The Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

The term “Christkillers” is an ugly one as it is used today, and as it has been used for centuries by those who hate Jews. It has become a central justification for this special kind of Christian anti-semitic thinking. But one has to ask, what is the origin of the term and the idea, that is that the Jews are guilty of “killing Christ,” or, as it is sometimes put, of “Deicide,” that is “killing God”?

As far as I can determine the first mention of this idea as a blanket charge against “the Jews” comes from Paul’s earliest preserved letter, written to his followers living in the Greek town of Salonica or Thessalonica around the year AD 50. He writes:

“…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 that they may be save–so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thess 2:15-16).

What makes this passage important in terms of the development of Christianity is that it breaks new ground by laying a blanket charge that it was “the Jews” who killed Jesus, who displease God, and who oppose humankind. The strong vituperative language that Paul uses here is not really what makes the passage important in terms of the history of Christian anti-semitism. Actually, various Jewish groups (Essenes against Pharisees, Pharisees against Sadducees, Nazarenes against Pharisees) often use very ugly language in castigating their fellow Jews for their beliefs, practices or perceived moral failures. It is neither the language nor the vindictive spirit (You are going to hell and I am glad of it!) that marks Paul’s outburst here as exceptional. What stands out is that he addresses his condemnation against Jews as a whole, even though he himself was a Jew. In other words it was “the Jews” who are guilty of all these things and will be soon and rightly punished. It is a small step from this sort of thinking and the decision to take a bit of this justly deserved punishment of the “Jews” into one’s own hands.

But there is another fateful passage in the New Testament that pretty much “seals the deal” on this whole blanket “Christkiller” charge. It is found only in Matthew’s gospel and scholars are convinced it is an expression of author’s own sentiments, which are very similar to Paul’s, rather than any accurate record of history. The scene is at the trial of Jesus when the Roman governor Pontius Pilate delivers Jesus over to be executed by crucifixion. According to Matthew:

“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children’” (Matthew 27:25).

With these chilling words 1900 years of Christian persecution against the Jews was both launched and justified. After all, had not the Jewish people asked for this? Had they not freely taken upon themselves the label “Christkillers,” so that any fate suffered by the Jews, however inflicted, was in the end well deserved?

Today to most of us I think these ideas sound utterly repugnant and shocking in their blatant condemnation of an entire people, even a people who were yet to be born. But all one has to do is spend a bit of time on the Web with Google searches for any common anti-semitic terms and ideas, and the amount of thinking of this type so readily available at a keystroke or two is truly staggering.

I am not saying that Paul or the author of the gospel of Matthew were “anti-semitic” in the full sense of that word as it develops in subsequent Christian thinking. But I am convinced that the sentiments that they express in these passages are the beginnings of a way of thinking that easily developed into, or was translated into, justification for the most horrible and unspeakable attrocities against the Jewish people. The power of language in human affairs is without match. And whether Paul or the writer of Matthew were sincerely following their vision of God’s will or not, their language and what it implies, and came to imply, is sad beyond measure.
One might easily take these sentiments, and many did, and conclude that at the bottom of all the woes of human history is one group–the Jews.