Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity: Volume 2: Separation and Polemic

Richard C. Smith is a professor in the Classics Department of the
University of Alberta.

This selection of essays edited by S.G. Wilson, Professor of Religion at Carleton University, presents work from the final two years of a five-year seminar held at annual meetings of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in 1981 and 1982. Though the title focuses on anti-Judaism, the essays are much more concerned with the relationship between Judaism and Christianity during the first two centuries of our era and the causes for separation between the two religions rather than anti-Semitism as such.

The volume comprises eight essays, including two by the editor, as well as an evaluation in retrospect of the results of the total five-year process by Professor Lloyd Gaston of the Vancouver School of Theology. The editor has also provided an introduction, notes on the various contributors, an index nominorum and an index locorum.

Professor Wilson’s two essays deal with the second-century heretic and gnostic, Marcion, and the Christian orator, Melito, who flourished in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Since Marcion’s views were often the majority view of Christians in this period, the first essay makes clear that Marcion’s ideas were much more the rejection of the authority of Judaism than the rejection of Jews themselves. The more extreme Catholic position, as illustrated by Melito of Sardis, on the other hand, appropriated all the authority of Jewish tradition and Scripture for Christianity but viewed the Jews themselves as the murderers of God. It is especially ironic that Melito, at least, seems to have been led to his unfortunate position by his own desire to appropriate Jewish Passover traditions for Christian belief and practice including the celebration of Easter on the day of Passover instead of the first Sunday after Passover.

William Klassen of the Interfaith Peace Academy of Jerusalem offers an interesting essay on the epistle to the Hebrews. He proposes that the epistle seems to have been written before 70 C.E. and, if so, would have been well received by Jews living outside of Judea and Jerusalem and even these would not have had any great difficulty with it. In contrast, M.B. Shukster and Professor Peter Richardson of the University of Toronto note that the epistle of Banabas is most polemical against Judaism because at the end of the first century, Judaism had become a most attractive alternative to Christianity. Since they feel that the epistle was a product of Syro-Palestine, the change to direct attack on the temple and rabbinic exegesis in only a few years from the presumed time of the epistle to the Hebrew is striking.

Lloyd Gaston, as well as a retrospect, also contributed an essay on Ignatius of Antioch and related writers of the second century. He points out that much of the so-called anti-Judaism found here is really directed against Gentile Christians who adopted various Jewish practices (including reading the Septuagint as scripture!). Such Christians are also criticized in the Pastoral Epistles and Revelation. Such criticism was totally misunderstood later and was thought to be directed against actual Jews.

In other essays, Harold Remus of Wilfrid Lauricr shows that Justin Martyr’s so-called argument with Judaism is really designed to convert pagans; Jack Lightstone of Concordia University indicates how Early Rabbinism, Hellenistic Judaism, and early Christianity all offered holy men as mediators; and Alan Segal of Barnard College traces gnosticism in Christianity and Judaism (as well as calling for further study of the subject).

Taken together, the essays are a strong indication of the excellent work being done in this area of interpretation. It is to be hoped that not only the views expressed here will be carefully studied but that the results of further seminars on similar topics will be made available from the Society of Biblical Studies.