Jewish deicide

Jewish deicide is the theological position and the antisemitic trope that as a people, the Jews are collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus, even through the successive generations following his death. The notion arose in early Christianity, and it features in the writings of Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis as early as the 2nd century. The Biblical passage Matthew 27:24–25 has been seen as giving voice to the charge of Jewish deicide as well.

The accusation that the Jews were Christ-killers fed Christian antisemitism and spurred on acts of violence against Jews such as pogroms, massacres of Jews during the Crusades, expulsions of the Jews from England, France, Spain, Portugal and other places, and torture during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.

In the catechism that was produced by the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century, the Catholic Church rejected the deicide charge and taught the belief that the collectivity of sinful humanity was responsible for the death of Jesus, with Christians having a special responsibility themselves. In the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI issued the declaration Nostra aetate that repudiated the idea of a collective, multigenerational Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus. It declared that the accusation could not be made "against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today".

Most Protestant churches have never given a binding position on the matter; but some Christian denominations, such as the Episcopal Church in the US and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, have issued official declarations against the accusation.

Sources

Matthew 27:24–25

A justification for the charge of Jewish deicide has been sought in Matthew 27:24–25:

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." And all the people answered, "His blood be on us and on our children!"

The verse which reads: "And all the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!'" is also referred to as the blood curse. In an essay regarding antisemitism, biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine argues that this passage has caused more suffering throughout Jewish history than any other passage in the New Testament.

John 5:16–18

Many also point to the Gospel of John as evidence of Christian charges of deicide. As Samuel Sandmel writes, "John is widely regarded as either the most anti-Semitic or at least the most overtly anti-Semitic of the gospels." Support for this claim comes in several places throughout John, such as in John 5:16–18:

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, "My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working." For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Some scholars describe this passage as irrefutably referencing and implicating the Jews in deicide, although many, such as scholar Robert Kysar, also argue that part of the severity of this charge comes more from those who read and understand the text than the text itself. John uses the term Ἰουδαῖοι, Ioudaioi, meaning "the Jews" or "the Judeans", as the subject of these sentences. However, the notion that the Jew is meant to represent all Jews is often disputed by scholars who argued that the phrase is to be taken specifically to refer to "Jewish leaders". While the New Testament is often more subtle or leveled in accusations of deicide, many scholars hold that these works cannot be held in isolation, and must be considered in the context of their interpretation by later Christian communities.

Historicity of Matthew 27:24–25

According to the gospel accounts, Jewish authorities in Roman Judea charged Jesus with blasphemy and sought his execution, but lacked the authority to have Jesus put to death (John 18:31), so they took Jesus to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the province, who authorized Jesus's execution (John 19:16). The Jesus Seminar's Scholars Version translation note for John 18:31 adds: "it's illegal for us: The accuracy of this claim is doubtful." It is noted, for example, that Jewish authorities were responsible for the stoning of Saint Stephen in Acts 7:54 and of James the Just in Antiquities of the Jews without the consent of the governor. Josephus however, notes that the execution of James happened while the newly appointed governor Lucceius Albinus "was but upon the road" to assume his office. Also Acts relates that the stoning happened in a lynching-like manner, in the course of Stephen's public criticism of Jews who refused to believe in Jesus.

It has also been suggested that the Gospel accounts may have downplayed the role of the Romans in Jesus's death during a time when Christianity was struggling to gain acceptance among the then pagan or polytheist Roman world. Matthew 27:24–25, quoted above, has no counterpart in the other Gospels and some scholars see it as probably related to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Swiss Protestant theologian Ulrich Luz described it in 2005 as "redactional fiction" invented by the author of the Gospel of Matthew. Some writers, viewing it as part of Matthew's anti-Jewish polemic, see in it the seeds of later Christian antisemitism.

In his 2011 book, Pope Benedict XVI, besides repudiating placing blame on the Jewish people, interprets the passage found in the Gospel of Matthew which has the "crowd" (this being the translation of the specific original Greek word used in the text) saying "Let his blood be upon us and upon our children" as not referring to the whole Jewish people, but only to the group of supporters of the rebel Barabbas present at the trial. The other group identified by the pope as standing behind Jesus's trial is the "Temple aristocracy", another clearly defined category.

Historicity of Barabbas

Some biblical scholars, including Benjamin Urrutia and Hyam Maccoby, go a step further by not only doubting the historicity of the blood curse statement in Matthew but also the existence of Barabbas. This theory is based on the fact that Barabbas's full name was given in early writings as Jesus Barabbas, meaning literally Jesus, son of the father. The theory is that this name originally referred to Jesus himself, and that when the crowd asked Pilate to release "Jesus, son of the father" they were referring to Jesus himself, as suggested also by Peter Cresswell. The theory suggests that further details around Barabbas are historical fiction based on a misunderstanding. The theory is disputed by other scholars.

Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians also contains accusations of Jewish deicide:

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.

According to Jeremy Cohen:

Even before the Gospels appeared, the apostle Paul (or, more probably, one of his disciples) portrayed the Jews as Christ's killers ... But though the New Testament clearly looks to the Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus, Paul and the evangelists did not yet condemn all Jews, by the very fact of their Jewishness, as murderers of the son of God and his messiah. That condemnation, however, was soon to come.

Some scholars believe these verses are a later interpolation not present in the original text. They note how this excerpt contradicts various other statements from Paul's letters, such as his belief that God's promise to the Jews still applies and they will ultimately be saved, as well as his repeated self-identification as a Jew (which are instead treated in this passage as a different group wholly apart from himself). Furthermore, mention of Jews already having experienced divine wrath is seemingly a reference to the destruction of the Second Temple: if true, this would mean that the excerpt was added no earlier than 70 AD, after Paul's death.