the Siegal College of Judaic Studies. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. Author of Neither Jews nor Christians: The Enigma of Jewish Christianity which is required reading for students of Judaism and Christianity and those seeking to formulate educated views on the rise of early Christianity in its Jewish context.

Council of Laodicea in Phrygia Pacatiana, Canon XXIX,364 A.D.

"Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord's Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ."

Timeline 5th century B.C.E-5th century C.E.

A Project of DERECH HA OLAM

The Center for Judaic Studies, Hebraic Heritage and Semetic Culture