The Gospel of John and Jewish-Christian Relations 1978703481, 9781978703483

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The Gospel of John and Jewish–Christian Relations

The Gospel of John and Jewish–Christian Relations Edited by Adele Reinhartz

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL Copyright © 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Reinhartz, Adele, editor. Title: The Gospel of John and Jewish-Christian relations / edited by Adele Reinhartz. Description: Lanham : Fortress Academic, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018028927 (print) | LCCN 2018031267 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978703490 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781978703483 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. John—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Judaism (Christian theology)—Biblical teaching. | Christianity and other religions—Judaism. | Judaism— Relations—Christianity. Classification: LCC BS2615.6.J44 (ebook) | LCC BS2615.6.J44 G67 2018 (print) | DDC 226.5/083058924—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028927 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

List of Figures

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List of Tables

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Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Gospel of John in Jewish–Christian Relations Adele Reinhartz

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PART I: READING JOHN 1  E  rasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles: Gnostic Connections? Pheme Perkins 2  T  he Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John Michael Azar

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PART II: PREACHING JOHN 3  P  reaching the Hostile References to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John R. Alan Culpepper

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4  T  he Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary Eileen Schuller

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5  C  hristian Privilege, Christian Fragility, and the Gospel of John Amy-Jill Levine

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v

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Contents

PART III: RE-PRESENTING JOHN 6  E  cclesia and Synagoga In Principio: The Fourth Gospel as Resource for Anti-Jewish Visual Polemic Marcia Kupfer

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7  T  wo Bach Church Cantatas and “the Jews” in the Gospel of John Michael Marissen

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8  “ My Kingdom Is Not of This World”: Johannine Jesus Films and Christian Supersessionism Richard Walsh

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Bibliography 185 Subject Index

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Index of Sources

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Index of Modern Authors

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About the Contributors

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Figures

Figure 2.1

Icon on wood, Nativity of Christ. St. George Church, Taylor, PA. Figure 2.2 Mural, Meeting at Jacob’s Well (John 4). Prophet Elias Church, Chadra, Lebanon. Figure 2.3 Mural, Healing of the Paralytic (John 5). St. George Church, Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon. Figure 2.4 Mural, Healing of the Blind Man (John 9). St. George Church, Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon. Figure 2.5 Mural, Raising of Lazarus (John 11). Church of Our Saviour, Rye, NY. Figure 2.6 Crucifixion of Christ on Iconostasis. St. Jacob Monastery, Akkar District, Lebanon. Figure 2.7 Mural (partial), Last Supper (Judas dipping bread, Beloved Disciple leaning on Jesus). Church of Our Savior, Rye, NY. Figure 2.8 Chludov Psalter (9th cent.). Figure 2.9 Icon on wood. Ladder of Divine Ascent (12th cent.). Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt. Figure 2.10 Dome with Christ (Pantocrator) surrounded by prophets. St. George Church, West Roxbury, MA. Figure 2.11 Mural, Moses and the Unburnt Bush (Exod 3). St. George Church, Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon. Figure 2.12 Murals, Mother Maria of Paris next to Prophet Daniel. St. George Church, Taylor, PA. Figure 6.1 “I” at the beginning of Genesis, Bible (Octateuch) from the Cistercian Abbey of Notre-Dame du Bonport, France; last decade of the twelfth century. vii

25 26 27 27 28 29 29 30 31 33 37 40 114

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Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3

Figures

Ecclesia and Synagoga, detail of Fig. 6.1. 115 Opening to the Gospel of John, right page, “I” with Crucifixion above Ecclesia and Synagoga, Odbert Gospels, Abbey of Saint-Bertin (ca. 1000). 119 Figure 6.4 Double-page opening to the Gospel of John, Bamberg Gospels from Cologne (ca. 1050). 120 Figure 6.5 “I” at the beginning of the Gospel of John, Bible, France, early thirteenth century. 124 Figure 6.6 The Trinity. Detail of figure 6.1. 127 Figure 6.7 “Q,” Ecclesia trampling Synagoga, homiliary, Verdun, early third quarter of the twelfth century. 131 Figure 6.8 “O” at the beginning of the Song of Songs, Christ enthroned with Ecclesia and Synagoga at his feet, Giant Bible, Tuscany, third quarter of the twelfth century. 132 Figure 6.9 “O” at the beginning of the Song of Songs, Christ enthroned with Ecclesia and repudiating Synagoga. Bible of Stephen Harding, 1109–11. 136 Figure 6.10 Opening to Genesis. Tuscan Giant Bible. 137 Figure 8.1 The heavens or church dome from which Jesus comes into the film in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). 170 Figure 8.2 The triumphant Jesus silhouetted against the sky in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). 171 Figure 8.3 The resurrected Jesus glows in The King of Kings (1927). 173 Figure 8.4 A cross of light ascends from a broken menorah in The King of Kings (1927). 177

Tables

Table 3.1. Table 3.2. Table 4.1. Table 7.1 Table 8.1.

Readings from John in the Lectionary Cycle. Good Friday: “The Jews” in John 18:1–19:42. Readings from the Gospel of John in the Roman Catholic Lectionary. Juxtapositions of “the Jews” and “the Disciples/ Believers” in John. Johannine Peculiarities in Film.

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54 57 73 149 166

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the support of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College and its sponsorship of a conference held on April 2–3, 2017, where the ideas represented here were discussed, and for the gracious hospitality that I enjoyed during the two years that I was the Corcoran Visiting Chair at the Center (2015–2017). In particular, I wish to thank the director, Dr. James Bernauer, S.J., and the Associate Directors, Rabbi Dr. Ruth Langer and Dr. Camille Fitzpatrick Markey, for their warm collegiality. Many thanks to Camille for organizing all of the practical aspects of that conference. Its success was due in great measure to her efficiency and attention to detail. My thanks also to Ryan Mikalson and to Shoshana Walfish for their proofreading assistance, to Sergey Lobachev for the indexing, to Neil Elliott for shepherding the project through the approvals process at Fortress, and to Neil Elliott as well as Judith Lakamper for overseeing the editorial and production processes at Lexington. My deep thanks to Shoshana Walfish for designing the logo for the conference, and to Shoshana Walfish and Logan Turner for the image that graces the cover of this book. Finally, my sincere thanks to the contributors, including those who presented at the conference and those who joined this project later. Let us hope that our combined efforts will contribute both to the awareness of the Fourth Gospel’s role in the history of Jewish–Christian relations, and to a future of mutual understanding and respect among people regardless of religion or any other differences.

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Introduction The Gospel of John in Jewish–Christian Relations Adele Reinhartz Over lunch one day in the spring of 2016, Dr. James Bernauer, S.J., the Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, mentioned that he was to preach the following Sunday on a passage that included John 10:30: “The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” Jim asked me, in some dismay, “Why are we still reading that line?” Underlying this question was the concern that passages such as these still today have the power to create or reinforce the perception of Jews as Christ-killers, even after the Holocaust, the important Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, and the strenuous efforts of many Christian historians, theologians, and preachers to dismantle and condemn such views.1 From this conversation grew the idea of a conference on the Gospel of John and Jewish–Christian Relations, under the auspices of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, where I was privileged to hold the Corcoran Visiting Chair in 2015–2017. The majority of the chapters in this volume are the revised versions of the papers given at that conference. They are offered here as a contribution to the ongoing dialogue between Christians and Jews engaged in challenging the misperceptions of the past and fostering positive relationships in the present and future.2 The Fourth Gospel is a sublime work that has inspired and enriched the faith of countless Christians. At the same time, it is a problematic text that has provided potent anti-Jewish imagery exploited in anti-Jewish and antiSemitic discourse over the course of two millenia. In this introduction, I will draw attention to just a few of the Gospel’s difficult passages, comment briefly on their impact on Jewish–Christian relations, and describe the chapters in this volume. First, however, a few basic points about the Gospel of John itself. xiii

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THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: A VERY BRIEF INTRODUCTION The Gospel of John is one of the four Gospels included in the canon of the New Testament. Many aspects of this Gospel’s intentions, historical context, and meaning are widely debated. Most scholars, however, agree on a number of basic points regarding date, authorship, and provenance.3 It is generally accepted that the Gospel reached its present form towards the end of the first century CE, after a complex process of composition that may have involved written sources and multiple redactions. The Gospel itself points to the unnamed Beloved Disciple as its author or, at least, as the authority behind its narrative (19:35; 21:24). The New Testament canon attributes the Gospel to “John the Evangelist,” and tradition has often identified this Evangelist with John, the son of Zebedee.4 Most New Testament scholars agree, however, that this is a later attribution and that the Gospel’s actual author(s) are unknown or anonymous. They also agree that the author of John’s Gospel is not John of Patmos, whom the Book of Revelation names as its author; it is possible that the author of John’s Gospel may have written one or more of the Johannine epistles. Although the tradition associating the Gospel with the Roman city of Ephesus in Asia Minor (on the western coast of present-day Turkey) cannot be verified, the Gospel was certainly written somewhere in the Diaspora rather than the land of Israel. Unresolved are precisely the issues that are most pertinent for Jewish–Christian relations: the historical circumstances that shaped the Gospel, the specific purpose and audience that its author or authors envisioned, and, most directly, the Gospel’s stance towards Jews who did not believe in Jesus.5 John’s Jews The Fourth Gospel contains approximately seventy references to hoi Ioudaioi, a designation most often (and best) translated as “the Jews.” Several of these references are neutral or descriptive, referring to Jewish festivals or specific practices (e.g., 2:6, 13; 4:9; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2; 11:55; 19:40). In some passages, the Ioudaioi are depicted as wavering between faith and skepticism (e.g., 7:11–13; 11:45–46). John 4:22, in which Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that salvation is from (or of) the Jews, is often construed as a positive statement, though this is by no means certain.6 The vast majority of occurrences, however, express a negative or even hostile stance towards the Jews. These passages express several themes that became central to Christian antiJewish and anti-Semitic discourse.

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Jews as Persecutors of Jesus: The Deicide Charge The Jews first appear in 1:19–27 as the ones who send priests and Levites to interrogate John the Baptist as to his identity. The Baptist immediately responds in the negative: he is not the Messiah—answering a question that they did not ask but was apparently implicit in their initial question: “Who are you?” (1:19). The conversation deteriorates from there. Although they exchange words and not blows, the underlying tone of the passage is antagonistic. In John 2:18–21, the Jews challenge Jesus himself after he has “cleansed” the temple: “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus then replies: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews take his words literally and respond, in either mockery or wonder, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But, as the narrator informs us, “he was speaking of the temple of his body.” After these introductory chapters, however, the Jews’ antagonism toward Jesus and those associated with him proceeds beyond words to an intention to harm. From John 5 to the end of the Gospels, the Jews persecute Jesus for breaking the Sabbath and making claims about God (5:16, 18); argue with him over their covenantal relationship with God (8:48, 52, 57); attempt to stone Jesus (8:59; 10:31–33); and, finally, orchestrate his death (18:14, 31, 35, 36, 38; 19:7, 12, 31). John traces the Jews’ responsibility for deicide to a meeting of the leadership after the raising of Lazarus. Some of the Jews who had witnessed the miracle believed in Jesus but others went to the Pharisees and reported on what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. (11:45–52)

The Gospel, therefore, blames the Jewish leadership for the plot against Jesus, though it is interesting to note that neither the high priest nor the council expresses any hostility towards Jesus. Rather, this is a version of the wellknown ethical enigma of the lifeboat: Is it ethical to sacrifice the life of one person in order to save many more?

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The deicide theme is picked up again in the Passion narrative. “So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him. First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people” (18:12–14). The rest of the Passion narrative portrays Pilate as trying repeatedly to release Jesus, and the Jews repeatedly calling for his crucifixion: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (19:6, 15). Jews and Satan One of the most persistent anti-Semitic images—the association of Jews and Satan—originates in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John. During a heated discussion between Jesus and some Jews who used to believe in him, Jesus declares that the Jews “are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. . . . Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God” (8:44–47). This assertion comes at the climax of a hostile confrontation between the Johannine Jesus and the Johannine Jews in 8:31–59. This confrontation revolves around competing genealogical assertions. The Jews initially claim Abraham as their father (8:39). In 8:41 they trace back their genealogy even further, to God, declaring: “We are not illegitimate children [literally: begotten out of fornication]; we have one father, God himself” (8:41). To this Jesus responds: “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me” (8:42). In this argument, both Jesus and the Jews are drawing on the Aristotelian concept of epigenesis, according to which a person’s lineage is evident in their behaviour and other characteristics. To be a child of God therefore requires a close resemblance to God the Father, a resemblance that, according to this Gospel, only Jesus can claim. By persecuting him, John’s Jesus declares, the Jews show that their father is Satan, not God.7 Jews Persecute Believers The Gospel also makes several statements about Jewish persecution of Christ-believers. In John 9, Jesus heals a man born blind. In their investigation of this act, the Jewish authorities interrogate the parents about what happened, but they refuse to provide information: “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak



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for himself” (9:22). The narrator explains that “his parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue” (9:23). In chapter 16, Jesus warns the disciples: “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me” (16:2–3). Whatever the historical circumstances of Jesus’s life and death, these passages convey a negative view of the Jews who interact with Jesus in this Gospel, and employ what I refer to as a rhetoric of vilification that can, and indeed has, led readers or listeners to blame these Jews for Jesus’s death. These passages raise an important issue: Is the Gospel of John itself antiJewish, that is, was it intended at least in part to convey to, or and even instill in, its audience a negative view of Jews? Or did the anti-Judaism emerge only in the history of its interpretation? SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVES Most scholars do not consider the Gospel as such to be anti-Jewish, and they explain, or, perhaps, explain away, the Gospel’s hostile passages about the Jews in a number of ways. Many point to the neutral or positive statements as softening or counteracting the obviously hostile representation of the Jews as Christ-killers and the children of Satan. Others argue that the term Ioudaios in this Gospel does not mean “Jews,” but some subgroup, perhaps the Jewish authorities, or residents of Judea, or some other group.8 Many, following the influential work of J. L. Martyn and R. E. Brown, view the hostile comments as reflecting the natural response of a community of believers to acts of persecution at the hands of the Jewish authorities.9 This view is based on the interpretation of the expulsion references as allusions to the actual experience of a Christ-confessing community. And there are a few who suggest that the comments that strike us as hostile are merely conventional slander with little if any negative emotion behind them.10 Many of these views presume that the tension represented in the Gospel reflects an inner-Jewish conflict rather than a conflict between two separate groups such as Jews and Christians.11 To support this view, they may draw attention to the fact that Jesus himself, as well as the disciples, were obviously Jewish. Jesus cites the Jewish scriptures and participates in the Jewish festivals; the disciples believe in Jesus as the fulfilment of the Jewish scriptures.12 These points may be convincing to some. But a closer look at the Gospel shows that they are by no means set in stone. Even Jesus’s comment that

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“salvation is from the Jews” is not a statement about the Jews’ spiritual status but simply points out that the savior expected by the Samaritans is Jesus, a man whom the Samaritan woman has identified as a Jew (4:9). The hypothesis that the Gospel reflects the expulsion of Johannine believers from the synagogue is based on the problematic perception of the Gospel as a “two-level drama” that encodes this traumatic experience in its story of Jesus. There is no clearcut evidence, whether internal or external, for this construction, and, indeed, the theory itself is implicitly anti-Jewish insofar as it blames the Jews for expelling the Johannine believers, and therefore, indirectly, for the hostile statements about them. Finally, it must be noted that, although their Jewish origins are not denied, Jesus and the disciples are never labelled Ioudaioi within the Gospel. (The one exception is John 4:9, in which the Samaritan woman refers to Jesus as a Ioudaios.) This disassociation coheres with the Gospel’s overall negative stance towards the Ioudaioi and functions rhetorically to discourage the Gospel’s audience from identifying as or associating with the Ioudaioi.13 I would argue, then, that someone hearing or reading the Gospel in isolation from modern values and concerns, would easily come away with a negative impression of and attitude towards Jews as the ones who plotted Jesus’s death and persecute his followers, and therefore are estranged from God and doomed to eternal condemnation. The history of interpretation of this Gospel, and of Jewish–Christian relations more generally, provides ample evidence that the Fourth Gospel was indeed read in anti-Jewish ways. The deicide charge, grounded not only in the Fourth Gospel but also in Matthew 27:25, in which Matthew’s Jews call out: “His blood be on us and on our children!” reverberates through history to this very day.14 The same is true of the link that the Gospel draws between the Jews and Satan, which persisted in art, drama, and theology through to the modern period, and can still be found in abundance on neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites. The Gospel of John was favored by the Nazis precisely because, in their view, John got it right about the Jews.15 The question is: What to do about it? The most direct approach might be for Christians to repudiate John’s antiJudaism openly and often. This would entail removing offensive passages from the lectionary, rethinking Easter liturgies, and refraining from preaching on these passages unless it is explicitly in order to draw attention and engage in ethical critique of this representation in the Gospel and its impact in history. This, of course, is easy for me to say. As a Jewish scholar of John, I am preoccupied with this Gospel, but it is not part of my sacred scriptures or my tradition, and I do not ascribe to it either sanctity or authority. For Christian scholars, however, the matter is more complicated.

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Since the 1960s, both Catholic and Protestant churches have undertaken processes of reflection on the ways in which Christian texts and theologies might have contributed to an environment in which anti-Semitism was an acceptable social attitude and political stance. The Vatican II document Nostra Aetate and the declarations of some of the Protestant churches have attempted to eliminate the “teaching of contempt” that blamed Jews for the death of Jesus. Nostra Aetate declared that, while the Jewish authorities and their followers at the time of Jesus did press for his death, responsibility does not extend to all Jews everywhere and of all time. “Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.” To teach otherwise constitutes a failure to “conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.” The Episcopal Church points to the Church’s self-understanding as the bearer of divine truth and deplores that “such patterns of thought have led Christians to overt acts of condescension, prejudice and even violent acts of persecution. In the face of those acts, a profound sense of penitence is the necessary response.” It is my hope that the moment will come when the images of Jews as the children of Satan and as Christ-killers will disappear from public discourse and private sentiment, and when the convictions expressed in Nostra Aetate and other such documents will truly be accepted by all. OUTLINE OF CONTENTS The chapters in this book represent readings of this Gospel, or, to be more precise, readings of readings: interpretations of and perspectives on how John has been read and used in different eras, traditions, and modes. Part I: Reading John The two chapters in this first part examine two sets of readings: the sections of the Gospel and the Johannine letters that are perhaps the earliest responses to Johannine traditions; and readings of John in Eastern Orthodox traditions. These chapters are an important reminder that the development of Christian identity was not solely about creating a boundary between Christ-confessors and Jews, and that the early Church Fathers and their later followers were not uniform or monolithic in their views of the Jews. Nevertheless, in both cases, hostility towards Jews is not eliminated by the presence of more complex and varied perspectives. Pheme Perkins’s chapter, “Erasure of ‘the Jews’ in the Farewell Discourse and Johannine Epistles: Gnostic Connections?” considers the disappearance

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of the Ioudaioi from the farewell discourses and letters and gnostic materials. In her view, the almost complete absence of references to the Ioudaioi (aside from John 13:33) does not signify a softening in the sharp contrast between belief and disbelief that is evident throughout the Gospel. Rather, this absence reflects a moment in the complex development of Christianity in which attention was turned away from the need to differentiate the new movement from its Jewish origins and towards the need for differentiation within the amorphous group of Christ-confessors. Nevertheless, traces of the Jews remain. Michael Azar’s “Reading John’s ‘Jews’ through Eastern Orthodox Thought and Practice” focuses on the effects of John’s (“the Theologian’s”) portrayal of the Jews on three primary sources for Orthodox thought and practice: the Greek patristic commentaries; the Byzantine-Orthodox artistic tradition; and the Byzantine-Orthodox liturgical tradition, especially with regard to Holy Week and Pascha (Easter). Azar argues that portrayals of John’s reception by the Greek church fathers do not do justice to their treatment of John’s Jews. He further notes that the grotesque image of the Jew in Christian art does not have a counterpart in the Eastern traditions. Third, he points out the legacy of Jewish ideas of the Messiah in Eastern christologies. For these reasons, he cautions against simplistically employing Christian anti-Judaism as the hermeneutical key for understanding Jewish–Orthodox Christian relations. Part II: Preaching John This part focuses on the present-day North American Christian denominations. The first two chapters examine “the Jews” in the Protestant and Catholic lectionaries and consider what “Sunday” Christians would encounter, as well as how modern anti-Judaism might be countered. The third chapter, more pessimistically, examines the ongoing perpetuation of anti-Jewish attitudes in contemporary preaching. Alan Culpepper’s chapter, “Preaching the Hostile References to ‘the Jews’ in the Gospel of John” intends to offer some practical help to those who teach and preach these passages. First, it locates the hostile references to “the Jews” in the Revised Common Lectionary. It then offers some brief comments on these texts, and concludes with suggestions for how they can be handled in the context of worship and preaching. Culpepper points out that the Gospel, from its inception, not only told a story of Jesus set in the first three decades of the first century CE but also attempted to make that story relevant to its late first-century audience. In doing so, however, the Gospel also created a bridge over which the Gospel’s hostility towards the Jews or their leaders could be conveyed to each new generation of readers. Culpepper urges preachers not to ignore John’s problematic



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passages but to explain their historical context, which, Culpepper argues, was a setting of dispute with the Jewish authorities at the time the Gospel was written. At the same time, preachers must make clear that these echoes of the past do not constitute the Gospel’s message for Christians today. Rather, their content and their hostile stance must be rejected if one is to be faithful to the Gospel in which they appear. Eileen Schuller’s chapter, “The Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary,” focuses on how “Sunday Catholics”—those who encounter the Gospels only through the Sunday and festival lectionary readings—might understand and respond to the Gospel of John. She points out that, aside from the period around Easter, Sunday Catholics do not encounter much of the Gospel of John. Schuller suggests that this relative unfamiliarity with the Gospel makes it difficult for some Catholics to understand the impact of Nostra Aetate on the relationship between Jews and Christians, or even to perceive that there is a problem at all. A view from the trenches of Jewish–Christian relations comes from AmyJill Levine, who, as a Jewish New Testament scholar based at Vanderbilt in Nashville, has taught extensively at churches in the “Bible Belt” with specific focus on anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Her chapter, entitled “Christian Privilege, Christian Fragility, and the Gospel of John,” is more pessimistic than the views of Azar, Culpepper, and Schuller. In contrast to Culpepper, she does not believe that contextualizing the Gospel as the response to a hypothetical expulsion of Jewish Christians from the synagogue is very helpful. In her experience, scholarly recommendations regarding how to address “the Jews” in John’s Gospel generally fail to make the transition from classroom to pew. One reason for this failure is the absence of teaching about antiJudaism from the syllabi of the theological schools in which ministers receive their training A deeper reason, however, lies in the coupled phenomena of Christian privilege and Christian fragility, which, in turn, are integrally related to the broader issues of white privilege and white fragility. Part III: Re-presenting John The third part of the book looks at three instances of the Gospel of John’s reception in the artistic tradition—medieval illuminated manuscripts, J. S. Bach’s church cantatas, and the “Jesus film” genre—all of which exemplify ongoing anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic tropes. Insofar as these remain available, and, especially in the case of the Jesus movies, widely consumed, the problematic elements of the Gospel continue to circulate in our society regardless of how well they are preached from the pulpit, or taught in the classroom, or written about in scholarly books and articles. Perhaps there is consolation in

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the probability that, at least in the case of these particular artifacts, their debt to John, and their use of Johannine anti-Jewish motifs, are likely to go unnoticed by many who view or hear them in galleries, museums, concert halls, and movie theaters. In “Ecclesia and Synagoga at the Creation,” Marcia Kupfer examines the magnificently illustrated “I” that opens the book of Genesis in a late twelfth-century bible from the Cistercian abbey Notre-Dame du Bonport. This “I” features a striking confrontation between Ecclesia (the church) and Synagoga. Kupfer compares this confrontation to the similar illuminations that often accompanied the opening of the Fourth Gospel in manuscripts prior to and contemporary with the Bonport manuscript. She concludes that, against a background of local Christian indebtedness to Jews, the Bonport Bible introduced Genesis with visual proof that Synagoga had relinquished her scriptural patrimony to Ecclesia and would inevitably capitulate to her truth. Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel supplied ammunition in this endeavor. Moving ahead to the early eighteenth century, Michael Marissen analyzes “J. S. Bach’s Church Cantatas and ‘the Jews’ in the Gospel of John.” Marissen argues that, in ways not always obvious to today’s listeners, Bach based the librettos and musical settings of these cantatas on the Fourth Gospel’s distinctive language as found in Luther’s German translation. As a result, these works reflect on the alleged persecution of the church (as the mystical body of Christ) by actual and metaphorical Jews both in the past and in Bach’s day. Marissen also notes that this aspect of Bach’s church cantatas is rarely discussed by scholars. While some might argue that the beauty of the music overrides the potential anti-Semitic messaging, the opposite argument could be made: that in Bach’s music, as in the Gospel of John, the anti-Jewish polemic undermines their aesthetic beauty and the declaration of God’s boundless love for the world. Richard Walsh’s chapter, “‘My Kingdom Is Not of This World’: Johannine Jesus Films and Christian Supersessionism,” brings us into the modern age. Walsh demonstrates that modern Jesus movies rely heavily on the Gospel of John even in films that purport to be based on other Gospels. This reliance is most evident in four pervasive themes: the stranger from afar; the light of the world; the darkness comprehended it not; and the victorious passion. These four themes converge in the Johannine idea that Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world, and, in doing so, tilt most Jesus films toward Christian supersessionism. A short volume of collected chapters cannot hope to address the full history of the Fourth Gospel’s impact on Jewish–Christian relations covering two millennia and every possible medium, from theology to cinema. Neverthe-



Introduction xxiii

less, I hope that these soundings will contribute to the efforts of Christians and Jews alike to find ways to appreciate what is good and life-affirming about the Gospel of John, while also acknowledging the damaging impact of its portrayal of Jews as the children of Satan and the killers of Christ. Only when Christians disavow this portrayal can the Gospel of John continue to be a true source of inspiration and perhaps even a path forward in the relationships between Jews and Christians in the modern world. NOTES 1.  See the essays in Pim Valkenberg, ed., Nostra Aetate: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Catholic Church’s Dialogue with Jews and Muslims (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016). 2.  For additional perspectives on John and anti-Judaism, see the essays in R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson, eds., John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017). 3.  Detailed discussion of the points in this paragraph can be found in any commentary to the Gospel of John. See, for example, Raymond Edward Brown and Francis J. Moloney, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (New York: Doubleday, 2003); Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003); Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005); Karoline M. Lewis, John (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014). 4.  For discussion, see R. Alan Culpepper, John, the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994). 5.  See Adele Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2018). 6.  Reinhartz, Chapter 4. 7. Adele Reinhartz, “‘And the Word Was Begotten’: Divine Epigenesis in the Gospel of John,” Semeia, no. 85 (January 1, 1999): 83–103. Adele Reinhartz, “‘Children of God’ and Aristotelian Epigenesis in the Gospel of John,” in Creation Stories in Dialogue; The Bible, Science and Folk Traditions: Radboud Prestige Lectures in New Testament, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and Jan Gabriël van der Watt (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 243–52. 8.  Malcolm F. Lowe, “Who Were the ‘Ιουδαίοι?’” Novum Testamentum 18, no. 2 (1976): 101–30; Daniel Boyarin, “The Ioudaioi of John and the Prehistory of Judaism,” in Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin J. Roetzel, ed. Janice Capel Anderson et al. (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 216–39; Cornelis Bennema, “The Identity and Composition of Οι Ιουδαι̂οι in the Gospel of John,” Tyndale Bulletin 60, no. 2 (2009): 239–63. 9.  J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003); Raymond Edward Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979).

xxiv

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10.  Luke Timothy Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” Journal of Biblical Literature 108, no. 3 (1989): 419–41. 11.  D. Moody Smith, John (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 292. 12.  On the attempt to include Jesus’s Jewishness as an argument against viewing the Gospel of John as anti-Jewish, see Paul N. Anderson, “Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 265–312. 13. Adele Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, ed. R. Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Assen, Netherlands: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 341–56; Adele Reinhartz, “The Johannine Community and Its Jewish Neighbors: A Reappraisal,” in What Is John? ed. Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 111–38. 14.  Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 15.  Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2010), 107–11.

Part I

READING JOHN

Chapter One

Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles Gnostic Connections? Pheme Perkins Translators, commentators, preachers, and liturgists all have a stake in the problematic semantic range of the label hoi Ioudaioi in the Fourth Gospel. No single “politically correct” substitution accurately represents its usage throughout the narrative. But the difficulties would be no more than a routine annoyance for translation and public proclamation, were it not for the persistent drum beat of hostility evident in ca. 46 percent of the cases.1 What John Ashton describes as “intense loathing” directed at hoi Ioudaioi—as determined adversaries of revelation in/by the divine Son of God—far exceeds the polemical sparring in our other gospel materials.2 Its poisonous Wirkungsgeschichte has left a legacy that other chapters in this volume will address. In his commentary on Matthew, Ulrich Luz proposed that the Gospels of John and Matthew, which are otherwise quite distinct, share a comparable Jewish–Christian background to the Jesus narratives that depict hostility to Jesus and imply an audience that is separated from an ambient Jewish community.3 In both gospels, Pharisees represent a key group in the opposition, which has decided early on to have Jesus executed (Matt. 12:14; John 11:57). Both incorporate the charge of being one who leads the people astray (ὁ πλάνος; Matt. 27:62; John 7:12, 47). Matthew also uses the collective term hoi Ioudaioi. In his gospel, Matthew, the designation appears only in a narrator’s comment, where it serves as a generic identifier for those who spread rumors to discredit Christian faith in the resurrection as a fraud propagated by Jesus’s disciples (“this report spread among Jews to this day,” Matt. 28:15). It does not refer to the hostile coalition of religious authorities who conspired with Judas to secure Jesus’s death as it does in the Johannine Passion Narrative (John 18:31, 36, 38; 19:7, 14). Jesus’s exchange with Pilate in John 19:35–36 reflects the rapid semantic slide between a familiar usage of hoi Ioudaioi as an ethnic designation employed in speaking to/by a Gentile 3

4

Chapter One

(Pilate’s “Am I a Ioudaios?”) to the virulent hostility of opposition (“If my kingship were of this world, would not my servants be fighting so that I not be turned over to hoi Ioudaioi?”) Whatever position one adopts concerning the Fourth Gospel’s sources and their relationship to material from the Synoptic Gospels, nothing in the Synoptics remotely resembles this Johannine usage.4 If that puzzle demands explanation, so does an equally familiar phenomenon that is often noted but quickly passed over: the disappearance of hoi Ioudaioi from the Fourth Gospel’s farewell discourses and the Johannine Epistles (John 13:31–14:31; 15:1–16:4a; 16:4b–33; 17:26).5 Its only appearance in the Farewell Discourses fits the pattern of that generic designation which looks back from the narrator’s perspective to the narrative of Jesus’s ministry (“and as I said to hoi Ioudaioi, ‘where I am going you cannot come,’” 13:33) comparable to the usage which Luz noted in Matt. 28:15. The absence of hoi Ioudaioi from the Johannine discourses does not mean that the Johannine speech pattern, which employs apocalyptic antitheses fueling the opposition of belief/ disbelief, have been softened in any way. “The world”—an expression with its own semantic range in Johannine parlance—enters the ring.6 Because the farewell discourses are clearly directed toward the postresurrection experience of Johannine believers, the hostility or alienation that they experience is no longer associated with hoi Ioudaioi but with “the world.” Hardly a surprise, then, that the intra-communal fractures reflected in the Johannine epistles employ fairly extensive linguistic echoes of the farewell discourses, leaving behind any references to hoi Ioudaioi or the specific religious traditions of Israel and its Scriptures.7 Not to put too fine a point on it, that conversation is over! COMMUNITY “HISTORIES” AND THEOLOGICAL APOLOGETICS As the preoccupation with refining the “sources,” editing, and the subsequent “ecclesiastical redaction” approach to the Fourth Gospel pioneered by Rudolf Bultmann lost steam in the second half of the twentieth century, the hoi Ioudaioi problem was rolled into discussions of the Johannine community and its historical vicissitudes fueled by the “two-level” reading strategy of J. L. Martyn.8 Martyn’s approach was elaborated in a general discussion of the Johannine community and in a major commentary on the epistles by R. E. Brown.9 The trauma of synagogue expulsion alluded to in John 9:22 and 16:2 often served as an explanatory apologetic for the virulent language directed at hoi Ioudaioi—bolstered in Martyn’s case by extraneous speculation about a now discredited use of Birkat ha-Minim (“the blessing” [read: curse] on or of the heretics) attributed to Jamnia ca. 85 CE.10



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 5

From the Jewish side of the discussion, Daniel Boyarin developed an equally elaborate—and somewhat problematic—explanation to attribute the polemic to inner Jewish religious divisions originating in the early second temple period; in particular, a powerful opposition between the returned exiles from Babylonia and those who had remained behind after the destruction of Solomon’s temple. The ideology of the party of returned exiles is reflected in Ezra-Nehemiah and, to some extent, in Chronicles. The historical basis for this polemic was connected with the expanding authority and territory of Jerusalem/Judea. These developments were opposed by “people of the land” and Samaritans.11 Boyarin argues that the subsequent loss of the rich diversity of Second Temple Judaism that fueled inner-religious debate resulted in misconstruing its polemic into categories of “Jesus believers” over against all other Jews. When the Johannine Christians faced their own internal schism(s) over theology and praxis, they did not resort to old divisions which had no purchase in their own, primarily pagan, social context (1 John 5:21). Even the polemical “high Christology” has been moderated in the epistles using the predominant “sent from the Father” motif, coupled with a title which only appears once in the gospel, “savior of the world” (1 John 4:14; cf. John 4:42). The “world” stands for that social sphere in which the Johannine communities stand both bounded in self-administered isolation—even from others who claim the same traditions—and at the same time as participants in the on-going salvific mission.12 But if that is the communal position that the epistles and the farewell discourses share, then one must challenge assumptions about the “live wire” or “formative trauma” explanations for the hoi Ioudaioi of the gospel’s narrative. At least by the time that the evangelist’s penultimate version of the gospel, including the farewell discourse material, was composed, neither the evangelist nor his implied readers had any effective connection or communication with the Judean roots of their source narratives about Jesus’s deeds and words.13 One might even suggest that the exhortation to remain attached to Jesus, the “true” vine in John 15:1–10, has transposed the supersessionist narrative of Jesus as replacement for key Jewish religious festivals and symbols emphasized by Brown to its logical conclusion.14 There is no Judean “rootstock” in Johannine communities at the turn of the century. This reading of the Johannine evidence for the implied communal audience of the gospel presumes that, even if the specific details of editing and expansion remain problematic, the evangelist reworked diverse sources to produce the canonical narrative in at least two stages—with the possibility that some final redaction occurred within Johannine circles after that work was finished. In addition, again even granting the difficulty with some of its minute details, Brown’s proposal that 1 John demonstrates familiarity with a penultimate version of the gospel including its prologue remains a plausible

6

Chapter One

working hypothesis. Composed by a prominent figure in the community, not the evangelist, 1 John employs a linguistic pattern shared with the discourses in exhortations to “remain,” keep the “love command,” and identify Jesus as the heavenly Paraclete.15 Thus it is probable that the combined evidence of the farewell discourses and Johannine epistles provides a glimpse of the community before the gospel as we have it was completed. Therefore the extensive Judean material in its sources cannot provide evidence to situate the author/audience within the religious disputes of first-century Judea more than a half century before its composition. That being the case, one may challenge the assumption that the narrative invective directed at hoi Ioudaioi represents emotional “loathing” on the part of the evangelist or his audience. If the generic Ioudaios as the designation for Jesus’s opponents was not present in the evangelist’s narrative sources, then use of the term must represent the evangelist’s literary choice to represent the opposition.16 John’s use of a generic term, Ioudaios, familiar to non-Jews, far outstrips the synoptic usage, with a density matched only by Acts. The very distance between the evangelist/audience and Judeans may have facilitated their recasting from the semantic range of Judeans and religious feasts and traditions typical of “Jews” wherever they lived. If the semantic patterns representative of the evangelist and audience when a self-referential posture is being adopted are found only in the farewell discourses and epistles, then our question becomes, “whence this extraordinary erasure of hoi Ioudaioi?” How does the absence of hoi Ioudaioi from the Farewell Discourses relate to the ambiguity in the semantic range evident in the first half of the gospel? Can we detect anything comparable in early Christian circles? To suggest a possible answer to that puzzle—albeit one that is more speculative for being outside typical scholarly discussion of anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel—I will turn to another of Bultmann’s intuitions: the emergence of gnostic spirituality in Johannine circles. Though that suggestion was proven wrong in the initial details, it may well have been correct in the aggregate. JEWS, THEIR GOD, AND THE GNOSTIC REVEALER Seeking an exemplar for the highly symbolic, first-person, self-referential discourse style of the “one sent from heaven” in the Fourth Gospel, Bultmann turned to fourth-century Mandean literature to suggest that the evangelist had discovered in Jesus that divine figure and adapted proto-gnostic revelation discourses to the Jesus figure. Subsequent discovery of an extensive col-



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 7

lection of comparable religious material in Coptic translations from Greek originals at Nag Hammadi fueled additional speculation about possible links between the Fourth Gospel and discourses of the heavenly revealer.17 Rather than assume that gnostic origins represent an intrusion of religious impulses that had no connections with Judaism, scholars can point to an extensive tradition of Adam speculation, Genesis interpretation, and the prominence of female Wisdom figures in gnostic texts identified as “Sethian” after the ancestor of the enlightened race. Therefore some scholars insist that this religious movement emerged in Judean or perhaps Samaritan circles.18 Most Johannine scholarship has discredited a “gnosticizing option” for two reasons: our sources for gnostic origins are mid-second century at best; and the Fourth Gospel has no traces of such basic items in the Sethian repertoire as the polemic against the Judean God as a “demonic, jealous ruler of a poorly constructed material world” or the superiority of the true Human to that God. Even if the opening Logos hymn in the Gospel is derived from Jewish wisdom tradition (John 1:1–5), John does not present a mythologized Wisdom/Logos as “fallen” from a heavenly light-world and needing rescue.19 Whatever echoes of the Fourth Gospel appear in gnostic literature merely demonstrate the openness of its language to the hermeneutical readings of the second century on the part of gnosticizing intellectuals as the commentary tradition in Valentinian circles attests.20 The Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish apocalyptic texts provide an adequate Judean context for the symbolic language in which the evangelist has cast the words of Jesus, an approach solidly embedded in the commentary tradition by the magisterial work of Raymond Brown.21 But this scholarly perspective leaves us in a quandary when faced with John’s stance towards hoi Ioudaioi and the stunning erasure of the Gospel’s Judean roots in the semantic articulation of communal identity that is shared by the evangelist and the Johannine elder of the epistles at the end of the first century. April DeConick’s imaginative construction of gnostic spirituality and its revolutionary potential for modern as well as ancient practitioners reopens the Bultmannian approach to John.22 DeConick has argued that the offensive speech of John 8, with its language of “your father the Devil” (8:44) and “you neither know me nor my father” (8:19) as well as the threat “I told you that you will die in your sins unless you believe I AM” (8:24), demonstrates a transitional theology that is moving toward the full-fledged revisionist cosmology and hermeneutics evident in gnostic sources. For the evangelist, the Jews are not worshipping the true God but a demonic Lawgiver from whom Jesus, the revealer, came to liberate humanity. In DeConick’s view, this proto-gnostic picture of salvation was the object of the refutation in 1 John. Its injunction to “love one another and not be like Cain from the Evil One” (1 John 3:11–12a) exhibits the residual elements in the gnosticizing theology of the Fourth Gospel

8

Chapter One

tradition. The elder opposes its hermeneutic with the emerging Catholic position that Christ came into the world and died for the forgiveness of sins. The enlightened Christians cannot claim to belong to that “sinless” seed of God represented by “Sethians” in classical gnostic systematizing.23 Bultmann’s insight that there are gnostic footprints present at the origins of Johannine theology can explain both the virulent attack on hoi Ioudaioi in the narrative of Jesus’s public ministry, and the erasure of Judean origins, which emerges in the snapshots of the future community from the farewell discourses. The “catholic” reading of the Johannine tradition formulated by the elder of 1 John, in principle, rejects “anti-Judean” sentiments like those expressed in John 8. Since DeConick considers the proto-gnostic revealer figure in the Fourth Gospel to be the originating theological insight of the gospel, she concludes that the “catholic” position was sparked by the influence of other theological streams within Christianity. She suggests that so-called “apostolic Christians” in the Petrine tradition joining the community resulted in that theological shift.24 That possibility, however, does not account for the apparent convergence between the farewell discourses and epistles in both the language for the relationship of believers to the world and its divergence from gospel traditions that are characteristic of that “apostolic Christianity.” To see whether this hypothesis might be recast to address these questions, we now turn to preliminary soundings in gnostic texts preoccupied with putting those apostolic Christians in their place. APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANS AS “THE JEWS”: THE APOCRYPHON OF JOHN, THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS, AND THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH We will survey texts from across the spectrum of gnostic writings which employ elements of gospel tradition in their narrative framework and/or discourses by the revealer. The Apocryphon of John (ApJohn) survives in four copies, two each of a long and short recension. Its cosmogony was known in some form to Irenaeus in the second century (Adv. Haer. i.29). It incorporates the type of Genesis interpretation characteristic of “Sethian” gnostics. A homiletic piece, The Gospel of Truth (GosTr), is extant in one complete copy with fragments from another codex. Its association with Valentinian circles appears to be confirmed by a reference in Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii.9.11). The most recently published in our group, the Gospel of Judas (GJudas), became known only in 2006. Its central apostolic character is traditionally identified with the “enemy/Jews” in Catholic (and Protestant)



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 9

Christian tradition.25 Debates have raged over whether this Judas figure is the villain or the “hero” thrust in the face of “apostolic Christians.” Pursuing the ethical traditions of pedagogy associated with GJudas, however, has led Ismo Dunderberg to suggest that ambiguity is built into the Judas character.26 Even though he receives private instruction from Jesus, Judas as presented in these texts fails to achieve the status of the “perfect human,” the soteriological goal of Sethian teaching. This goal may also be at stake in the secessionist claims to sinlessness refuted in 1 John. ApJohn provides an elaborate, cosmogonic reading of Genesis to explain how the heavenly Adam figure came into existence and was replicated in the lower world by a creator and his powers, hoping to hold the superior intellect imprisoned in “forgetfulness” of its divine origin and destiny.27 GJudas incorporated sections of the Sethian cosmogony in its revelations of the eventual apocalyptic destruction of the world governed by the lesser creator and the planetary powers. The “true seed” or Sethian race has its origins in a luminous, eternal world from which the Savior descended and to which he conducts the “immovable race.” Both GJudas and ApJohn employ a pattern common to gnostic texts in reporting a privileged revelation that the Savior gives to a favored disciple that the others do not or cannot receive. While ApJohn employs a postresurrection scenario typical of what we find in such gnostic revelation discourses,28 GJudas, like the Johannine farewell discourses, is set in the days before Jesus’s death.29 It adopts the motif of Jesus’s departure/return to the Father and the disciples’ inability to follow where Jesus is going that figures so prominently in John 13:31–14:31. That departure/ascent and return, which the Johannine discourse associates with Easter visions of the risen Lord (“in a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me,” John 14:19), however, is enacted in the days prior to Jesus’s death in GJudas. GJudas both demonstrates that what “dies” on the cross is not the luminous Savior but the material body30 and rejects the promise that the farewell discourse holds out to Jesus’s flawed and frightened disciples that they will come to the Father’s house with Jesus (John 14:2–3; contrast GJudas 43:26–44:12; 45:1–7). GJudas evidently presumes that its late second or early third century audience is familiar with narrative traditions from both John and Luke-Acts.31 But in those traditions the separation between Jesus and the disciples left grieving (John) or flat-footed staring up into the heavens (Acts) is overcome by a subsequent gift of the Paraclete or the Spirit. GJudas cuts the disciples off completely. Asked by the disciples where he had gone during the night, Jesus replies that he had gone to another “great and holy race” which does not belong to this realm, a race to which they do not belong (36:10–37:7). His ominous words, “nor will any mortal human offspring be able to join it” (37:5–7) leave them confused and speechless.

10

Chapter One

Since GJudas acknowledges that Judas had been replaced among the Twelve (36:1–5), it refers to Judas as a “thirteenth” disciple (44:20–21), who is initially depicted as morally superior to the others. He acknowledges that Jesus’s origins are in the Barbelo aeon, sent by One whose name Judas is not worthy of pronouncing (35:10–21). Some early interpreters quickly assumed a simplistic reversal of polarities: Judas as the enlightened disciple pitted against the Twelve, the foundation of apostolic orthodoxy. That reading does not hold up. The docetic Christology of GJudas does make Judas concluding betrayal of Jesus’s location for cash an indifferent matter. Yet as the thirteenth disciple Judas becomes both “the accursed” and, perhaps, the eschatological antichrist. Like the other disciples he remains excluded from the “holy race”: “You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the rest of the races, and you will rule over them. In the last days they to you. And you will not go up to the holy race” (45:19–46:1). Despite the private revelations that Jesus gives him, Judas neither gains the moral perfection of stable control of his emotions (56:23–25), nor the spiritual ability to complete the heavenly ascent or witness the Savior doing so. As a transitional figure compared to the other disciples, whose number “twelve” also points to the twelve races or tribes of Israel (55:5–11), Judas is superior to the Twelve.32 As the narrative ends, however, Judas remains staring up as the luminous Revealer ascends for a final time with a mysterious voice speaking from heaven (57:23–58). As he turns away a disturbance breaks out “among the Jews.” Chief priests and scribes decide to seize Jesus where he is praying because they fear the crowds who consider him a prophet (58:6–19; Matt. 21:46; Luke 22:2). Finding Judas outside, the scribes make the requisite deal. At that point the narrative ends. But the reader knows that Judas is fulfilling what Jesus had predicted. On the next day, “he who bears me will be tortured,” though that action cannot touch the Savior. Judas, more than the Twelve, will enable that sacrifice (56:6–20). Throughout GJudas, Jesus castigates the Twelve for sacrificial forms of ritual activity. The Christian rites of eucharist (34:1–2) and baptism as forgiveness of sin (41:11–21) are ridiculed as actions of those who are spiritually immature. An even more direct polemic is directed at those who sacrifice animals (38:1–4,9).33 While that might initially appear to be aimed at sacrificial rituals in the Jerusalem temple said to be replaced by the death of Jesus as in the Letter to the Hebrews, GJudas depicts the Twelve as entangled in that practice as well. All of their piety is governed by the deity and astral powers that govern the material world. Those engaging in these sacrificial rites remain subject to a stock catalogue of sins despite their pretenses of humility (38:13–23; 40:7–14).



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 11

GJudas articulates a theological position that tracks closely with the dissident Christians under attack in 1 John. Its docetic Christology rejects any sacrificial interpretation of the death of Christ “for sin” and the substantial reality of the Revealer’s presence in a human body. On the ethical side, those who belong to “the holy race” have achieved a stability which is no longer disturbed by the passions. By equating Christian rituals and temple sacrifices, GJudas makes a further readjustment in the implied audience’s worldview. Even if the familiar narratives about Jesus and his disciples in Jerusalem distinguish between the “chief priests and scribes,” Judas, and the Twelve, in the end are all worshippers of Saklas and are members of the “corruptible race,” not the “mighty and incorruptible race” for whom the Savior was sent into the world (42:12–22). ApJohn also adopts items from the familiar gospel narratives that provide bit parts for Jewish characters without according them any further significance. Even though its extensive reinterpretation of Genesis is laced with “not as Moses said” corrections, it is not evident that the readers would even consider the Pharisee challenger of the opening framework a custodian of Mosaic tradition. Its introduction has John, the son of Zebedee, challenged by a Pharisee as he is going up to the temple. The Pharisee voices a familiar Jewish charge that Jesus was a deceiver who “turned you from the tradition of your ancestors.” Thrown into spiritual turmoil, John leaves the temple for a barren, mountainous place, where he has a vision of the polymorphic (Father, Mother, Child) divine Savior (NHC II 1:5–2:25). John is instructed to communicate this revelation “to your spiritual friends who are from the unshakable race of the perfect human.” At the conclusion the Savior announces that he is ascending to the perfect realm. The revelation transmitted to John is complete. John is to record it and communicate it as esoteric teaching to his spiritual friends (31:25–32:10). Since the last line has him report everything to the other disciples, ApJohn clearly does not share the anti-Twelve posture of GJudas. Sethian teachings, which are the content of its revelation, have the apostolic witness of no less an authority than the evangelist, John, the son of Zebedee. Both of these Sethian works wash Christianity’s Jewish background out of the picture. At most some stock pieces are lifted out of the narrative as filler characters. Any disputes or alternative religious groups imagined in such writings fall within the broad spectrum of Christ-believers. Consequently any religious polemic falls within its boundaries. Such a narrowing of focus is not peculiar to gnostic sects. Retraction within the boundaries of one’s own type appears even more pronounced in 1–2 John where addressees are to have nothing to do with secessionists, who are identified as apocalyptic agents of

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evil (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:1–3; 2 John 7).34 Raymond Brown read this shrunken horizon as evidence that in both numbers and material resources the opponents were out-performing the circles addressed in 1–2 John.35 However, recording and trading in esoteric writings that are only to be revealed to persons of a certain spiritual attainment as in ApJohn also presumes internal division within a larger religious community, or even sectarian isolation comparable to the relationship between “the children of light” in the Yahad of the Dead Sea Scrolls community and other Jews. In both the Johannine epistles and farewell discourses and in the gnostic texts, “erasure of the Jews/Judeans” appears strongly correlated with the shift to esotericism that promoted discovery of mysteries for a spiritual elite concealed within the public narratives of the gospels. Harold Attridge suggested that the divergence between GosTr and treatises devoted to the detailed, technical exposition of the Valentinian theological speculation to which it is closely related is a function of the genre and purpose of that work. Rather than address the spiritual elite, GosTr served as “a homiletic reflection from a specifically Gnostic point of view on the ‘gospel’ or the revelation provided by the Christian tradition.”36 Its author is familiar with much of what came to comprise the canonical New Testament (gospels, Pauline epistles, Hebrews, and Revelation).37 It is not specifically an esoteric work, though Anne Kreps has recently argued that the complex, selfreferential play on “the book” as external object and inner reality in GosTr suggests that the author accords this work a sacred or revealed character as a “new/true” gospel.38 Whether one adopts the position that GosTr intends to function as a “new gospel” or as hinting at the esoteric truth of an emerging New Testament canon, its adaptation of key theological motifs from the Johannine tradition has been recognized ever since its initial publication sixty years ago. Not only is the Son the Word and revelation of the Father, it enlightens by clearing away the fog of forgetfulness (16:1–18:7): “He enlightened them; he showed (them) a way; and the way is the truth which he taught them” (18:18–21). From the perspective of this study its spiritual hermeneutic marks a striking turn. When GosTr reads the passion story, it completely erases human actors from the account. Error personified grows angry and persecutes the Savior. The salvific event of the cross is to provide a “fruit of knowledge”—explicitly contrasted with that of Genesis 3: “He was nailed to a tree (and) he became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. It did not, however, cause destruction because it was eaten, but to those who ate it, it gave (cause) to become glad in the discovery, and he discovered them in himself, and they discovered him in themselves” (18:22–31). The expression “discovered them in himself . . . him in themselves” transcribes the Johannine language of “remaining” or



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 13

“dwelling in” that unites believers with the glorified Son, or the indwelling Son/Father/Spirit in its various linguistic expressions characteristic of the farewell discourses and 1 John. Christians in the second century CE identified the “John” of Rev. 1:1, the evangelist and the elder of 1–2 John with John, the apostle.39 An even longer, more elaborate reinterpretation of Johannine tradition in GosTr draws on Revelation. It incorporates “the book of life” and the vision of the Lamb able to take the sealed book from the angel’s hand in Rev. 5:1–16. The names of those who will be enlightened have been “written in the thought and mind [of the] Father, which from before the foundation of the totality was within his incomprehensibility—that (book) which no one was able to take, since it remains for the one who will take it to be slain” (19:27–20:6).40 GosTr can then incorporate the kenosis theology of Phil. 2:6–11 in describing Jesus, who “entered the empty space of terrors,” death understood as forgetfulness and ignorance of the knowledge of the Father required for perfection (20:30–21:25). Interpreting the parable of the shepherd running after the lost sheep, the “number” which enables transfer from the “left” to the “right” hand is completed.41 Rescuing a sheep from the pit on the Sabbath highlights the fact that there is a Sabbath on which it is not fitting for salvation to be idle—a distant echo of Jesus’s response to Judean critics in John 5:19–24. But as we have seen in ApJohn, all traces of dispute over actual Jewish Torah observance have vanished. That erasure is even more striking when contrasted with the sharp conclusion of the controversy in John 5:45–46a: “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” These brief soundings in representative samples of gnostic Christian reinterpretation, both Sethian and Valentinian—including esoteric reimagining of Jesus’s esoteric revelation to/about disciples and homiletic reading of the emerging Christian canon—provide additional evidence for the “erasure” of any actual Jews/Judeans/disciples of Moses from Christian consciousness. Such erasure did not occur in every case, however. In early Christian Rome, Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho and new reconstructions of proximity in Jewish and Christian catacomb burials provide strong counter-evidence for that city.42 Yet, our survey of Johannine traditions and their appropriation in these gnostic texts indicates that there are Christian communities whose semantic fields contain no hints of “the Jews.” As in the treatment of the Twelve in GJudas, some examples of gnostic polemics were directed at an emerging “orthodox” Christianity which claims that it alone has apostolic foundations.43 It is these proto-orthodox Christian groups who are being attacked under the figure of “the Jews,” worshippers of Saklas, unable to

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receive knowledge of the true God and Father brought into the world of darkness and error by the Son. CONCLUSION: HERMENEUTICAL DILEMMA Our pursuit of one among the many paths leading from the trailhead of the Johannine tradition has highlighted forgetfulness, or “erasure,” to adopt the terminology of contemporary criticism. Though some contemporary scholarship has moved away from distinguishing earlier and later theological traditions within the Gospel in favor of literary analyses of the canonical text, our study suggests identifiable stages of composition. Recognizing that the canonical gospel reflects an on-going communal process of relecture explains how Johannine believers both retained elements of their Jewish roots and ceased to have living contact with those sources.44 A “forgetting” of the Jews/Judeans/disciples of Moses in their various forms had already begun in some Christian communities by the end of the first century CE. In the Johannine semantic field of the farewell discourses and epistles one can observe the expansion of a powerful symbolic hermeneutic whose origin may lie in Jewish apocalyptic, as many interpreters have insisted. Whatever its particular social forms, this symbol system treats opposition to the “one from heaven” and his disciple emissaries as a reflection of deeper oppositions embedded in structures of the world itself. Salvation cannot be experienced by those who remain enchanted by the surface level narratives. It requires a more radical transformation that takes believers out of that world—sometimes literally in the “heavenly ascent” pattern. Concrete details of the humanity of Jesus or his Jewish cultural and religious context lose their relevance for devotees intent on tracing that return to heavenly glory promised in the revelation discourses of John 14–17.45 It is impossible to decide whether these developments reflect the systematic mythologizing of Jesus as heavenly revealer that we find in later gnostic sources or some more generalized docetic Christology.46 A communal memory of expulsion from a local Jewish community may, or may not, have had an impact on the formation of narrative traditions about Jesus prior to the Fourth Gospel. By the time the canonical version of that gospel was completed, however, that is sometime after the farewell discourses and epistles were written, its aposynagogos references carried no trauma-laden emotional freight at all. The community no longer has any effective interaction with Jews or Jewish Christians. The fraught relationships involved in contesting who are the true custodians of Mosaic tradition embedded in the gospel’s narrative layer are being reread as manifestations of a deeper level of hostility



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 15

to divine revelation.47 By the second half of the second century, the period represented by our gnostic core samples, the gospel’s aposynagogos threats could just as easily represent separation from an emerging orthodoxy’s claim to apostolic tradition—a separation which these texts present as both necessary and even beneficial for those who belong to the “perfect race.” Not only is this particular branch in the Johannine legacy fueled by emerging patterns of gnostic spirituality in the second century, which Bultmann’s existentialist hermeneutic repackaged for the twentieth century, but the narratives to which the hermeneutic strategy of symbolic reinterpretation was applied remain in play with all their ambiguities.48 When the symbolic translation comes back to be applied to the descendants of those “disciples of Moses” represented in them, ignorant characterization can fuel the violence of social “erasure.” Two lessons we might draw from this investigation are: (a) against simplistic replacement strategies—erasure is never complete, traces remain; (b) forgetting is ignorance “of the Father,” and quite lethal. NOTES 1.  For a comprehensive list see, Urban C. von Wahlde, “The Johannine ‘Jews’: A Critical Survey,” New Testament Studies 28 (1982), 33–60; idem, “Narrative Criticism of the Religious Authorities as a Group Character in the Gospel of John: Some Problems,” New Testament Studies 63 (2017), 222–45. 2.  John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel. Second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 64–69. For other examples of the “anti-Jews/Judeans” language see John M. G. Barclay, “Hostility to Jews as Cultural Construct: Egyptian, Hellenistic, and Early Christian Paradigms,” in idem, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 157–77. 3.  Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28. Trans. J. E. Crouch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 302–303. 4.  Even within the genre expansion of the Johannine narrative as a “trial dialogue.” On the genre of the exchanges with Pilate see Michael Theobald, “Gattungswandel in der Johanneischen Passionserzählung:
Die Verhöre Jesu durch Pilatus
 (Johannes 18:33–38; 19:8–12) im Licht der Acta Isidori und anderer Prozessdialogue,” in Studies in the Gospel of John and Its Christology: Festschrift Gilbert van Belle. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium CCLXV, ed. Joseph Verheyden, Geert van Oyen, Michael Labahn, Reimund Bieringer (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 447–83. 5.  Jean Zumstein, “The Farewell Discourse (John 13:31–16:33) and the Problem of Anti-Judaism,” in Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, ed. R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vannenville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 461–77; idem, Das Johannesevangelium. Kritischeexegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 510; Raymond F. Collins, “Speaking of the Jews. ‘Jews’ in the

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Discourse Material of the Fourth Gospel,” in Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel, 281–300.  6. Ashton, Understanding, 396–98.  7. Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to John. Volume 3 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 48–52.   8.  J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. Third edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 2003); original edition published in 1967. For a challenge to Martyn’s entire reconstruction of Johannine community history based on the exclusion from the synagogue comments, see Jonathan Bernier, Aposynagogos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages, Biblical Interpretation 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).   9.  Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979); idem, The Epistles of John. AB 30. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982). For discussions of Brown’s legacy in Johannine studies, see Paul N. Anderson, “The Community that Raymond Brown Left Behind: Reflections on the Johannine Dialectical Situation,” in Communities in Dispute, pp. 49–93; Urban von Wahlde, “Raymond Brown’s View of the Crisis of 1 John in Light of Some Peculiar Features of the Johannine Gospel,” in Communities in Dispute. Current Scholarship on the Johannine Epistles. Edited by R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), 18–43. 10.  For a detailed study of the Jewish sources for “cursing Christians,” see Ruth Langer, Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat Haminim. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16–39. She argues that the earliest possible evidence for the practice is mid- to late fourth century CE. “This suggests the possibility but not the certainty that the prayer began as a response to Christianity; by the time of Epiphanius, it did explicitly curse at least Jewish–Christians, whoever they were in his time,” (p. 39). Therefore, attempts to retain the hypothesis that such a practice is reflected in the communal expulsion of John 9:22, in my view, have no historical foundation outside the Johannine text. If the Fourth Gospel reflects a crisis for a localized community of observant Jewish Christians near the end of the first century, the catastrophic feeling of a lost national, socio-cultural, and religious identity could easily be reflected in the three Johannine references (9:22; 12:42; 16:2; cf. Jean Zumstein, Das Johannesevangelium, 371. Some scholars continue to defend the Martyn reconstruction, e.g., J. Louis Martyn, “The Johannine Community among Jewish and Other Early Christian Communities,” in What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present, and Future of Johannine Studies, ed. Tom Thatcher (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2007), 183–90; Joel Marcus, “Birkat Ha-Minim Revisited,” NTS 55 (2009), 523–51. 11.  Daniel Boyarin, “The Ioudaioi in John and the Prehistory of Judaism” in Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin C. Roetzel. Edited by Janice Capel Anderson, Phillip Sellew, and Claudia Setzer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 216–39. 12.  Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 14–20; Judith M. Lieu, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel: Explanation and Hermeneutics,” in Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 17

2000, ed. R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vannenville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 137–40. 13.  A term like Ioudaios, whether it is purely an ethnic/religious term or is more specifically coded to the geographic region of Judaea, can no longer provide any sense of communal origins or identity for the Johannine audience of the discourses and epistles. On the problem of terminology and communal identity see Philip F. Esler, “From Ioudaioi to Children of God: The Development of a Non-Ethnic Group Identity in the Gospel of John,” in In Other Words: Essays on Social Science Methods and the New Testament in Honor of Jerome H. Neyrey, ed. A. C. Hagedorn, Z. A. Crook, and E. Steward. Social World of Biblical Antiquity, Second series 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield-Phoenix, 2007), 106–137. For a general discussion of use of Ioudaios as an ethnic term in Jewish sources, see Stephen Mason, “Jews, Judeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” Journal of Jewish Studies 38 (2007), 457–512. 14.  “…it is a feature of Johannine theology that Jesus applied to himself terms used in the OT for Israel and in other parts of the NT for the Christian community. This is part of the Johannine technique of replacing ‘the kingdom of God is like . . .’ with ‘I am . . .’ Since John sees the Christian believers as the genuine Israelites, the vine as a symbol of Jesus and the believers is, in a certain way, the symbol of the new Israel,” Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (XIII–XXI). AB 29A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970), 670. 15.  Brown provides a complex description of the theological reflection, retrieval, and revision of theological insights through a succession of Johannine teachers, including the opposition in 1 John who are being opposed by the presbyter author of 1 John for having lost touch with the foundational truths of the Johannine tradition (Epistles, p. 97). The presbyter of the Johannine epistles is not to be identified with the evangelist author of the discourses. In the latter the Jesus is the first Paraclete (John 14:16) whereas the Paraclete who enabled the developing theological insights in the Johannine community (John 16:12–13) is apparently associated with the Spirit. For 1 John 1:7–2:2, the heavenly Jesus is the Paraclete whose atoning death brought forgiveness of sin for the entire world (Epistles, 235–41). 16. Reading the narrative that results creates an impression of the superiority of Jesus and his followers to the degenerate teaching and practice of “Jewish” opponents, who have abandoned God’s revelation to Moses, the patriarchs, and the prophets. At the same time, the implied author and audience stand at considerable distance from Jews or Jewish traditions, see Robert Kysar, “Anti-Semitism and the Gospel of John,” in Anti-Semitism and Early Christianity: Issues of Polemic and Faith, ed. Craig A. Evans and Donald A. Hagner (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 113–17. Kysar adopts the view that the sharp edges of Johannine anti-Jewish language reflect the polemic born of social division, “The vitriolic attack on Judaism is nothing more or less than the desperate attempt of the Johannine Christians to find a rationale for their existence in isolation from Judaism,” (p. 122). Apparently, given the linguistic erasure of “Jew” and “Jewish” terms from the farewell discourses and the epistles, the Johannine community did not attempt to forge an alternate claim to being a “sect” with the truth of the Jewish tradition, contrary to those who have read

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this linguistic entanglement with “the Jews” as evidence for Johannine Christianity as Jewish Christianity, as in James F. McGrath, “Johannine Christianity: Jewish Christianity?” Koinonia 8 (1996), 1–20. 17.  Pheme Perkins, Gnosticism and the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 109–42. 18.  April D. DeConick, The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 135–51. 19.  On the influence of wisdom traditions on the Prologue, see Martin Scott, Sophia and the Johannine Jesus (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992). 20. Titus Nagel, Die Rezeption des Johannesevangeliums im 2. Jahrhundert. Studien zur vorirenäischen Aneignung und Auslegung des vierten Evangeliums in christlicher und christlichgnostischer Literatur ABG 2 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2000), 281–469. 21.  For the apocalyptic origins of the anti-Jewish sentiments concerning the Devil in John 8, see Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, “The Ruler of the World, Anti-Christs and Pseudo-Prophets: Johannine Variations on an Apocalyptic Motif,” in John’s Gospel and Intimations of Apocalyptic, ed. Catrin H. Williams and Christopher Rowland (London: Bloomsbury/T. & T. Clark, 2013) 180–99. 22. DeConick, Gnostic New Age, 135–61. 23.  April DeConick, “Who Is Hiding in the Gospel of John? Reconceptualizing Johannine Theology and the Roots of Gnosticism,” in A. D. DeConick and G. Adamson, eds. Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions (New York: Routledge, 2014), 13–29. 24. DeConick, Gnostic New Age, 155. 25.  Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28. Trans. James E. Crouch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) 481–85. 26.  Ismo Dunderberg, Gnostic Morality Revisited. WUNT 347 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 39–56. 27. Dunderberg, Morality, 50–53. 28.  Pheme Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1980). 29. G. Constanze Dressler, “Das Judasevangelium als vorösterliche Offenbarungsschrift: Überlegungen zu gattungsgeschichtlichen Eigentümlichkeiten.” In Judasevangelium und Codex Tchacos. Studien zur religionsgeschichtlichen Verortung einer gnostischen Schriftensammlung. Edited by Enno Edzard Popkes and Gregor Wurst. WUNT 297 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), 55–70. 30.  Gesine Shenke Robinson, “An Update on the Gospel of Judas (after Additional Fragments Resurfaced),” ZNW 102 (2011), 116–117. 31.  Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “The Gospel of Judas: A Scriptural Amplification or Canonical Encroachment?” in Judasevangelium und Codex Tchacos. Studien zur religionsgenschichtlichen Verortung einer gnostischen Schriftsammlung, ed. Enno Edzard Popkes and Gregor Wurst. WUNT 297 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 253–90; Simon Gathercole, “Matthean or Lukan Priority? The Use of NT Gospels in the Gospel of Judas,” in Judasevangelium und Codex Tchacos. Studien zur religionsgenschichtlichen Verortung einer gnostischen Schriftsammlung, ed. Enno



Erasure of “the Jews” in the Farewell Discourses and Johannine Epistles 19

Edzard Popkes and Gregor Wurst. WUNT 297 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 291–302. 32. Apparently GJudas takes the replacement of Judas from Acts 1:15–26 as an indication that Judas is not considered one of the apostolic group of twelve disciples. Unlike the Twelve, Judas recognizes that Jesus has come from the Barbelo realm, which in Sethian gnostic texts is the source of all the lower divine aeons (34:18– 35:21). Jesus refers to Judas as a “thirteenth spirit” (44:21). 33.  Herbert Schmid, “Was hat der ‘Judasevangelist’ eigentlich gegen die Eucharistie?” in Judasevangelium, 71–98. 34.  Identifying the secessionist as “the Liar” in 1 John 2:22 also evokes the use of “liar” to refer to the devil as an ancestor of Jesus’s Judean opponents in John 8:44, 55 (Brown, Epistles, 351). But the opponents in the epistles as former co-religionists of the elder and his audience are not opposed to the identification of Jesus with God as in John 8. 35. Brown, Epistles, 69–86. 36. Harold W. Attridge, Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex). NHMS 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1985) 79. 37.  See the footnoted allusions to the NT by Hans-Martin Schenke, “‘Evangelium Veritatis’ (NHC I,3/XII,2),” in Hans-Martin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge und Ursula Ulrike Kaiser, eds. Nag Hammadi Deutsch. 1 Band: NHC I,1–V,1. GCS Neue Folge 8 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001) 33–44. 38.  Anne Kreps, “The Passion of the Book: The Gospel of Truth as Valentinian Scriptural Practice,” JECS 24 (2016) 317. 39. For example, Justin Martyr, Dial. 81.4; Irenaeus, Haer. 3.11.1; 3.16.5, 8; 5.30.3. 40. Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed. The Church of the ‘Valentinians.’ NHMS 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2006) 150–52. 41.  Focusing on the synoptic gospel traditions rather than the Johannine echoes, see C. M. Tuckett, “Synoptic Tradition in the Gospel of Truth and the Testimony of Truth,” JTS ns.35 (1984) 133–34. 42.  Reported by Nicola Denzey Lewis, “Inventing Judaism: Rethinking Rome’s Jewish Catacombs in Light of Early Modern Christianity,” at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature on Nov. 21, 2016. 43.  GJudas extends the polemic register even further by first associating the sacrificial rituals of the Twelve with that of priests in the temple devoted to the God of Israel but even engaging in immoral behavior prohibited by Torah, see Lance Jenott, The Gospel of Judas, STAC 64 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 58. 44. Zumstein, Johannesevangelium, 42–52. 45. Zumstein suggests that these chapters, themselves, reflect a process of relecture. Chapters 15–16 form an initial rereading of the first of the discourses (13:31–14:31) followed by chapter 17. The final discourse of Jesus before the passion retrieves the prologue with which the gospel opened (17:5, 24 and John 1:1–2; Johannesevangelium, 627). 46.  Possibly the view of those whom 1–2 John reject as dissenters who have separated themselves from the Johannine fellowship (Brown, Epistles, 50–64). Though

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the opponents have many similarities to the Christology of later second century gnostic sources, there is no evidence for the ontological dualism and rejection of the creator characteristic of those systems (pp. 64–65). On using later gnostic texts as the hermeneutical lens for understanding the conflict in the Johannine epistles, see Pheme Perkins “Gnostic Revelation and Johannine Sectarianism. Reading 1 John from the Perspective of Nag Hammadi,” in G. van Belle, J. G. van der Watt, and P. Maritz, eds. Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel BETL CLXXIV (Leuven: Peeters, 2005) 245–76. 47.  See Pheme Perkins, “Moses in the Gospel of John,” Biblical Essays in Honor of Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, and Richard J. Clifford, SJ. Opportunity for no Little Instruction, eds. Christopher G. Frechette, Christopher R. Matthews, and Thomas D. Stegman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014), 237–54. 48.  DeConick presumes that gnostic spirituality is rooted in a Jewish two-powers in heaven tradition of mysticism with Samaritan origins (Gnostic New Age, 98–100, 141–61). Hans Jonas rightly recognized affinities between Valentinian spirituality and the existentialism of 20th century theology: Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 3rd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).

Chapter Two

The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John Michael Azar

The Orthodox Church is a body of fourteen administratively separate, yet intricately united, local churches or jurisdictions based in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.1 As a tradition deeply influenced by the politics, history, theology, and liturgy of the Middle East, both ancient and modern, the Orthodox Church has shared a complex and varied relationship with Judaism in a way that Catholic and Protestant churches have not. The various Orthodox Churches understand themselves to be united in faith and, more broadly speaking, in their practice. Nevertheless, their historic and almost complete lack of a centralized authority complicates any attempt to assess “the Orthodox tradition” as a whole, particularly with regard to Jewish–Christian relations. With that in mind, I offer an overview of only some of the ways that John’s Gospel has impacted Jewish–Christian relations in the Orthodox East. Rather than focus on particular moments or locales of Jewish–Christian interaction, which differ markedly amid the various Orthodox Churches, I will consider the effects that the portrayal of the Jews by “the Theologian” (as the Gospel’s implied author is called in the Orthodox tradition) has had on what still are, aside from Scripture, the three primary sources for Orthodox thought and practice: first, the Greek patristic commentaries; second, the ByzantineOrthodox artistic tradition, and third, the Byzantine-Orthodox liturgical tradition, especially with regard to Holy Week and Pascha (Easter). GREEK PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES The most complete early Greek Christian readings of the Fourth Gospel that survive in their original language are Origen’s third-century commentary, 21

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John Chrysostom’s fourth-century homilies, and Cyril of Alexandria’s fifthcentury commentary.2 As the scholia from Byzantine manuscripts of John’s Gospel reveal, the influence of these texts, especially John Chrysostom’s, never really faded in the Byzantine tradition.3 In fact, the influence of the Greek fathers’ reception of the Theologian’s Gospel has yet to wane in the Orthodox world, where one is rarely considered without the other. These ancient commentaries—especially that of John Chrysostom—are regularly a resource for contemporary Orthodox homilies, often more so than anything more recent. If these fathers are valued highly in Orthodox traditions, the same is not true in Jewish–Christian relations. Indeed, they often serve as examples of Christian anti-Judaism, particularly with regard to their exegeses of the Fourth Gospel. I have examined both the manner in which these fathers understood John’s Jews as well as the reception of their readings among historians and biblical scholars over the last century more fully elsewhere.4 Here I will address two key and common assumptions: 1) that these fathers read John 8:44 as proof that Jews are by nature of the devil and 2) that John’s totalizing presentation of “the Jews,” especially at the crucifixion of Jesus, caused patristic writers to hold all Jews of all time guilty of his death. These two assumptions are held with near ubiquity among modern scholars and have contributed greatly to the view that these authors are anti-Jewish.5 Though Christian history would eventually, and often, accuse Jews as being from the devil by nature, neither Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril, nor any other “orthodox” writer of the early period, to my knowledge, ever asserted such a thing. Proto- or pro-Nicene thinkers such as these were characteristically very careful with their theological language regarding “nature.” In fact, while Heracleon, an early gnostic commentator, seems to have employed John 8 in order to accuse Jews of being by nature of the devil, Origen directly opposes him on this and many other points in his Commentary on John. Contending that, contrary to Heracleon, no one can be a “child of the devil” (cf. John 8:44) by nature, Origen looks to 1 John 3 in order to assert that whoever commits sin becomes of the devil: Insofar as we commit sins, we have not as yet put off the generation of the devil, even if we are thought to believe in Jesus . . . [and] to the extent that he has not yet destroyed the works of the devil in us . . . we have not as yet put aside being children of the devil, since it is our fruits that show whose sons we are [emphasis added].6

For Origen, it is not nature but one’s deeds that make one a child of the devil. While it may be appropriate to read Heracleon’s interpretation of John 8:44 as anti-Jewish, the same cannot be said of Origen’s response.7



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 23

John Chrysostom’s Homilies on John, preached in Antioch in the late 380s, are surprisingly devoid of the sort of anti-Jewish hostility for which Chrysostom is so well known. This point is all the more remarkable considering that Chrysostom preached his infamous Adversus Judaeos sermons and composed his Commentary on Galatians within a year or two of these Johannine homilies.8 Chrysostom did not read Jesus’s accusation in John 8:44 as the bitter reaction of a community of Christians excluded by, or attempting themselves to exclude, “the Jews” (as would be common in more recent scholarship).9 Rather, Chrysostom views this verse as the words of a caring but tough teacher who seeks to shock his beloved students (not just Jews) away from a clinging attachment to the world and its achievements in order that they might be free to learn the things of heaven. As he sets the scene of this passage in Homily 54, Chrysostom explains that the Jews believe only partially, but do not persevere in the faith.10 Recognizing the ensuing harshness of Jesus’s words, Chrysostom employs a motif of spiritual surgery—a motif he uses regularly in his works: Christ’s intentions, he argues, are like those of a surgeon attempting to remove a deeply embedded malady. Thus he paraphrases on behalf of Christ, “I am about to make a deep incision; do not move.”11 Chrysostom emphasizes that these Jews are those “who have believed” (John 8:31); this observation supports one of his key spiritual points: those in whom Christ’s words do not take deep root are easily swayed by outside assaults. It is with the intention of deepening the faith of these Jews and making them “free” (John 8:32) that Christ tries to “penetrate their souls” with these evidently “more striking words.”12 Viewing Christ as a teacher or surgeon for the Jews, but not as their enemy, Chrysostom sees no discord between the harsh language of John 8 and Christ’s desire for their repentance. His characterization of the whole affair, in other words, offers an element of credibility to what Luke Timothy Johnson and others have argued—that speaking in such a “striking” way about one’s opponents, or even one’s students, was relatively normal.13 Finally, Cyril of Alexandria, perhaps the most prolific of the early biblical commentators (and still commemorated by the Orthodox Church as “the seal of the fathers”), provides key evidence against the second scholarly assumption noted above—that early readers of John assumed all Jews of all time were collectively responsible for the death of Christ.14 In his interpretation of John 8:44–46, Cyril, a well-known opponent of Judaism, compares the conflict between the Johannine Jews and Jesus to that between Cain and Abel.15 He then asserts: “We should not think that all Jews were immersed in sheer and utter senselessness” since they did not all “retain in their own behavior the exact imprint of Cain’s stubbornness.” Rather, “we shall blame” the “unholy scribes and Pharisees in particular.”16 This tendency to distance

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the common people from the culpability of the leaders, reminiscent of similar approaches among modern Johannine scholars, reappears in Cyril’s exposition of the Passion Narrative. Commentating on John 19:5–6, Cyril states: “[It] is to the leaders of the Jews alone, it seems, that the wise Evangelist ascribed the origin of such impiety.”17 Cyril’s reasons for differentiating the common people from their leaders undoubtedly differ from those of modern scholars. While the latter have often been ethically motivated, seeking to distance John from placing blame collectively on “the Jews” as a whole, Cyril’s concern seems more rhetorical, attempting to demonstrate that uninformed, but otherwise innocent, masses can be easily led astray by poor teachers.18 Nevertheless, when assessing Cyril’s stance toward Judaism it is important to note that it is the leaders, not the people as a whole, who bear the brunt of Cyril’s exegetical opposition. Broadly speaking, the commentaries or homilies on John written by Origen, Chrysostom, and Cyril employ the tension between Jesus and the Johannine Jews not against contemporary Jews but against their own, inner-ecclesial opponents.19 Despite their comments about Jews in their other writings, in commenting on the Gospel, they adapt the conflict in John 8 between Jesus and the Jews to their own third-, fourth-, and fifth-century internal Christian debates. They read the Johannine Jews who oppose Christ as representative of any misguided, nefarious, or heretical group in their own churches that they seek to oppose. It is against their contemporary heterodox or heretical opponents that they interpret Jesus’s interactions with the Jews. Their interpretations of John 8, in other words, do not necessarily reflect views about non-Christian Jews that they express elsewhere so much as their polemics against their opponents within their own churches. THE BYZANTINE ICONOGRAPHIC TRADITION Unlike much of Western art, the Byzantine iconographic tradition, even to this day in Orthodox churches, is extremely reserved and deeply conservative, changing very little through the centuries. This artistic tradition offers theological statements about the scenes or persons depicted. Akin to John’s Gospel itself, Orthodox depictions of Gospel scenes manipulate time and space in order to draw the viewers’ attention to a particular, normally christological, point. This is most obvious in the typical Orthodox portrayal of the Nativity of Christ, where multiple scenes are collapsed into one, with a theological statement about Christ as the one eternally crucified at the center (figure 2.1).20

Figure 2.1.  Icon on wood, Nativity of Christ. St. George Church, Taylor, PA.

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To those more familiar with Western religious art, the art of the Byzantine world, much like the art of classical and late antiquity, is strikingly un-lifelike. Traditionally, no figure that appears in iconography expresses any emotion in his or her face. In the icons specifically drawn from John’s Gospel, such as the Meeting at Jacob’s Well (John 4; figure 2.2), the Healings of the Paralytic (John 5; figure 2.3) and Blind Man (John 9; figure 2.4), the Raising of Lazarus (John 11; figure 2.5), and the Crucifixion of Christ (John 19; figure 2.6)—the Orthodox depiction of which bears distinctly Johannine themes (i.e., serpentine shape, the presence of the Beloved Disciple, here identified as John, and Jesus’s mother)—the characters show little emotion or realism. Partly due to the stubborn Byzantine preference for artistic preservation rather than innovation, one must go to great lengths in Byzantine art (and, therefore, contemporary Orthodox churches) to find anything comparable to the infamous and grotesque Christian depictions of Jews that sometimes appeared in the West, especially in the medieval and Renaissance periods.21

Figure 2.2.  Mural, Meeting at Jacob’s Well (John 4). Prophet Elias Church, Chadra, Lebanon.



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 27

Figure 2.3.  Mural, Healing of the Paralytic (John 5). St. George Church, Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon.

Even when the Byzantine State actively resisted the flourishing of Jewish communities (which it indeed did from time to time and in varying degrees), Orthodox art rarely gave in to the trends of society. In one of the few booklength studies of Jews in Byzantine art, Elisabeth Revel-Neher summarizes, Nothing in Byzantine iconography can compare with the terrible Western catalogue: Nothing in the work of the Byzantine artist—in his careful, ardu-

Figure 2.4.  Mural, Healing of the Blind Man (John 9). St. George Church, Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon.

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Figure 2.5.  Mural, Raising of Lazarus (John 11). Church of Our Saviour, Rye, NY.

ous pursuit of ancient models, in his desire to transmit them—caused him to swerve from his task and to pass judgment. Whatever the political, theological and ecclesiastical conditions, he continued serenely on his way. There is a fundamental, essential difference between the image of the Jew and of Judaism in the Byzantine mediaeval world and in that of Western Europe. It is the difference between a falsely objective pictorial indictment, loaded with malignant theological and moral argumentation, and the search for a true depicture (even if the truth was not that of reality, but of spirituality) based on the sacred text, a restrained image of the ever living world of the Old Testament and the faithful transmission of models.22

She continues, The image of the Jew in the Byzantine world is fundamentally different from that of the Jew in the West. Totally, profoundly original, it contains neither exaggeration nor caricature. It degenerates neither into moralizing nor accusation, nor, still less, into hatred. It is a precious and living testimony to rich contacts with the Jewish world, with the sources of a tradition deeply rooted in the life of the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean world.23

The strict, theological focus of Byzantine art and its stylistic conservativism, according to Revel-Neher, are key reasons why it rarely displays the “signs of infamy” (such as distorted facial features or disheveled hair) often reserved for Jews, and especially Judas, in Western art.24 For example, the image of Judas in the typical Byzantine depiction of the Last Supper (figure 2.7) contains none of the grotesque features sometimes ascribed to him in depictions of the

Figure 2.6.  Crucifixion of Christ on Iconostasis. St. Jacob Monastery, Akkar District, Lebanon.

Figure 2.7.  Mural (partial), Last Supper (Judas dipping bread, Beloved Disciple leaning on Jesus). Church of Our Savior, Rye, NY.

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same scene in the medieval West. Similarly, icons specifically drawn from John’s Gospel, such as the Raising of Lazarus (figure 2.5), more neutrally depict the Jews in disbelief (e.g., with their hands raised as they seemingly murmur among themselves), without resorting to distorted caricatures. In the rare cases that “signs of infamy” do appear, they reveal a remarkable continuity with the patristic readings of the Johannine Jews outlined above: the distorted characters typically represent the heterodox or heretic—whichever inner-ecclesial opponent the artist is resisting—rather than the Jew as such.25 A well-known example appears in the post-iconoclast Chludov Psalter of the ninth-century (figure 2.8). On the page where the text reads, “They gave me gall to drink, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar” (Psalm 69:21), the artist juxtaposes, typologically, the soldiers’ offering Christ the vinegar with John VII, the ninth-century iconoclastic Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch’s hair is deliberately disheveled, as he wipes away the image of Christ and therefore shares the same crime as those that mocked him at his crucifixion.26

Figure 2.8.  Chludov Psalter (9th cent.).

Figure 2.9.  Icon on wood. Ladder of Divine Ascent (12th cent.). Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.

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Similarly, the Byzantine use of devilish images, in contrast to the Western association between the Jews, or Synagoga, and the devil, typically addresses the heterodox, heretic, or immoral soul—the latter strikingly shown in the iconographic depiction of monks whose weighty, sinful deeds prevent them from climbing the spiritual ladder to heaven (figure 2.9).27 These icons demonstrate that Byzantine artistic use of the devilish motifs typically holds to the patristic reading of John 8:44: that it is one’s deeds, not nature, that make one a child of the devil. LITURGICAL TEXTS OF HOLY WEEK AND PASSOVER (PASCHA) The Eastern tradition has sought to preserve significant liturgical continuity with its pre-Christian, Hebraic roots. This profound sense of continuity is evident in two aspects of Orthodox practice: the prominent place of the prophets of the Old Testament in the iconography of Orthodox churches (typically closest to Christ in a traditional dome; figure 2.10), and the regular appearance of various Old Testament saints in the Orthodox liturgical calendar (a liturgical practice not reflected in the West). Nonetheless, in Orthodox liturgical texts, as with the Gospels themselves, this claim of continuity with the Old Testament has regularly gone hand in hand with resistance to Jews and the Jewish tradition, which also claim the same continuity. Nowhere is this resistance more evident than in the liturgical texts of Holy Week and Pascha—the annual celebration of deliverance through Christ and Moses.28 Though Christianity in the West apparently did not celebrate Easter annually until after the late second century, the East, where Jews and Christians continued to celebrate Passover, does not seem to have had this festal gap.29 This is a key reason why most Orthodox Christians, to this day, do not typically call the annual feast “Easter” but “Passover.” Though the terms for the Jewish and Christian “Passovers” are indistinguishable in much of the Orthodox world (e.g., in Arabic or Greek), most English-speaking Orthodox Christians tend to transliterate the Greek term for Passover, therefore calling the feast “Pascha.” The earliest surviving liturgical paschal text with a distinctly Christian flare is On Pascha by Melito of Sardis (ca. 190). Melito, a Jew by birth, was, like many others in the East, a Quartodeciman—that is, he celebrated Pascha on whatever day Nissan 14 fell (thus, in Melito’s case, at the same time as the large Jewish community of Sardis) rather than exclusively on a Sunday. While a variety of councils condemned Quartodecimanism,30 the practice of



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 33

Figure 2.10.  Dome with Christ (Pantocrator) surrounded by prophets. St. George Church, West Roxbury, MA.

celebrating Pascha only on a Sunday did not become standard until after the First Council of Nicea in 325. Melito’s complete text resembles a Haggadah more than a sermon; in this sense it may be the earliest extant Haggadah, Jewish or Christian.31 Melito is a significant figure in the history of Jewish–Christian interaction. Melito’s On Pascha is a remarkable specimen of the second century’s continuation and, in many ways, midwifing, of the specifically Johannine paschal tradition for later centuries. The indelibility of Johannine motifs is most evident in Melito’s emphasis on Christ as the Passover Lamb sacrificed on Nissan 14; Melito’s understanding of both law and temple as contingent expressions of Christ, the true Law and temple; the explicit and underlying Exodus themes that give rhyme and reason to Melito’s entire presentation of Christ as the Lamb, and, most disconcertingly, his emphasis on the people’s collective opposition to Christ. Though Melito never uses the phrase “the Jews” (he prefers “Israel”), and though the majority of his statements against those who reject Christ is in the second person (speaking directly to his

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congregants for their rejecting Christ), his harsh totalizing of the collective opposition to Christ is easily palpable: What strange injustice have you done, O Israel? You have dishonored the one who honored you, you have disgraced the one who glorified you, you have denied the one who owned you, you have ignored the one who made you known, you have murdered the one who gave you life.32

This emphasis on the collective—even if rhetorical— responsibility testifies to the continuation of the Johannine tradition of totalizing those who reject Christ, as well as that tradition’s place in the so-called “parting of the ways.”33 Johannine scholarship has often taken John’s stark totalizing as evidence that John was reacting either to ways that had parted or trying to effect such a parting.34 It seems more likely that Melito is neither reacting to a way that has parted, simply speaking, nor trying to effect a simple parting of the ways either. Rather, inheriting a Johannine blend of Hellenistic-Hebraic thought, Melito and Quartodecimans like him are caught in a love triangle of sorts, attempting both. As Pope Victor’s attempt to excommunicate the “churches in Asia” in the 190s and the Council of Nicaea’s pronouncements against Quartodecimans in 325 both confirm, much of Gentile Christianity viewed Melito and Quartodecimans as too Jewish.35 (One must underscore again the Christian West’s avoidance of an annual Passover celebration, likely for fear of Judaizing, until the late second century, if not later.) On the other hand, more mainstream Jewish thought, which was deeply present in Sardis itself, would view Melito as not Jewish enough.36 Melito, in other words, was too Christian for Jews and too Jewish for Gentiles, neither Christian in the more un-Semitic sense nor Jewish in the more mainstream sense. And while in a manner “parted” from “Judaism,” he appears to be accentuating such a parting in order to emphasize his unity with the rest of “Christianity.” Like Melito’s On Pascha, Orthodox paschal texts from later periods were profoundly influenced both by the situation that gave rise to John’s Gospel and by its distinct theology. Even today, Orthodox Holy Week/Pascha depends on the narrative and theology of John’s Gospel specifically (e.g., the underlying language of Exodus, the focus on Christ as temple and Lamb, or the selection of John’s prologue as the culminating reading of the week).37 And, while there is much to be considered in these texts from the standpoint of Jewish–Christian relations—from the more troubling continuation of the Greek rhetorical tradition’s psogos (invective), infamous from John Chrysos­ tom,38 to modern Orthodox calls to reform these texts—here, I will consider specifically the impact that the Johannine tradition has left on the way that



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 35

these texts portray the central reason for which so many Jews rejected Christ.39 Deeply influenced by the Johannine emphasis on the Logos become flesh (cf. John 1:14), the Messiah who lives forever by dying (John 3:12–14; 12:32–34), the one “from above” (John 8:23) weeping (John 11:35), Orthodox thought relishes the paradoxical, delights in the oxymoronic, and found itself on the juxtaposition of the human and divine. A variety of Eastern texts regularly speak of the Virgin who gives birth, the God who suffers, the incorruptible assuming the corruptible, the Author of Life becoming subject to death, the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’s feet while the disciple betrays. One finds this love of dissonant juxtaposition forcefully expressed in the Holy Week and Pascha texts, which comprise hymns that often and unabashedly mold the biblical passages in order to highlight the divine-human paradox. As one of the central hymns of Holy Friday proclaims, Today is suspended upon the tree, he who suspended the earth amid the waters; A crown of thorns crowns him, who is the King of the Angels; He is wrapped in the purple of mockery, who wraps the heavens in clouds; He receives buffetings, who freed Adam in the Jordan; He is transfixed with nails, who is the Son of the Virgin. We worship your passion, O Christ. Show us also your glorious resurrection.40

As part of, and beyond, this marveling at the divine-human paradox, these hymns stand in awe more specifically of Christ’s great sunkatabasis—a word often translated as “condescension” or “considerateness” (or, more recently, “adaptability”). The concept is central to patristic thought and exegesis as a means through which to understand God’s act of salvation, from creation onward, in his “condescending” to the human state or “adapting” divine things toward human intelligibility.41 When the hymns of Holy Week consider the Gospel accounts and marvel at what is done to Christ, they do so in a manner that highlights the absurdity of his sunkatabasis, well beyond what the Gospels themselves do—except, perhaps, the Gospel of John. This interpretive tendency toward accentuating paradox and sunkatabasis is chiefly what produces the overwhelmingly, but not entirely, negative picture of Jews and Judaism. The charge that is levied against those who rejected Christ is precisely their failure to accept his sunkatabasis—his taking on the degradation and despicability of the human condition for us and for our salvation. Like the Jews in the Fourth Gospel, the opponents of Holy Week cannot grasp that the Messiah shines most gloriously at his crucifixion and that the very same God of Exodus is at work in both (cf. John 5:46; 12:28–34). Thus one of the hymns on Holy Thursday summarizes, immediately following the

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reading of Jesus’s trial, rejection, and sentencing in John 18:28–19:16: “they have not understood your sunkatabasis.”42 On the one hand, the charge of failing to grasp Christ’s sunkatabasis reveals the distinct impact left by the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus’s interlocutors and opponents are regularly disturbed by his acting in a human manner unbecoming to the divine or a divine manner unbecoming to the human. Indeed, as numerous patristic texts from the so-called christological controversies show, in the wake of John’s Gospel, orthodox christology developed as a consistent series of attempts to explain and defend the reality, necessity, effectiveness, and dignity of the crucified Christ.43 It grew in light of the Johannine tradition, demonstrating that the cross was not merely intended, as the Synoptics imply (cf. Matthew 16:21), but that it was the fullest expression of Christ’s exalted divinity—the means by which he draws all humankind to himself and remains forever (John 12:32–34), heals as the serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14–15), and reveals that he is (John 8:28–29). Time and again, church fathers accuse their opponents of being ashamed of the cross and therefore attempting to claim Christ was not fully divine (or truly human).44 This ongoing tension between Christ’s equality with the Father and the place of the cross as the central expression of his exalted status demonstrates John’s impact on the early christological debates and later paschal reflections, both of which refract the opponents in John through later theological debates. On the other hand, these hymns from Holy Week and Pascha, many of which originate from the Byzantine liturgical reforms of the ninth century (in the wake of iconoclasm), reflect Jewish anti-Christian polemic that survived in the Byzantine Empire. One noteworthy example of this tradition is the ninthcentury treatise, Qissat Mujadalat al-Usquf (“The Account of the Disputation of the Priest”), which, within a few centuries, was translated to Hebrew as Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer, the title by which it became widely known in Europe.45 This vitriolic anti-Christian text, targeting Eastern Christianity,46 was likely produced in Muslim lands just outside the Byzantine Empire.47 Because the author’s land had been under Islamic rule for at least a few centuries, this text demonstrates that Jewish anti-Christian polemic could circulate in the absence of missionizing activity or any overt hostility from Christians.48 Like other Jewish anti-Christian polemics, this text rejects Christ’s divine origin, arguing that his actions in the Gospels are not compatible with the majestic God of Exodus. As the text’s protagonist, Nestor, plainly says, “I do not believe in a god who dwelt in the filth and menstrual blood in the abdomen and womb.” For Nestor examined the Torah, which is from the words of Moses, peace be on him, and found written there: “The God your Lord is a devouring fire” [Deut. 4:24]. Then Nestor said: “How can there be fire upon fire in a woman’s abdomen?”49



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 37

The author continues similarly, It is most astonishing how it is that you, who claim to be judicious and reasonable, are not ashamed . . . that you worship a god who dwelt in the womb, in the filth of menstrual blood.50

The author is entirely right: Eastern Christian hymnography and iconography view Mary and the burning bush in Exodus 3 as intricately united, mutually containing the uncontainable God without being destroyed (figure 2.11). This widespread tradition seems to have originated at the Monastery of St. Catherine at the base of Mt. Sinai (in Egypt, where Nestor likely originates). A variety of Orthodox hymns clarify the comparison: You showed Moses, O Christ God, an image of your most pure Mother, In the bush that burned yet was not consumed; For she herself was not consumed, when she received in her womb the fire of divinity; She remained incorrupt after her pure childbearing; By her prayers, O greatly merciful One, deliver us from the flame of passions, And preserve your people from all harm.51

Figure 2.11.  Mural, Moses and the Unburnt Bush (Exod 3). St. George Church, Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon.

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Thus, Nestor is not wrong that Christians would speak of the sunkatabasis of the God of Exodus appearing in human form—for indeed, that is what the hymns and iconography proclaim—yet as a Jew who reads the Torah, he entirely rejects it. Toward the end of the later Hebrew version of the work, Nestor makes similar remarks with regard to the crucifixion—revealing the distinct impact of the Johannine tradition in particular, both in his collective designation of the people and his timing of the crucifixion: And you testify that Jesus was struck and spat upon. The Jews announced throughout the city that on Friday, the eve of Passover, until noon, he would carry a cross on his neck upon which he was to be crucified. . . . The Jews brought him and hung him on the cross. . . . How are you not embarrassed by your God, who was faint and weary; is it not written: “He does not faint or grow weary” [Isa. 40:28]? . . . I wonder how you can make Jesus into God, since he was crucified and pierced, as you say, and every crucified person is cursed [cf. Deut 21:23].52

This passage, coming shortly before the work’s conclusion, highlights the ridiculousness of the Christian claim that the God who revealed himself to Moses is precisely the one who died on the cross. The author concludes his work by juxtaposing the glory of Moses, to whom God regularly spoke, with the absurdity of Jesus, with whom Satan spoke. Though these aspects of Nestor’s polemic are disturbing, his points are, again, not incorrect. Eastern Christians, especially during Holy Week, proclaim that the God who enacted deliverance and a way of living through Moses is precisely the God who did the same, and more completely, through his cross. As the variety of images included here show, Christ is regularly depicted with the words ὁ ὢν in his cruciform halo, identifying the God who sent Moses to Egypt (Exod. 3:14) with the one who was crucified. Though John might not go so far, it is clearly with the inspiration of the Johannine tradition, in particular (including Revelation), that the Eastern tradition has so often spoken of the God of Exodus being crucified on the tree that he created.53 JOHN AND CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN–JEWISH RELATIONS With the preceding exploration, I have not suggested that the Orthodox past, from the church fathers through the iconography and liturgical texts, expresses no opposition toward Jews or that, all things considered, it offers the modern world an entirely positive assessment of Judaism vis-à-vis Christianity.54 Though these sources can offer some positive fruits for this endeavor,



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 39

one cannot look to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, with the invective that characterizes many of its liturgical texts, or the Byzantine laws and church canons against Jews, and so forth, as the model of interreligious sensitivity in the twenty-first century. Despite the significantly better life that Jews typically had in the Christian East, there have been moments of outright persecution, such as the pogroms in nineteenth-century Russia or sixteenth-century Crete (and episodes of Jewish persecution of Eastern Christians as well).55 What I have attempted to do, rather, is to demonstrate that, first, modern portrayals of the early reception of John often result from scholarly stereotyping of Gentile readers and stem from broad summaries rather than close examination. The Greek patristic commentaries do not speak of Jews as by nature of the devil, nor do they easily promote a collective and active punishment of all Jews for crucifying Christ. One must not fall into the trap, for which John’s Gospel is so often faulted, of totalizing the entirety of the tradition by means of the hostility of some or even many. There is much in John’s reception history to be mined and preserved, even while discarding the more unfortunate and numerous aspects of that history. Second, the image of the Jew in Christian art so well known among Western scholars—that of the distorted face, disheveled hair, and devilish associations—finds no counterpart in the East. Third, the Eastern paschal texts reveal not only the theological influence of John’s Gospel, but also the continuation of the worldview that seems to have, in part, given birth to the Gospel and its presentation of the Jews: that is, a deeply Eastern, Hellenistic-Hebraic form of belief in the Messiah that emphasized the stark juxtaposition of his divinity and humanity along with his sunkatabasis and thus did not coincide smoothly with a variety of other trends in Jewish or Christian belief. These points warrant a few concluding observations regarding John’s place in Jewish–Christian interaction from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.56 First, given the significantly different Jewish–Christian relationship in the East historically, Jewish–Christian dialogue (as well as works on John’s Gospel or the history of Christian–Jewish interaction) cannot simplistically employ Christian anti-Judaism as the “hermeneutical key for describing and understanding the historical development of the Jewish–Christian relationship.”57 Such a hermeneutical key does justice neither to the complexities of patristic writings, nor to the dynamics of Eastern Christian artistic and liturgical expression, nor to Jewish anti-Christian literature. Second, modern scholars, especially Johannine scholars, ought to write and speak with more care when promoting what Marc Saperstein has admirably called “metaphors of continuity”:58 the scholarly tendency to see the Eastern fathers as direct forerunners whose comments warrant mention alongside those of Nazis, especially given that the latter, unlike the former, actually

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did say Jews were, according to the Johannine Jesus, by nature of the devil.59 Johannine scholarship frequently exhibits this fallacy; while it is rhetorically effective, it is difficult to justify. One cannot defend Cyril’s or Chrysostom’s rhetoric or wider opposition to Judaism by modern standards or in light of history. Such justification is not necessary, however, in order to acknowledge that their readings of the Johannine Jews, as well as their broader relationships with Jewish contemporaries, were far more complex than either the labels of “anti-Judaism” or “anti-Semitism” allow. Such unrestrained rhetorical links, moreover, risk obscuring the memory of faithful Orthodox Christians declared Righteous among the Gentiles. Damaskinos, the Archbishop of Athens during World War II, opposed the Nazis in a public letter and by issuing false baptismal certificates to the Jews of Greece. The Metropolitan of the Greek island of Zakynthos, Chrysostomos (after John Chrysostom), when asked by German authorities for the list of local Jews, submitted a paper bearing only his name. Fr. Dimitri Klepinin, an Orthodox priest in Paris, and his companion, Mother Maria Skobtsova of Paris (figure 2.12), perished at the hands of Nazis for protecting Jews. Surely, each of these lived up to the words of Metrophanes III, the sixteenth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, who, after an episode of anti-Jewish violence, declared that “those Christians who commit these insolent acts against the Jews are excommunicated from God Almighty and are cursed and are unforgiven and remain bound even after death.”60

Figure 2.12.  Murals, Mother Maria of Paris next to Prophet Daniel. St. George Church, Taylor, PA.



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Third, without more care given to the often internecine Jewish–Christian past, especially in the East, modern scholars stand in danger of exacerbating the already difficult relationship between the State of Israel and Arab Christians, the vast majority of whom are Orthodox Christians. Historically speaking, the weight of hostility that has so often characterized the Jewish– Christian relationship falls on the Christian shoulder; John’s Gospel has contributed, at times, to that hostility. Nevertheless, the simplistically collective way in which contemporary authors often refer to that past may unwittingly foster hostile relationships in the present. Such is the case, for example, with regard to the increasingly rightwing and nationalistic direction Israeli society has taken in recent years, especially under the current government, whose rhetoric too often moves toward collectively blaming, and punishing, “the Arabs” for dangers caused by “some Arabs.” Such rhetoric erases the distinction between non-Jews in general and the enemies of the State or of Judaism, often drawing upon the history of Christian anti-Semitism. This distinct blend of religious and nationalistic rhetoric has already led to a variety of troubling episodes that have strained Orthodox Christian–Jewish relations in Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies, such as the 1979 murder of Fr. Philomenos Hasapis, the priest of the Orthodox Church of Jacob’s Well in Nablus, or the 2014 arson attack on an Orthodox Christian seminary in Jerusalem, which left the seminary’s walls decorated with words redolent of an ancient, antiChristian slander: “Jesus is the son of a whore.” Unqualified portrayals of the Jewish–Christian past, with anti-Judaism as the sole hermeneutical key, risk condoning these and other, often more subtle, forms of mistreatment, such as the building of settlements on land formerly belonging to the Orthodox Christian villages of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour. Both of these villages now run up against a near-thirty-foot wall that prevents the majority of Christians in those villages from visiting the Holy Sites of Jerusalem, which are regularly accessible to Christians from elsewhere, and also ensures that few non-Arabs see what life is like behind that wall. In an increasingly polarized world, portrayals of the past that seek the black and the white, but dismiss the gray, are not needed. In approaching the place of John in Jewish–Christian relations, for the sake of history and the life of the modern world, we must recognize the black and white, dwell on the gray, happily promote and humbly repudiate what is necessary, continually considering how best to employ the past in a manner that serves to benefit the present. NOTES 1.  The fourteen independent, or “autocephalous,” churches are those of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Moscow, Georgia, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria,

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Greece, Cyprus, Poland, Albania, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia. The majority of Orthodox Christians in the United States are under the Church of Constantinople. Furthermore, an additional jurisdiction, the Orthodox Church in America, is considered autocephalous by some (but not all) of the other Orthodox Churches.   2.  See Maurice Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).   3.  William Lamb, “Conservation and Conversation: New Testament Catenae in Byzantium,” in The New Testament in Byzantium, ed. Derek Krueger and Robert S. Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2016), 277–300, here 288–90.   4.  Michael G. Azar, Exegeting the Jews: The Early Reception of the Johannine “Jews” (Leiden: Brill, 2016).   5.  For a fuller review of the modern scholarly reception of the patristic reception of John’s Jews, see ibid., 9–54.  6. Comm. Jo. 20:103, 105. The English translation used here is Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, trans. R. E. Heine, FC 80, 89 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989, 1993). The critical Greek text is Origène: Commentaire sur saint Jean, ed. Cécile Blanc, SC 120, 157, 222, 290, 385 (Paris: Cerf, 1966, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992). For further elaboration of Origen’s consideration of John 8 against Heracleon, see Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 82–86.  7. Emphasis on Heracleon while disregarding Origen can skew understanding of the early reception of John 8:44. Cf. Gilbert Van Belle, “‘Salvation is From the Jews’: The Parenthesis of John 4:22b,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium 2000, ed. Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 370–400, here 393–95.   8.  Much of the following is more fully developed in Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 124–26. The English translation used here is John Chrysostom, Commentary on Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, trans. Thomas Aquinas Goggin, FC 33, 41 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1957, 1959). There is no critical Greek edition.  9. See J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (3d ed.; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003). Though not the first to express this view, Martyn’s book, originally published in 1968, served to increase significantly its scholarly popularity. 10. See Hom. Jo. 54.1 (FC 41:64–65). 11.  Μέλλω βαθεῖαν διδόναι τομὴν, ἀλλὰ μὴ σαλεύεσθε (Hom. Jo. 54.1 [PG 59:296]; FC 41:65 misleadingly translates these words as “I am going to wound your pride, but do not be disturbed”). See also Plutarch, Moralia 2.131a, where the same words are used to describe a “deep incision” made to remove a fishbone stuck in a person’s throat. 12.  Hom. Jo. 54.1 (FC 41:65, modified; PG 59:296). 13. Luke Timothy Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” JBL 108 (1989): 419–41. Cf. Urban C. von Wahlde, “‘You Are of Your Father the Devil’ in Its Context: Stereotyped Apocalyptic Polemic in John 8:38–47,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 43

Leuven Colloquium, 2000, ed. Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 418–44. 14. The English translation of Cyril’s commentary is Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, trans. David R. Maxwell, Ancient Christian Texts, 2 vols. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013, 2015), here abbreviated as “Maxwell” followed by the volume and page number. The critical Greek text is found in Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ed. P. E. Pusey, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1872; repr. Bruxelles: Culture et civilization, 1965), here abbreviated as “Pusey” followed by volume and page number. Much of the following is drawn from Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 186–94. 15. See Comm. Jo. 6 (Maxwell 2:4–7; Pusey 2:99–105). 16.  Comm. Jo. 6 (Maxwell 2:7, modified; Pusey 2:105). 17.  Comm. Jo. 12 (Maxwell 2:335; Pusey 3:64). 18.  See Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 194. 19.  See Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 49–54 and 203–216. 20.  Unless otherwise noted, all images are personal images. While many of the images included here are contemporary, each holds fairly conservatively to the traditional Byzantine style of iconography explained above. This exploration, moreover, focuses on the general style of Byzantine iconography, without commentary on local variations, which are relatively minor for the purposes of this paper. 21.  See, for example, the art-historical study by Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 22.  Elisabeth Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew in Byzantine Art, trans. David Maizel (Oxford: Pergamon, 1992), 109–10. 23.  Ibid., 111. 24.  Ibid., 108. 25. Ibid. 26.  Though the Second Council of Nicea in 787 rejected iconoclasm, icons were not publically and officially restored until 843. The remarkably few exceptions in which Jews appear negatively in Byzantine art (in this case, the illuminated manuscripts rather than icons) arise primarily in this period after the iconoclast controversy, where iconophiles believed—in many cases, likely rightly so—that icons were rejected due to Jewish or Islamic influence (the former, for example, having been the case with the iconoclast emperor Michael II [820–29]; see Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew, 13n30). See Kathleen Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters: Iconophile Imagery in Three Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). This period, not coincidently, also bore witness to a wider move in Orthodox theology toward reestablishing the legitimacy of Orthodoxy as rooted in the Old Testament, which had often been marshalled against icons in the preceding century. See Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson, “Introduction,” in The Old Testament in Byzantium, ed. Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), 1–38, here 21. 27.  See Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew, 108–9. This icon is named after a seventh-century spiritual text by John Climacus (John of the Ladder), commemorated on the Fourth Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox tradition.

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28.  See Michael G. Azar, “Prophetic Matrix and Theological Paradox: Jews and Judaism in the Holy Week and Pascha Observances of the Greek Orthodox Church,” SCJR 10 (2015): 1–27, here 3–4. 29.  See, for example, Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo, 1986), 1–78. 30.  See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23. 31.  See Alistair Stewart-Sykes, The Lamb’s High Feast: Melito, Peri Pascha, and the Quartodeciman Paschal Liturgy at Sardis (Leiden: Brill, 1998), esp. 60–65. 32.  On Pascha 73. The English translation is Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001). 33.  My points here follow many of the observations made by Alistair StewartSykes, “Introduction” in On Pascha, by Melito of Sardis, trans. Alistair StewartSykes (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), esp. 25–27. 34.  For one of the earliest expressions of the “had parted” perspective, see James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (London: Socino, 1934; repr., New York: Atheneum, 1969). (Parkes’ book, incidentally, seems to have coined the phrase “parting of the ways” in regard to Jewish–Christian history.) This view was especially popularized in 1968 by Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. For one of the first modern expressions of the “attempting to effect a parting” perspective, see Jules Isaac, Jesus and Israel (trans. Sally Gran; New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), first published in 1948. Adele Reinhartz has offered a perspective similar to that of Isaac more recently: Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018). 35.  On Pope Victor specifically, see Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.9. 36. Regarding relevant prohibitions in Mishnah Pesahim 7.1–2, see Alistair Stewart-Sykes, introduction, 27, which cites Étienne Nodet and Justin Taylor, The Origins of Christianity: An Exploration (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1998). 37.  The moveable (variable) portions of the Holy Week and Pascha services are found respectively in two liturgical books, the Triodion and the Pentecostarion. While there is no “official” Greek/English compilation of the Holy Week and Pascha texts, among the most widely used is George L. Papadeas, comp., Hai Hierai Akolouthiai tēs Megalēs Hebdomasos kai tou Pascha/Greek Orthodox Holy Week and Easter Services (New English trans.; South Daytona, FL: Patmos, 2007). This is the edition I use below, abbreviated as Hai Hierai Akolouthiai. 38.  See Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 142–46. 39.  Much of the following is a more condensed version of Azar, “Prophetic Matrix,” where I consider more fully other, often more troubling, issues related to the portrayal of Jews in these services. 40.  Fifteenth Antiphon, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 238 [modified]). 41.  See, for example, David Rylaarsdam, John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of his Theology and Preaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) as well as Rylaarsdam’s dissertation out of which the book grew: “The Adaptability of Divine Pedagogy: Sunkatabasis in the Theology and Rhetoric of John



The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John 45

Chrysostom” (PhD diss., The University of Notre Dame, 1999). On the issue of translation specifically (and a key reason why I transliterate above), see R. C. Hill, “On Looking Again at Sunkatabasis,” Prudentia 13 (1981): 3–11. 42.  First verse of the Eleventh Antiphon, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 232 [modified]). 43.  See John Behr, The Nicene Faith (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). 44.  See, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 3.3.3 (or 5.3 according to an older enumeration). 45.  For the principal text and translation used here, with an extensive introduction and notes, see Daniel J. Lasker and Sarah Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, 1996). 46.  Ibid., 1:21. 47.  Ibid., 1:19. 48.  Ibid., 1:35. 49.  Qissa 76, cited in ibid., 1:67. 50.  Qissa 82, cited in ibid., 1:68. 51.  Kontakion sung in honor of the Icon of the Unburnt Bush on September 4 (not coincidently, also the feast day of Moses). The translation used here is that of the Orthodox Church in America, used by permission (available at “Icon of the Mother of God: ‘The Unburnt Bush,’” https://oca.org/saints/lives/2010/09/04/102500-icon -of-the-mother-of-god-the-unburnt-bush). 52.  Sefer 179–80, cited in Lasker and Stroumsa, Polemic of Nestor the Priest, 1:128. 53.  See Azar, “Prophetic Matrix,” 19. 54.  Unfortunately, Jewish–Christian dialogue in the West has tended to ignore Orthodox Christianity, cf. John Pawlikowski, “Historical Memory and Christian–Jewish Relations,” in Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships, ed. Philip A. Cunningham et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 14–30, here 28. 55.  On the Russian pogroms, which were partly the result of historical circumstances distinct to the Russian Empire, see John Doyle Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 56.  A variety of observations offered above also appear in Azar, Exegeting the Jews, 211–15. 57.  Alfons Fürst, “Jüdisch-christliche Gemeinsamkeiten im Kontext der Antike. Zur Hermeneutik der patristischen Theologie,” in Methodische Erneuerung der Theologie: Konsequenzen der wiederentdeckten jüdisch-christlichen Gemeinsamkeiten, ed. Peter Hünermann and Thomas Söding (Freiburg: Herder, 2003), 71–92, here 71. 58.  Marc Saperstein, “A Jewish Response to John T. Pawlikowski and Mary C. Boys,” in Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships, ed. Philip A. Cunningham et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 64–76. Though Saperstein here is speaking specifically of the two essays that

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precede his, I am applying his points more broadly (as he does elsewhere; cf. ibid., 73n10). 59.  See, for example, the story titled, “What Christ Said about the Jews,” in the antisemitic children’s book by Ernst Hiemer: Der Giftpilz (Nuremberg: Stürmerverlag, 1938), 40–41. 60. As translated in George C. Papademetriou, Essays on Orthodox Christian– Jewish Relations (Bristol, IN.: Wyndham Hall, 1990), 87–88.

Part II

PREACHING JOHN

Chapter Three

Preaching the Hostile References to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John R. Alan Culpepper

A personal word: I delivered my first paper on “the Jews” in John thirty years ago.1 I think I understand John and its references to “the Jews” better now, but I find that they trouble me more. John is distinctive among the Gospels in the way it connects the reader with the ministry of Jesus. Every religion that has scriptures interprets its scriptures for each new generation, in the contemporary context, and seeks to connect each new generation with its scriptures. The Gospel of John, however, at least at points, tells the story of the past in terms of the setting of its intended hearers or readers, as though Jesus were acting or speaking to their context. J. Louis Martyn coined the term “a two-level drama” in his interpretation of John 9.2 The effect is that its original readers could see their situation reflected in the Gospel’s narrative of Jesus’s conflict with the synagogue authorities. But it also means that a bridge was created over which the hostility with the Pharisees in Jesus’s day is conveyed into the present of each new generation of readers.3 The growing awareness of the anti-Judaism of the Gospel of John was shaped by the work of Raymond E. Brown, the most influential American New Testament scholar of the twentieth century. A review of the development of his thought can serve, therefore, as a reminder of the course the discussion of John’s references to “the Jews” has taken, and a model of increasing awareness and sensitivity. Brown’s growing recognition of the problem has been cogently traced by Sonya Cronin in her book, Raymond Brown, “the Jews,” and the Gospel of John: From Apologia to Apology.4 Cronin describes the evolution of Brown’s interpretation of “the Jews” in the Gospel of John through the course of his writings, decade by decade, and traces his move “from apologia to apology.” In The Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles, a short book published in 1960,5 Brown interpreted “the 49

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Jews” as “the hostile Jerusalem authorities” and displayed no awareness of potential anti-Jewishness in the Gospel. The first volume of his Anchor Bible commentary on John, published in 1966,6 recognized that the term “the Jews” carried different meanings in different passages in the Gospel and that its use was influenced by the evangelist’s post 70 CE setting. Changes in his views in the second volume of the commentary, published in 1970, are subtle at best, but seem in line with his growing awareness. In The Community of the Beloved Disciple (1979),7 he reconstructed the history of the Johannine community and speculated that the use of the term “the Jews” as a reference to the community’s opponents in the synagogue originated with Samaritan converts who joined the community. The term was adopted by the community following their expulsion from the synagogue, when they no longer considered themselves Jews. For the first time, Brown describes the hostility in the Gospel as anti-Jewish.8 Further development in Brown’s thought is evident in his magisterial works published in the 1990s. In The Death of the Messiah (1994),9 Brown continued to maintain the involvement of Jews in Jesus’s death but moved on to repudiate the condemnation of Jews by the Church in later centuries, quoting Nostra Aetate for the first time as exemplary of modern Christian attitudes toward Jews. Brown addressed his readers directly about anti-Jewish sentiment. At the same time, he reiterated positions he took in The Community of the Beloved Disciple, that the conflict with the synagogue reflects the Gospel’s setting rather than the ministry of Jesus, and that “John’s intent is hostile, deliberate, and incriminating towards ‘the Jews.’”10 Concern over anti-Judaism pervades the last book he published before his death, A Retreat with John the Evangelist (1998).11 In this slim, creatively written volume Brown allows the evangelist to speak in the first person, to claim that he was not John the son of Zebedee, and that his characters represent different types of responses to Jesus. The evangelist says that he never intended his Gospel to fuel hatred for the Jews in later centuries, “and I sincerely regret that my words were applied to them.”12 Brown’s awareness of John’s anti-Judaism therefore grew steadily over the decades, and he moved from explaining it to apologizing for it.13 In contrast, many interpreters insist that John is not anti-Jewish but reflects an intra-Jewish dispute.14 The intent of this chapter is to offer some practical help to those who teach and preach the Gospel. First, it discusses the identification of hostile references to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John and locates them in the Revised Common Lectionary.15 Then, it offers some brief comments on the texts with hostile references and concludes with suggestions for how they can be handled in the context of worship and preaching.



Preaching the Hostile References to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John 51

IDENTIFYING THE HOSTILE REFERENCES TO “THE JEWS” IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN There are about seventy references to “the Jews” in the Gospel. Some of these simply distinguish Jews from Samaritans or Gentiles. Other occurrences of the term, however, reflect a distinctive, hostile, Johannine use of the term. So hurtful are these references that Kaufmann Kohler’s comment in the Jewish Encyclopedia over a century ago, that the Gospel of John has been called “a gospel of Christian love and Jew hatred,”16 still calls for a response from Christians. Interpreters have commonly distinguished various uses of the term Ioudaioi in John. In a much-cited article, Urban C. von Wahlde surveys all of the references to the Ioudaioi in John. Von Wahlde identifies three characteristics of “the Johannine use” (i.e., “hostile” use) of this term:17 1.  In these instances “the term does not have its nationalistic meaning since these ‘Jews’ are distinguished from other people who are themselves Jews by nationality/religion/culture.” 2.  A second characteristic of the Johannine Jews is their hostility toward Jesus. 3.  “They represent a single undifferentiated reaction. There is no sign of an increase of hostility throughout the gospel.” Two observations need to be made at this point. (1) Von Wahlde was responding to efforts to distinguish the instances where hoi Ioudaioi refers to the religious authorities from those where it refers to the common people, and (2) he then used this category of references as a criterion in his theory of the sources and stages in the composition of the Gospel. He therefore made distinctions that are not necessarily relevant for our present purposes. Still, his widely recognized work provides a standard by which we can identify the hostile references in John. The result of his analysis is a scheme of seven categories of the Johannine use of the term “the Jews”: 1.  Texts where “the Jews” are clearly authorities and clearly hostile: 5:10, 15, 16, 18; 7:13, 15; 9:18, 22a, 22b; 18:12, 14, 36; 19:38; 20:19. 2.  One text where “the Jews” are clearly identified as authorities, but their attitude is not one of hostility or unbelief but rather skepticism: 1:19. 3.  Jews as a group manifesting unbelief and skepticism, but they are not clearly identified as authorities: 2:18, 20; 7:35. 4.  In some verses, the intense hostility and stereotyped group reaction to Jesus mark them as “Johannine Jews,” but it is not explicitly clear that they

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are authorities: 7:1, 11; 8:22, 48, 52, 57; 10:24, 31, 33; 11:8; 13:33; 18:31, 38; 19:7; and 19:12, 14, 31, which are brief but refer to the same group. 5.  Occurrences in the passion narrative too brief to be judged individually but referring to the group identified earlier as hostile authorities: 18:20, 33, 35, 39; 19:3, 19, 20, 21a, 21b, 21c, 40, 42. 6.  References to common people who show the same hostility and stereotyped reaction to Jesus as the authorities: 6:41, 52. 7.  Two texts that do not fit any of the above categories: 8:31; 10:19. In a recent article, von Wahlde builds on his longstanding engagement with this subject, arguing for the necessity of distinguishing among three meanings of the term Ioudaioi in the Gospel of John: (1) “Judeans,” (2) “the national, ethnic, and religious entity,” and (3) “a group that functions as religious authorities.”18 The latter are characterized by “the fact that the hostility of all in this group is uniform in intensity.”19 Paul Anderson argues that the hostile uses of the term Ioudaioi are limited to the authorities in Jerusalem and that John is not anti-Jewish. 20 While I take issue with his argument at various points,21 his analysis clarifies the data. Anderson distinguishes the positive, negative, neutral, and ambiguous references to hoi Ioudaioi in John. The only positive reference is in John 4:22, “salvation is from the Jews.” There are no negative or ambivalent references to hoi Ioudaioi where the term designates the Jewish religion in general. All are positive or neutral (1:31, 47, 49; 3:10; 12:13). Where the term designates Judeans or religious authorities in Judea, it occurs in positive (7:15; 8:31–32; 11:18–19, 31, 33, 35–36; 12:9–11), neutral (1:19; 3:1, 25; 5:15; 10:24; 13:33; 18:14, 20), negative (2:18, 20; 5:16, 18; 6:41, 52; 7:1, 11, 13, 35–36; 8:22, 48, 52, 56–57, 59; 9:18, 22; 10:30–33; 11:8, 53; 12:42; 16:2; 18:31, 36, 38; 19:7, 12, 14, 20–21, 38; 20:19), and ambivalent (3:1–8; 7:1–10, 50–51; 10:19–21; 11:7–8, 45–46, 54; 19:39–40) references. Note that Anderson combines the Judeans and the religious authorities, two categories that von Wahlde distinguishes. Anderson concludes: The result of this analysis is that while many among the Judeans believe—as did also the Galileans, the Samaritans, and the Hellenists—half of the Ioudaioi references in John are to Judean leaders who question Jesus, fail to embrace his works and teachings, and seek to do him in. They see him as an affront to temple money-changing and animal-selling enterprises, and his healings on the Sabbath violate the Mosaic Law.22

Ambivalence is palpable, Anderson observes, as “there are intense divisions among Judean leaders over Jesus”; “some believe in him and others oppose



Preaching the Hostile References to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John 53

them for doing so.”23 For our purposes, it is noteworthy that Anderson interprets the following references in John 1–12, identified by von Wahlde as negative, to be neutral: 1:19; 10:24; 13:33. He also nuances the references in the passion narrative. Some of those von Wahlde identifies as hostile but assigned to category 5: “Occurrences in the passion narrative too brief to be judged individually but referring to the group identified earlier as hostile authorities,” Anderson reads verses 18:14, 20, 33, 35, 39; 19:3, 19, 20–21, 31, 40, and 42 as neutral. Using the categories defined by von Wahlde and Anderson, we can identify the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary in which the verses containing hostile references to the Jews appear and then offer suggestions for how those who preach and teach these texts can interpret these verses. We will also need to raise the broader question regarding whether limiting the hostility toward the Jews in John to the verses in which it is overt alleviates the problem of anti-Judaism in John in any significant way. IDENTIFYING THE HOSTILE REFERENCES TO “THE JEWS” IN THE LECTIONARY The lectionary does not devote a “year” to the Gospel of John, as it does to each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Nevertheless, Johannine texts appear in the lectionary several times each year, and every year during Holy Week. The first step is to identify the Sundays on which the “hostile references” serve as the gospel text in the lectionary used in most churches. Table 3.1 is arranged by year (A, B, C), with the liturgical season in the left column, the Sundays for which there is a reading in John, the Johannine text (in bold if it contains a “hostile” reference to “the Jews”), and its categorization by von Wahlde and Anderson in the remaining columns. The references to “the Jews” in the passion narrative, read on Good Friday, are assigned to the categories in table 3.2 by von Wahlde and Anderson. By comparing the list of hostile references with the Johannine texts chosen for the lectionary, it is evident that many of the most flagrant occurrences of the Johannine use of the term have been excluded from the lectionary. Most of the hostile texts that do appear in the lectionary occur in texts that are important in the Christian Year, and are therefore unavoidable, as, for example, the Johannine texts that are read during Holy Week every year. The exercise of assigning references to “the Jews” in John to various categories is useful for identifying those verses, which, when read in isolation as the text for the morning, contain explicit, hostile overtones. On the other

20:19

10:1-10 14:1-14 14:15-21 17:1-11 20:19-23/7:37-39

I

I

I IV

20:19

12:9, 11

3:1 4:9, 22 9:18, 22 11:7, 8, 19, 31, 33, 36, 45

IV I, IV, V I, V

3:1-17 4:5-42 9:1-41 11:1-45

Mar. 12 Mar. 19 Mar. 26 Apr. 2

(von Wahlde)

Category

13:33 see below 19:38, 40, 42

1:29-42

Jan. 15

“the Jews”

12:1-11 12:20-36 13:21-32 13:1-17, 31b-35 18:1-19:42 19:38-42 20:1-18 20:19-31

1:1-14

John

Dec. 25

Holy Week    Monday April 10    Tuesday April 11    Wednesday April 12    Thursday April 13    Friday April 14    Saturday April 15 Easter April 16    2nd Sunday April 23    3rd Sunday    4th Sunday May 7    5th Sunday May 14    6th Sunday May 21    7th Sunday May 28 Pentecost June 4 Season after Pentecost

Advent Christmas Epiphany    2nd Sunday Lent    2nd Sunday    3rd Sunday    4th Sunday    5th Sunday

Year A 2016-17

Table 3.1.  Readings from John in the Lectionary Cycle

Negative

Negative

19:38 Negative; 19:40, 42 Neutral

Neutral

Negative Negative

(Anderson)

Advent    3rd Sunday Dec. 17 Christmas Dec. 25 Epiphany    2nd Sunday Jan. 14 Lent    3rd Sunday Mar. 4    4th Sunday Mar. 11    5th Sunday Mar. 18 Holy Week    Monday Mar. 26    Tuesday Mar. 27    Wednesday Mar. 28    Thursday Mar. 29    Friday Mar. 30    Saturday Mar. 31 Easter April 1    2nd Sunday April 8    4th Sunday April 22    5th Sunday April 29    6th Sunday May 6    7th Sunday May 13 Pentecost May 20 Season after Pentecost    Trinity Sunday May 27    10th Sunday July 29    11th Sunday Aug. 5    12th Sunday Aug. 12    13th Sunday Aug. 19    14th Sunday Aug. 26    All Saints Day Nov. 1    27th Sunday Nov. 25

Year B 2017-18

3:1-17 6:1-21 6:24-35 6:35, 41-51 6:51-58 6:56-69 11:32-44 18:33-37

I

20:19

VI VI

I, V

6:41 6:52 11:33, 36 18:33, 35, 36

3:1 6:4

IV I, IV, V I, V

12:9, 11

12:1-11 12:20-36 13:21-32 13:1-17, 31b-35 18:1-19:42 19:38-42 20:1-18 20:19-31 10:11-18 15:1-8 15:9-17 17:6-19 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

III

II

(von Wahlde)

Category

13:33 see below 19:38, 40, 42

2:13, 18, 20

1:19

“the Jews”

2:13-22 3:14-21 12:20-33

1:43-51

1:6-8, 19-28 1:1-14

John

18:33, 35 Neutral; 18:36 Negative (continued)

Negative Negative

Negative

19:38 Negative; 19:40, 42 Neutral

Neutral

Negative

Neutral

(Anderson)

(Hostile references in bold)

Advent Christmas Epiphany    2nd Sunday Lent Holy Week    Monday    Tuesday    Wednesday    Thursday    Friday    Saturday Easter    2nd Sunday    3rd Sunday 4th Sunday 5th Sunday 6th Sunday 7th Sunday Pentecost Season after Pentecost Trinity Sunday Thanksgiving Day

1:1-14

2:1-11

12:1-11 12:20-36 13:21-32 13:1-17, 31b-35 18:1-19:42 19:38-42 20:1-18 20:19-31 21:1-19 10:22-30 13:31-35 14:21-29/5:1-9 17:20-26 14:8-17 (25-27)

16:12-15 6:25-35

Jan. 20

April 15 April 16 April 17 April 18 April 19 April 20 April 21 April 28 May 5 May 12 May 19 May 26 June 2 June 9

June 16 Nov. 28

John

Dec. 25

Year C 2018-19

Table 3.1.  (continued)

I I, IV, V I, V I IV IV

20:19 10:19, 24 13:33

(von Wahlde)

Category

13:33 see below 19:38, 40, 42

12:9, 11

2:6

“the Jews”

Neutral Neutral

Negative

19:38 Negative; 19:40, 42 Neutral

Neutral

(Anderson)



Preaching the Hostile References to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John 57

Table 3.2.  Good Friday “The Jews” in John 18:1–19:42 Category

von Wahlde

Anderson

I.

18:12, 14, 36; 19:38

IV. V.

18:31, 38; 19:7; and 19:12, 14, 31 18:20, 33, 35, 39; 19:3, 19, 20, 21a, 21b, 21c, 40, 42

18:14 (Neutral), 18:36 (Negative); 19:38 (Negative) Negative; but 19:31 Neutral Neutral

hand, the so-called hostile references cannot be so neatly categorized and contained when one considers the Gospel as a whole. The term hoi Ioudaioi (“the Jews”) is a universalizing reference. The Gospel constructs this group character sequentially, adding new information with each reference. The characterization of “the Jews” begins with the statement in the prologue that “his own people did not accept him” (1:11). The first reference to “the Jews” conveys that they have some measure of authority and that they are located in Jerusalem: they “sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem” to question John the Baptist (1:19), and then they question Jesus in the temple (2:18, 20). Jesus does not trust those “who believed in his name” in Jerusalem as a result of the sign that he did there (2:23; cf. 1:12 and 2:11). After the reader is told that “the Jews” were seeking to kill Jesus (5:18), every subsequent reference is colored by this attribution of hostility to them. Accordingly, even “the Jews who had believed in him” (8:31) are called children of the devil (8:44). Even the earlier statement that “salvation is from the Jews” (4:22) can hardly be classified as a positive reference.24 Salvation, like Moses and the prophets, the law, the temple, and the festivals are all part of the heritage that John claims for those who receive the revelation that Jesus brings. The “true worshipers” will worship “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” but “in spirit and truth” (4:21–23). Although hoi Ioudaioi may designate Jews as opposed to Samaritans in John 4 and Judeans in some later references and religious authorities in others, its ambiguity in John means that the hostility associated with some of the references colors all of them as one reads the Gospel. Consequently, one cannot limit its effect by assigning it to some occurrences of the term while assigning others to different categories. The exercise of categorizing references to “the Jews” is useful here, however, to identify those verses that, read in isolation, convey the hostility that John attaches to “the Jews” as it progressively develops this term as a group character in the Gospel.

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COMMENTS ON THE LECTIONARY TEXTS CONTAINING HOSTILE REFERENCES My intent is certainly not to minimize the potentially hateful influence of the Johannine use of “the Jews,” but to identify the scope of the problem and provide brief comments on the lectionary texts that contain such hostile references with the hope of helping those who follow the lectionary in their preaching schedule. John 1:19 Year B, Advent, 3rd Sunday This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”25 Here “the Jews” are clearly religious leaders with the authority to send priests and Levites from Jerusalem to investigate John the Baptist’s activities and preaching. This passage says more about John’s notoriety than it does about the authorities. They are responding responsibly to a popular movement and a radical prophet whose following might pose a threat to the fragile stability of the people under Roman domination. When the Gospel uses language in this way, as it does, we must be very careful about making general references that judge all Jews, either then or now. John 2:18, 20 Year B, Lent, 3rd Sunday The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” These “Jews” may be either the temple authorities or some in the crowds who responded to Jesus’s demonstration in the temple. They speak the “Johannine language” when they ask Jesus about a “sign”—language we do not find in the so-called “cleansing of the temple” in the other gospels.26 Jesus answers metaphorically, as he typically does in John. The important theme for proclamation in these verses is not the opposition Jesus encountered in the temple but John’s assertion that Jesus is the locus of God’s presence and revelation after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Jesus did not say that he would



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destroy the temple but that he would raise up a new temple, referring to his resurrection. The church is therefore imaged as a new temple community, which may be supersessionistic but need not be interpreted in an exclusive manner.27 John 6:41 Year B, Season after Pentecost, 12th Sunday Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” This verse occurs in the context of Jesus’s discourse following the feeding of the five thousand earlier in this chapter. This verse and 6:52, the text for the next Sunday, are the only two verses von Wahlde assigned to category VI, references in which common people show the same hostility and stereotyped reaction to Jesus as the authorities. Because they are unique in this respect they are perplexing. Since the feeding occurs in Galilee, it has been suggested that these verses designate “the Judeans,” but it is doubtful that John means to say that only the Judeans responded to Jesus’s discourse with “murmuring” (6:41, Greek: egonguzon) and then “disputing” or fighting among themselves (6:52). There is more here than might initially be apparent. Immediately following the reference to Moses at the end of the previous chapter, Jesus feeds a multitude at the time of the Passover. When the crowd in Capernaum challenges him to do a sign the next day, quoting Ps 78:24 (or Exod. 16:4, 15), “he gave them bread from heaven to eat” (John 6:31), Jesus systematically reinterprets each part of this verse in good midrashic fashion, claiming that “he” is the Father, not Moses; the bread is Jesus himself, not manna; and eating the bread means eating his body and drinking his blood. “The Jews” then reenact the rebelliousness of the ancient Israelites in the wilderness, just as Jesus reenacted the feeding in the wilderness. One way to handle this passage homiletically is to affirm that we who continue to be fed by the heavenly Father are no less rebellious than the ancient Israelites who ate manna in the wilderness or the crowd of Galileans in Jesus’s day. John 6:52 Year B, Season after Pentecost, 13th Sunday The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” See the comment above on John 6:41.

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John 9:18, 22 Year A, Lent, 4th Sunday The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight. . . . 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 18

As it happens, the first text with hostile references to appear in Year A has been the single most influential text in the debate over the life setting of the Fourth Gospel in the last fifty years. In his landmark volume, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel,28 J. Louis Martyn proposed that the Gospel can be read on two levels: the time of the ministry of Jesus and the events in the Johannine community at the time the Gospel was written. This verse was his principal argument as he contended that the verb “to agree” suggests a formal agreement. Because there was no such agreement during Jesus’s ministry, Martyn argued, this reference is anachronistic, pointing to an agreement that precipitated the exclusion of Johannine Jesus followers from the synagogue. Martyn claimed that this “agreement” was the Birkat ha-Minim, the twelfth blessing in the Shemoneh Esrei, the central set of prayers of the Jewish liturgy, a claim that most Johannine scholars have repudiated or modified.29 Debate over this verse has contributed to a much wider reassessment of “the parting of the ways,” as James D. G. Dunn put it.30 Most scholars would agree, however, that John interprets the ministry and teachings of Jesus with a view to their meaning in his own time, near the end of the first century CE. Preachers are faced with a delicate task. Sunday morning is not the time to try to lead a congregation into the murky historical processes by which Christians separated from Judaism, or an overview of fifty years of Johannine scholarship. At the same time, some guidance is needed, at least in passing, regarding John’s account of Jesus’s conflict with the religious authorities in its historical and literary context. The preacher will of course have to decide how to do this for his or her congregation, but this much can certainly be said: (1) We do not know how the separation between Jews and Christians took place, probably in various ways and at different times in different communities.31 (2) We have to be careful about reading later distinctions back into these earliest times. (3) The Pharisees who took the lead in investigating Jesus’s healing on the Sabbath were faithfully trying to insure that God’s commandments were being respected and observed in their community.



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John 10:24 Year C, Easter, 4th Sunday So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” The context here is Jesus’s teaching in the temple at Hanukkah. At the end of the scene (10:31), “the Jews” take up stones to stone him. This single verse will need some context, but the reading can stop with 10:30. The Jews’ question raises the issue of the identity of the Messiah and what Mark Stibbe has termed “the elusive Christ” of the Fourth Gospel.32 In this context, the reference to “the Jews” in John 10:24 need not be treated as a hostile reference. The Jews simply function here, as do other interlocutors in John, to advance the dialogue. John 11:8 Year A, Lent, 5th Sunday The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” As is the case with all the hostile references in John, the Gospel does not mean all “the Jews.” In this instance, John means those who took up stones against Jesus (10:31) after his dispute with them in the temple. There was a specific conflict that gave rise to this opposition. Yet, because the disciples did not really understand what Jesus was doing, they were fearful about his announcement that they would return to the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany. The emphasis should fall on the disciples’ lack of understanding, Jesus’s love for Lazarus, and Jesus’s obedience to the direction of his Father. John presents the resurrection of Lazarus as a sign of what Jesus was doing (and will do) for all who receive him. John 13:33 Year C, Easter, 5th Sunday; Holy Week, Thursday “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’” This reference continues the themes of Jesus’s elusiveness and his “whence” and “whither.” In John, one must understand where Jesus comes from and where he is going in order to understand who he is. Characteristically, the theme is developed through misunderstandings. In John 7:33 Jesus

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announced that he was going to the one who sent him. “The Jews” do not understand, and they speculate, ironically, that he is going to the Diaspora. In the next chapter the same exchange is repeated. This time they speculate that he will kill himself (8:21–22). In the lectionary text, Jesus says for a third time that he is going away. This time it is the disciples who do not understand. The reference to “the Jews” in this verse simply signals the cross reference to the early exchanges. John 18:1–19:42 Years A, B, and C, Good Friday In the Christian calendar, Holy Week is a season for deep introspection, confession, reaffirmation of one’s faith, and affirming the triumph of life over death in the Resurrection. There are nineteen references to “the Jews” in John’s account of the arrest, trial, death, and burial of Jesus (18:1–19:42), counting three in 19:21. Ten of these are in reference to the title “the King of the Jews” and its interpretation in John (18:31, 33, 36, 38, 39; 19:3, 14, 19, 21). In the other references Caiaphas is reintroduced as the one who advised “the Jews” that it was better for one man to die “on behalf of the people” than for the nation to be destroyed (18:14 referencing 11:47–52). In John 18:20, Jesus declares that he has not taught in secret but in public, in the synagogues and in the temple, “where all the Jews come together.” In John 19:7, “the Jews” respond to Pilate’s verdict that he “finds no crime” in Jesus, saying that they have a law that forbids blasphemy, and by that law he ought to die because he claims to be the Son of God. “The Jews” protest that, if Pilate releases Jesus, he is no “friend of Caesar” (19:12). “The Jews” then protest Pilate’s inscription of the charge against Jesus, saying that it should read, “This man said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’” (19:20–21). John 19:30 notes that, because it was the day of preparation for the Sabbath, Pilate ordered that the criminals’ legs be broken to hasten their deaths. The last two references (19:38, 40) are in the text for Saturday of Holy Week (see below). John’s passion narrative is distinctive in several respects. First, only in John are the Romans involved in the arrest of Jesus. In fact, quite implausibly, John says that Judas led a cohort (six hundred soldiers) and men from the high priests and Pharisees to the garden across the Kidron to arrest Jesus. The point is that, unlike the Synoptics, in which the Jewish authorities arrest Jesus and then take him to Pilate the next morning, in John, Pilate must have ordered Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus. Second, the trial of Jesus before Pilate is staged in John to focus on Pilate’s struggle with



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his response to Jesus and his failure to confess him publicly because of his loyalty to Caesar. The narrator says that the Gospel was written to bring its readers to believe in Jesus (20:30–31), and in John the characters who encounter Jesus are used to illustrate various responses to him. In the trial narrative, therefore, attention is focused on Pilate, not the Jewish people or the Jewish religious authorities. To be faithful to the text and its reading during Holy Week, sermons should focus on Pilate as a reminder of how self-interest, compromise for political expediency, and “the Empire” can undermine one’s impulse to faith. Holy Week challenges all believers to see themselves in Pilate’s treachery. John 18:33, 35, 36 Year B, Season after Pentecost, 27th Sunday Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 35 Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Two identities are at issue in these verses. Is Jesus “the king of the Jews?” And, who is Pilate: “I am not a Jew, am I?” Jesus is indeed “the King of the Jews,” as the inscription Pilate himself wrote testifies (19:19–21); but as Jesus declares, his kingdom is not of this world. It transcends political, ethnic, and racial boundaries. The further question, as the Johannine trial before Pilate unfolds, is Pilate’s identity, which only he can determine. His angry rebuff, “I am not a Jew, am I?” expresses the typical contempt of a Roman official for a provincial, but it is worth considering how the question functions in John. Since Jesus has just challenged Pilate to make his own decision about who Jesus is, the question seems to imply that since he is not a Jew he is exempt from the challenge of faith. By declaring that his kingdom “is not of this world” Jesus vows that his activities are apolitical, that is, not revolutionary or directly anti-Roman. Jesus answers Pilate’s second question, “what have you done?” passing over his first question, “I am not a Jew, am I?” What answer might the evangelist have expected the reader to supply? Of course, Pilate is not a Jew, but that does not mean that he does not have to make his

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own response to Jesus. The revelation through the Son came to the Jews, but it is also for Gentiles—indeed, the whole world (17:18). John 19:38, 40, 42 Holy Week, Saturday After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. . . . 40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. . . . 42 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. John’s account of the burial of Jesus follows the pattern of using characters as studies in responses to the demands of faith. Developing the tradition that Jesus was buried by strangers (Acts 13:29), specifically Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43 and parallels), John identifies Joseph as a “secret believer’ (cf. 12:42) for “fear of the Jews” and adds the participation of Nicodemus. Here again, “the Jews” are in the background. Attention is focused on Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and their courage in requesting the body of Jesus and giving it a decent burial. John 20:19 Year A, Easter, 2nd Sunday Year B, Easter, 2nd Sunday Year C, Easter, 2nd Sunday When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” The locked doors heighten the wonder of the risen Lord’s appearance to the disciples. Here “the Jews” probably refers to the authorities who collaborated with the Romans in Jesus’s death. The preacher can refer to “the authorities” with no loss of meaning when retelling the story. Secondarily, John’s account may evoke the fear of the civic and religious leaders among adherents of the Johannine community later in the century. One of the themes of this appearance story is Jesus’s reassurance of the believing community when it encountered opposition, as it has at various periods in Christian history and still does today in various parts of the world.



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SUGGESTIONS FOR PREACHING TEXTS CONTAINING HOSTILE REFERENCES At a gathering of participants in the “Christian Leadership Initiative,” a program cosponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the Shalom Hartmann Institute, Chaim Seidler-Feller offered a four-step approach to morally problematic texts, an approach that he attributed to Krister Stendahl: 1.  Acknowledge the problem 2.  Set the texts in their historical context 3.  Reinterpret the texts 4.  Condemn the text on moral grounds The difficulty posed by the hostile references to “the Jews” in the Christian scriptures is no secret. By acknowledging the problem at the outset, the preacher sensitizes the congregation to this issue and recognizes the discomfort many of them also feel. Preacher and congregants can then struggle together to find ways to read the text. As the foregoing notes suggest, one approach to preaching these texts is to be careful about language so that one does not perpetuate the stereotype of hostility, and to set the text in its historical and literary context. By doing so, the preacher can show that the Gospel texts should not be read anachronistically or out of context. Texts often contain theological or moral dilemmas. The preacher can place texts in juxtaposition with one another so that the hearers have to deal with the tension. Some of the Johannine texts are classically paradoxical: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” (John 1:9) “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1:12) “. . . many believed in his name because of the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.” (John 2:23–24) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . .” (John 3:16) “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” (1 John 2:15)

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“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” (John 13:34) “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” (John 8:44)

The Gospel of John continually confronts us with the challenge of contextualizing its language of hostility in reference to “the Jews.” This struggle to reconcile the “Gospel of Christian love” with its language of “Jew hatred”33 transcends the original intent of the Gospel, requiring interpreters to contextualize and deconstruct the latter in light of the Gospel’s own overriding ethic of love.34 Each Sunday has four readings, so the preacher may also set one of the other texts in dialogue with the Johannine text. My point in these brief comments is that, by paying attention to John’s themes and the subtleties of the lectionary texts, the preacher can find ways to highlight the Gospel’s message about Jesus and its call to faith while leaving its references to “the Jews” in the background and contextualizing them. That does not mean that they should be ignored. In appropriate ways, the preacher can explain that the Gospel is rooted in a setting of dispute with the Jewish authorities at the time the Gospel was written. This historical setting accounts for its hostile references to “the Jews.” Nevertheless, while these references are echoes of a context long in the past, not the message of the Gospel for Christians today, the hostility to which they give voice must be addressed and rejected if one is to be faithful to the Gospel in which they appear. NOTES 1.  “The Gospel of John and the Jews,” RevExp 84 (1987): 273–88; “The Gospel of John as a Threat to Jewish–Christian Relations,” in Overcoming Fear between Jews and Christians, edited by James H. Charlesworth (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 21–43; “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Problem for Christian Interpreters,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, edited by R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 61–82. 2.  J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1968). 3. Reginald H. Fuller, “The ‘Jews’ in the Fourth Gospel,” Dialog 16 (1977): 31–37. 4.  LNTS 504 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). Cf. my review in RBL 2016, from which the following paragraphs are taken. 5.  Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel of St. John and the Johannine Epistles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1960).



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  6.  Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, AB 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).   7.  Raymond E. Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979).  8. Cronin, Raymond Brown, 82 (n. 4); Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple, 42 n. 66 (n. 7).  9. Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994). 10. Cronin, Raymond Brown, 101 (n. 4). 11.  Raymond E. Brown, A Retreat with John the Evangelist (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger, 1998). 12.  Ibid., 71; Cronin, Raymond Brown, 123 (n. 4). 13. For significant additions to the field in the past sixteen years, see esp.: Reimund Bieringer et al., eds., Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, edited by R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001); Adele Reinhartz, Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (New York: Continuum, 2001); Raimo Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews, and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Susan E. Hylen, Imperfect Believers: Ambiguous Characters in the Gospel of John (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 113–34; Ruben Zimmermann, “‘The Jews’: Unreliable Figures or Unreliable Narration?” in Character Studies in the Fourth Gospel: Narrative Approaches to Seventy Figures in John, edited by Steven A. Hunt, D. Francois Tolmie, and Ruben Zimmermann, WUNT 314 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 71–109; Cornelis Bennema, Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 87–100; Nina L. Collins, Jesus, the Sabbath and the Jewish Debate: Healing on the Sabbath in the 1st and 2nd Centuries CE, LNTS 474 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Jonathan Numada, “Interpreting Johannine Anti-Judaism in Light of Hellenistic Diaspora Jewish Social Identity and Cultural Memory” (McMaster, PhD dissertation, 2016); and R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson, eds., John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, RBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017). 14.  See the essays in Bieringer et al., eds., Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel (n. 13); Daniel Boyarin, “The Ioudaioi in John and the Prehistory of ‘Judaism,’” in Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin J. Roetzel, edited by Janice Capel Anderson, et. al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); Paul N. Anderson, “AntiSemitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, edited by R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson, RBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 265–311. 15.  The Revised Common Lectionary (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1992). See http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/. For the Catholic Lectionary, see “Readings from John’s Gospel Used on Sundays and Major Feasts,” compiled by Felix Just: http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/John-Gospel-Sundays.htm. 16.  Kaufmann Kohler, “New Testament,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1905), 9: 251.

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17.  Urban C. von Wahlde, “The Johannine ‘Jews’: A Critical Survey,” NTS 28 (1982): 33–60; see further idem, “The Gospel of John and the Presentation of Jews and Judaism,” in Within Context: Essays on Jews and Judaism in the New Testament, edited by David P. Efroymson, Eugene Fisher, and Leon Klinicki (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 67–84; idem, “‘The Jews’ in the Gospel of John: Fifteen Years of Research (1983–1998),” ETL 76 (2000): 30–55. 18.  Urban C. von Wahlde, “Narrative Criticism of the Religious Authorities as a Group Character in the Gospel of John: Some Problems,” NTS 63 (2017): 222–45, esp. 232. 19.  Ibid., 232 n. 33. 20.  Anderson, “Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John” (n. 14). 21.  See “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Problem for Christian Interpreters” (n. 1). 22.  Anderson, “Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John,” 291. 23.  Ibid., 290. 24.  Cf. “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Challenge for Christian Interpreters,” 74 (n. 1). 25.  Quotations from John are taken from the NRSV. 26.  John develops the trope of Jews seeking signs. Cf. John 6:30; Matt 12:38–39; 16:1–4; Mark 8:11–12; Luke 11:16, 29; 1 Cor 1:22. 27.  See Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001); Michael Theobald, “Raum- und Zeitkonstruktion im Johannesevangelium. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur expositionellen Funktion der Erzählung von der Tempelreinigung Joh 2,13–22,” in The Opening of John’s Narrative (John 1:19–2:22): Historical, Literary, and Theological Readings from the Colloquium Ioanneum 2015 in Ephesus, edited by R. Alan Culpepper and Jörg Frey, WUNT 385 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 249–73. 28. J. L. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1968), revised editions in 1979, 2003. Cf. esp. Adele Reinhartz, “Story and History: John, Judaism and the Historical Imagination,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationshp in Context, edited by R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson, RBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 113–26. 29.  See n. 13 above; Reinhartz, “Story and History”; and Ruth Langer, Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat Haminim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 30.  James D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and Judaism and Their Significance for the Character of Christianity, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2006). 31. See Jörg Frey, “Toward Reconfiguring Our Views on the ‘Parting of the Ways’: Ephesus as a Test Case,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, edited by R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson, RBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 221–39.



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32.  Mark W. G. Stibbe, “The Elusive Christ: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel,” in The Gospel of John as Literature: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Perspectives, edited by Mark W. G. Stibbe, NTTS 17 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 231–47. 33.  See n. 16 above. 34.  See my essay, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Problem for Christian Interpreters” (n. 1); and Francis J. Moloney, Love in the Gospel of John: An Exegetical, Theological, and Literary Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013).

Chapter Four

The Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary Eileen Schuller

It is generally acknowledged that one of the results of the Second Vatican Council that had a significant and immediate impact on Catholic life was the reform of the lectionary: the predetermined selection of biblical readings to be used on each Sunday of the year, on weekdays, on special feasts and occasions, and for the celebration of the sacraments.1 This reform also had significant ecumenical ramifications since, in the aftermath of the Council, the lectionary of the Roman Catholic Church was, with some modifications, adapted and adopted by many Protestant churches.2 In revising the lectionary that had been used since 1570, the Second Vatican Council called for “a more ample, more varied and more suitable reading from sacred scripture” with the intent that “the treasure of the Bible be opened up more lavishly so that a richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God’s word.”3 The Revised Lectionary of the Roman Missal for Sundays and Solemnities was promulgated in 1969 and implemented on the first Sunday of Advent in 1971, with a few small revisions added in 1981.4 The Protestant adaptation was published as the Common Lectionary in 1972 and the Revised Common Lectionary in 1992.5 The post-Vatican Council lectionary is built around a three-year cycle of readings (usually designated as Year A, B and C) with three readings (usually a reading from the Old Testament, one from the Epistles and one from the Gospels) plus a psalm for each Sunday.6 It has often been said that a lectionary implicitly forms a canon within a canon. The passages chosen as lectionary pericopes become the Bible for many Catholics. That is, the passages that are heard within the context of the Sunday Mass are the biblical passages most familiar to “Sunday Catholics”;7 indeed, for some these may be virtually the only biblical passages they know. It is easy to collect numerous passages from various documents of the Second Vatican Council 71

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to the Catechism of the Church to local directives in dioceses and parishes urging that the Sunday readings be supplemented, informed, and enriched by individual devotional reading of the bible, by lectio divina, by regular group and individual bible study; in fact, very often these exhortations remain more an ideal rather than reality. And even for those Catholics who are engaged in some way in personal and regular reading and bible study, or who attend Mass on weekdays and hear two Scripture readings plus a psalm proclaimed each time, it is still the case that certain passages from the Gospels are “experienced” in a special way because they are read within a liturgical context: the congregation stands (as opposed to sitting for other readings); the reading is from a decorated Gospel Book that is carried in procession; the passage is framed by a solemn declaration “The Gospel of the Lord” and a communal response “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” Hearing a passage in this way is different than reading the same passage in the privacy of one’s room or in a formal classroom setting. The way that the Gospel of John, as opposed to the three Synoptic Gospels, is read within the Sunday lectionary is distinctive in still other ways.8 The other Gospels are read consecutively over the course of the year, and hence it is common to talk of the Year of Matthew, the Year of Mark and the Year of Luke. This shapes how the Gospel is heard: as a more or less continuous reading, where it is relatively easy and natural for the listener or homilist to make comparisons and links (“as we heard last week in Luke”) or to develop certain major themes (“recall how Matthew presented Jesus as the new Moses in last week’s reading”). But there is no Year of John. According to an ancient tradition of the church, the Gospel of John is associated most closely with the Lenten season (and with the Sacred Tridium of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday) and the Easter season. Otherwise it is used only on selected Sundays. Indeed, except for one group of Sundays in Year B (see table 4.1) and during Lent and Easter seasons, the Gospel of John is never heard on two consecutive Sundays. It is illuminating to take a quick “walk through” the lectionary to see what our Sunday Catholic will actually hear of the Gospel of John and when/in what context over the course of the three-year cycle (see table 4.1). To start at the beginning of the church year, during the season of Advent, over the three years there is only one reading from the Gospel of John (Third Sunday, Year B, John 1:6–28), a passage about John the Baptist and, incidentally, the first passage in the Gospel to introduce the language of “the Jews” (“when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to interrogate John,” John 1:19). At Christmas in all three years, at the Mass that is celebrated during the day itself (as opposed to Masses celebrated in the evening before or during the night), a lengthy section, verses l–18, from the Prologue of John’s

Table 4.1.  Readings from the Gospel of John in the Roman Catholic Lectionary Lectionary Number

Sunday or Feast Day1

Reading from John2

3rd Sunday of Advent B Christmas ABC Mass Of the Day 2nd Sunday after Christmas (often replaced by Epiphany)

John 1:6-8, 19-28 John l:1-18 (shorter option)

64 65 66

2nd Sunday Ord. Time A 2nd Sunday Ord. Time B 2nd Sunday Ord. Time C

John 1:29-34 John 1:35-42 John 2:1-12

28 29 31

3rd Sunday of Lent A 3rd Sunday of Lent B 4th Sunday of Lent A    (option in B and C) 4th Sunday of Lent B 5th Sunday of Lent A    (option in B and C) 5th Sunday of Lent B 5th Sunday of Lent C

John 4:5-42 (shorter option) John 2:13-25 John 9:1-41 (shorter option)

Palm Sunday B, Procession With Palms Holy Thursday ABC Good Friday ABC Easter Sunday ABC

John 12:12-16 (second option; First choice, Mark 11:1-10) John 13:1-15 John 18:1 – 19:42 John 20:1-18

2nd Sunday of Easter ABC 3rd Sunday of Easter C 4th Sunday of Easter A 4th Sunday of Easter B 4th Sunday of Easter C 5th Sunday of Easter A 5th Sunday of Easter B 5th Sunday of Easter C 6th Sunday of Easter A 6th Sunday of Easter B 6th Sunday of Easter C 7th Sunday of Easter A    (replaced by Ascension) 7th Sunday of Easter B    (replaced by Ascension) 7th Sunday of Easter C    (replaced by Ascension)

John John John John John John John John John John John John

8 16 19

32 34 35 36 37 39 40 42 43/44/45 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 59 60 61

John 1:1-18

John 3:14-21 John 11:1-45 (shorter option) John 12:20-33 John 8:1-11

20:19-31 21:1-19 (shorter option) 10:1-10 10:11-18 10:27-30 14:1-12 15:1-8 13:31-33a, 34-35 14:15-21 15:9-17 14:23-29 17:1-11a

John 17:11b-19 John 17:20-26 (continued)

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74 Table 4.1.  (continued) Lectionary Number

Sunday or Feast Day1

Reading from John2

164 166 167

Pentecost Sunday ABC    Pentecost B optional    Pentecost C optional Trinity Sunday A Trinity Sunday C Body and Blood of Christ A

John 20:19-23    John 15:26-27, 16:12-15    John 14:15-16, 23b-26 John 3:16-18 John 16:12-15 John 6:51-59

110 113 116 119 122

17th Sunday of Ord. Time B 18th Sunday of Ord. Time B 19th Sunday of Ord. Time B 20th Sunday of Ord. Time B 21st Sunday of Ord. Time B

John John John John John

161

34th Sunday of Ord. Time B Christ the King

John 18:33b-37

63

6:1-15 6:24-35 6:41-51 6:51-58 6:53, 60-69

The designation and nomenclature of the Sundays are often slightly different in the Revised Common Lectionary; for a readily accessible introduction and charts, see http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu. 2 The verse numbers are according to the Canadian edition of the Sunday Lectionary, Lectionary: Sundays and Solemnities (Ottawa: Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops 2009). Occasionally there are slight variations in the exact verses between the Canadian edition and that used in the United States; see the full charts compiled by Felix Just, “Main Differences between the 1992 Canadian Edition and the 1998 USA Edition of the Lectionary for Mass,” http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Differences-Canada-USA.htm. For further discussion of the reading for Easter Sunday, see p. 80. 1

Gospel is the assigned reading (though there is an option for shortening to verses 1–5 and 9–14). This is the only exposure our Sunday Catholics will have to the Johannine Prologue––but they may have gone to the evening or the Midnight Mass where the Christmas story from Luke is read instead. And even on Christmas Day, the Gospel from Luke can be used “according to pastoral needs”;9 at least in my own experience, more frequently now pastors are opting to substitute the familiar Christmas story for the more abstract and theological discourse “in the beginning was the Word.” Between Christmas and Lent selections from the first and second chapter of the Gospel of John are read on the second Sunday of Ordinary Time, different passages in each of the three years; the declaration of John the Baptist “here is the Lamb of God” (John l:29–34 in Year A), the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1–11 in Year C); in Year B, Catholics read the call of Andrew and Simon (John l:35–42) while the Revised Common Lectionary, which incorporates those verses in a longer reading for Year A, has the call of Philip and Nathanael (John l:43–51). Following an ancient tradition in the Church, John’s Gospel is associated in a particular way with the Lenten season. The well-known and long narra-



The Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary 75

tive stories are read in Year A, with the option of using them also in Years B and C, especially if there are candidates for reception into the church at Easter in the parish: third Sunday, the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:5–42); fourth Sunday, the man born blind (John 9:1–41); fifth Sunday, the raising of Lazarus (John ll:1–45). In addition, the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8:1–11) comes on the fifth Sunday in Year C in the Catholic lectionary; in the Revised Common Lectionary there is a substitution (probably because of the text-critical history of John 8) and Mary’s anointing of Jesus from John 12:1–8 is read instead. Other, less narrative passages come on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays during Lent in Year B, about Jesus’s death and the cleansing of the temple (John 2:13–25, 3:14–21, 12:20–33). As we come to Holy Week, there is an option of hearing John’s account of the entrance into Jerusalem during the procession with the psalms on Palm Sunday of Year B, but I suspect that the first listed option of Mark’s account is the one most often chosen. Those Catholics who attend the services of the Tridium (a significant but limited number) will hear on Holy Thursday John’s account of the washing of the feet (John 13:1–15) and John’s passion narrative on Good Friday (John 18:1–19:42), by far the longest pericope from John’s Gospel in the lectionary. On Easter Sunday, the set reading is a rather short passage from the resurrection narrative from John 20:1–9 (extended to John 20:1–18 in the Revised Common Lectionary and in the Canadian Lectionary, as we will discuss below), with an option to read the Lukan account instead from the Easter Vigil (Luke 24:1–12); my impression is that John is most often read. Again, in keeping with ancient tradition, the Gospel of John is read extensively in the post-Easter cycle, from the second to the seventh Sundays (though only on the third Sunday in Year C), selected parts of chapters 10–15. In North America, the seventh Sunday is regularly replaced by the celebration of the Feast of the Ascension, and, in doing so, the only readings from Jesus’s Prayer at the Last Supper that our Sunday Catholics would hear are lost. In contrast, the verse John 20:19, “and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews,” could be heard up to six times over three years: every year on the second Sunday after Easter and again each year on Pentecost, though there are optional readings from John 14 and 15 for Pentecost in Years B and C (though I wonder how often the chance to avoid another repetition of “the fear of the Jews” factors in the decision about what reading to choose on Pentecost Sunday). Finally, there is one more reading from the Gospel of John in Year A, on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), from the “Bread of Life” discourse in John 6. After this Easter cycle, in Years A and C, our Sunday Catholic may not hear the Gospel of John again for a long while––not until Christmas Day

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Mass (and perhaps not even then as we have noted). However, if it is Year B, there are five Sundays of Ordinary Time, the seventeenth Sunday to the twenty-first, where the sixth chapter of John (the feeding of the crowd and “the Bread of Life” discourse) is read, more or less consecutively, in all, over fifty verses. Coming at the end of the Year of Mark (where the Gospel is too short to fill up all the Sundays) and during late summer, these five Sundays in August are often the bane of homilists––a bit too rich and too repetitious a diet of John all at once. As the church year moves to a close, there is only one more Sunday where the Gospel of John is heard, in Year B on the thirtyfourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Feast of Christ the King, which repeats a section read on Good Friday from the Passion Narrative (John 18:33b–37). This is a distinctive, one might even say an unusual, way to read a Gospel. It is difficult for our Sunday Catholic to get any real sense of the great themes and particular theological approach of John’s Gospel. True, all or at least most, of the special Johannine vocabulary and perspectives are there: the Logos/Word of the Prologue, the intricate and repetitious discourse style, the light/darkness, truth/error dichotomies, the call for faith, and the explicit statement of purpose, namely that this is written for the believer, so that “you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). But many of the features that make this Gospel distinctive are muted and hard to grasp when heard over a three-year cycle in short pericopes as opposed to being concentrated in a focused reading. One distinctive aspect of a lectionary is that the Gospel is not read in isolation, but in conjunction with a first reading, usually from the Old Testament, and a second reading from one of the Epistles. The Gospel pericope is shaped, in particular, by what has already been heard in the first reading, by some link of theme, wording, imagery, or by an implicit typological relationship.10 My impression is that the hearing of the Gospel of John is less influenced by a pairing with the first reading than is the case with the Synoptics. So much of John is read in Lent (where the first reading follows its own logic and sequence as it works through salvation history) or in the post-Easter season where, following an ancient tradition of the Church, the first reading is a more or less consecutive, but highly selective, series of readings from the Acts of the Apostles. During the rest of the year, the choice of the Old Testament reading for pairing is often fairly obvious: the call of Andrew and Simon Peter (John l:35–42) is linked with the call of Samuel (1 Sam. 3:3b–10); the woman at the well (John 4:5–42) is paired with Moses striking the rock for water (Exod. 17:3–7); the Bread of Life discourse (John 6) is matched with passages from Elijah’s feeding miracle (2 Kings 4:42–44), the manna in the desert (Exod. 16:2–4, 12–15), and the angel feeding Elijah (1 Kings 19:4–8). Sometimes one gets the sense that the compilers of the lectionary were



The Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary 77

searching for a link: the wedding feast at Cana is linked with a passage from Isaiah 62 chosen, as far as I can see, simply because it uses the language of marriage, bride and bridegroom. As has already been noted, a lectionary is, by definition, a selective reading. The Gospel of John contains approximately 880 verses; just slightly more than five hundred verses are read in the course of three years, that is, about 55–60 percent of the Gospel.11 Eighty-two of these verses come from the lengthy reading on Good Friday (John 18:9–19:42). Removing these from the count, it is closer to 50 percent of the Gospel that makes it into the Sunday lectionary. What is not read is often as interesting—and as controversial—as what is read. Accusations have sometimes been made that the fashioners of the lectionary betrayed a more or less subtle tendenz, even a conscious “plot,” to omit certain passages and themes (most often the accusation is that the lectionary is weak on passages that have to do with sin, judgment, and condemnation). There has been a concern that biblical passages involving women, and in which women are central figures (a limited number in the bible as a whole), are underrepresented in the lectionary. The introduction to the Lectionary for Mass from 1969 names some specific criteria that were operative in the choice and, therefore, the omission, of what is read.12 A basic consideration was what was judged to be an appropriate length for the texts; there it is stated that narrative texts can be longer, and other pericopes should be shorter “because of the profundity of their teaching” (section 75). The introduction states quite bluntly that “texts that present real difficulties are avoided for pastoral reasons” (section 76). In many concrete instances, however, we are left second-guessing whether specific passages or clusters of verses were omitted because they were perceived as presenting a “real difficulty” or for some other reason. Other general principles can be deduced from observation of what is omitted, for instance, a general tendency to omit stage directions and hard-to-pronounce names of people and places, and what Gerald Sloyan once described as a “delicacy bordering on squeamishness” when it comes to anything about bodily functions or sexuality.13 How does this play out in terms of what is not read from John’s Gospel?14 For the most part, the same general principles are operative in the treatment of John’s Gospel as in the lectionary as a whole. For instance, geographical directions (someone went from here to there; John 2:12, 4:1–4, 20:10) are often omitted. Sometimes the operative concern seems to be the length of the pericope. In those Sundays of Ordinary Time in Year B that use the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, certain core sentences (e.g., “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me . . . this is indeed the will of the Father that all who see the Son and believe in him

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may have eternal life” 6:36–40) are never heard; the only reason seems to be to keep the pericope to ten or eleven verses. Furthermore, for the Gospels overall, there is a general principle that when an incident or story appears in two or three of the Synoptics, only one is taken up for inclusion in the lectionary. Thus from John 6, the section about Jesus walking on the water, verses 16–23, is not read and that is probably because the parallel Matthean account (14:22–33) is included in the Year of Matthew. This principle may also account for why the incident of the healing of the son of the royal official in John 4:43–54 is not included, namely, that the more-or-less parallel story of the healing of the centurion’s son in Luke 7:1–10 is already in the lectionary. There are certainly sections of John’s Gospel that one might have expected in the lectionary that are absent from it: omitted, for instance, are all fortyseven verses of chapter 5 with the healing of the man at the pool of Bethsaida and the long discourse following; the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus (John 3:1–10); and the passage about the death of the Beloved Disciple in the epilogue of John 21:20–25. Except for the story of the woman taken in adultery, nothing is read from chapters 7 and 8 and this, de facto, eliminates many of the most difficult passages about “the Jews”: Jesus’s accusation in John 8:44, “you are from your father the devil”; the accusation of the Jews that Jesus has a demon in John 8:48; statements that “the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him” (John 7:1); and “they picked up stones to throw at him” (John 8:59). Of the three statements in John’s Gospel about the aposynagogos (the one who is put out of the synagogue), two are not included in the lectionary (John 12:42, 16:2). Therefore, our “Sunday Catholics” hear only the version in 9:22, in the narrative of the man born blind, whose parents “were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.” Thus, of the seventy-one occurrences of “the Jews” in the Gospel of John, a significant portion, some twenty-four of these, are not read in the Sunday lectionary.15 While this may be seen as a positive move, it also means that our Sunday Catholics are not hearing any preaching on these passages, preaching that might address explicitly the problematic nature of such language. Even more significantly, our Sunday Catholics may well be virtually unaware that such passages are part of their sacred scripture. In talking to parish groups about Jewish–Christian relations in general, about our shared history and the dramatic change that the Second Vatican Council initiated with Nostrate Aetate, about the necessity to develop new paradigms for conceptualizing Jewish–Christians relationships, I have frequently been met with a real puzzlement and questions: “What really is the problem? Things aren’t that bad. . . . Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.” While there are many factors generating such a response, I increasingly wonder if at least one contributing factor may be that our Sun-



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day Catholics (especially if they do not attend the Good Friday liturgy) have simply not heard many of the passages that generate my concerns. Furthermore, although the fact that the lectionary is a selected and partial reading means that many of the most negative and anti-Jewish passages in John’s Gospel are not proclaimed on Sunday, it also means that certain passages that might be characterized as “positive,” passages that would help the listener to understand Jesus as a Jew and as a member of the Jewish people, our Sunday Catholics will not hear. They will hear Jesus saying “salvation is from the Jews” in the story of the Samaritan woman (John 4:22), as well as her query, the one place in the Gospel where Jesus is called a Ioudaios, “how is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me . . . ?” (John 4:9). Our Sunday Catholic will learn, almost by osmosis, certain things about first-century Jewish life: about distinctions between Jews and Samaritans (“Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans” John 4:9); about regulations for purity and food (in the story of the wedding feast at Cana, “now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification,” John 2:6); about burial practices (“they took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial customs of the Jews,” John 19:40); about the Jewish feasts and the participation of Jesus and his disciples (“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,” John 2:13). But the major role that the annual cycle of feasts plays in John’s Gospel is certainly muted or perhaps largely lost on our Sunday Catholic since many of the references are not included: “After this there was a festival of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem” (John 5:1), “Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near” (John 7:2), “At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem (John 10:22), “Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves” (John ll:55). Though attention has often been focused on the specific negative verses that are read about “the Jews,” the omission of certain passages eliminates certain opportunities for the hearer to absorb, almost unconsciously, how Jesus participated in the life of the Jewish people. As noted earlier, special attention has been directed to how and when women appear throughout the lectionary.16 Certainly from John’s Gospel our Sunday Catholic hears a number of stories in which women are central and active figures: Mary and Martha in the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11:1–45; the Samaritan woman at the well through whom “many Samaritans” came to faith in Jesus “because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39); the women who stand “near the cross of Jesus” (a specific Johannine detail) and are named (“his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene” John 19:25); and the entrusting of his mother to the disciple whom he loved (19:25–17). In John’s account of the resurrection

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read on Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene is a central figure. However, in the Roman lectionary the reading ends at verse 9 so that the emphasis is on the arrival of “Simon Peter and the other disciple”; the encounter between the Risen Lord and Mary Magdalene is not heard by our Sunday Catholic. This significant passage, with its commissioning of a woman to “go to my brothers and tell them,” is more likely to be heard in churches using the Revised Common Lectionary where the reading is extended to include verses 11–18 (though this is not assured since the Revised Common Lectionary allows the option of reading the resurrection story from Luke 24). In the years leading up to 1992 when the Canadian lectionary was being reprinted and revised (at the time when the Canadian bishops adopted the New Revised Standard Version translation), it became clear to those working on revisions that, while Rome would not approve of the deletion or substitution of any prescribed lectionary passages or even individual verses,17 there was some flexibility to add materials. Thus, in the 1992 and subsequent 2009 versions of the lectionary for Canada, the number of verses read on Easter Sunday is expanded to include the Mary Magdalene pericope.18 Although there is still the option for the shorter reading ending at verse 9, the full text is printed, and in my experience it is the full text that is almost always read.19 Finally, it is impossible to talk about the Gospel of John in the lectionary without addressing the serious issues that this Gospel, in particular, raises for Jewish–Christian relations. As noted above, many of the most problematic passages about “the Jews” are simply not heard in the Sunday lectionary, but there are certainly others that are a genuine matter of concern. As already noted, these include the charge that followers of Jesus were expelled from the synagogue by the Jews, read on the fourth Sunday of Lent; much of the Passion narrative read on Good Friday; the repeated motif in the post-Easter cycle of the disciples locked in the house for “fear of the Jews” (John 20:19). Since these passages are treated specifically in Alan Culpepper’s chapter in this volume,20 let me focus my remarks more specifically on how the language of “the Jews” has been handled in the lectionary in Canada over the years. In light of Nostra Aetate and subsequent documents (especially, Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis, 1985), all throughout the 1980s in the official Canadian Liturgical Calendar that is published annually by the bishops’ conference, there was an extended and explicit note: During the holy days immediately preceding Easter, especially when the passion account is being read or meditated upon, we can unwittingly or unwillingly transmit certain anti-Semitic impressions. Before reading the account of the passion (especially according to John) it would be well for us to recall that when



The Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary 81

the evangelist refers to “the Jews” we know he is not saying that all Jews, either of Jesus’ time or our time, are responsible for his death.21

In 1987, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops published a book “for interim use,” Passion Narratives for Holy Week. For the Gospel of John on Good Friday, in the Jerusalem Bible translation (which was being used at the time in Canada), in nine places, hoi Ioudaioi was translated as “Jewish leaders” or “Jewish authorities”;22 the translation “the Jews” was maintained in three places: Pilate’s question “are you king of the Jews?”; the inscription on the cross “the King of the Jews,” and in John 20:19, “this notice was read by many of the Jews.” This interim text was widely distributed and used in parishes. In 1992, when Canada adopted the New Revised Standard Version translation and published a new edition of the lectionary, basically the same practice continued with a few small modifications; “Jewish leaders” or “Jewish authorities” was used seven times; in two cases (John 18:31 and 19:7) hoi Ioudaioi was handled by the pronoun “they” or “them” and John 20:19 was translated “many of the people read this inscription.” This translation became very familiar to people between 1992 and 2009. But when a republication of the Sunday Lectionary was required in 2009, certain revisions were demanded prior to approval by Rome in order to meet the requirements of a new document, “On the Use of Vernacular Languages in the Publication of the Books of the Roman Liturgy” (Liturgiam Authenticam), published in May 2000 by the Congregation for Divine Worship.23 According to these norms, in every case hoi Ioudaioi must be translated “literally,” that is, as “the Jews.” Since 2009 that is what appears in the Canadian lectionary, consistently in the Good Friday reading, though in the reading of the narrative of the man born blind (on the fourth Sunday of Lent), the 2009 lectionary has “Jewish authorities” in John 9:22. Whether this slid under the radar of the checkers in Rome or the same strictness was not demanded outside of the Passion narrative is difficult to ascertain. The reintroduction of “the Jews,” especially in the Good Friday liturgy, has been particularly jarring since this language had not been used for over twenty years. The official notes accompanying the 2009 lectionary have a special section entitled “Passages Referring to the Jewish People,” which deals with this issue by shifting the focus from translation to homiletics: Liturgiam Authenticam and its accompanying documents mandate a stricter fidelity to the biblical text in translation. For example, this requirement presents a difficulty in the translation of the Passion narratives. While “the Jews” is set out as a strict translation of the original text, it must always be made clear that the term, especially in the Gospel of John, refers to the religious leaders and

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authorities of the day. Homilists and catechists are encouraged to address this issue sensitively and clearly.24

To conclude, the use of the Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary illustrates a particular reception of the Gospel. Both a long and consistent church tradition and the specific decisions that were made in the post-Vatican Council revision of the lectionary have shaped how this Gospel is heard by our Sunday Catholic for whom the lectionary is the main exposure to the Gospel. There have been some very preliminary attempts to explore whether there are other, and perhaps more satisfactory, alternatives to how the Gospel is presented. Some of these have focused on the possibility of a more consecutive reading of the Gospel, whether by introducing in a fourth “Year of John” into the cycle or by combining Mark and John in different ways; 25 others have looked at different approaches to the reading of the Johannine passion narrative on Good Friday.26 Hopefully such considerations as have been raised in this chapter can be part of the reflection of those who will be entrusted with further revision and development of the Sunday lectionary. NOTES 1.  The term “lectionary” is used for both the lists of preselected passages as well as for books that print the passages in sequence for public reading. The particular translation of the bible to be used for the readings is determined by the Conference of Bishops in a given country or region. In Canada, since 1992 the translation used in the lectionary is the New Revised Standard Version, with specific adaptations. Since 2009, the following statement is found in all printed editions: “Adaptations for liturgical use have been made to selected Scripture texts. These adaptations have been made to bring the readings into conformity with the Ordo Lectionum Missae, edition typical altera, the Lectionarium and Liturgiam Authenticam, as well as to facilitate proclamation. These adaptations were prepared by and are the sole responsibility of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.” In the United States, the translation approved for liturgical use is the New American Bible. I am grateful to Dr. Adele Reinhartz for the invitation to be part of the conference at Boston College, and especially for the invitation to reflect on the Gospel of John from the perspective of its use in the Catholic Lectionary. This chapter is not a comprehensive and technical study of the lectionary but reflects the more informal style of a conference presentation and some of the specific questions that I was asked to address, especially from the perspective of the experience of the Catholic Church in Canada with the lectionary. 2.  Horace T. Allen, Jr., “The Ecumenical Import of Lectionary Reform,” in Shaping English Liturgy: Studies in Honor of Archbishop Denis Hurley, ed. Peter C. Finn and James M. Schellman (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1990), 361–80. 3.  The Constitution on the Liturgy, sections 35:1 and 51.



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 4. The introduction to the Revised Lectionary for Mass provides an excellent short overview of the lectionary and an outline of the principles that guided its revision. Available in The Liturgy Documents: A Parish Resource, Volume I (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1991), 117–64.   5.  The Consultation on Common Texts, Common Lectionary: The Lectionary Proposed by the Consultation on Common Texts (New York: The Church Hymnal Corp., 1983); The Revised Common Lectionary (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1992).   6.  There are many pastorally oriented introductions to the lectionary, including: Ralph A. Keifer, To Hear and Proclaim: Introduction Lectionary for Mass (Washington, DC: National Association of Pastoral Musicians, 1983); Normand Bonneau, The Sunday Lectionary: Ritual Word, Paschal Shape (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1998); Regina A. Boisclair, The Word of the Lord at Mass: Understanding the Lectionary (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2015); on a more technical level, Fritz West, Scripture and Memory: The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997).   7.  I use the term “Sunday Catholics” throughout this chapter as a descriptive, not as a pejorative or judgmental way to describe the significant number of Catholics whose major religious activity and link to their church is attendance at Sunday liturgy.   8.  When it comes to the Gospel of John, the differences between the Catholic Lectionary and the Revised Common Lectionary are slight (most of the adaptations made in the Revised Common Lectionary were in the choice of the Old Testament reading so as to provide for a more varied and consecutive reading of certain biblical books). Significant differences in the use of the Gospel of John will be discussed in context.   9.  The texts from the Christmas Mass during the Night may be used for Masses on Christmas Day: “The readings from any of the Christmas Masses may be used according to the pastoral needs of each celebration,” Lectionary Sundays and Solemnities (Ottawa: Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2009), p. 50. 10. The relationship between the first reading and the Gospel has been much discussed and often critiqued by both biblical scholars and liturgical experts; for an analysis with a particular focus on Jewish–Christian relations, see Michael Peppard, “Do We Share a Book? The Sunday Lectionary and Jewish–Christian Relations,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 1 (2005–2006): 89–102. The Revised Common Lectionary allows for two options: a pattern of paired readings in which the Old Testament and the Gospel readings are closely related, and a pattern of semi-continuous Old Testament readings. 11.  Such figures can only be approximate and depend on exactly what is counted. As noted above, certain readings, though formally part of the Sunday lectionary, are rarely, if ever, heard, for example, the readings from John 17 for the seventeenth Sunday after Easter which is replaced by the feast of the Ascension. Also, if the shorter option is consistently chosen in a parish, the total number of verses heard will, of course, be fewer. Felix Just counts 526 verses as read, 59.8 percent of the total Gospel; see his charts “Lectionary Statistics,” http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm. In the lectionary from the Roman Missal of 1570, 256 verses were used, about 30 percent of the whole Gospel.

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12.  Eileen Schuller, “Some Criteria for the Choice of Scripture Texts in the Roman Lectionary,” in Shaping English Liturgy: Studies in Honor of Archbishop Denis Hurley, ed. Peter C. Finn and James H. Schellman (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1990): 385–404. 13.  Gerald S. Sloyan, “The Lectionary as a Context for Interpretation,” Interpretation 31 (1977):131–38 (quotation from p. 138). 14.  Of course, many more passages appear in the weekday lectionary and in the Lectionary for Ritual and Votive Masses, but these will not be heard by our Sunday Catholic. For a complete list of “Texts from the Fourth Gospel Not Used in the Lectionary,” see the charts compiled by Felix Just, http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary /John-Gospel-Omissions.htm. 15.  Occasionally a single verse or half verse that mentions “the Jews” is omitted, but it is very difficult to know precisely what has occasioned the omission, i.e., on the fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C, the reading is John 13:31–33a, 34–35, with omission of verse 33b “You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews, so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’” 16. Eileen Schuller, “Women in the Lectionary,” National Bulletin on Liturgy 27/137 (1994): 108–14; reprinted in Remembering the Women: Women’s Stories from Scripture for Sundays and Festivals, compiled by J. Frank Henderson (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1999), 368–74; Regina Boisclair, “Amnesia in the Catholic Sunday Lectionary: Women—Silenced from the Memories of Salvation History,” in Women and Theology: Proceedings of the College Theology Society, 1994, ed. Mary Ann Hinsdale and Phyllis H. Kaminski (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 125–31; Ruth Fox, “Women in the Bible and Lectionary with Practical Suggestions for Liturgists and Presiders,” Liturgy 90 (1996). 17.  For instance, requests that had been made to Rome to omit Ephesians 5:22 “wives, be subject to your husbands” (twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B) had not been favorably received. 18.  In a similar vein, at the Easter Vigil, in the Canadian lectionary the third reading from Exod. 14:15 to 15:1 is expanded to add Exod. 15:20 and, thus, to include the reference to Miriam and the woman singing and dancing. 19.  There is a notation that the Gospel from the Easter Vigil (Luke 24:1–12) can be read in place of the Gospel of John, but this option is rarely chosen. 20. R. Alan Culpepper, “Preaching the Hostile References to ‘the Jews’ in the Gospel of John,” this volume, 46–69. 21.  Also reprinted in Passion Narratives for Holy Week by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (Ottawa: Publication Services, 1987), 13. 22.  John 18:14, 31, 36, 38, 19:7, 12, 14, 31, 38. 23. For the text, see http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds /documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_liturgiam-authenticam_en.html. 24.  The Revised Lectionary for Sundays and Solemnities: Editorial Notes published by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in conjunction with the revised 2009 edition of the lectionary for use in Canada. 25.  For a proposal of what a four-year lectionary could look like, see the work of the Joint Liturgical Group of England in G. Tellini, editor, A Four Year Lectionary,



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Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1990; for another proposal, see https://willhumes.files .wordpress.com/2011/08/a-four-year-lectionary-version-3.pdf. For a somewhat different combination of Mark and John in a Year B2, see http://opensourcelectionary .com/lectionary-mods/year-of-john/year-b2-a-year-of-john. 26. In 2000 and 2001 the Continuing Seminar on Biblical Issues in Jewish– Christian Relations analyzed and proposed various strategies that future editions of the lectionary might employ to address concerns; see Philip A. Cunningham, “Translating and Excerpting the Johannine Passion Narrative for Liturgical Proclamation,” https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/sites/partners/cbaa_seminar /Johannine_PN.htm. For other approaches, see J. Frank Henderson, “Critical Reflections on the Passion Narrative of the Good Friday Liturgy,” www.jfrankhenderson .com/pdf/goodfridaypassion.pdf.

Chapter Five

Christian Privilege, Christian Fragility, and the Gospel of John Amy-Jill Levine

The critical exegeses regarding how to address “the Jews” in John’s Gospel provided by biblicists and historians generally fail to make the transition from classroom to pew. The reasons for this failure are various: the issue of antiJudaism rarely shows up in homiletics syllabi; the Association of Theological Schools does not require its member schools to address anti-Jewish preaching or teaching; homiletics faculty leave it to the biblical studies faculty to deal with “the Jews” or the hostile texts; seminaries hire rabbis to teach the elective course on Judaism and then suppose that the rabbis will address antiJewish preaching (most cannot, because most do not spend time listening to Christian sermons); and so on.1 There is also, I propose, a deeper reason why the problem of anti-Jewish preaching, whether by commission or omission, remains: the coupled phenomena of Christian privilege and Christian fragility. These phenomena are analogous to, and are often reinforced by, white privilege and white fragility. In her 1988 essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh extended her studies of male privilege to questions of race: “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.”2 Drawing on her experiences in women’s studies, McIntosh states, “I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.”3 Until she could understand her own position from the perspective of others, as best as such understanding can be achieved, and until she could listen to people who had different experiences colored by race, McIntosh could not see or hear her own privileged status. After an extensive list of her own 87

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privileges, she notes, “For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy.”4 To do this requires both self- and community awareness, which can then lead to action. This “elusive and fugitive” status finds one of its origins in what Robin DiAngelo identifies as “white fragility.” DiAngelo defines white fragility as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.”5 The selfprotective responses to the direct evidence not only of racial oppression but also of white privilege find their origin in socialization. DiAngelo continues, “whites are often at a loss for how to respond in constructive ways. Whites have not had to build the cognitive or affective skills or develop the stamina that would allow for constructive engagement across racial divides.”6 Finally, DiAngelo describes the “factors that inculcate white fragility”: they include segregation, both representational and informational, the assumption that the situation of white people is normative, indeed universal (comparable to the universality of the identity “man”), and therefore the sense that all people share common experiences, values, and needs.7 All systems of oppression are distinct, but, just as McIntosh extrapolated from work in women’s studies to theorize racial issues, so can we extrapolate from studies of racial privilege and fragility to interrogate the structural systems of Christian privilege and Christian fragility. It appears to me that Christian privilege undergirds harmful preaching about Jews and Judaism and prevents recognition of anti-Judaism across the Christian spectrum. Christian fragility prevents harmful preaching, including the use of anti-Jewish stereotypes and theology, from being addressed. Despite institutional condemnation of the churches’ historical anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic statements and actions, the problem remains, due to the (often unrecognized) toxicity of homiletical language. To see what internet resources are available to pastors, I engaged in an illuminating, if unscientific, exercise: I plugged “John 19:1–16” and “sermon” into Google, and found sixty-nine self-uploaded sermons and sermon-outlines on SermonCentral.8 A few of the sermons dated back to 2004 and focused on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Most of these carefully treated the so-called “hostile verses.” Jay Robinson, in “Who Really Killed Jesus?” (Baptist, March 31, 2004), tackled the issue directly: Throughout history [the Jews] have been most likely suspects. Church leaders have misused\misinterpreted the bible to promote theological justification for



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Christians to hate Jews. . . . Christians like Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, and Luther, have accused all Jews as being Christ haters and Christ killers. Even today there are those who have distorted views of story to believe Jews alone responsible. Are the Jews guilty? Question has to be answered Have I PLOTTED AGAINST OTHERS? Have I misused my power? Have I been part of tearing down . . . ?9

This is a good start. However, apart from the Gibson commotion, the question of how to talk about Jews is largely absent. A few sermons spoke about “the Jewish leaders,” “the religious leaders and the political leaders,”10 or an unnamed “they” who sought to kill Jesus. Other sermons epitomized the problem itself. Three examples should suffice. 1.  In “Selling Self to Caesar,” Phil Morgan (Pentecostal; April 2, 2002) proclaimed:11 This declaration (John 19:14–16) by the Jews. You might miss it quite easily because of the pace of the account—the noise of the throng—but this is a DEFINING MOMENT.

Here is the SEED of Israel’s blindness right down to the present day. The Apostle Paul wrote, in 2 CORINTHIANS 3:14 . . . “For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ.” To this very day, when the Old Testament prophecies of Messiah are read in Jewish synagogues, there is no comprehension of the glorious way in which God has fulfilled it—and is fulfilling it—in the earth today. The mighty plan of God is lost in the haze to them—there’s a veil over their eyes. Why? Because they “MISSED the day of their visitation.” Jesus came, and God attested Him before their very eyes and ears with His own voice from Heaven, and with signs and wonders and authoritative teaching—and they rejected Him. The Light of the World came and shone before them—but sinful men prefer the darkness—and so they disowned Him, and let the haze of confusion and uncertainty descend and cover their minds once more. 2.  The second is “Punishing the Innocent and Powerful” by Ron Tuit (“independent/Bible,” July 6, 2016):12 In essence, Pilate was not even “true” to himself when he relented to the pressure of the Jews and proceeded to punish the innocent Lord Jesus. . . .

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Ironically, Pilate referred to Jesus as “the King of the Jews” to the end. This is unusual, and we can only surmise that he was trying to persuade the Jews to change their mind concerning Jesus’s demise, but according to God’s Divine Plan, they would not change their minds because their hearts were hardened toward God’s promised Messiah, even though the evidence was undeniable that Jesus was the Christ sent from Heaven to redeem them. . . . They do not believe the WORDS of Jesus, they do not accept His sacrifice for sin on their behalf, and they have not relinquished the rule of their hearts and lives to Him; even as the Jews said in verse 15: “We have no king but Caesar!” People look to rule of earthly kings but not to the Heavenly King.

3.  Derrick Tuper’s “What Will You Do With Jesus?” (Christian/Church of Christ; Oct. 14, 2013) proclaimed:13 Pilate thought the Jews would see his tortured body and be satisfied with that and then have pity on him and drop the whole matter of crucifixion. However, the Jews were relentless in their pursuit of death for Jesus (6). We can’t negotiate with those who are bent on evil. We can’t compromise on Jesus to try to appease non-Christians; it won’t work. “You take him and crucify him.” Pilate didn’t want to deal with Jesus. He tried to pass him back off to the Jews. “You’re the ones who want to kill him so badly, go and do it yourself.” But that wasn’t going to work (7–9). “He was even more afraid.” He was already afraid of what these angry Jews would do if he let Jesus go. Now, upon learning what specifically the Jews were charging him with and that it was the worst crime imaginable to a Jew, Pilate became even more afraid. . . . Time after time God gives people chances to change their hearts toward him. Some people are like the Jews who refused to give up their hatred . . . They rejected King Jesus in favor of a pagan king. They crucified the Holy One and accepted Barabbas the murderer in his place. This reveals the depth of their hatred and depravity. Really this wasn’t about blasphemy; that was just a convenient charge to bring Jesus to Pilate. This whole incident was going on because Jesus went after Jews time and again about their own sinfulness and instead of humbly accepting Jesus’ input they despised him for it. Their pride caused them to hate Jesus and send him to the cross. In our pride and sinfulness we will always reject Jesus. . . . To reject Jesus is to embrace Satan.

Such sermons draw upon one vein of reception history and Christian theology: the Jews rejected Jesus, whom they should have recognized. The recognition is obvious to the Christian. Speaking from their privileged position, the pastors presume the Christian worldview (here narrowly defined) is



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the only appropriate one. And, since this view is true, other views must, by definition, be false. That which is false is the anti-Christ; by this reasoning, then, the Jews become the anti-Christ. The message is not simply one they find in John’s Gospel. As we see in these sermons, the “hostility” is threaded throughout the New Testament: sermons on John turn to quotes from Paul and allusions to Peter’s speech in Acts 3. Were the term “Jew” to be removed from John’s Gospel, were the character Judas to be erased, the problematic teachings would still continue. Rosemary Reuther suggested decades ago that “possibly anti-Judaism is too deeply embedded in the foundations of Christianity to be rooted out entirely without destroying the whole structure.”14 This would be tantamount to saying that racism and sexism are so deeply rooted in American society that the entire edifice should be pulled down. I’m not there yet. I still see the American dream of “all created equal” as a worthy goal, just as I see Jesus’s concern for love of God, love of neighbor, and love of enemy to be possibilities. But both American society and the Christian church face structural problems, and those problems need to be acknowledged. More than this, they need to be addressed head-on. The dominant society wants to think that the system is at least pretty good; they do not want to acknowledge that social sins are a structural component of their existence. Perhaps Christian fragility functions the same way: “Don’t tell me that there is something deeply embedded in my text and my theology that might be sinful or rotten. Just let’s cull out a few problems in the lectionary and we’ll be fine.” If removing symbols of the Confederacy from places of public honor is one way of recognizing and engaging white privilege, what symbols might the church address, and how might it do so? MOVING FROM WOKE TO WORKS For many liberal congregations and, I suspect, for most readers of this volume, such anti-Jewish sermons as cited above are reprehensible. The aware Christian reader, to use the currently popular term, is “Woke.” Being “woke” is explained dryly by Amanda Hess in the New York Times: “Think of ‘woke’ as the inverse of ‘politically correct.’ If ‘P.C.’ is a taunt from the right, a way of calling out hypersensitivity in political discourse, then ‘woke’ is a back-pat from the left, a way of affirming the sensitive. It means wanting to be considered correct, and wanting everyone to know just how correct you are.”15 Hess concludes, When white people aspire to get points for consciousness, they walk right into the cross hairs between allyship and appropriation. These two concepts seem at

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odds with each other, but they’re inextricable. Being an ally means speaking up on behalf of others—but it often means amplifying the ally’s own voice, or centering a white person in a movement created by black activists, or celebrating a man who supports women’s rights when feminists themselves are attacked as man-haters. Wokeness has currency, but it’s all too easy to spend it.

The homilist who mentions the problem of hostile texts is “Woke” or, to use Jesus’s terms, has “stayed awake” (e.g., Matt. 24:42–43; 25:13; 26:41; Mark 13:35–37; 14:38; cf. 1 Thess. 5:6; Rev. 16:15). But to be “woke” or “awake” is not enough. The next step—doing something about the problem once it is acknowledged—presents the challenge. Shifting discourse to “Jewish leaders” in the homiletic moment does not resolve the problem. Despite the best intentions of the pastor—and they are good intentions—the substantive problem remains: the congregation still hears, from the Gospel itself, the message that the only good Jews are those who follow Jesus; Jews remain the negative exemplar.16 Once Christian privilege is named, Christian fragility kicks in. Calling out the harmful impact of invoking such Johannine material usually triggers defense mechanisms: I didn’t mean to sound anti-Jewish; I’m just reading what the text says; I surely don’t mean all Jews; the text is the word of God and therefore cannot be anti-Jewish, racist, sexist . . . and so on. In her chapter in this volume, Eileen Schuller speaks of conversations with Catholic parishioners about anti-Jewish preaching, where the common refrains are “what really is the problem? Things aren’t that bad. . . . Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.”17 The responses assert Christian privilege and betray Christian fragility: ignorance coupled with denial. People who make antagonistic statements or who deny the problem are not ipso facto bad people. I’m delighted when pastors and academics are “woke,” because the alternative—ignorance—is not a good one. People should be neither blamed nor shamed for not recognizing problems in their own tradition. We are all embedded in various structures of inequity. We do not hear the hate. We cannot see it. And when we are confronted with it, we usually go into defensive mode. That is a normal human reaction. Yet it is this defensiveness, born of privilege and fragility, that undermines the standard homiletic approaches to the hostile texts. Application of the general guides—acknowledgment of the problem; changing the wording; placing texts into historical contexts; sensitivity to John’s language, and so on—is insufficient; they may in the end reinforce both the privilege and the fragility if the response of the congregation (let alone of the pastor) is, “We’ve acknowledged the problematic texts; we’ve acknowledged the harm they do; we are sorry [although our apology is for the church over the centuries and not from us personally],” then the congregation is absolved of the problem.



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It is “woke” in the sense of “look at us—we are good people because we acknowledge a systemic problem.” Acknowledging the problem can create a nice catharsis: look at how righteous we are, because we name our antiJewish texts (although historical-critical work tells us that they really weren’t anti-Jewish to begin with) and because we decry anti-Semitism. We can see the ineffectuality of the standard approach by replacing Christian fragility with white fragility. For people with racial privilege to say, “Yes, we did terrible things in our history and we are sorry” is insufficient. The insufficiency is made manifest when the apology has corollaries: “I personally was not involved in racist acts; I personally do not see how I benefit from my racial identity; I am in fact penalized by affirmative action programs. . . .” Further, acknowledgment that is not followed by action, or even by deeper discussion of how white, or Christian, privilege works, is a sign of complacency; it is not a sign of reconciliation or correction. The following discussion shows both why some current homiletic guides are insufficient and how Christian fragility functions. THE LIMITATIONS OF HISTORICAL-CRITICAL WORK FOR HOMILETICS I’m all in favor of teaching the historical contexts of Jesus and his earliest followers. I do not think, however, that this approach works particularly well when preaching on passages mentioning “the Jews” in John’s Gospel. Most sermonic appeals to history presume that we can identify the setting and motivations of the author. Worse, the homiletic short historical note provides the satisfaction of signaling “we’re woke; we know there’s a problem here,” but it does not resolve the problem. We Do Not Know the Context We do not know with certainty whether the author of the Fourth Gospel was a Jew, a Samaritan, or a gentile. We do not know if the author had a target audience in mind or was writing for what might be called the church universal. We have no evidence to support J. L. Martyn’s theory of a two-stage narrative, and we have no evidence of any Jewish-worldwide effort in the late 90s (the ostensible period in which the Fourth Gospel was composed— another hypothesis) to expel Jesus’s followers from their congregations.18 To the contrary, Paul suggests internal discipline (2 Cor. 11:24) rather than expulsion was likely the approach to Jesus’s followers in multiple synagogue settings.

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Culpepper proposes, “The preacher can explain that the Gospel is rooted in a setting of dispute with the Jewish authorities at the time the Gospel was written. This historical setting accounts for its hostile references to ‘the Jews.’”19 The claim is based in hypothesis. We do not know if John’s Gospel is reflecting history as it happened, or how John envisions it and wants readers to envision it. Therefore, I am wary of the efficacy of history for addressing the homiletic problem.20 Academics assert, frequently, that John is responding to the synagogue decision to evict Jesus’s followers. Yet, not even the Gospel itself displays such ejection. Nor does this approach explain why Jews might want to evict Jesus’s followers; is it because these followers are proclaiming that all are damned apart from those who follow their views? Because these followers are encouraging gentiles to stop worshipping the local gods and so, according to local religion, putting the state in danger? When we hear John’s claims about how “‘those Jews’ want to throw us [Christians] out of our institutions” with ears attuned to privilege, a different set of conclusions necessarily emerges. For example, white privilege, especially coupled with class privilege, gives rise to comments such as “the immigrants are taking all our jobs” or “those Black women are living off our tax dollars.” When we hear John’s narrative with “woke” ears, the easy move to “Here’s what some Jews were doing at the time” should become more difficult. “Jewish Authorities” The language of “Jewish authorities” does not help much in the homiletic setting. First, these authorities are still Jews. Second, had the Jewish population wanted to combat their leaders, they had the power to do so: revolution is the flip side of authoritarianism, as the Gospels themselves indicate. Herod Antipas wanted to kill John the Baptist, but “he feared the crowd, because they regarded him as a prophet” (Matt. 14:5); the authorities “wanted to arrest [Jesus], but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet” (Matt. 21:46, cf. Mark 12:12). Third, the congregation has no clue how these “Jewish authorities” gained their position. If the congregation thinks of “religious authorities,” some may well make the logical move to their own “religious authorities”: bishops, elders, etc.—i.e., people generally just like them, even people elected by them. I worry that people in the pews might believe that Jews are involved in an international conspiracy, as the forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion suggests.21 Less helpful is the term “religious authorities,” which reduces the Jewish population to a “religion.” Congregations are likely to invest this term



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with creedal meaning, and thereby view Jews as comparable to Methodists or Lutherans. The Jewish sense of peoplehood, involving language, land, genealogy, and so on, goes missing. Nor is “religious authority” quite correct: the high priest does not control belief systems, local practices, and so on; he is not comparable to a bishop, pope, or even district superintendent. References to “religious authorities” would also remind the biblically literate person in the pew of John’s emphasis on theological concerns, for the Fourth Gospel makes the death of Jesus a theological issue: “the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God” (John 5:18). Using “political authorities” as an alternative also creates problems, evoking the idea of elected, political authorities familiar to North Americans. “Political authorities” may in fact be more accurate, given that the high priest held his appointment by Roman consent. Yet to speak of the authorities, of whatever sort, without addressing who they are and how they gained their authority will not resolve the problem. Finally, if we take out “Jewish,” do we risk removing Jesus from his Jewish context? What then is the priest or pastor to do? Follow the rules some churches make regarding translation (here, Professor Schuller’s observations on the Catholic lectionary are especially relevant), but take the time to explain them? Reject them? Skirt them just slightly? Provide a disclaimer (passing as historical information) right before the Gospel reading? Gather a group of fellow travelers and write to the powers-that-be in the attempt to change the translation, or the lectionary? When is the time for action and what should that action be? Standard Invective Another historical take is to announce that John is using standard ancient polemic, whether the categories found in Prophetic literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, or in Roman polemic.22 The first problem here is that the mere fact that a type of polemic is conventional does not thereby rob it of its capacity to do harm. It has become conventional in American political discourse to echo, for example, Donald Trump regarding Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”23 The conventionality of it just makes it worse. The second problem with the analogy is that the Jewish community preserved the prophetic literature, not the Gospel of John. To tell the congregation that John is simply speaking the way Jews speak with each other, as Jeremiah or Ezekiel spoke to the children of Israel is, in effect, to state that “the Jews”

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are to blame for John’s rhetoric. Even those who would insist, with some warrant, that the authority behind the Fourth Gospel is the (Jewish) Beloved Disciple, should be able to take the next step: we do not have his exact words; what we have are words imputed to him (so John 21), recontextualized into the Gospel. Nor do we know if he saw himself as still within the “Jewish community” per se. History vs. Literature Texts take on meanings within their historical contexts. They also take on meanings when read as narrative wholes. At times, the historical “fact” and the narrative impression collide. For example, commenting on Pilate’s question to Jesus, “I am not a Jew, am I?” (John 18:35), Culpepper asks: “What answer might the evangelist have expected the reader to supply? Of course, Pilate is not a Jew, but that does not mean that he does not have to make his own response to Jesus. The revelation through the Son came to the Jews, but it is also for Gentiles— indeed, the whole world.”24 Yes, and, of course, Pilate is not a Jew; he is a Roman governor. Nevertheless, John’s hearers may well conclude, based on the Fourth Gospel’s numerous references to the “Jews” and its dualistic worldview, that Pilate, once he decides to condemn Jesus, is in fact a Jew; he is the quintessential Jew: He sends Jesus to the cross. Reading is an art, and at times the effect of the narrative can override the historical context. John is not Jewish but Is Reflecting Internal Jewish Issues Finally, related to this historical-critical approach is the claim that John cannot be anti-Jewish because John is a Jew speaking to other Jews. This conclusion about authorship and readership is, again, a hypothesis. When I hear this thesis of locating the author within an original Jewish context, which may in fact be historically accurate, used to explain or, more accurately, to justify the negative rhetoric, I find the argument unhelpful. It reminds me of a comment I heard a white student make in a discussion of the social effects of slavery: “African slavery started with Africans selling Africans.” The point has merit, but it winds up displacing the responsibility of non-Africans in the selling and buying of millions of people. The conversation then must move to the homiletic setting, where John is not a Jew talking to Jews; to the contrary, John is a saint of the church talking to the Christian faithful. The Gospel of John is not being proclaimed to Jews; it is being proclaimed at First Baptist, Westminster Presbyterian, and Aldersgate United Methodist. That audience is not an abstract concept; it is



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rather a congregation comprised of Joe and Shatika and Manuel and Keiko and others sitting in the pews. It’s the Homily! In the attempt to avoid hostile messages, historical contextualization can work—and work well—in a classroom. It is less effective from the pulpit, where the focus is not on the historical context of a particular reading, but on what the congregation needs to hear that morning. The sermon is not an ideal time for a history lesson. The congregation may not need a message about anti-Semitism, especially in a six-minute homily (Protestants typically have more time than Catholics for scriptural reflection in a liturgical setting). William Brosend defines “the fundamental homiletical question” as “What does the Holy Spirit want the people of God to hear from these texts on this occasion?”25 What the people need to hear will vary: encouragement, consolation, reconciliation, celebration, exhortation, and so on. At times, topics such as racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, and the like can get in the way of what this church at this time needs to hear. The Historical Context Argument in Brief Conversation with Privilege Doing history is necessary for overcoming structural imbalance. We need to know how we got to where we are. But the doing of history is already compromised by the very structural problems it seeks to undermine (I am reminded of Audre Lorde’s famous claim, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”26). When we tell history in the United States, we tell primarily white Protestant male history, with the non-normative subjects (women, slaves, the indigenous population, Catholics, Jews, Muslims . . .) mentioned on occasion. Normativity is most easily found in indices. We have Black History Month and Women’s History Month; we do not have “white male history month” because that perspective is normative. People on the alt-right who complain about this lack miss their own privilege: every month is their month. The historical-critical work on John’s Gospel, particularly as it is taught in seminaries and divinity schools, is not often Jewish history. It begins with questions about John’s Gospel, and then it seeks for connections within broader Jewish historical data as best as they can be recovered. It rarely asks the question of identity: What do Jews make of this text?27 How would a Jewish person, then or now, respond to John’s preaching? On the rare occasions the question is asked, the response is likely to be something along the lines

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of seeing John as a missionary text addressed to Jews.28 The response is not helpful, especially on the homiletics front. Historical-critical work done in service to the church is a necessary first step, but the steps cannot stop with reconstructing the past. The historians’ tools are not going to dismantle the structural anti-Judaism built into the proclamation if not also into the text itself. FRAGILITY AND DEFLECTION My students will sometimes wonder why I warn them about anti-Jewish preaching. It’s not a question that often surfaces in their homiletics classes. For them, society’s problems are racism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant stances, homophobia, and rejection of the trans population. Jews frequently code them as “white”;29 the students have no notion of the discriminatory codicils explicit as well as tacit that are still operative in education, housing, and club membership. For a few, I’m the only Jew with whom they’ve ever spoken. Or, as one Vanderbilt student expressed (not to me, so I admit to passing along gossip, but it’s good gossip) after I lectured on anti-Jewish rhetoric in forms of liberation theology, “Why is she so concerned about the Jews? The Middle Passage was worse than the Holocaust.” The game of comparative victimization in which the last one on the bottom wins never helped anyone in the long run. Meanwhile, the existence of Jews of color is denied. The Christian fragility model holds that I, and others who find John’s language problematic, am overreacting, ignoring the causes of John’s rhetoric, deflecting attention from pressing social concerns, and so on. And in all these cases, fragile Christians deny the problem. Denying the problem of anti-Jewish proclamation, let alone their own complicity in it, also denies Christians a direct opportunity to work against intersectional bigotry. Eric K. Ward observes: antisemitism has been a throughline from the Posse Comitatus, which set itself against “anti-Christ Jewry”; to David Duke’s refurbished Ku Klux Klan, which abandoned anti-Catholicism in the 1970s in order to focus on “Jewish supremacism”; to the neonazi group The Order, inspired by The Turner Diaries, which in the mid-1980s went on a rampage of robberies and synagogue bombings in Washington state and murdered a Jewish radio talk show host in Denver; to evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson who denounced anti-Semitism but used its popularity among their followers to promote an implicitly White supremacist “Christian nationalism”; to the contemporary Alt Right named by White nation-



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alist Richard Spencer, which has brought anti-Semitic thought and imagery to new audiences on the internet—and now at White House press conferences.30

This throughline can also be found within sections of churches not primarily defined by whiteness: in some traditionally black and Hispanic congregations the “Jew” is recognized as the “other”: the money-changer becomes the money-lender. Minoritized communities can imbibe the bigotry of the majority: to hate those my enemies hate is to become part of the larger whole. To see how the structural problems of white fragility correlate with Christian fragility, the following four examples put the standard general guides for addressing the so-called hostile texts in John into conversation with additional symptoms of white fragility. Not All Jews Are Bad Addressing the “fear of the Jews” (John 20:19), a phrase that is heard as many as six times over a three-year lectionary cycle, Culpepper suggests, “Here ‘the Jews’ probably refers to the authorities who collaborated with the Romans in Jesus’ death. The preacher can refer to ‘the authorities’ with no loss of meaning when retelling the story. Secondarily, John’s account may evoke the fear of the civic and religious leaders among adherents of the Johannine community later in the century. One of the themes of this appearance story is Jesus’ reassurance to the believing community when it encountered opposition, as it has at various periods in Christian history and still does today in various parts of the world.”31 John’s Gospel, from a literary-critical perspective, may at this point not be speaking about “the authorities” but about anyone outside Jesus’s followers. The redefinitions by Urban C. von Wahlde and Paul Anderson (e.g., “religious authorities,” “temple functionaries”) are lovely exercises in taxonomy, but they have, as far as I can tell, nothing to do with what the redactor planned, the original audience heard, or how the text functions as literature today.32 The various definitions provide (in my own admittedly cynical readings) a mechanism of exculpating the text for its general presentation of Jews. I doubt Marcus turned to Livia, or Ferdinand to Isabella, and asked, “Do you think that one was about Judeans, Jews in general, or Jewish leaders?” Readers, too, I fear, will look at the various lists and then quickly turn the page. Lists fill word counts, but they do not, often, resolve problems. Those readers, then and now, will hear about an undifferentiated and generally unpleasant, damned, and nasty group of “Jews.”

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The Johannine world is divided into “us” and “them,” and “the Jews,” generally, are “them.” To speak of “authorities” in some cases is a viable move, but a tricky one that might strike some readers as dishonest. Moreover, the text does not read “the authorities”: more than seventy times, it reads “the Jews.” Second, given that the text does say “the Jews,” the move to contemporary civic and religious leaders, while plausible, threatens to reinstantiate the idea that “the Jews” are really the ones with the power and the money. Finally, claims such as “When the Gospel uses language in this way, as it does, we must be very careful about making general references that judge all Jews, either then or now”33 do not work for the same reason that responses to white fragility do not work. Although well-intended, the result of this message is, “we know that not all Jews are like this,” just as “we know that not all Mexicans are rapists and not all African-American women are welfare queens.” And so, we wind up excusing the language, not confronting it. All Lives Matter In responding to the challenges that Black Lives Matter poses to white supremacy, with attention to the dangers of what has been called “driving while black,” numerous people insisted that all lives matter. This is a response of white privilege in that it universalizes a notably distinct experience: the person of color does not receive the same treatment from the police or the courts that white people do. The dominant population fails to recognize that in our society black lives often do not matter as much as white lives. The statement “black lives matter” does not mean that black lives matter more than white lives; it means that black lives matter as much as all lives should matter. The “all lives matter” approach is what underlies the universalizing of the homiletic pronouncement that “we, the members of the congregation, are the Jews” whom Jesus castigates. “We”—that is, we Christians—are in the same line as those rebellious Israelites in Exodus and those rebellious Jews in John’s Gospel. We are all sinners. The role of Israel is universalized to “us” and to “our experiences” even as it is both taken away from the Jews and functions to reinforce the connection of Jews with sin. Extending the references to all people does not erase the problem of the rhetoric; rather, such universalizing language co-opts the rhetoric. We see this type of co-opting and universalizing reading in the third sermon cited above: “Their pride caused them to hate Jesus and send him to the cross. In our pride and sinfulness we will always reject Jesus.” Yes, all lives matter and all people are sinful, but in circumstances where racism is present (i.e., always), black lives in particular matter because they have not “mattered” in the same way to the dominant society. In the church context, Jewish lives matter.



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They Deserve It White fragility manifests itself in claims that “they deserved it”: the incarceration rate for African-American men is disproportionately high because, it is assumed, African-American men commit disproportionately more crime. Missing from this diagnosis is any awareness of the structural inequities of the US judicial system.34 Similarly, Christian fragility manifests itself when suggesting, regarding Jews: “they deserve it.” In both cases, the majority recognizes the problem, but rather than addressing it, explains it as beginning with the very people whom the problem impacts. One version of this approach claims that, because John’s rhetoric is reactionary, the Jews brought it upon themselves. Had the synagogue been more welcoming of John and his perspective, the negative rhetoric never would have surfaced. The easiest way to counter this view is to ask congregants if they would be warm and welcoming to those who not only preached a different Gospel but who insisted that their view was the only correct view. A second response, which I have heard said by more than a few people who were themselves struggling with the question of anti-Judaism in their canon, is that “the Jews” right from the beginning persecuted the church, with Paul serving as the primary example. Therefore, they wanted to know: Did Jews really plan the horrific events of 9/11? Do Jews control all the banks and the media? Did Jews invent AIDS to kill people of African descent? Did Jews plan the Holocaust in order later to receive monetary reparations and a state? And so on. The people who asked these questions, both white and people of color, both born in the United States and immigrants, were genuinely curious. Surely, they thought, some of these rumors must be true; otherwise, why do they have so much traction? Such arguments have traction in Christian contexts because modern political and racial anti-Semitism is necessarily related to the dualism of John, coupled with other such hostile texts as, especially, Luke 16:14: “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money. . . .” I cannot count the number of biblical studies texts and Christian sermons I’ve read that insist Jews equate wealth with piety and poverty with sin, whereas Jesus undermines this teaching. John’s Gospel elevates the evils of Jews and Judaism to the cosmic via the Satanic. If John thinks “the Jews” are that bad, then any contemporary nonbiblical stereotype will find reinforcement in the biblical text. We Live in a Post-Problematic World Until the last US presidential election, many people cocooned in white privilege believed that we were living in a post-racial society: America elected a

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black president; African-Americans serve on the Supreme Court, as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, make money in the entertainment and sports arenas, and are “some of their best friends.” The same argument, in trump suits, fits the Christian privilege view concerning Jews: Jews are smart, wealthy, wellconnected. What are those Jews then whining about? A quick listen to one of the sermons cited above might surface the problem. An honest chat with a Jew about anti-Semitism might help. Attention to the anti-Jewish rhetoric on the right as well as on the left should shatter the post-whatever worldview. If that doesn’t work, perhaps attention to shootings in Kansas City, bombings in Brussels, assassinations in Argentina, or the occasional swastika that shows up on my office door would make the case. My point is not that America in the summer of 2017 is the equivalent of Munich in 1932. Again, the game of comparative horror is not one I care to play. My concern is that Christians are more inclined to dismiss acts of antiSemitism and to focus instead on acts of racism. The Charlottesville example serves again to demonstrate the issue. In its aftermath, the sermons focused on white supremacy; the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on August 23, 2018, announced the formation of a new ad hoc committee to address the “sin of racism.” That is all good. Where is the notice of the Charlottesville synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, that had to hire security because the police refused them protection from the Unite the Right folks, who proceeded to march past the synagogue shouting “Sieg Heil” and “Jews will not replace us”? Where is the attention of the bishops regarding anti-Jewish preaching or teaching, since that sin is more likely to surface in US churches than any racist remarks? Again, I am not claiming that anti-Semitism functions the same way racism in the United States does. As an Ashkenazic Jew, I have more daily privileges than my counterparts of color, right down to the student who wondered whether he landed his own job because he’s black. I Feel Like an Honorary Jew. . . . “I invited an African-American to my church”; “We sing African hymns” (as if all of Africa speaks the same language or shares the same traditions); “We have an African mask in our living room”; “My daughter learned African drumming in middle school.” These various moves reinforce white privilege even as they attempt to combat racism. The problems enter when African and African-American materials are contextualized according to white categories; they serve as tokens. This is why addressing the structural problems are so difficult. The same double bind impacts Christian privilege. It manifests in the argument that John loves the “Old Testament,” loves the Jewish feasts, the



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Jewish traditions, sees Jesus in terms of the temple, and so on. John loves all things Jewish; it’s just “the Jews” who are children of Satan. I’m not feeling the love in John’s Gospel. I am, rather, seeing an appropriation of all things Jewish—history, ritual, temple, text. John offers no love of Jews; at best, John sees the Ioudaioi as having preserved the correct tradition vis-à-vis the Samaritans, but not only as lost but also as damned apart from Jesus. They Do It Too Minoritized people sometimes make hateful statements about the majority. In some cases, the minoritized individual becomes radicalized, and the response is one of violence. When such events occur, white privilege kicks in as a response: “they’re animals; they hate us; we’ve done everything we can for them (e.g., welfare, integration) and this is how they respond.” I’ve heard the same claims regarding anti-Christian polemic in Jewish sources: “Yes, John has some hostile things to say, but so does your Talmud.” And indeed, the Talmud does. The difference here is the context in which the pronouncements are made. The Talmud is not known or read by the majority of Jews. Those who do read and study it debate its meaning. The Talmud itself is not a monolithic work but rather contains within it a multitude of often contradictory views on any given topic. In other words, a passage from the Talmud is not the same thing as a passage of Scripture proclaimed to the congregation from a pulpit during a worship service. Not all polemic is equal. IF THE PROBLEM IS STRUCTURAL AND SYSTEMIC, WHAT CAN I DO? Church programs Churches today run programs on addressing white privilege and white fragility. They might do the same with their relationship to Jews and Judaism. A single line before a sermon or the once-a-year “Jews are our friends” sermon becomes boring at best, or produces a negative reaction at worst. The congregation perceives itself to be scolded, and then fragility kicks in. Or, the congregation sees itself as progressive, but the structures of anti-Judaism remain in place. For congregations on the lectionary, there are several possible moves, from the Band-Aid (they do not resolve the problem, but at least they cut back on

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bloodshed and help prevent infection) to the ideal. The Band-Aid: put warning notes, each designed for hostile texts to be read, in the order of worship and announce it before the reading itself. The major change: petition the powers that be! Churches are the churches of the people: tell the organizers that what is currently in place is a deformation of the Gospel. Professor Schuller notes changes made in the readings for Canadian Catholics. How wonderful if Catholics could be mobilized to change the lectionaries, eliminating negative verses concerning Jews or Pharisees and including positive verses concerning women’s roles and representations. If the approach to white fragility and white privilege requires several hours over several days, so too does the study of the presentation of “the Jews” in canon and church. Since the problem is systemic, the response has to be more than a single comment. Clergy Training The 2015 Episcopal General Ordination Open-Resource Exam question on “Holy Scriptures” prompted my targeted search on SermonCentral. The examination question reads: John’s Gospel, as a whole, has been criticized because of its perceived attitude toward the Jewish people. Some believe that as the inspired and infallible Word of God, the Fourth Gospel condemns the Jewish people as those who rejected and ultimately put Jesus to death. Others believe that the language used to speak of the Jews in John is inherently anti-Semitic, and as such the use of John’s Gospel by the modern church is at the least anachronistic. Each year your parish reads John’s Passion account (John 18:1–19:37) as part of the Good Friday Liturgy from The Book of Common Prayer. Now a member of your parish Worship Committee has questioned the lack of sensitivity toward the Jewish people in continuing the practice of reading John’s Passion narrative on Good Friday, asking that John’s Passion be eliminated and another Passion narrative be read in its place. You have chosen to address this in a major article in your parish newsletter. Using your knowledge of Holy Scripture, grounded in an exegesis of John 19:14–16 [John 19:14–16 reads (NRSV): Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus . . .”], in 1,000 words create your parish newsletter article, explaining the practice of reading John’s Passion as part of the Good Friday Liturgy.



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Your article should be based on an exegesis of John 19:14–16. Your article should incorporate an understanding of John’s use of the term “the Jews.” Your article should be accessible to a lay person while demonstrating your ability to interpret Holy Scripture accurately. Your exegesis should utilize material from the Old and New Testaments. Your article will be evaluated on the clarity and accuracy of your argument and its conciseness in providing Scripture-based resources for your congregation when addressing this situation.35

A clergy person forced to reflect on this question is better able to preach from the pulpit, guide bible study, and lead congregational discussion. I suspect such clergy are also better prepared to address intersectional issues, make alliances with local Jewish communities for justice work, and prevent the easy anti-Semitism that passes for common discourse in some halls of Christian privilege. Call Out and Call In When anti-Jewish comments are made, or read, say something. Recently, for example, I found on the Patheos site an article dated August 15, 2017, and entitled, “9 Reasons You Need to Preach about Charlottesville, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice.” The posting, which had numerous helpful selections based on that Sunday’s lectionary readings, also wound up scapegoating Jews. In addressing Matt. 15:10–20, the original posting stated, “Jesus’ words would not have been shocking or offensive to the people around him in the story, nor to the original readers of Matthew’s gospel. Personal insults and harsh exchanges were part and parcel of First Century rhetoric, and Matthew would never have intended to portray Jesus as being a bigot. So we can’t blame Jesus for this kind of speech. The point was to show Jesus healing a Gentile, which actually would have been more shocking for Matthew’s Jewish readers.” I wrote to the author: “Your message therefore is ‘Matthew’s Jewish readers are bigots who would be shocked that a Jew healed a gentile and we (Christians) should do better.’ There are several points problematic here,” and then delineated the issues. The author, a scholar of grace and courage, wrote back, and shortly thereafter posted “8 Ways to Preach about Charlottesville, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice—Revised.”36 This was not the first sermon for which I’ve sent a note; it will not be the last. Most pastors are warmly receptive, even thankful, to learn how their

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words sound in other people’s ears; most also appreciate my backing up my claims with historical as well as hermeneutical points. What would happen, I wonder, if clergy, faculty, and students—so well attuned to anything racist and so immediately delighted to call that racism out—would also attend to anti-Jewish preaching? The approach is not simply to call out, but to “call in”: to point out with friendship what the problem is, and not to see the author as, well, deplorable.37 Imagining Otherwise Not everyone sees a problem with the so-called “hostile” verses, as the sermons quoted above demonstrate. Just as many who code as white are oblivious to present-day practices of racism, so too are many Christian preachers unaware of how John’s Gospel is implicated in anti-Jewish thought and action or how John’s Gospel may sound to Jewish ears. Acknowledging the problem is not an easy step, given the barriers created by Christian privilege. One practical step is for the pastor or priest to pretend there is a Jew in the congregation: if one would not say something in the presence of a Jew, then that same something should not be said in the presence of anyone. The model here is the in-house racist comment: the comments we make in the privilege of being among our own. A second approach is to learn about how anti-Jewish preaching functions in places and times where anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic action also occurs. What is said about Jews in the churches attended by those who shouted in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and “Jews will not replace us”? A third is to recognize the intersectionality of racism and anti-Semitism. Here, pastors in the black church traditions need to recognize their own Christian privilege even as they need to be aware of how their preaching might lead to anti-Jewish attitudes. If we move into silos, and so fail to recognize the intertwined nature of racism and anti-Semitism, the problems magnify. Worse, if black preaching accepts the dominant culture’s anti-Jewish agenda, which is a possible part of Christian privilege, then potential allies will be lost in the struggle against racism. Christian privilege on the left, the sector of the church that is already aware of the problems in the text, allows church members to silo forms of oppression. In a searing article in the Atlantic, Emma Green writes, “The identity politics of the intersectional left are radically different from the generalized bigotry of the far-right fever swamps. And yet, they are in relationship: Universalized movements that aim to fight oppression against all peoples in all of their identities necessarily invite backlash from those who feel that they’re



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losing their place in society.”38 She then quotes historian David Nirenberg: “It would really reduce and impoverish debate to see this example [in Charlottesville] as primarily an anti-Jewish rally . . . [or] as entirely an anti-African American rally. It’s all those things,” said Nirenberg. “To the extent that we separate those and claim, ‘No, it’s only about my identity,’ we fail to understand basic aspects of identity politics in the present.”39 When Charlottesville surfaced in sermons the following Sunday, the focus was on race. Unless the intersectional aspects of bigotry are flagged, the roots remain in place. As best as I can tell from anecdotal evidence, both black and white pastors took to their pulpits the following Sunday to condemn the sin of racism. The target was “White supremacy.” The response, on occasion, mentioned the sin of anti-Semitism,40 but most, as far as I can tell, did not. If our social issues are framed only as “white supremacy,” then Christian privilege, manifested with noxious pride among KKK members, goes unchecked. Yes, the church should proclaim “Jesus saves”; Christians should not, however, disregard how their proclamation of a limited soteriology impacts those outside their walls. I wonder how those pastors, who on the Sunday morning after Charlottesville insisted that they “categorically reject the myth of white supremacy,” would react if asked also to “categorically reject the myth of Christian supremacy?” Many churches are celebrating the removal of Confederate flags, statues of heroes of the Confederacy, and other symbols that have multiple meanings, from Southern Pride to Racist Hate. The evils of slavery trump the promotion of Southern pride. Would these same churches consider that the evils of anti-Semitism trump the promotion of select lectionary texts? Some of these flags and statues will be relocated to museums; should some of those Gospel readings be relocated away from Sunday morning proclamation as “good news?” To ask the question would advance the discussion on the homiletic front. NOTES 1.  For reflections on the failures of theological education regarding the subject of Jews and Judaism, see Amy-Jill Levine, “Nostra Aetate, Omnia Mutantur: The Times They Are a-Changing,” in Elena Procario-Foley and Robert Cathey (eds.), Righting Relations after the Holocaust and Vatican II: Essays in Honor of John Pawlikowski (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press/Stimulus Foundation, 2018), 226–252. For a study on how homilists address “the Jews” in light of official ecclesial teaching, see Amy-Jill Levine, “Proclamation, Translation, Implication: Addressing the Vilification of ‘The Jews,’” in James W. Barker with Joel N. Lohr and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Found in Translation: Essays on Jewish Biblical Translation in Honor of Leonard J.

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Greenspoon. Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies (Purdue: Purdue University Press, 2018), 268–288.   2.  Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School; an excerpt from Working Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies,” Wellesley College Center for Research on Women; text posted at https://www.csusm.edu/sjs/documents /UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf. The study of male privilege, white privilege, and the various applicable terminologies, has substantially advanced; it has also broadened to issues of sexuality, gender identity, American identity, etc.  3. Ibid.  4. Ibid.   5.  Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility,” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3.3 (2011), 54–70 (54).  6. Ibid., 57.  7. Ibid., 58–63.   8.  Kevin Ruffcorn, “Deceptive Looks,” sermon posted to Sermoncentral.com on April 17, 2018, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/scripture/sermons-on-john -1914-1916?passage=john%2019:14-19:16, accessed August 20, 2017.  9. Jay Robison, “Who Really Killed Jesus?” sermon posted to Sermoncentral .com on March 31, 2004, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/who-really-killed -jesus-jay-robison-sermon-on-easter-good-friday-67251?ref=SermonSerps, accessed August 20, 2017. 10.  Freddy Fritz, “Jesus on Trial: The Sentence,” sermon posted to Sermoncentral .com on March 24, 2016, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/jesus-on-trial -the-sentence-freddy-fritz-sermon-on-son-of-god-200893?ref=SermonSerps, accessed August 20, 2017. 11.  Phil Morgan, “Selling Self to Caesar,” sermon posted to Sermoncentral.com on April 2, 2002, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/selling-self-to-caesar -phil-morgan-sermon-on-easter-good-friday-45218, accessed August 20, 2017. 12.  Ron Tuit, “Punishing the Innocent and Powerful,” sermon posted to Sermon central.com on July 6, 2016, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/punishing-the -innocent-and-powerful—ron-tuit-sermon-on-jesus-trial-202868?page=2, accessed August 20, 2017. 13.  Derrick Tuper, “What Will You Do with Jesus?” Sermon posted to Sermon central.com on October 14, 2013, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons /what-will-you-do-with-jesus-derrick-tuper-sermon-on-jesus-christ-179820, accessed August 20, 2017. 14. Rosemary Reuther, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of AntiSemitism (New York: Seabury/Crossroad, 1974), 228. 15. Amanda Hess, “Earning the ‘Woke’ Badge,” First Words. New York Times Magazine, April 19, 2016, at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine /earning-the-woke-badge.html?mcubz=1, accessed August 20, 2017. 16.  See Levine, “Proclamation, Translation, Implication.”



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17.  Eileen Schuller, “Reading the Gospel of John in the Catholic Lectionary,” this volume, 78. 18.  See Adele Reinhartz, “The Johannine Community and Its Jewish Neighbors: A Reappraisal,” in “What Is John?” ed. Fernando F Segovia, vol. 2 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 111–38. 19.  Culpepper, “Preaching the Hostile References to ‘the Jews’ in the Gospel of John,” this volume, 66. 20.  See Amy-Jill Levine, “Matthew, Mark, and Luke: Good News or Bad?” in Paula Fredriksen and Adele Reinhartz (eds.), Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 77–98. 21.  See the classic study by Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (New York: St. Martins Press, 2000); Binjamin W. Segel, A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, ed. and trans. Richard S. Levy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). 22.  The standard argument can be found in Luke Timothy Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” Journal of Biblical Literature 108, no. 3 (1989): 419–41. See Michael G. Azar, “The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jews, and the Gospel of John,” in this volume, n. 16. 23.  See Katie Reilly, “Here Are All the Times Donald Trump Insulted Mexico,” Time, August 31, 2016, http://time.com/4473972/donald-trump-mexico-meeting -insult, accessed August 20, 2017. 24.  Culpepper, “Preaching,” 63–65. 25.  William Brosend, The Preaching of Jesus: Gospel Proclamation, Then and Now (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox 2010), 48. 26.  Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983), 94–101. 27.  Adele Reinhartz’s Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2002) is a notable exception. 28.  Suggested by Adele Reinhartz, personal correspondence. 29.  See Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998); See also Emma Green, “Are Jews White?” Atlantic, December 5, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com /politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453, accessed August 20, 2017. 30.  Eric K. Ward, “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” Political Research Associates, June 29, 2017; forthcoming in The Public Eye (Summer 2017), http://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/skin-in-the-game-how -antisemitism-animates-white-nationalism, accessed August 20, 2017. On the farright group Posse Comitatus, see Daniel Levitas, The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right, 1st ed. (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

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31.  Culpepper, “Preaching,” 64. 32.  Culpepper, “Preaching,” 51–53. 33.  Culpepper, “Preaching,” 58. 34.  The classic study is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010/2012). 35.  In his blog on this examination, “Crusty Old Dean” (January 15, 2015), Tom Ferguson, former dean of Bexley-Seabury Seminary and currently rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Sandwich, Massachusetts, writes, “We lose credibility with our inter religious partners if we simply ignore or pretend we do not have inherent anti-Jewish tendencies in our Scripture, liturgy, and theology; like white privilege, it’s a form of Christian privilege to presume we can forget or ignore or explain away aspects of our past,” http://crustyoldean.blogspot.com/2015/01/blogging-goes -questions-1-and-2-let-goe.html, accessed August 20, 2017. 36. Leah D. Schade, “8 Ways to Preach about Charlottesville, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice—Revised,” August 15, 2017, http://www.patheos.com /blogs/ecopreacher/2017/08/8-ways-preach-charlottesville-white-supremacy-racial -justice/#FWp2akcocjdWOafI.99, accessed August 20, 2017. 37.  I first heard the “calling out” vs. “calling in” distinction from my late colleague, professor of homiletics, Dale P. Andrews. 38.  Emma Green, “Why the Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed with Jews,” The Atlantic, August 15, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08 /nazis-racism-charlottesville/536928, accessed August 20, 2017. 39. Ibid. 40.  Summarizing United Methodist preaching, Heather Hahn noted that the United Methodist Women’s group issued a statement against “racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry.” See her “At Sunday Worship, Pastors Decry Racism” United Methodist News Service, August 14, 2017, http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/at-sunday-worship -pastors-decry-racism, accessed August 20, 2017.

Part III

RE-PRESENTING JOHN

Chapter Six

Ecclesia and Synagoga In Principio The Fourth Gospel as Resource for Anti-Jewish Visual Polemic Marcia Kupfer The great historiated “I” that opens Genesis in a late twelfth-century bible from the Cistercian abbey Notre-Dame du Bonport (near Rouen, diocese of Évreux) features at its base an arresting confrontation between Ecclesia and Synagoga (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 53, fol. 7v).1 The female personifications are identically haloed and wear garments of the same type and colors. Such elemental twinship, however, does not obscure the glaring oppositions. Crowned, Holy Church (labeled Sancta ecclesia) gazes upward with wideopen eyes as she holds her Eucharistic chalice and waves her banner aloft. The crown tumbles from blindfolded Synagoga (labeled) who unfurls a scroll and grasps a broken staff, its banner inverted. Ecclesia’s head is covered with a veil and her mantle draped to conceal her torso, while Synagoga’s long hair is immodestly exposed and her mantle arranged to call attention to her breasts.2 Synagoga stands astride a hunched and blood-streaked black devil baring a bloodied fang (diabolus inscribed across its rear). Ecclesia likewise tramples underfoot a prostrate figure, also labeled Synagoga, equal in size to the upright personifications but crouching on bent knee and elbow, her head turned back (figures 6.1 and 6.2). Not previously mentioned in the extensive literature on the familiar pictorial proxies for Christianity and Judaism, Bonport’s formulation of Ecclesia and Synagoga is unique even as contemporary analogues exist for various iconographic components.3 The image is remarkable both for its fraught disparagement of the twice-depicted Synagoga and for its having provoked a subsequent radical effacement of the figure below Ecclesia. Why, moreover, does the theme appear at the head of Genesis? In illuminated bibles of the twelfth century, the pairing of Ecclesia and Synagoga sometimes occurs at the Song of Songs or, albeit rarely, at the Prophets.4 Absent, too, from the page is a crucifixion scene, the usual context for the symbolic representation of the two religions. Rather, the visual disputatio 113

Figure 6.1.  “I” at the beginning of Genesis, Bible (Octateuch) from the Abbey of Notre-Dame du Bonport, France; last decade of the twelfth century. Paris, BnF. MS lat. 53, fol. 7v.



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Figure 6.2.  Ecclesia and Synagoga, detail of Fig. 6.1.

here accompanies a narrative sequence that extends beyond Genesis to include material from Exodus. The creation account begins in medias res with the making first of Adam (labeled) in the panel above the right text column (containing in gold leaf capitals the rest of Gen. 1:1) and then of Eve in the medallion below. The next three medallions down the “I” relate the Fall: the divine admonition not to eat of the tree of knowledge, the serpent’s seduction of the couple into disobedience, and the expulsion from paradise. The penultimate medallion encloses a sailboat-like ark bearing Noah (labeled noe), his prominently featured wife (labeled uxor), and family across the floodwaters. The story jumps ahead to the crossing of the Red Sea with a portrait bust of the horned Moses (labeled moyses) infiltrating the vertical line of ornamental leonine/taurine masks.5 Ecclesia and Synagoga do crop up at Genesis in a handful of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century bibles from Flanders and England, a cluster belonging, broadly speaking, to the same artistic zone as the Norman manuscript.6 But the later examples dissipate through their stock iconography, not to mention their Gothic prettiness, the dramatic force of this earliest instance.

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I propose that intertextual resonance between the In principios of the “Old” and “New Testaments,” amplified by established exegetical and artistic traditions acting together, elucidates the placement, treatment, and function of Ecclesia and Synagoga in the Bonport Bible. The first part of my chapter considers prior and contemporary depictions of the paired personifications at the opening to the Fourth Gospel. The second part returns to the Bonport manuscript, an Octateuch, produced in the years just after the abbey’s royal foundation in late 1189 to early 1190. The king of England and duke of Normandy Richard the Lionheart had launched the house with monks from the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame du Val in the Île-de-France (north of Paris).7 I analyze the visual polemic that bridges the two texts on the page: the end of St. Jerome’s preface to the Old Testament in the left column and the beginning of Genesis in the right. The constellation of images reflects a cosmological perspective that had long integrated Johannine and Pauline polarities—light vs. darkness, vision vs. blindness, acceptance vs. rejection of the truth, grace vs. law, spirit vs. letter—and had mapped the set onto Christian negation of Judaism. But the bible’s Genesis illustration also pushes this negation in a new direction. It weaves Synagoga’s errors, retrojected in time, into the story ab initio of humanity’s weakness and corruption; Eve becomes Synagoga’s precursor. Pictorial elaboration of Synagoga’s genealogy draws from the Fourth Gospel and its explication in the most influential and widely available patristic commentary on John, St. Augustine’s. Yet, following the authority of St. Jerome, does not Hebrew scripture underwrite Christian soteriology? Ecclesia’s triumph, foreordained, mandates the recuperation of the Old Testament text about to unfold, and makes supersessionist doctrine foundational to the experience of reading the bible from this manuscript. The Bonport volume is hardly the only twelfth-century Cistercian bible to grapple in its illustrative program with the tension between Jewish witness to the Hebraica veritas and the displacement of Synagoga. I will look back at the famous bible produced under Stephen Harding, abbot of Cîteaux from 1108 to 1133. I will then glance ahead at the trace that Christian– Jewish interaction left in the Bonport abbey library. The exchange, recorded in a manuscript dating only slightly later than the community’s bible, typifies social relations ca. 1200 and may perhaps be relevant, if only obliquely, to the striking picture of Ecclesia and Synagoga in principio. IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM The enhanced stature historically enjoyed by the Gospel of John in the cultivation of Christian spirituality is critical to addressing the potency of its



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rhetoric in service to anti-Jewish discourse.8 Scholarship on the place of the Fourth Gospel in medieval art delineates a multi-faceted visual complement to the superior dignity that the Latin church conferred on the text and its putative author. Three important publications, coinciding in the years 2001–2003, establish the larger framework prerequisite to research on how pictorial crossreferences between John and Genesis may motivate individual works. I can here only summarize the parameters most relevant to the case at hand. Jeffrey Hamburger’s far-reaching study of John’s virtual deification attends to the evangelist’s composite literary persona. The very aspects of John’s life and writings that prompted his Christomorphic representation also shaped artistic investment in his devotional cult.9 The key points in this cult stem from the belief that John was an eyewitness to the events about which he writes (21:24). In this role, John identifies himself five times as the beloved disciple. He leaned on Jesus’s breast at the Last Supper (13:23; 21:20). At the crucifixion, Jesus declared him the Virgin Mary’s adopted son, and she became his charge (19:26–27). On hearing from Mary Magdalene that Jesus’s corpse had disappeared (20:2), he outran Peter to the tomb, and when he saw it empty, he believed. At the lakeshore, he recognized and announced the resurrected Christ (21:7). John’s presumed virginity and scripturally attested intimacy with Jesus made him a model of the religious life and its contemplative goals. Thought to have imbibed divine wisdom from Christ’s bosom, John gained mystical knowledge of celestial mysteries. Just as his Apocalypse records the visionary’s prophecy of last things, so his Gospel expounds the evangelist’s inspired theology of first things. Its rewriting of Genesis, as interpreted by the church fathers, brings the account of creation in the Jewish canon into line with the economy of Christian salvation. The Gospel’s running interest in the symbiosis between faith, vision, and knowledge encouraged the recruitment of images as vehicles of spiritual ascent to union with Christ. François Boespflug and Yolanta Załuska focus their joint investigation on what modern parlance calls the Gospel’s “Prologue.”10 Already in late antiquity, the opening verses (1–14) had acquired special distinction through liturgical use as the pericope read during mass on Christmas day in the Vatican basilica, a practice eventually generalized in the West. The Prologue found its richest visual expression in prefatory miniatures that condense weighty matters of dogma: God’s triune being, majesty and cosmic rulership, the eternity of the Word and its creative power through which all things were made, the incarnation, the identity of the Creator and the Savior, and the earthly manifestation of Christ’s glory, which his disciples witnessed. John was regarded not only as having formulated orthodox positions on the Trinity, Christology, and the divine act of creation, but also as their fiercest defender against heretics. Bianca Kühnel’s pathbreaking book on the visual imbrication of cosmology

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and eschatology through diagrammatic composition also discusses the Johannine prologue. She deals specifically with the reciprocity between Genesis and John frontispieces.11 Where her chronological purview terminates, in the eleventh century, the two aforementioned studies pursue developments well into the thirteenth, with Hamburger moving beyond manuscripts and into the late Middle Ages.12 To restate the scholarly consensus in other terms, the artistic interlocking of John’s Prologue and the opening of Genesis is so widespread and enduring a phenomenon that it may be considered almost reflexive. The mutual association entails the formal structure of the initials themselves: the transfer of the IN monogram from the John pages in the Ottonian Gospel books to Genesis incipits in Mosan Romanesque bibles, and vice versa the transfer from Genesis of the single “I” populated with medallions to John. Iconographically, the importation into John frontispieces of cosmological imagery—including (from ca. 1000) personifications of the four elements, heavenly bodies, ocean, earth, and eventually, from the later twelfth century, entire hexameral cycles—has as its counterpart the retrojection in Genesis incipits of the Logos-Creator, Christ in Majesty, and allusions to the end time. Against this background, the lone extant antecedent to the Bonport Bible’s placement of Ecclesia and Synagoga In principio stands out (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.333, fol. 85r: figure 6.3). It occurs in a magnificent gospel book from the scriptorium of the Flemish abbey of St. Bertin (located between Arras and Calais, today northwestern France), a manuscript dating from the turn of the millennium and illuminated by artist and abbot Odbert (ruled ca. 986–ca. 1007). The Morgan’s Odbert Gospels is famous for its suite of evangelist portraits and facing historiated initials on purpled panels surrounded by exuberant foliate borders, for highly innovative iconography fusing Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian sources, and for a drawing style born of close ties to work across the Channel.13 The majuscule “I” at John houses the crucifixion with Mary and John under arches below the cross, and further down the stem, Ecclesia above Synagoga. Three scenes inhabit the lush borders: the harrowing of hell (left), the women at the empty tomb (right), and the ascension (above) in which only Christ’s lower body is visible, the figure cut off to suggest his disappearance into the heavens.14 In the lower border, personifications of Terra suckling serpents and Oceanus holding a fish and trident represent the earthly theater into which the Word made flesh had descended; they recall the waters gathered into seas and the emergence of dry land (Gen. 1:9–10). The four Rivers (Gen. 2:10–14) along the sides, while in other contexts collectively symbolizing the four gospels, here intimate the Edenic perfection of creation disrupted by the Fall, to which the serpent wound around the base of the cross alludes and which Christ’s sacrifice

Figure 6.3.  Opening to the Gospel of John, right page, “I” with Crucifixion above Ecclesia and Synagoga, Odbert Gospels, Abbey of Saint-Bertin (ca. 1000). New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum. MS M.333, fol. 85r. Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan [1837–1913] in 1907. Photographic credit: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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redeems. The paradisical streams also evoke passages in John in which Christ promises “a fountain of water springing up into life everlasting” (4:13–14) and “rivers of living water” to flow out of his belly (7:38), an allusion to the crucifixion when Longinus pierced his side (19:34). Even as certain aspects of the Morgan page can be related to well-known Ottonian frontispieces from the first half of the eleventh century, it differently inflects the prologue. Let me first review the comparanda. In the Bernward Gospels (ca. 1015, Hildesheim, Dom und Diözesanmuseum, Domschatz 18, fol. 174r) and the Bamberg Gospels from Cologne (ca. 1050, Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Misc. Bibl. 94, fol. 154v), the opening John miniatures combine cosmological references to Genesis with the representation of Christ’s heavenly majesty as the Lord of hosts (Isa. 6, see figure 6.4). In the Uta Codex (ca. 1025, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 13601, fol. 89v), the page devoted to the evangelist’s portrait is the locus for an analogous conjunction that resorts instead to a scene of the transfiguration.15 The latter scene recurs in the Bamberg Gospels, where it fills two-thirds of the pendant miniature facing the Majesty (fol. 155r). Significantly, all three works visualize the Word made flesh through the event of Christ’s nativity by displaying the swaddled infant on an altar-like crib.

Figure 6.4.  Double-page opening to the Gospel of John, Bamberg Gospels from Cologne (ca. 1050). Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Msc. Bibl. 94, fol. 154–55r.



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Just as the Bamberg transfiguration scene shows the disciples beholding Christ’s glory (John 1:14, inscribed), so the nativity episode in the miniature’s upper register shows the shepherds as witnesses who hear the angelic annunciation of his birth. The Bamberg diptych also takes up the Prologue’s theme of the world’s darkness and ignorance, juxtaposing it with recognition and belief. The lower half of the cosmos dominated by Christ enthroned, the earthly zone is divided between scenes of idol-worship and baptism. The Bernward Gospels include an extended suite of narrative scenes from Christ’s earthly life, with full-page miniatures, each split into two registers, portraying his baptism (a scene of John the Baptist at work also appears in the Uta Codex), the raising of Lazarus, the entry into Jerusalem, and the crucifixion; the ascension, coupled with John’s portrait, concludes the series (fols. 174v–75v). By contrast with these Ottonian treatments of John, the Morgan page frames the incarnation not in terms of Jesus’s birth, but only his death. To be sure, it encapsulates Christ’s divinity through the post-crucifixion episodes, and, in the resurrection and ascension scenes, the disciples and the Virgin perform a testimonial function. But by giving the crucifixion a privileged position in the very letter with which the Gospel begins, Odbert emphasizes less the light shining in the darkness than “the darkness did not comprehend it” (1:5) and “the world knew him not” (1:10). For what demonstrates rejection of Christ more absolutely than the crucifixion? And, conversely, what more supremely the price of humanity’s redemption? The centrality accorded to the scene parallels Augustine’s insistence on the cross, the ship by which the sea of this world must be traversed, in his reading of the prologue (Tractatus in Euangelium Iohannis 2:2–4). Christ’s Passion is the sign par excellence of the incarnation, the lowliness of the Word’s descent into flesh. “‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.’ But wherefore was He crucified? Because the wood of His humiliation was needful to thee. For thou hadst become swollen with pride . . . On account of thee He was crucified to teach thee humility.”16 A volume of Augustine’s homilies on the Fourth Gospel (Augustini liber super Ioannem) is listed among the 305 manuscripts recorded in the catalogue, dated 1104, of St. Bertin’s library.17 Whether it, or another copy of the text, belonged to the abbey already during Odbert’s time remains an open question, but Augustine’s commentary circulated widely and was known also through early medieval epitomes.18 Odbert’s crucifixion scene, unlike that associated with John in the Bernward Gospels, inserts Ecclesia and Synagoga. Their depiction at the cross is an artistic invention that can be dated shortly before the middle of the ninth century, the iconography becoming more conventionalized, according to Nina Rowe, by the 870s. From this period, ivory plaques of the Metz school at once reduce narrative complexity in their conjoined crucifixion and resurrection images

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and impose bilateral symmetry around the cross. On Christ’s right stands the Virgin along with Ecclesia holding up her vessel to catch the blood mixed with water from his wound, while, depicted below, Longinus raises his lance. On Christ’s left stand St. John and Synagoga holding her banner, while Stephaton raises his sponge. As Rowe aptly puts it, “Christ’s body becomes the hinge between the era of the law and the age of grace, embodied respectively in Synagoga and Ecclesia.” Although the supersessionist logic is visually crystal clear, Synagoga herself “bears no signs of ignominy.” On the contrary, her posture conveys her ambivalence: while walking away from Christ, she turns her head and looks up at him as if to signal a “hope for conversion.”19 Beatrice Kitzinger has observed that Odbert’s crucifixion scene, harking back to these Carolingian models, transposes the core composition to the initial’s vertical format.20 Still, the dissolution of the four-figure group on either side of the cross, albeit the product of a formal imperative, effectively changes the status of Synagoga. Placed at the bottom of the “I” beneath the feet of Ecclesia, she ceases to be a coequal partner in a purely temporal argument about the unfolding of salvation history. The hierarchical arrangement reflects, and encourages, visual interference from images representing domination of the vanquished foe; the pictorial tradition of victory over adversaries, inherited from classical antiquity, would have a long life in medieval art.21 Indeed, Odbert’s Synagoga, of noble bearing and gazing upward like the Carolingian exempla, is the earliest on record to display an inverted banner, a sign of defeat.22 Shifted from its properly liturgical venues in Carolingian art (an initial in the Drogo Sacramentary; bejeweled covers of books used in the mass) to the incipit of the Fourth Gospel, the image of the crucifixion with Ecclesia and Synagoga performs several mutually reinforcing tasks. The pair stands for the collectivities that play important supporting and antagonistic roles in the ensuing Gospel narrative: Christ’s followers on the one hand and the Jews on the other, mention of whom in John (approximately seventy times) vastly outnumbers that in the Synoptics combined.23 Might the cumulative references to the Jews, a salient aspect of the text in contradistinction to the first three Gospels, have inspired, if only subliminally, Odbert’s recourse to and revision of the iconographic motif? In referring explicitly to verse 11, “He came unto his own: and his own received him not,” Synagoga particularizes, indeed names, the uncomprehending darkness and disbelieving people—the Jews. At the same time, because a personification is, by definition, a reification of an abstract concept, the figure of Synagoga dislodges their refusal to acknowledge Christ from any specific narrative context in historical time and makes it an ontological predisposition.24



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The next verse with its introductory conjunction, “But as many as received him, he gave them the power to be made the sons of God,” qualifies the totalizing statement of rejection vis-à-vis “his own.” Augustine so interprets it (Tractatus 2:12–13). Yet the figure of Ecclesia, covering the faithful, and Synagoga operate a decisive cut. Together, the pair visually translates the description of past action into an ongoing contest. Insinuated into the matrix of Johannine polarities, the antinomy of the two covenants along with the opposition between their respective adherents becomes a first principle, a cosmological axiom. Thus do Ecclesia and Synagoga crystallize antithetical states of spiritual being at the opening to John in a one-volume bible of French origin dating not much later than the Bonport Bible (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 11, fol. 256r, see figure 6.5).25 Pictorial reference to Genesis, here elided, is not necessary for the historiated “I” to map the divergent destinies of the pair onto the successive cosmological separations (heaven and earth, night and day, water and land) that the Creator enacted at the beginning and that the prologue bundles into the metaphorical work of light and darkness. Five roundels each enclose a half-length figure. At the top, Christ holds a globe, followed by John the Baptist cradling a cross-nimbed lamb of God in drapery folded over his left arm. Triumphant Ecclesia, crowned, occupies the center of the initial; her banner flutters from a cross-shaped staff and she lifts a chalice in her veiled left hand. The denigration of Synagoga is consistent with the early thirteenthcentury handling of the motif. Blindfolded, she lowers her head, her crown slides off, and her staff is splintered. The overturned oil lamp further casts her in the role of a “foolish virgin” from the nuptial parable figuring the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:1–13). At the bottom comes horned Moses, who looks upward as he displays an unfurled scroll with one hand and rests his rod against his shoulder with the other. The string of images encapsulates verse 17, “For the law was given by Moses: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Reading across, the individual figures seem keyed to words or phrases in adjacent lines of text: Christ to verbum (v. 1–2, first three lines); John the Baptist to testimonium (v. 7–8, lines 9–11 from top); Ecclesia to qui credunt in nomine eius (v. 12–13, lines 16–20); and Synagoga to lex per moysen (v. 17, lines 27–28). Moses at first seems less clearly to fit the pattern, unless, correlated to interrogaverunt and dixerunt (v. 21–22), he stands for the Jews and their agents, the priests and Levites, sent to question the Baptist. Notwithstanding the positive valence accorded Moses in Christian typology, he can also negatively impugn the Jews. Peter the Chanter (d. 1197), echoing Isidore of Seville, states that “Moses signifies the Jewish people placed under the law. As he struck the rock with

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Figure 6.5.  “I” at the beginning of the Gospel of John, Bible, France, early thirteenth century. Paris, BnF, MS lat. 11, fol. 256r.

his rod and doubted the power of God [Num. 20:13], so that people, placed under the law given by Moses, nailed Christ to the wood of the cross and did not believe him to be the power (virtus) of God.”26 By the time the Bonport monks acquired their Bible manuscript, patristic and early medieval readings of John 1:1 and Genesis 1:1 as pendants had been compiled in materials for classroom study of the sacra pagina. A ma-



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jor repository of this exegetical linkage, the glossa ordinaria (Laon, early twelfth century for the relevant books) was taught at the cathedral school in Paris from the 1150s.27 There, master and eventually chancellor Peter Comestor adapted the Gloss, among other sources, to his larger project of expounding the historical sense of scripture as the basis from which to draw theological insights.28 Chapter 1 of his Historia scholastica (first version 1169–1173, revisions before 1178) introduces Genesis with a paraphrase of John 1:1, a novel move that, to quote Mark Clark, “made the Word a principal literal meaning of ‘in the beginning’ for the first time.”29 From the moment of its earliest dissemination, Comestor’s highly esteemed textbook entered the university curriculum. Stephen Langton’s lectures on the Historia scholastica (1170s–1193) show his evolving responses to theological questions arising from Comestor’s conflation of the two biblical lemmas.30 This Parisian background is worth bearing in mind, given that Val abbey, located in the diocese of Paris, supplied the founding community of Bonport. Of course, the Gloss and the Historia scholastica were core pedagogical instruments for bible study not only in cathedral schools and the university, but also in monasteries. IN PRINCIPIO CREAVIT DEUS CAELUM ET TERRAM The “I” of Genesis in the Bonport Bible, extending the entire length of the page, structurally divides the two columns of text. Its iconographic content, however, forges a seam between them. The latter half of Jerome’s epistolary prologue to the Pentateuch (Desiderii mei desideratas, S 285, begun on fol. 7r) fills the left column.31 In this letter, addressed to Desiderius, Jerome defends his decision to translate the Five Books from the Hebrew rather than from the Septuagint. The evangelists and apostles cite passages from scripture that, absent from the Septuagint, he has found preserved in the original Hebrew. He derides the legend that the Seventy translators each individually received identical formulations through prophetic inspiration. Laboring collectively, they faced inherent constraints. “They translated before the advent of Christ, and expressed in ambiguous terms that which they knew not. We, after his passion and resurrection, write not prophecy so much as history. . . . I do not censure the Seventy, but I am bold enough to prefer the Apostles,” who outrank even the prophets in terms of spiritual gifts. “Wherever in translation I seem to you to go wrong, ask the Hebrews, consult their teachers in different cities.” It is a different matter “if they have rejected passages which were afterwards used against them by the Apostles, and the Latin texts are more correct than the Greek, the Greek than the Hebrew!”32

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In sum, Jerome advocates an instrumentalist approach to Christianity’s Jewish inheritance. On the one hand, Hebrew scripture enshrines the most authoritative rendition of the Old Testament’s historical and prophetic support for the New. On the other, its contemporary curation by living Jews remains suspect. The very rabbis who mediate access also stand accused of disavowing and setting aside proof-texts that buttress the Christian faith. The logic of this split perspective, transposed to a theological register, plays out in the column of images at the head of Genesis. The twice-pictured Synagoga, both trampling the devil and herself trampled by Ecclesia, betrays an unresolved ambivalence, one that lies at the heart of supersessionist hermeneutics. For does not Christian exegesis perforce presuppose the value of the Jewish heritage when erecting a typological system on its foundations, or accord the law some purpose in the schema of salvation history when declaiming its abrogation? The bible’s Genesis illustration, comprising the personifications and the narrative gateway into the biblical text that they frame, doubles as a polemic adversus iudeos to which the Gospel of John and its canonical interpretations contribute. Crowning the “I,” God is visualized in Trinitarian terms (figure 6.6). The compound image of the deity is enclosed in a “figure-8” mandorla (above, only the black contour of the ovoid form survives; the pigments have flaked off exposing the preparatory ground). The half-length bearded figure, blessing with his right hand and holding the orbis terrarum with his left, merges below the waist with the encirclement of two full-length figures, both haloed and beardless. Seated and facing each other, they are enveloped in the golden lap of the overarching figure, their blue tunics of a piece with his blue mantle. The formulation, unique to my knowledge, thus shows God’s oneness to subsume three distinct, consubstantial persons.33 The two confronted figures mirror one another in their speaking gestures and speech scrolls, which cross their bodies and spill out of the roundel. The scroll at right enters the adjacent rectangular scene of the creation of man, where it wraps around Adam’s arm—the divine speech act is thereby continuous with its material effect. By the same token, the dominant figure within the image of the triune God is clearly meant to portray Christ, who, when forming Adam, wears the same red tunic and blue mantle. Note, moreover, that Christ-Logos and the bearded Adam whom he creates are physiognomically identical. Through these pictorial strategies, the artist has attempted to suggest (1) the Trinitarian dogma of the Word coequal and coeternal with the Father and (2) the Christological dogma of the Son’s two indivisible natures “consubstantial with God in his divinity and with man in his humanity.”34 While the appearance of Christ-Logos in creation scenes could not be more conventional, the artist has gone further to twin Adam and Christ in the very field



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Figure 6.6.  The Trinity. Detail of Figure 6.1.

where the words of Gen. 1:1, inescapably recalling John 1:1, are inscribed in gold leaf. The depiction of man’s formation not merely adumbrates but proleptically actuates the Word made flesh, the second Adam come to redeem the sin of the first. What licenses the artistic expression of such doctrinal and typological concerns is the scriptural passage prioritized for representation at the top of the page. The figures of the two divine Persons addressing one another and the resemblance between Christ and Adam together illustrate Gen. 1:26–27, “And let us make man to our image and likeness. . . . And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him.” The slide from singular to plural and back to singular forms was regularly invoked to demonstrate contra iudeos that the Hebrew text confirms Christianity’s triune Godhead.35 Six narrative medallions populate the “I,” but instead of displaying a hexameral cycle they advance the telos of salvation history. The roundel below the image of God, enclosing the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping

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Adam, completes Gen. 1:27 (“male and female he created them”) via 2:21–22. The account of the Fall, expansively related in three medallions, fills the middle of the initial. The original sin stipulates both the incarnational subtext of the scene of Adam’s formation and the ecclesiological subtext of the two medallions at the initial’s base, their typological argument transparent. Noah’s ark symbolizes the church and the Flood prefigures baptism. The crossing of the Red Sea reinforces the baptismal theme. As St. Paul had already averred, “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:1–2). The roundel confines the crowd of Israelites to the field beneath the portrait bust of Moses, on the side of the blindfolded Synagoga. Origen had concatenated the Pauline reading of the event with salvific role of baptism in the Gospel of John (3:5): “What the Jews supposed to be a crossing of the Sea, Paul calls Baptism; what they supposed to be cloud, Paul asserts is the Holy Spirit. He wishes that to be understood in a similar manner to this which the Lord taught in the Gospels, ‘Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’”36 Trinitarian theology, articulated in the pictorial treatment of Gen. 1:1, thus also informs the concluding roundel from Exodus. Christ’s discourse on the necessity of baptism in John 3—the Son’s descent into the world divided between light and darkness, the dynamics of belief and rejection— reprises the Gospel’s prologue. Paul further draws from the Israelites’ baptism in the cloud and sea an eschatological warning. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank of the spiritual rock, a type of Christ (1 Cor. 10:2–4). Nevertheless, most of them later succumbed to temptation and, because of their misdeeds, God overthrew them in the desert (5–10). “Now all these things happened to them in figure: and they are written for our correction upon whom the ends of the world are come” (11). The miniaturist, conscious of the Last Judgment, ties the beginning and end of time at the top of the page. Christ displays an east-oriented T-O map in which the western sectors Europe and Africa have been flipped. The mirror reversal, no scribal error, correctly disposes the landmasses according to God’s perspective on the world. It signals Christ’s standpoint at the Second Coming: as he arrives in the east and looks down and west (cf. Matt. 24:27), so humanity will look up and east. The specular relation alerts viewers of the image that they are in God’s sight.37 The motif of the reversed T-O motif situates the Bonport Bible between Flemish and English art, a pedigree that coincides with the placement of Ecclesia and Synagoga at Genesis. Blind to Christian truth, Synagoga denies the authority of the scripture that Moses hands to her. Greatly deprecating her stature, however, is the devil beneath her feet. Granted, her stance on his back can be taken positively to the extent that it implies victory, however temporally qualified. Had she not



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refused idol-worship and been chosen from among all peoples for Christ’s birth (Augustine, Tractatus 2:12)?38 Still, the pictorial effect is equivocal. In the larger iconographic context, the visual relationship concurrently sets up Synagoga’s identification with the demon, the more so as the second figure of Synagoga beneath Ecclesia’s feet displays the analogous crouching posture. No less than the tumbling crown, broken staff, and inverted banner signify her downfall, Synagoga’s mount becomes a spiritual attribute. The diabolic affiliation derives from Christ’s dialogue with the Jews, transcribed by the deified evangelist (John 8:44), “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning (ab initio).” In chiastic opposition, formally and symbolically, to Ecclesia’s Eucharistic chalice, the demon’s blood-red fang and the blood trickling down his belly reveal his homicidal intent. Christ’s castigation of the Jews for their desire to kill him follows a long discourse in which he reveals his origin: “You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world.” “Who art thou?” they inquired. “Jesus said to them: The beginning (principium), who also speak unto you” (John 8:23–25). Augustine’s commentary on the demonic paternity of the Jews (Tractatus 42) solidifies the raison d’être for Synagoga’s enhanced negativity at the opening to Genesis.39 His explication builds on the premise of Christ’s relationship to the Father, returning to the linkage between the Word of the Johannine Prologue and the creation of heaven and earth (42:2, 8, 10, 14). The Jews could neither understand nor even hear Christ’s speech because they withheld belief and refused the truth (42:9, 14). Their encounter with Christ reiterates the primordial disobedience. For the devil, in his ill-will to man, assuming the guise of a serpent, spoke to the woman, and from the woman instilled his poison into the man. They died by listening to the devil, whom they would not have listened to had they but listened to the Lord; for man, having his place between Him who created and him who was fallen, ought to have obeyed the Creator, not the deceiver. Therefore “he was a murderer from the beginning.” . . . The devil is called a murderer, not as armed with a sword, or girded with steel. He came to man, sowed his evil suggestions, and slew him. (42:11)

In seeking to kill Jesus (42:4, 6), the Jews aligned themselves with the devil who had killed Adam (42:12, 13). The Bishop of Hippo takes pains to dissociate Christ’s accusation against the Jews from the Manichean heresy, with its dualist ontology of evil (42:10, 12, 15). But Augustine’s refutation of such a thing as Satanic ancestry from nature in no way mitigates his condemnation of the Jews. Their perfidy, while not of metaphysical origin, is nonetheless transgenerational and perennial.

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He compares the charge of diabolic paternity in John 8 to the language of the Old Testament. “The prophet says to those very Jews, ‘Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite’ [Ezek. 16:3]. The Amorites . . . the Hittites . . . were themselves of a nation altogether different. . . . But because . . . the Jews imitated their impieties, they found parents for themselves, not of whom they were born, but in whose damnation they should share” (42:10). Like their forebears, the Jews of Christ’s day willfully emulated the devil in their deeds: Here, again, it is not of their nature as men, but of their depravity, that you are to think. In this way they are of God, and yet not of God. By nature they are of God, in depravity they are not of God. . . . For the good nature which is of God sinned voluntarily by believing the persuasive words of the devil, and was corrupted. . . . How were they of Him? Because He it was that created the man of whom they were born. . . . Because He is the Architect of nature,—Himself the Creator of flesh and spirit. How, then, were they not of Him? Because they had made themselves depraved. They were no longer of Him, because, imitating the devil, they had become children of the devil. (42:15)

The narrative trajectory down the page of the Bonport Bible updates Augustine’s exegesis, bringing it into the present. After Christ-Logos explicitly instructs the first couple, they proceed to accept the devil’s word in a scene that telescopes their temptation and subsequent consciousness of sin. It is Eve who harkens to the serpent (which holds the fruit up to her ear) while Adam clutches his throat with his right hand (acknowledging the deadly consequence?). Ashamed, both hold leaves to cover their nakedness. It is Eve, however, who bears the brunt of the angel’s thrust from paradise (the partial figure of Adam, with shorter hair, is cut off by the medallion’s ring). As Eve had been at the beginning of history, so now Synagoga remains the devil’s tool. Do her exposed tresses and incompletely draped chest further associate her with the seduced and seductive Eve? It may be worth noting that, in the scene of woman’s creation, the only frontal depiction of the nude female figure, the artist has (faintly) articulated Eve’s breasts in the same asymmetric manner as he has arranged Synagoga’s mantle. In any case, Synagoga’s immodest appearance suffices to evince impiety and identify her with carnality and concupiscent flesh. Offspring of the devil with respect to her transgressions, Synagoga shares in his punishment and suffers the same defeat. Thus, she figures a second time, crushed beneath the feet of Ecclesia. Close parallels to the motif of Synagoga trampled occur in manuscripts from the third quarter of the twelfth century. An illuminated collection of homilies, thought to come from Verdun Cathedral, includes a “Q” that shows victorious Ecclesia in the center of the letter’s bowl quashing blindfolded Synagoga, whose prone body forms



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the tail (Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 121, fol. 273v, see figure 6.7).40 The historiated initial opens Bede’s homily for the dedication of a church. The text (on Luke 6:43–48) covers Christ’s sermon on the good and bad trees and their respective fruits.41 The theme had earlier in the century inspired the symbolic representation of Ecclesia and Synagoga in contrary arboreal terms.42 A giant Tuscan bible similarly renovates the relationship between Ecclesia and Synagoga at the Song of Songs (Montalcino, Museo Civico e Diocesano d’Arte Sacra, MS 2, fol. 56r), a point in illustrative cycles where the personifications are occasionally featured (see figures 6.7 and 6.8). Fallen from her seat on the throne, leaving the place at Christ’s left conspicuously empty, Synagoga lies on the ground next to the tablets of the law (figure 6.8). Demeaned to the role of footstool and cradling her sacrificial buck, she looks up to acknowledge the new bride who wields chalice and host.43 In the Bonport Bible, this formulation of Synagoga’s abject status converges with her programmatic assimilation to Eve. Otto Karl Werckmeister has famously delineated the iconographic tradition of the recumbent Eve in which, overcome with remorse and eager for expiation, she crawls on bent

Figure 6.7.  “Q,” Ecclesia trampling Synagoga, homiliary, Verdun, early third quarter of the twelfth century. Grand Verdun, Bibliothéque d’étude (formerly Verdun, Bibliothéque municipale), MS 121, fol. 273v. Photograph: CAGV, all rights reserved.

Figure 6.8.  “O” at the beginning of the Song of Songs, Christ enthroned with Ecclesia and Synagoga at his feet, Giant Bible, Tuscany, third quarter of the twelfth century. Montalcino, Museo Civico e Diocesano d’Arte Sacra, MS 2, fol. 56r.



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knee and elbow. Her figure thereby enacts the debased posture imposed on penitents as they ritually performed the creeping punishment that God meted out on the diabolic serpent whose ways they had imitated.44 Given the inclusion of the Exodus scene in the bible’s Genesis illustration and its place between the framing personifications, a visual analogy of Synagoga to the recumbent Eve gains further justification from Paul’s description of the Israelites punished in the desert. They were cast down by God (Deo nam prostrati sunt), made prostrate, for they “perished by the serpent (serpentibus perierunt)” (1 Cor. 10:5, 9). The best known example of the crawling Eve is the sculpted figure of ca. 1130 from the lintel of the Burgundian church of St. Lazare, Autun. Significantly, Werckmeister established the motif’s genealogy in Anglo-Saxon manuscript illustration of Genesis, where, unlike the Autun figure, Eve completes the psychological attitude of penance through the pose of the head. Perhaps the English iconographic background helps explain the adoption of the penitential posture for the trampled Synagoga in the Norman Bible. While her crawling body resembles Eve, her turned head recalls the movement of her ambivalent counterparts in earlier crucifixion scenes, like Odbert’s and his models. If Ecclesia, with her chalice, and the bloodthirsty devil are contraries across one diagonal axis of the square in which they are set, do the two figures of Synagoga so function across the other? The near total erasure of the prostrate Synagoga leaves only her silhouette, making it impossible to reconstruct the interior details. Might she have looked up at her blindfolded double, imploring her conversion? Or higher up at the blessing Christ who, holding the orbis terrarum as a sign of sovereignty, will judge humanity at the end of days? Dominated by Ecclesia, Synagoga crouches on the side of and under the baptismal waters of the Red Sea; submission to salvation in the church transfers her to Christ’s right. What was it about this figure that so provoked a reader to obliterate her yet leave intact the personification supported by the devil? Might the crouching female body have been explicitly sexualized in a way that unsettled a Bonport monk? I doubt it: traces of a garment around the legs indicate that the figure was only allegorically related to Eve, not depicted in the nude. Might the very suggestion of Synagoga’s repentance have irked? Or was it rather the fraught quality of the entire conception, overdetermined by parallelisms and oppositions, that impelled intervention? Was the effacement of a supplementary Synagoga an attempt to short-circuit or stabilize meaning? Speculation on this score seems fruitless. As to why Synagoga cum diabolus did not incite a comparable response, art historical evidence suggests an answer. The figure may have been iconographically normalized given that, between the later twelfth and first-quarter of the thirteenth centuries, demons do crop up in association with Synagoga. Sara Lipton observes

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their appearance, particularly in contexts where the personification, or Jewish protagonists, demand greater negative legibility.45 The figure of Moses, too, is remarkably ambiguous. The artist slipped him into the chain of grimacing leonine masks, their taurine horns and boar-likes tusks pinned to the medallions. The grotesque behaves in the manner of an ornamentally repeated motif, and is not a semantic element of iconography representing a defined person, object, or concept. It does become, however, a rhetorical conduit for meaningful play. The physiognomic resemblance between the bestial masks and the devil’s mug, no less than the substitution of the similarly horned Moses, is an incontrovertible visual fact of the composition.46 Yet what, if any, programmatic conclusion can be drawn? Should Moses’s insertion into the string of demonic visages be construed negatively to build a diabolic lineage between the Old Testament leader, who smote the rock of life-giving waters, and the Jews who, personified by Synagoga, nailed Jesus to the cross? Or should Moses in his disruption of the pattern be construed positively as giver of the law that had allowed Synagoga a qualified domination of the devil? Or both? A fixed unequivocal message seems impossible to tease out. BEYOND THE BOOK To triumphant Ecclesia (and the monastic community under her aegis) vanquished Synagoga cedes ownership of the Old Testament, which she cannot properly interpret and which Jerome’s translation project rescued from hostile rabbinic curation. The Bonport Bible sutures together on one page reverence for the Latin legacy of Hebrew scripture with contempt for Judaism personified. The tension intrinsic to supersessionist hermeneutics, caught between appropriation and derogation, more diffusely informs the Bible of Stephen Harding (now in four volumes, Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MSS 12–15) and the Bible at Montalcino mentioned above. Both works counterbalance the elevation of Jewish learning with the vilification of Synagoga. The originally two-volume Harding Bible (1109–1111) is a celebrated instance of Christian scholarly overtures to Jewish experts for the purposes of textual criticism, a consultative outlook concomitant with a new, and growing, interest in the literal and historical reading of scripture.47 On the last page of the first volume (MS 13, fol. 150v), Harding relates the circumstances surrounding the choice of the exemplar for the Bible and why the copy exhibits extensive erasures in certain parts. A review collation of the text postcompletion had led the monks to the surprising discovery of significant disparities among the Latin manuscripts of Jerome’s translation “from a single



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fount of Hebraic truth (de uno hebraice veritates fonte).”48 The monks then seem to have taken to heart Jerome’s advice in his letter to Desiderius: “we resorted to certain Jews expert in their Scripture, and we interrogated them most diligently in romance speech [the French vernacular] about all those places” of concern. “Opening many of their books before us, they explained the Hebrew or Chaldean [Aramaic] scripture to us in romance speech.” By comparing what they learned from the Jews with their own Latin manuscripts, the monks corrected their bible. Great regard for the Hebraica veritas and for the Jews’ linguistic proficiency, however, in no way carried over to the theological status accorded Judaism. It merits notice that the same work routinely cited as exemplifying cordial relations between Christians and Jews also portrays Synagoga despised, moreover with a harshness extraordinary for the period. In the second volume, the initial “O” at the beginning of the Song of Songs (MS 14, fol. 60r), frames Christ enthroned in majesty between an upright Ecclesia and a crumpled Synagoga, whom he pushes away (figure 6.9).49 The miniature belongs to the vanguard of an iconographic movement that treats Synagoga with increasing disdain in images that express palpable animosity.50 Adding injury to insult, so to speak, a later reader completely rubbed out her face. Was Christ’s own forceful gesture of repudiation not sufficient to quell an emotionally driven response (loathing? fear?), or did it invite the physical assault on the figure? So much for Harding’s injunction at the close of his monitum, “We also forbid by the authority of God and of our congregation that anyone should presume to treat this book, prepared with great labor, disrespectfully or to make note of anything with his ungula [scribal tool] either in the text or the margin.” In the Bible at Montalcino (near Siena), probably made at a local monastery, a humiliated Synagoga compensates for the pictorial staging of the Hebraica veritas earlier in the work. Genesis opens with an initial “I” containing a hexameral medallion cycle and crowned with an image of Christ holding a balance (Museo Civico, MS 1, fol. 5v). In an adjacent panel, Moses holds two banners unfurled for the bilingual display of the first verses (figure 6.10). The “amateurish quality” of the Hebrew lettering and several grammatical errors belie the elementary training of the Christian illuminator or scribe who wrote the text.51 According to Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, the incorrectly vocalized text would nonetheless produce a phonetically faithful reading if sounded aloud. She therefore concludes that the scribe knew the pronunciation of the verses but did not have an available model and had to rely instead on his memory.52 The work indicates some engagement in language instruction, presumably through contact with Jews. The Hebrew inscription amounts to more than a school exercise, a demonstration of learning, or a sign of an ouverture d’esprit.53 It claims possession of the originary sacred

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Figure 6.9.  “O” at the beginning of the Song of Songs, Christ enthroned with Ecclesia and repudiating Synagoga. Bible of Stephen Harding, 1109–11.

language of revelation. Its performance on the page, acting to attest the veracity and authenticity of the Latin translation, confirms that the Christian Bible is the rightful heir to the Jewish scriptural canon. Nina Rowe, focusing on artworks other than those I have considered here, argues persuasively that the visual degradation of Synagoga over the course of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was precipitated by real exchange between Christians and Jews. Iconographic transformation, in other words, had a social trigger. “The new image types are by-products of the intellectual ‘renaissance’ . . . when churchmen sought out Jewish scholars for guidance in the reading of scriptures.”54 Clergy became increasingly aware that Jews had evolved “their own traditions of exegesis on the Hebrew Bible, that they indeed had developed new bodies of scholarship,” and did not conform to the old Augustinian paradigm according to which they “preserved the Old Testament for the sake of Christians.” Some of the most vitriolic condemnations of

Figure 6.10.  Opening to Genesis. Tuscan Giant Bible.

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Synagoga, Rowe found, occur in monastic works. “Complex visual and textual formulations proclaiming Christian ascendancy” incorporated Synagoga “as an emblem of an outworn Judaism – the very opposite of the flourishing Jewish intellectual life that Christian clerics actually encountered.” I would add that Christian scholars’ expanded contact with their Jewish counterparts perhaps made Jewish rejection of Christian typology that much more perplexing, or infuriating. My analysis of the confrontation between Ecclesia and Synagoga in the Harding, Montalcino, and Bonport Bibles seconds Rowe’s general assessment. Furthermore, the local historical context in which the Bonport manuscript was created and used corroborates her thesis that churchmen weaponized supersessionist hermeneutics in “images that asserted the necessity to crush or contain the Jewish population.” Rouen offers a prime example of how, despite episodic persecution and vulnerability, Jewish communities thrived in direct proportion to surrounding urban growth.55 In the autumn of 1096, crusading armies en route from Normandy to the Holy Land massacred the Jews of Rouen who resisted forcible conversion. But the community reconstituted itself and sustained vibrant economic relations with Christian burghers, institutions, and the king. Impressive archeological remains of monumental stone construction dot the area of the medieval Jewish quarter, among which is a building replete with Romanesque architectural decoration thought to have served as a yeshiva. The twelfth-century community hardly publicly projected spiritual defeat or decay. Its prosperity declined after the Capetian annexation of Normandy in 1204. Bonport monks did not remain insulated from the sort of transactions in which Christians and Jews regularly engaged. The abbey acquired an early thirteenth-century copy of Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica in which marginal Latin and Hebrew notes document the manuscript’s use ca. 1213 as collateral: one Radulfus pledged it to secure a loan of some eight pounds from the Jew Vivant (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 5097, fols. 162v and 163r).56 The moneylender in question is thought to be the same Vivant of Chambois (near Alençon) mentioned in royal edicts issued on 6 and 10 December 1201.57 King John had commanded bailiffs to assist Vivant, “the Jew (subject) of William Marshal” (Anglo-Norman knight and count of Pembroke, d. 1219), in collecting debts. Whether the abbey redeemed the Comestor manuscript or received it from the party who had done so remains an open question. But merely leafing through the pages would have made visible to the monks the widespread practice of pawning Christian books (not to mention liturgical objects).58 Against a background of local Christian indebtedness to Jews, the Bonport Bible introduced Genesis with visual proof that Synagoga had relinquished her scriptural patrimony to Ecclesia and would inevitably capitulate



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to her truth. Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel supplied ammunition in this endeavor. NOTES 1.  I am indebted to Patricia Stirnemann for generously sharing her expertise with me at an early stage of my research; any errors of fact or interpretation are mine alone. The abbreviation BnF stands for the Bibliothèque nationale de France. All biblical citations refer to the Latin Vulgate; English translations follow the Douay-Rheims version. BnF MS lat. 53 is one of 87 manuscripts that Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Finance Minister under Louis XIV) acquired from the Bonport abbey for his Paris library in 1683: Léopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1868), 1: 534–43; Étienne Deville, Les manuscrits de l’ancienne bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Bonport conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale et à la Bibliothèque de Louviers: catalogue déscriptif (Paris: H. Champion, 1909–1910), On the manuscript, see Deville, catalogue I–XLIV, no. 3, pp. 11–14. MS Contents (for source of S nos. and full citation to De Bruyne, see below n. 31): Fol. 1v, addition to the Bible, list of relics held at Bonport in 1423. Fol. 2r: Jerome’s Epistle (no. 53) to Paulinus, preface to the whole Bible (S 284, De Bruyne 2015, 1–7). Fol. 5v, Theodulf of Orléans, verse preface to the Bible (De Bruyne 2015, 9–14). Fol. 7r, Jerome’s preface to the Old Testament (S 285, De Bruyne 2015, 7–8). Fol. 7v, Genesis with historiated initial “I”. Fol. 38v, Exodus. Fol. 65r, Leviticus with historiated initial “V” depicting God speaking to Moses. Fol. 83v, Numbers. Fol. 109v, Deuteronomy. Fol. 133r–v, Jerome’s preface to Joshua, Judges, and Ruth (De Bruyne 2015, 22–23). Fol. 133v, Joshua with historiated initial “E” depicting the death of Moses and Joshua receiving from God the command to traverse the Jordan. Fol. 149v, Judges, with historiated initial “P” depicting two figures, one holding a scroll, conversing. Fol. 165v, Ruth. 2. I am exceedingly grateful to Pamela Berger and Matilda Bruckner for their sharp observations on aspects of the iconography of Synagoga that emphasize her immodesty; conversation with them at the Boston College symposium gave new direction to my research. My description of Synagoga’s indecorous appearance also owes much to Sara Lipton’s discussion of the personification in the Stammheim Missal of ca. 1170–1175, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (New York: Henry Holt, 2014), 120–25. 3.  For the most recent comprehensive discussion of this iconography, with earlier bibliography, see Nina Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). The treatment of the theme in the late Middle Ages is further considered in Miri Rubin, “Ecclesia and Synagoga: The Changing Meanings of a Powerful Pairing,” in Conflict and Religious Conversion in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora Limor (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 55–86. Additional studies are cited in nn4, 40, and 42 below. To my knowledge, the only context in which the Genesis illustration of BnF

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MS lat. 53, fol. 7v has been published concerns the detail of the T-O map at the top of the page: Danielle Lecoq, “Image du pouvoir: globe céleste ou globe terrestre de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge,” in Le globe et son image, ed. Danielle Lecoq, Catherine Hofmann, Ève Netchine, Monique Pelletier (Paris: BnF, 1995), 6–29, at 27; Marcia Kupfer, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 137–53, esp. 147. 4.  Ecclesia and Synagoga appear in the “O” at the Song of Songs in the Harding (or Cîteaux) and Montalcino Bibles discussed below; in the Bible from Saint Bénigne, ca. 1125–1135 (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 2, fol. 301r); the Saint Thierry Bible depicts Ecclesia without Synagoga (Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 23, fol. 16r), see Walter Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: the Twelfth Century, two vols., A Survey of MSS Illuminated in France, ed, François Avril and J. J. G. Alexander (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), 2:80–82 (cat. no. 64), 86–87 (cat. no. 69). Reproductions of the initials can be accessed through the website http://bvmm.irht .cnrs.fr/. The Lambeth Bible (Canterbury, Saint Augustine’s Abbey, ca. 1140–1150) presents Ecclesia and Synagoga in a full-page illumination that serves as frontispiece to Isaiah, and again in a historiated initial opening Habbakuk (London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3, fols. 198r, 307r); the Bible’s second volume (Maidstone Museum) originally also depicted Ecclesia and Synagoga in the initial “O” at the Song of Songs (fol. 53r), see Dorothy M. Shepard, Introducing the Lambeth Bible: A Study of Texts and Imagery (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), with earlier bibliography, 143–51, 185–88, 213–18. For the appearance of the personifications in the context of liturgical manuscripts, see Stephan Waldhoff, “Synagoga im Sakramentar. Zur revelatio synagogae in der Handschrift 193 der Bibliothèque municipale de Tours,” Frühmittelalterlichen Studien 43 (2009): 215–70 and Cécile Voyer, “L’allégorie de la Synagogue: une représentation ambivalente du judaïsme,” in L’allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Âge: forms et fonctions, héritages, créations, mutations, ed. Christian Heck (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 95–109. 5.  The inscriptions labeling the figures were executed by at least two individuals. The largest, Sancta ecclesia, was clearly written by the principal scribe. The smaller inscriptions in black ink come from the same hand, likely his: adam (in scene of his formation), angelus (expulsion scene), noe, uxor eius (Flood scene), diabolus. I would venture that the inscriptions in black ink on two scrolls are as well: I have not been able to reconstruct the phrase on Christ’s speech scroll in the scene of Eve’s creation; the word [Syna] GOGA appears on the scroll held by the blindfolded personification. A different hand is responsible for the two inscriptions, in brown ink, Synagoga and Moyses. They may not therefore be contemporaneous with the execution of the miniature, but if added later nevertheless date from the very early thirteenth century. 6.  To date, I have come across four Bibles with Ecclesia and Synagoga at Genesis. Three include the personifications in Crucifixion scenes at the base of the initial “I”: Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13149, fol. 8r, English, second-quarter of the thirteenth century, see François Avril and Patricia Danz Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire VII–XXe siècle (Paris, BnF, 1987), 78 (no. 122). Paris, BnF, MS lat. 17947, fol. 4r, northwest France/Flanders, 1260s. Reproductions accessible through the Mandragore website of the BnF. NY, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS G.64, fol. 6v,



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Flemish, 1270s, reproduced on the Morgan’s Corsair website. Without the Crucifixion scene: Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.1.14. fol. 5r, Italian scribe and English illuminator, second quarter of the fourteenth century, see Paul Binski and Patrick Zutshi with Stella Panayotova, Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 145 (no. 152), pl. 52, see the Cambridge Digital Library for reproduction.   7.  Annick Gosse-Kischniewski, “La fondation de l’abbaye de Bonport: de la légende à la réalité politique,” in 1204, la Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens, ed. Anne-Marie Flambard-Héricher and Véronique Gazeau (Caen: Publications du CRAHM, 2007), 61–74, esp. 63–66. She pins Richard’s decision to the summer of 1189; the date of the first extant charter from the monastery, May 1190, supplies the terminus ante quem. Fanny Madeline, “Rouen and Its Place in the Building Policy of the Angevin Kings,” in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300, ed. Leonie V. Hicks and Elma Brenner (Turnout: Brepols, 2013), 65–99, esp. 77–78 on the abbey’s relation to Richard’s other construction projects in Rouen and Les Andelys.   8.  It is therefore curious that Robert Chazan, From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 4, altogether elides the Fourth Gospel from his overview without so much as a nod to its importance in the Christian canon. His unaccountable decision to focus exclusively on the Synoptics allows him to argue that medieval Christian clergy could entertain a a nuanced understanding of Jews and Judaism.  9. Jeffrey Hamburger, St. John the Divine: the Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). For a complementary literary history, see Annette Volfing, John the Evangelist and Medieval German Writing: Imitating the Inimitable (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 10.  François Boespflug and Yolanta Załuska, “Le Prologue de l’Evangile selon saint Jean dans l’art médiéval (IXe–XIIIe siècle): L’image comme commentaire,” Folia historiae artium 8–9 (2002–2003): 11–45. 11.  Bianca Kühnel, The End of Time in the Order of Things: Science and Eschatology in Early Medieval Art (Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 2003), 185–94. 12.  Boespflug and Załuska, “Le Prologue de l’Evangile selon saint Jean,” 36–37; Hamburger, St. John the Divine, 21–42. 13.  I owe a special debt of gratitude to Beatrice Kitzinger, whose essay on the genre of the gospel book reacquainted me with the Odbert manuscript discussed here and alerted me to its John page. See her “Framing the Gospels, c. 1000: Iconicity, Textuality, and Knowledge,” in The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Adam Cohen, J. H. Chajes, and Marcia Kupfer, forthcoming. For a cultural history of the monastery and its insular ties from the Carolingian period, see Karine Ugé, Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders (York: York Medieval Press in association with Boydell, 2005), 37–49. For earlier bibliography on the Odbert scriptorium, see André Boutemy, “Un grand enlumineur du Xe siècle: l’abbé Odbert de Saint-Bertin,” Annales de la Fédération Archéologique et Historique de Belgique 32 (1947): 247–54; idem, “Influences carolingiennes

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dans l’oeuvre de l’abbé Odbert de Saint-Bertin (ca. 1000),” in Karolingische und ottonische Kunst: Werden, Wesen, Wirkung (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1957), 427–33; idem, “L’abbé Odbert et l’enluminure anglaise,” Archives de l’art français 25 (1978): 15–19; Claire Kelleher, “Illumination at St-Bertin at Saint-Omer under the Abbacy of Odbert” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1968); Susan Lowry, “New York, PML M.333 and Manuscript Illumination at the Monastery of St-Bertin under Abbot Odbert (986–ca. 1007)” (unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1993). 14.  The locus classicus on this iconographic formulation of the Ascension scene is Meyer Schapiro, “The Image of the Disappearing Christ: The Ascension in English Art around the Year 1000,” Gazette des beaux-arts 23 (1943): 135–52; Robert Deshman, “Another Look at the Disappearing Christ: Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in Early Medieval Images,” The Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 518–46. 15.  See Boespflug and Załuska, “Le Prologue de l’Evangile selon saint Jean,” 21–30, with reproductions; Adam S. Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany (University Park: Pennnsylvania State University Press, 2000), 120–28; Jennifer P. Kingsley, The Bernward Gospels: Art, Memory, and the Episcopate in Medieval Germany (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 59–78, esp. 64–69, color plates 14–17. 16.  Sancti Aurelii Augustini In Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV, ed. Augustino Mayer, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 12– 14, cited passage at 13–14. The quoted translation comes from Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 1, 7, ed. Philip Schaff (originally 1888, reprinted Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 15 at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107 .iii.iii.html#iii.iii-Page_15. 17.  Gustav Becker, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: M. Cohen, 1885), no. 77, 181-84, at https://archive.org/details/catalogibiblioth00beck. The catalogue’s date of 1104 comes from its original 1788 publication, but the manuscript containing it is now lost; see Ugé, Creating the Monastic Past, 43. 18.  David F. Wright, “The Manuscripts of St. Augustine’s Tractatus in Euangelium Iohannis: A Preliminary Survey and Check-List,” Recherches augustiniennes et patristiques 8 (1972): 55–143 and idem, “The Manuscripts of the Tractatus in Iohannem: A Supplementary List,” Recherches augustiniennes et patristiques 16 (1981): 59–100. Michael M. Gorman, “The Oldest Epitome of Augustine’s Tractatus in Evangelium Ioannis and Commentaries on the Gospel of John in the Early Middle Ages,” Revue des études augustiniennes 43 (1997): 66–99, reprinted in the author’s Biblical Commentaries in the Early Middle Ages (Florence: Galluzzo, 2002), 435–75; idem, “The Commentary on the Gospel of John by Haimo of Auxerre,” Revue Bénédictine 115 (2005): 61–111. 19. Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City, 51–61, quoted passages at 59. 20.  Kitzinger, “Framing the Gospels, c. 1000,” forthcoming. 21. Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City, 40–47.



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22.  Carra Ferguson O’Meara, The Iconography of the Façade of Saint-Gilles-duGard (New York: Garland, 1977), 95–96. 23.  D. Moody Smith, “Judaism and the Gospel of John,” in Jews and Christians: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Crossroad: 1990), 76–96, at https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl /sites/partners/cbaa_seminar/Smith.htm. See also Adele Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel, in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, ed. R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 213–30. 24.  For comparison, see the very different treatment of the Jews in the illustration of the prologue in an eleventh-century Byzantine gospel book (Paris, BnF, MS gr 64, fol. 158v–159r), reproduced and discussed by Boespflug and Załuska, “Le Prologue de l’Evangile selon saint Jean,” 26–27. 25. For a bare-bones description of this early thirteenth-century Bible, and the digitized manuscript, see http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8455938j/f1.image. I follow the dating assigned by Patricia Stirnemann, “Nouvelles pratiques en matière d’enluminure au temps de Philippe Auguste,” in La France de Philippe Auguste: Le temps des mutations, ed. Robert-Henri Bautier (Paris: Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982), 955–80, esp. 971, 977 (no. 17). The text is briefly discussed in Henri Quentin, Mémoire sur l’établissement du texte de la Vulgate 1 (Rome: Desclée, 1922), 411–12. Further information and bibliography is available at http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc59021j and through the database Mandragore, http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp. 26. Gilbert Dahan, “Les ‘figures’ des Juifs et de la Synagogue: l’exemple de Dalila,” Recherches augustiniennes 23 (1988): 125–50, esp. 130 for the quote from Peter the Chanter as transcribed from Oxford, Balliol College, MS 23, fol. 34v, “Hic Moyses iudaicum populum significat sub legem positum. Nam sicut Moyses virga percussit petram et de Dei virtute dubitavit, ita ille populus sub lege per Moysen data positus Christum ligno crucis affixit, sed eum virtutem Dei esse non credidit.” Dahan, n35, supplies the reference to Peter’s source in Isidore, Quaestiones in vetus Testamentum, In Numeros 33.4, PL 83, col. 343: “Nam sicut Moyses, petram virga percutiens, de Dei virtute dubitavit, ita ille populus [Judaeorum], qui sub lege per Moysen data tenebatur, Christum ligno crucis affigens, eum virtutem Dei esse non credidit, sed sicut percussa petra manavit aqua sitientibus, sic plaga dominicae passionis effecta est vita credentibus.”
 27.  For an overview of this linkage, see David A. Salomon, An Introduction to the Glossa Ordinaria as Medieval Hypertext (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), 82–92. A digitized copy of the Editio Princeps of the Biblia cum glossa ordinaria (Strasbourg: Adolf Rusch, 1480/81) can be consulted online via links at http:// glossae.net/fr/node/159 with a transcription and edition of the text by Martin Morard, 2012–16, at http://gloss-e.irht.cnrs.fr/php/livres-liste.php. 28.  Alexander Andrée, “Peter Comestor’s Lectures on the Glossa ‘ordinaria’ on the Gospel of John: the Bible and Theology in the Twelfth-Century Classroom,” Traditio 71 (2016): 203–34.

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29.  Mark J. Clark, The Making of the Historia Scholastica, 1150-1200 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), 239–41, 264–69, quote at 239. On the date of the text, see 6–7, on the role of the Gloss in the classroom and in Comestor’s work, 43–48, 84–108. 30. Clark, The Making of the Historia Scholastica, 48–50, 187–213 for chronology and the relationship between Comestor and Langton; 241–48, 270–84 on Langton’s revamping of Comestor’s opening chapter on Genesis. 31. The numbering derives from Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi, 1950–80 at http://www.repbib.uni-trier.de/cgi-bin/rebidasrb.tcl. For the Latin text, see Donatien De Bruyne, Prefaces to the Latin Bible, reprinted with introductions by Pierre-Maurice Bogaert and Thomas O’Loughlin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 7–8. 32.  I quote the English translation by Stefan Rebenich, Jerome (London: Routledge, 2002), 102–4. 33. On the pictorial representation of the Trinity, see François Boespflug and Yolanta Załuska, “Le dogme trinitaire et l’essor de son iconographie en Occident de l’époque carolingienne au IVe Concile du Latran (1215),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 37 (1994): 181–240; and idem, “Le Prologue de l’Evangile selon saint Jean,” 37–42. My earlier publication of this page from the Bonport Bible, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map, 147 erroneously identifies the topmost roundel as the separation of day and night. 34. As articulated in the Chalcedonian Creed (451), https://www.ccel.org/ccel /schaff/creeds2.iv.i.iii.html for the text and https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds1 .iv.iv.html for the theological background. 35. A. Sapir Abulafia, “The Bible in Jewish–Christian Dialogue,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, 2, From 600–1450, ed. Richard Marsden and Ann E. Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 616–37, esp. 618–20. 36.  Origen, “Homilies on Exodus,” 5 in Origen. Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine, The Fathers of the Church, a New Translation 71 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 276. Rufinus had translated these sermons into Latin in 403–4. Origenes Werke, 6, Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, 1, ed. W. A. Baehrens Leipzig: J. C Hinrichs, 1920, 184. 37. Marcia Kupfer, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 137–53, esp. 147. 38.  See n. 16 above. 39.  Sancti Aurelii Augustini In Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV, 366–73; Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, 235–40 (translated passages at 238, 239), and https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107.iii.xliii.html. Tractatus 42 is the source of the excerpts used in the Gloss on John 8:44, see Anselmi Laudunensis Glosae super Iohannem, ed. Alexander Andrée, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 267 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 165. The 1683 inventory of Bonport manuscripts acquired by Colbert lists a folio volume Augustinus in Joannem (Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits, 1: 541, no. 24). However, I have been unable to identify this item with any manuscript in Deville, Les manuscrits de l’ancienne bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Bonport or in the checklists of the Tractatus published by Wright (see above n17).



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40. Franz Ronig, “Die Buchmalerei des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts in Verdun,” Aachener Kunstblätter 38 (1969): 7–212, manuscript discussed at 116–32, and the miniature’s iconography at 159–60. The manuscript opens on fol. 1r with a complex allegorical image of the Last Judgment that also features Ecclesia and Synagoga, but as a confronted pair, see 156–57; idem, “Zwei singuläre Darstellungen von Ekklesia und Synagoge in einer Handschrift des 12. Jahrhunderts zu Verdun,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 18 (1966): 297–305. 41.  Bedae Venerabilis Homeliarum Evangelii, Homelia 25, ed. D. Hurst in Bedae Opera pars III/IV, Corpus Chrstianorum Series Latina 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 368–78. 42.  Hélène Toubert, “Une fresque de San Pedro de Sorpe (Catalogne) et le thème iconographique de l’Arbor Bona-Ecclesia, Arbor Mala-Synagoga,” Cahiers archéologiques 19 (1969): 167–89, reprinted with fewer illustrations in eadem, Un art dirigé. Réforme grégorienne et iconographie (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 65–89. 43.  The miniature is discussed by Ronig, “Die Buchmalerei,” 159 and idem, “Zwei singuläre Darstellungen,” 303–4. On the Bible, see now Walter Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 138 and 286, cat. no. 128. 44. O. K. Werckmesiter, “The Lintel Fragment Representing Eve from SaintLazare, Autun,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 1–30, esp. 4–12, 17–19. 45. Lipton, Dark Mirror, 122, 150–67. 46.  On the negative, indeed diabolic, connotations of the horns, implicit already in Jerome’s Vulgate mistranslation of Exodus 34:29–30, see Stephen Bertman, “The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 27 (2009), 95–106. 47. For an overview of this topic with bibliography, see Abulafia, “The Bible in Jewish–Christian Dialogue,” 629–33. On the Harding Bible itself, see Yolanta Załuska, L’Enluminure et le scriptorium de Cîteaux au XIIe siècle, Cîteaux, Commentarii cisterciences. Studia et documenta 4 (Nuits-Saint-George: Cîteaux, 1989), chapter 3; eadem, Manuscrits enluminés de Dijon (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherché scientifique, 1991), 49–56; Matthieu Cauwe, “La Bible d’Étienne Harding. Principes de critique textuelle mis en œuvre aux livres de Samuel,” Revue Bénédictine 103, 3–4 (1993): 414–44; Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts, 2:70–72 (cat. no. 58); Alessia Trivellone, “Images et exégèse monastique dans la Bible d’Étienne Harding,” in L’exégèse monastique au Moyen Âge (XIe-XIVe siècle), ed. Gilbert Dahan and Annie Noblesse-Rocher (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2014), 85–111. 48.  I have used the Latin edition and English translation of Harding’s monitum in Claudio Stercal, Stephen Harding. A Biographical Sketch and Texts, trans. Martha F. Krieg, Cistercian Studies Series 226 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 51–55 (quotes at 53, 55). 49.  Marie-Louise Thérel, “L’origine du thème de la ‘synagogue répudiée,’” Scriptorium 25, 2 (1971): 285–90; Trivellone, “Images et exégèse monastique,” 88–89, 98. 50. O’Meara, The Iconography of the Façade of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, 98–108; Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City, 61–76.

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51. Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination, 138, and Sed-Rajna in n. 49. 52.  Her opinion is cited in Marie-Louise Thérel, “Remarques sur une illustration du livre de la Genèse dans la Bible de Montalcino,” Revue d’histoire des textes 2 (1972): 231–38, at 237. 53.  Thérel, “Remarques,” 238. 54.  Quotes in this paragraph and the next, at Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City, 61–62. 55. Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Elma Brenner and Leonie V. Hicks, “The Jews of Rouen in the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries,” in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 369–82, with a review of the earlier literature and weaknesses in Golb’s account; Bernard Gauthiez, “The Urban Development of Rouen, 989–1345,” in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 17–58, esp. 28, 34, 39. 56.  On fol. 163r, “Ego Radulfus debeo Vivant judeo octo libras, quatuor solidis minus, in obptabis rexurrectionis Domini, scilicet pro catallo et pro usura,” [I Radulfus owe Vivant the Jew eight pounds less four shillings, on the octave of Easter, that is for the principal and interest], and underneath it “Annus ab incarnatione Domini MCCXIII,” in Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits, 1: 537–38. Colette Sirat, “Note sur la circulation des livres entre juifs et chrétiens au Moyen Âge,” in Du copiste au collectionneur. Mélanges d’histoire des textes et des bibliothèques en l’honneur d’André Vernet, ed. Donatella Nebbai-Della Guarda and Jean-François Genest (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 383–403, at 396–97 reports that those notes have disappeared; the Hebrew marginalia on fol. 162v records, in her reconstruction, that “Raoul de Aurosavienne ? has pledged it for 20 sous” and that the repayment was scheduled on Sundays according to parashot. Joseph Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 25–26. Where MS lat. 5097 was produced has not been determined. 57. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits, 1: 538; Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy, 66–67, 372. Rotuli litterarum patentium in turri Londinensi asservati, ed. Thoma Duffus Hardy, 1, pt 1 ab anno MCCI ad annum MCCXVI (London: Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom, 1835), 3, col. 2. 58. Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange, 22–44. See now also Birgit Wiedl, “Sacred Objects in Jewish Hands. Two Case Studies,” in Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe: The Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz, ed. Philippe Buc, Martha Keil, and John V. Tolan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 57–77.

Chapter Seven

Two Bach Church Cantatas and “the Jews” in the Gospel of John Michael Marissen

The Gospel of John, unlike the other canonical gospels, consistently and explicitly denounces Jewish unbelievers in Jesus.1 Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the commentary movements within Bach’s St. John Passion (BWV 245) do not really engage matters Jewish.2 To explore Bach’s construction of Judaism and Jewishness based on John, one has to turn to his church cantatas, particularly those written for Sundays whose assigned readings came from this gospel and touched, directly or indirectly, upon relevant concerns, such as Quasimodogeniti (the First Sunday after Easter) and Exaudi (the Sunday after Ascension). In ways that will not always be obvious to today’s listeners, both the librettos and the musical settings of these cantatas, taking their cues from the distinctive language of the Gospel of John, reflect forcefully on the alleged persecution of the church (as the mystical body of Christ) by actual and metaphorical Jews, both in the past and in the present. It is important to know that before Bach could assume his post as cantor in Leipzig, he had to be tested on his knowledge of Lutheranism as it is systematized in the Book of Concord (1580).3 It is also important to know that Bach owned a large collection of bible commentaries and sermons,4 including several sets of Luther’s collected German works and the Calov bible Commentary.5 Bach’s copy of the Calov bible is now kept at the Concordia Seminary Library in St. Louis, Missouri.6 Scientific research has determined that the chemical content of the inks in the extensive underlinings in this bible is the same as that of the many marginal comments whose handwriting characteristics were identified as Bach’s by Hans-Joachim Schulze of the Bach-Archiv, Leipzig.7 So Bach clearly had expertise not only in music but also in scripture and its Lutheran interpretation, and there can be no doubt that he was intimately familiar specifically with the Gospel of John and its Lutheran interpretation. 147

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That said, this chapter explores not so much what Bach’s heart-of-heart feelings or personal beliefs may have been but rather what his church cantatas most plausibly mean. Study of Bach’s reception of the Fourth Gospel, admittedly, does not teach us much about John per se, but it has been my experience—if at times somewhat checkered—that such inquiry has value in raising awareness about Jewish–Christian issues for many who would otherwise probably not encounter them. Jews in the Gospel of John A key foundational text for our inquiry regarding “the Jews” in the Gospel of John and in Bach’s church cantatas is John 8:31–47. Here is the passage as Bach would have known it, from Luther’s translation (emphasis added):8 Now then Jesus spoke to the Jews who [had] believed in Him: “If you continue in my word, then you are my true disciples. . . . But now you seek to kill me, a person like me who has spoken the truth to you that I have heard from God. . . . Were God your father, then you would love me; . . . Why is it that you do not know the language in which I speak?—Because you are not capable of hearing my words [Denn ihr könnet ja meine Wort (sic)9 nicht hören]. You are of the father the devil, and you want to act according to your father’s desire. He is a murderer from the beginning, and is not constituted in the truth, because the truth is not in him; if he speaks lies, then he speaks from his own nature [so redet er von seinem eigen], for he is a liar, and a father of liars [denn er ist ein Lügner, und ein Vater derselbigen]. . . . Whoever is of God, he hears God’s Word; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of GOD.”

Going on to read the whole of John, one will see that the Gospel is predicated on a number of juxtapositions in which “the Jews” provide the negative foil for the positive attributes of what the Gospel calls “the disciples” of and “the believers” in Jesus Christ (see table 7.1). Belief in, and continued acknowledgment of, Jesus as God’s Messiah and Son is the stated central concern of the Gospel of John (see 20:31). It portrays unbelief in Jesus Christ as the ultimate sin (see 16:9) and belief in Jesus Christ as inextricably linked to belief in God “the Father” (see 12:44). The acknowledgment of God by “the Jews” without belief in Christ, in other words, is in this view not in fact belief in God at all, since it does not recognize the Most High as God the Father who sent his Son. John 3:18 is a key text here, and Bach’s Cantata 68, Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, closes with a grim setting of this passage, verbatim: “Whoever believes in him [in Jesus], he will not be condemned; but whoever does not

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Table 7.1.  Juxtapositions of “the Jews” and “the Disciples/Believers” in John. “the Jews”

“the disciples/believers”

darkness (Finsternis, 1:5, 3:19, 8:12, 12:35, 12:46)1

light (Licht, 1:4–5, 1:7–9, 3:19–21, 5:35, 8:12, 9:5, 11:9–10, 12:35–36, 12:46), children of Light (des Lichtes Kinder, 12:36) children of God (Kinder Gottes, 1:12, [11:52]) from above (von obenher, 8:23) not of this world (nicht von dieser Welt, 8:23, [18:36]) grace and truth . . . through Jesus (Gnade und Wahrheit . . . durch Jesum, 1:17) to believe [in Jesus and therefore in God “the Father”] (glauben, constant references) not condemned (nicht gerichtet, 3:18, 5:24); [hence:] to have eternal life (das ewige Leben haben, constant references)

[children] of the devil ([Kinder] von dem Teufel, 8:44) from below (von untenher, 8:23) of this world (von dieser Welt, 8:23, [18:36]) the law [that is, Torah] . . . through Moses (das Gesetz . . . durch Moses, 1:17) not to believe [in Jesus and therefore in God “the Father”] (nicht glauben, constant references) already condemned (schon gerichtet, 3:18)

1

It should be noted that there is a separate, more casual German term for simple physical darkness, say, at night (Dunkelheit). The term Finsternis, by contrast, is more intense and the one that would be used to refer to concepts such as “the powers of darkness,” and so on.

believe, he is already condemned [that is, will not see “eternal Life”]; for he does not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” The import of John 3:18 is expanded on and clarified in 3:36 and 12:48, where the gospel says: “Whoever believes in the Son [that is, in Jesus], he has eternal life; whoever does not believe the Son, he will not see [eternal] life; instead the wrath of God remains on him. . . . Whoever despises me [Jesus] and does not receive my words, he already has his judge; the Word that I have spoken, this will condemn him on the Last Day.” All this suggests that one would be hard pressed to derive any essentially positive or even neutral perception of Jews and Judaism from the Gospel of John. The Gospel moves beyond disagreement with Jewish unbelief in Jesus (which is not ethically problematic) to the teaching of contempt (which is ethically problematic: claiming that those whom it calls “Jews” are liars and murderers and by nature and by volition at that). John’s anti-Judaism is not merely incidental but built into the very structure of the Gospel’s narrative and its import. That is to say, anti-Judaism cannot be attributed simply to traditional interpretation or misinterpretation of the Gospel. The anti-Jewish sentiment is right there in the biblical text.10

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Only after the horrors of the Shoah did the Gospel’s language genuinely begin to register with Christians as profoundly troubling. Against this background, many recent Christian interpreters (whether scholarly or devotional or both) have pursued vigorous strategies to avoid admitting that the Gospel indeed teaches contempt for Jews and Judaism.11 To what extent the theological anti-Judaism of the Gospel of John helped precipitate or facilitate the horrors of the Shoah and whether this process was inevitable are prickly questions involving much controversy. That the teaching of theological contempt is deeply problematic in its own right, though, is surely not a contentious claim, and the suggestion that this tradition of Christian anti-Judaism at the very least encouraged Gentile Christians to look the other way when their “racially” Jewish neighbors, the overwhelming majority of whom did not believe in Jesus, were deported, seems eminently plausible. Much of the controversy about possible anti-Judaism in John has hinged on the question of how most appropriately to understand the ancient Greek word Ioudaios (plural Ioudaioi). Leaving aside the titular expression Basileus ton Ioudaion (usually translated as “King of the Jews”), the words Ioudaios or Ioudaioi appear around seventy times in the ancient Greek texts of the Gospel of John but only a few times in each of the other canonical gospels. It is generally accepted that in John the words Ioudaios and Ioudaioi are often used with negative connotations, with some frequency in a neutral manner, and rarely if ever positively. Many interpreters try to evade the charge of anti-Judaism by dissociating the Ioudaioi from the Jews, suggesting that traditional understandings, including Luther’s, have misread John’s expression as cultic when it ought to be read as geographical. John really meant not Jews (in the sense of worshipers of the God of Israel), so the argument goes, but Judeans (in the sense of natives of the land of Judea). According to this reading, no one today need be offended by John, because Ioudaioi refers narrowly to the people of a specific geographical region in antiquity, certainly not to all Jews at all times and in all places. Yet neither history nor a plainsense reading of John’s narrative actually supports this interpretation. More than a century before Jesus, the term Ioudaios had already been extended to denote not only those people who lived in Judea or had Judean parents. A variety of historical sources demonstrate that this term could also refer to people who worshiped the God of the temple in Jerusalem, no matter where they lived or where they were born.12 This is why it made perfect sense for John 6 to speak of Galileans—an ethnic group distinct from the people of Judea, as the first-century historian Josephus carefully notes13—and to call them Ioudaioi. Geographically, these people



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are Galileans; cultically, they are Jews. It likewise made sense for John 2 to refer to the purification rites of the Ioudaioi at a wedding in Cana, a village of Galilee (not Judea); the gospel is saying that the Galileans were practicing their own Jewish rites, not that the Galileans were practicing the rites of foreigners, namely, the Judeans. And further, when the Gospel, in chapters 2, 5, 6, 7, 11, and 19, refers to the worshipers of the God of the temple in Jerusalem as having traveled from abroad to attend the festivals of the Ioudaioi, the Gospel is obviously referring not to the festivals of Judea but to the festivals of the Jews.14 Another widely endorsed means of evading the charge of anti-Judaism in John is the suggestion that when the gospel refers to the Ioudaioi, it usually means the Jewish leaders and not the Jewish people in general. John was really condemning the Jewish authorities, in other words, and not ordinary Jews for rejecting Jesus. Yet a simple reading of the Gospel narrative already undermines this idea. John 12:42 states that “even from among the leaders [of the Jews] many came to believe in Jesus.” Moreover, the Gospel clearly portrays the vast majority of “the people” as choosing to follow those among their leaders who did not believe in Jesus, thus rendering a distinction between the “guilt” of the leaders and the innocence of their flock meaningless. Whom, then, does the Gospel of John mean by the Ioudaioi? For a start, it evidently does not mean to include any active followers of Jesus, whatever their cultic or ethnic background. In the Greek text of John the followers of Jesus are called “the believers” nearly a hundred times, “the disciples” around seventy times, and “brothers” a couple of times.15 Whatever their ethnicities or nationalities or cultural practices, though, the active followers of Jesus are never called Ioudaioi,16 and whatever the expression the Ioudaioi might generally mean elsewhere, in John it specifically refers only to Jews who did not yet believe, or no longer believed, in Jesus. So far as I can see, the Gospel does not use the word Ioudaioi to refer to Jews who became followers of Jesus but otherwise remained largely observant as Jews (that is, in biblical scholarship today, these people, who ate kosher and circumcised their males, are often called Jewish Christians or Christian Jews). For the Gospel of John, those Jews who did not accept Jesus had simply settled on darkness over light, the devil over God, the forces from below over those from above, this world over the world to come, unbelief over belief, and eternal damnation over salvation. Clearly, then, Luther was entirely right in translating John’s “the Ioudaioi” as die Jüden (“the Jews”).17 What about positive depictions of “Jews” in the Gospel of John? Biblical interpreters have frequently argued that the gospel does also contain some fundamentally positive statements about people it calls Jews. This concerns,

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for instance, the “many of the Jews” mentioned in John 11:19 and 11:31–36 who showed empathy by coming to console Jesus’s beloved friends Mary and Martha after the death of their brother, Lazarus. Yet the crucial point here emerges at the end of the scene, in John 11:45, when “many of the Jews,” after seeing Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, came to believe in Jesus, thus ceasing, in John’s scheme of things, to be Jews and becoming disciples and believers instead. The positive quality of “many of the Jews,” then, lies in their willingness to stop being Jews. Much more significant is the frequent claim that the statement in John 4:22 that “we [Jews] understand what we worship, because salvation is from the Jews” is favorable toward Jews. I myself have suggested earlier that this verse has “extremely positive connotations.”18 Like many readers of John, I failed to pay sufficient attention to the verses surrounding this statement. John 4:21–23 reads (emphasis added): Jesus said to her [a woman of Samaria], “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you [Samaritans] will worship the Father [that is, God] neither on this mountain [Gerizim, the site of the temple of the Samaritans] nor in Jerusalem [the site of the temple of the Jews]. You [who have followed the beliefs and practices of Samaritanism] worship what you do not understand; we [who have followed the beliefs and practices of Judaism] understand what we worship, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. And indeed, the Father seeks such [people] to worship him.”

At its outset, this passage may indeed seem positive; it indicates that the Gospel of John does not reject the spiritual heritage of the pre-Christian Jewish religion. Moreover, it has Jesus explicitly self-identifying with the Jews, a people who “understand what they worship,” for “salvation is from the Jews.” So far, so good. Yet what follows surely gives this passage a decisive negative twist. John 4:23 clearly implies that, henceforth, neither Jews nor Samaritans but only those referred to by the Gospel as disciples and believers qualify as true worshipers of God.19 In short, salvation may be from the Jews, but it is for the Jews only if they stop being Jews and instead become believers by worshiping the Father in Spirit and truth and acknowledging the advent of God’s promised Messiah in Jesus. More than a few interpreters have also argued that the Gospel of John, whatever it may have to say about Jews, by definition cannot be anti-Jewish, for the simple reason that its author, many of the characters it portrays, and many of its original readers were in fact Jews. By the same logic, one would have to conclude that it was impossible for the British colonists who founded the United States of America to be anti-British.



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JEWS IN BACH’S CANTATAS The following discussion focuses on two church cantatas in which Jews are presented through the lens of the Gospel of John in its Lutheran interpretation. These are Cantata 42, Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats, the only cantata in which die Jüden are explicitly mentioned by name; and Cantata 44, Sie werden euch in den Bann tun, which draws on the so-called aposynagogos, the (supposed) total excommunication of Jesus’s followers by the Jewish community either after or, as some scholars and many lay readers would have it, even before the defeat of the Jewish uprising and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Fearing the Jews, Then and Now: Cantata 42 “The Jews” feature explicitly by name in Cantata 42, where the reference is taken verbatim from John 20 and then applied emblematically to the situation of the church’s ongoing persecution by rhetorical “Jews.” The first recitative, a setting of John 20:19, is narrated by the tenor voice in a manner reminiscent of the heightened intensity of the tenor Evangelist’s presentation of biblical narrative in Bach’s oratorios. For Bach’s congregants, accustomed to the Lutheran tradition of sola scriptura, this would therefore have signaled the authoritative nature of this recitative’s text: “But on the evening of this same sabbath, when the disciples [of Jesus] were gathered and the doors were locked out of fear of the Jews, [the resurrected] Jesus came and entered among them.”20 The response to this passage takes the form of an exquisite and leisurely alto aria of more than ten minutes’ duration, declaring that “where two and three are gathered in Jesus’ precious name, there Jesus appears among them and says to this the ‘amen.’”21 Designed to comfort beleaguered followers of Jesus, this aria obviously draws on Matt. 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered in my [Jesus’s] name, there I am among them.” The implications of all this for the persecuted church are forcefully spelled out by the following paired recitative and aria for bass. The recitative reads (the emphasis is added but is matched by the ferocious musical declamation, rhythmic animation, and textual repetition of the setting itself): “One can see a fine example in this, from what took place in Jerusalem; for when the disciples [of Jesus] had gathered together in the dark shadow, out of fear of those Jews, at that my Savior entered among them—as testimony that he wants to be his church’s protection.22 So let the enemies rage!” (Incidentally, Bach’s musical setting clearly renders the emphasis at the words “those Jews” not as “those Jews” but as “those Jews.”) The bass aria then comes to the following

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conclusion (the added emphasis again matches that of the music’s extended melisma): “Jesus is a shield to those who belong to him, when they encounter persecution. For them the sun must shine with the gilded caption: ‘Jesus is a shield to those who belong to him, when they encounter persecution.’” This notion of persecution by the Jews was well established in the traditional Lutheran reading of the Gospel of John as a whole. Just as the Jews had pursued Jesus, so they would continue to pursue the followers of Jesus, so the argument went, drawing on John 15:20–25, which has Jesus saying to his followers (emphasis added): If they [the Jews] have persecuted me [see John 5:16], they will also persecute you . . . All this they will do to you for my name’s sake . . . Had I not come and said it to them, then they would be without sin. Yet now they cannot offer any objection to excuse their sin. . . . Had I not done my works among them . . . they would be without sin. Yet now they have seen it and yet hate both me and my father. So that the saying might be fulfilled [that is] written in their Law: they hate me without cause.

For Cantata 42, Jews are the persecuting enemies of the disciples of Jesus, and “the Jews” of the Gospel of John are emblematic of the true church’s persecuters ever since. Bach would have encountered similar statements about Jews as the archenemies of Christians in Johannes Müller’s Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb. Jews, Müller wrote, “are intensely inimical toward Christians, so much so that Luther writes in the eighth Jena volume: ‘A Christian will have, next to the devil, no more bitter and more intense enemy than a real Jew.’”23 Müller was quoting from Luther’s screed “On the Jews and their Lies” (1543), which, as indicated, was included in volume 8 of the Jena edition of Luther’s collected German works, though it is, of course, impossible to know for certain whether Bach specifically read this anti-Jewish material.24 What is clear, however, is that Bach, at the very least, engaged similar comments in his Calov Bible. This is indicated, for instance, by Bach’s marginal notation of a passage omitted at 2 Sam. 22:44, an omission not included in Calov’s own list of errata. Within Calov’s chapter 22, verse 44 marks the beginning of a new section, which in Lutheranism’s radically Christocentric fashion bears the title, “The LORD Messiah’s song of praise after his exaltation, particularly among the gentiles.” Verse 44 itself, then, reads, “You [that is, God the Father] deliver me [that is, the exalted “Lord Messiah,” Jesus Christ] from the quarrelsome people.” Calov glosses this as follows: “that is, from the backsliding Jews, who have become my [that is, Jesus’s] archenemies: from this I am delivered; indeed you [that is, God the Father] are casting them out.” Bach entered an asterisk right after Calov’s gloss and wrote into



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the margin the missing second half of the biblical verse, “and protect me to be the head among the gentiles; a people whom I did not know serves me.”25 Since it is not obvious that any material was missing here, one sees that Bach must have read this passage about the enmity of the Jews rather attentively. Several of my colleagues have suggested to me that Bach’s own true feelings about Jews cannot have been negative, because the many annotations in his Calov Bible indicate a certain respect for the Old Testament, especially regarding King David and the music in the First Temple in Jerusalem. What I have written elsewhere about George Frideric Handel and the Old Testament applies equally to Bach, though: My fellow Handel admirers often assert that the composer’s practice of writing oratorios on ancient Israelite subjects (for example, Israel in Egypt and Judas Maccabaeus) is “pro-[modern-]Jewish.” What they don’t realize is that although Handel and his contemporaries certainly did have a high opinion of the characters populating their Old Testament, this was only because Christians had already for many centuries thought of the righteous ancient Israelites as protoChristian believers in God’s expected messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, namely Jesus Christ. (That is to say, these righteous ancient Israelites were not thought of as proto-Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist Jews.) This is why . . . in his oratorio Israel in Egypt, Handel can set the words “And [the Hebrew people’s] cry came up unto God” to the melody of the first phrase from the Lutheran hymn “Christus lag in Todesbanden,” a musical quotation that makes perfect sense from a traditional [typological] Christian perspective but no sense from a modern Jewish perspective. Traditional Christianity, then, often taught that in its time and place—namely, before the advent of Jesus—the Jewish religion was “good.”26

Jews and “Jews” as Excommunicators and Murderers: Cantata 44 The point of departure for Cantata 42, as we saw, was John 20:19, which refers to Jesus’s followers being afraid of the Jews. What was it that they supposedly feared? The narrative source explaining the ostensible grounds for this fear was John 9:22, rendered by Luther as follows: “For they [the parents of a man born blind who had been healed by Jesus] were afraid of the Jews. Because the Jews had already agreed among themselves: if someone acknowledged Him [Jesus] as Christ [that is, as God’s Messiah], then he would be put under ban [that is, would be excommunicated from the synagogue].” It is this theme, the supposed excommunication and persecution of Jews who acknowledged Jesus as Christ from and by the Jewish community, the so-called aposynagogos, that is at the heart of Bach’s Cantata 44, Sie werden

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euch in den Bann tun. It features prominently in the gospel portion assigned to the Sunday Exaudi (the Sunday after Ascension), the liturgical occasion for which Bach prepared Cantata 44. In the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, this passage, John 15:26 through 16:4, reads as follows (emphasis added): [And Jesus said to his disciples:] “When the Comforter—whom I will send to you from the Father—comes, he (the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father) will bear witness to me. And you will also bear witness; because you have been with me from the beginning. Such things I have spoken to you so you are not offended. They [the Jews] will place you under the ban; the time is coming, however, that whoever kills you will suppose he is thus doing God a service. And therefore they [the Jews] will do such things to you, because they recognize neither my Father nor me. I have said such things to you so that, when the time comes, you may remember that I told you. I did not initially tell you this because I was with you.”

Drawing on this passage, Bach’s Cantata 44 starts with a verbatim setting of John 16:2a, “They will place you under the ban” (Sie werden euch in den Bann tun), for tenor and bass singers with orchestra, followed by a verbatim setting of 16:2b, “the time is coming, however, that whoever kills you will suppose he is thus doing God a service” (es kömmt aber die Zeit, daß, wer euch tötet, wird meinen, er tue Gott einen Dienst daran), for chorus with orchestra. Here is what Bach’s Calov Bible had to say about this particular verse (the text in italics indicates Calov’s glosses): They (the godless Jews) will place you [who believe in me] under the ban (thrust you out of their synagogues and congregations, and esteem you as cursed people, [John] ch. [9]:22, ch. 12:42); the time is coming, however, that whoever kills you will suppose he is thus doing God a service (as if he were accomplishing what is commanded by GOD in the Law [of Moses], at Deut. 13:6 and following verses). And therefore they [that is, the Jews] will do such things to you, because they recognize neither my father nor me.

In recent scholarship, the historicity of the aposynagogos has been fundamentally questioned. The term itself (“to [completely] put out of the synagogue”), employed three times in this gospel (at 9:22, 12:42, and 16:2), is otherwise unknown in contemporaneous or earlier texts in Greek. Many scholars doubt that anyone would have been totally banned from the Jewish community at this time simply for acknowledging Jesus as God’s Messiah; elsewhere in the New Testament, the apostles of Jesus are depicted as entering synagogues and even the temple (see, for example, Acts 2:46 and 5:42) without any hint that they had been excommunicated. It certainly cannot be demonstrated that anyone who acknowledged Jesus’s messianic role was ever banned from a



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synagogue at any time before the Gospel of John was written, and what is known about the broader historical context renders any such practice highly unlikely.27 It therefore seems rather more plausible to assume that the author of the Gospel of John did not introduce the aposynagogos in order to describe a historical reality that had led him to think badly of “the Jews” but in fact introduced the claim that ethnically Jewish followers of Christ had been excommunicated (rather than, say, seceding voluntarily to form their own community) to legitimize his preexisting anti-Jewish position. Needless to say, early-modern Lutherans needed no external historical corroboration to take at face value the Gospel’s claim that disciples of Jesus had been excommunicated and persecuted by Jews who did not accept Jesus as God’s Messiah. For Luther and his followers, John’s aposynagogos formed the paradigm for any form of persecution of the true church by actual or metaphorical Jews. The latter were to be found principally in the Roman church. This Lutheran transference from the assumed earlier Jewish persecution of the initial followers of Jesus to the contemporary persecution of Protestant Christians by Rome was laid out clearly, for example, in a chapter on the subject in August Pfeiffer’s Evangelische Christen-Schule. Before moving on to establish the contemporary relevance of the issue, Pfeiffer explained, based on a survey of later Jewish law, that “the Jewish ban . . . was of three kinds,” adding that “the scholars are not at one about which type of ban our Savior actually has in mind when he says: ‘They will place you under the ban.’”28 He then went on to clarify: It is not just a question of the Jewish ban, but of the ban customarily applied by the Christian church. Here, then, we again set aside the nonsensical anathema (“fulmen brutum” [that is, futile threat]) of the Roman Pope, which he is in the habit of imposing not only on kings and princes but also on innocent Christian congregations. For in this he really proves himself to be the Antichrist, and nobody need be worried about or perturbed by such a ban. (Augustine: “Injusta vincula disrumpit justitia” [Unjust bonds justice doth break].) What the Pope binds on earth, God looses in heaven: We might be under the Pope’s ban, but the Pope is under God’s ban!29

Against this backdrop, it is little wonder that Bach’s treatment of John 16:2 in Cantata 44 focuses on what Pfeiffer called “the Jewish ban.” The choral setting of 16:2b (“the time is coming, however, that whoever kills you will suppose he is thus doing God a service”) would seem to conjure up specifically the “fear of the Jews” from John 9:22, 19:38, and 20:19. Moreover, the musical rendering of “whoever kills you, will suppose” in bars 25–31 bears a slightly cryptic, but nevertheless extremely striking, resemblance to some

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of the formidable chromaticism performed by “the Jews” in the choral setting of John 18:31b in Bach’s St. John Passion, “we are not permitted to kill anyone” (Wir dürfen niemand töten). This music had first been rendered in Leipzig only six weeks before the Sunday for which Bach created Cantata 44. Here the immediate response to this prediction of Jewish/“Jewish” violence takes the form of an exquisitely melancholy da capo aria for alto singer, oboe, and continuo. Its text reads: “On earth Christians must be true disciples of Christ. Until they are blissfully overcome, torment, ban, and great anguish lie in store for them at every turn.” This response clearly illustrates the transformation of the “Jewish ban” into the threat of a “ban” that confronts Christ’s “true disciples” continuously, though ultimately in vain. The aria’s expression “true disciples” (wahre Jünger) surely alludes to the turn of phrase “truly disciples of mine” (alethos mathetai mou) in John 8:31. This expression is found nowhere else in the bible, and its rendering as meine rechte Jünger (“my true disciples”) is likewise unique to Luther’s bible translation. As we saw, this very verse, John 8:31, marks the opening of the Gospel’s extended discourse on Jews as children of the devil, as godless, and as (inherently and by volition) mendacious and murderous. Bach’s aria expresses a sort of proleptic judgment. Yes, the true disciples of Christ experience torment and great anguish in the present world, as captured by the aria’s general minor-mode melancholia and by its chromaticism at the phrase “torment, ban, and great anguish.” But other musical aspects are positive and consoling. The aria features the surface rhythms of the sarabande, the noblest of the stately court dances that many of Bach’s fellow Leipzigers were being taught by resident French dance masters at the time.30 Here, another striking similarity to Bach’s St. John Passion, rendered in Leipzig only a few weeks earlier, comes into play. There the aria “Ach, mein Sinn” set a weighed-down text to a tormented melody and corresponding harmonies but countered this with the ennobling rhythms of the saraband.31 The melancholy alto aria of Cantata 44, by virtue of the relationship between its heavy mood and exalted style, thus anticipates the conceit of the last two lines of its following bass recitative, whose text reads: The Antichrist—that great monster—seeks with sword and fire to persecute the members of Christ, because their teaching is repugnant to him. In the process he [as a rhetorical “Jew”] doubtless imagines what he does must be pleasing to God. Yet Christians are like those palm branches that, weighed down, only rise even higher.

This imagery of the palm branches intentionally weighed down to stimulate their growth upward is also found, for example, in the tragedy Papinianus



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by Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664), whose main character exclaims, “the noble palm rises the more one weighs it down.”32 The underlying notion of the Christian as a growing palm tree draws on Ps. 92:13, which is rendered in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day as “the righteous one will thrive like a palm tree; he will rise like a cedar on [the mountain range called] Lebanon.” Luther assumed that the unspecified tree in Ps. 1 was also a palm tree and noted, significantly, that the palm is the only tree that grows upward against every weight and pressure put upon it.33 What weighs down the “true disciples of Christ” in Bach’s Cantata 44 is “persecution” by “the Antichrist.” The antichristos is a mysterious, violent apocalyptic figure mentioned by name in the bible in 1 John 2:18, 2:22, and 4:3 and also in 2 John 1:7. In Lutheran thought, “the Antichrist” was predominantly understood to be the pope, who was regularly accused of acting, in essence, like Jews, both biblical and contemporaneous.34 In saying that the Antichrist “doubtless imagines what he does [that is, killing “the members of Christ”—the true church—“with sword and fire”] must be pleasing to God,” this recitative text in Cantata 44 is, of course, clearly echoing the anti-Jewish polemic of John 16:2b (“whoever kills you will suppose he is . . . doing God a service”). That Luther had associated this threat not only with metaphorical “Jews,” such as the pope, but also with contemporaneous actual Jews is evident, for example, from the widely circulated and continually reprinted “Table Talk” (Tisch-Reden). There Luther is quoted as saying (emphasis added): “The Jews, impersonating medics, deprive of life and property the Christians who take their medication, for they suppose they do God a service if only they intensely torment the Christians and secretly kill them.”35 It is clear from the formulation “for they suppose they do God a service” that Luther understood this alleged behavior on the part of contemporaneous Jews specifically as a fulfillment of the prophecy in John 16:2b. Whether one might infer from this that Bach’s Cantata 44 (and Cantata 42) could also have been meant or understood as a warning against the threat emanating from the very few Jewish families living in Leipzig at the time, or from the Jews who traveled to Leipzig to attend its trade fairs, is a moot point.36 As I have been suggesting, the principal concern of the two cantatas is with Roman Catholicism, tarred by Lutherans with the same brush as the Jewish religion, not least for supposedly sharing what they considered Judaism’s deadening focus on works righteousness. Some will respond to my line of reasoning by countering that contemptuous anti-Jewish language, when applied not to actual Jews but to Gentiles, is not truly anti-Jewish. Among other things, I have heard a great many conservative Lutheran theologians make this argument at academic conferences.

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Indeed, I have heard this rationale extended to the claim that the word jew as a verb is unproblematic when used not against Jews, in particular, but simply to denounce cheating or overslyness in business dealings, in general. While not everyone may realize that the term gypped for “robbed” or “cheated” originates in the association of these transgressions with Roma and Sinti (that is, the so-called gypsies), it would surely be implausible for anyone to claim that they do not recognize the origin and connotations of the verb jew, regardless of the context in which it is used. Alternatively, scholars have repeatedly suggested that a text cannot be antiJewish if it does not contain the words Jew or Judaism. If one follows this rather bizarre logic, none of the canonical gospels, or Bach’s two surviving Passions, for that matter, could be considered pro-Christian, of course, since none of these texts contains the word Christian or Christianity. CONCLUSION Bach’s substantial engagement of polemical anti-Jewish passages from the Gospel of John in his church cantatas has largely been missed or ignored in the vast secondary literature. Doubtless, many Bach lovers, if confronted with the material presented here, would dismiss the relevance of this biblical language out of hand, simply on the grounds that in great classical repertories, it is “the music itself” that counts and not the words. “Beauty [or at least aesthetic magnificence] trumps all,” these listeners would contend.37 This response is not unlike the apologetic claim that, in the end, the declaration of God’s boundless love for the world in the Gospel of John neutralizes its polemic against the Jews.38 Other interpreters, of course, are more inclined to argue that the anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of John in fact undermines or negates its declaration of God’s boundless love for the world.39 Likewise, the aesthetic magnificence of Bach’s musical settings surely makes these great cantatas more, not less, problematic. The notion that “beauty trumps all” really is too good to be true. NOTES 1. A longer version of this chapter appears in Michael Marissen, Bach & God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 122–48; reprinted here with permission of Oxford University Press. 2.  See Michael Marissen, Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St. John Passion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); the commentary in the St. John Passion



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focuses on Christian guilt, as, for example, at no. 11, which asks of Jesus, “Who has struck you so?” and answers, “I, I and my sins.”   3.  A full discussion of the (nontrivial) nature of these theological examinations is provided by Martin Petzoldt, “Bachs Prüfung vor dem Kurfürstlichen Konsistorium zu Leipzig,” Bach-Jahrbuch 84 (1998): 19–30.  4. See Robin A. Leaver, Bach’s Theological Library (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler-Verlag, 1985).  5. Abraham Calov, Die heilige Bibel nach S. Herrn D. Martini Lutheri Deutscher Dolmetschung und Erklärung (Wittenberg, 1681–1682).   6.  For facsimiles of the pages with Bach’s notations, see Howard H. Cox, ed., The Calov Bible of J. S. Bach (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), 108–393. See also Robin A. Leaver, J. S. Bach and Scripture: Glosses from the Calov Bible Commentary (St. Louis: Concordia, 1985).   7.  Bruce Kusko, “Proton Milloprobe Analysis of the Hand-Penned Annotations in Bach’s Calov Bible,” in The Calov Bible of J. S. Bach ed. Howard H. Cox (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), 31–106.   8.  Quotations from the Luther Bible are given throughout this chapter in literal translations of the text found in Johann Olearius, Biblische Erklärung, Darinnen, nechst dem allgemeinen Haupt-Schlüssel der gantzen heiligen Schrifft, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1678–1681). Bach owned a copy of this commentary bible.   9.  Until the end of the seventeenth century, the nominative and accusative plural of Wort was not ordinarily inflected. The plural was introduced here (meine Wort) by Luther presumably to distinguish “words” as a means of communication from “the Word,” that is, the divine (and incarnate) promise of salvation. “The Jews,” in other words, according to this view, not only failed to grasp the core message, but they did not even understand the words, the language in which the message was conveyed. 10.  Some interpreters emphasize that the language of John and other New Testament books is mild compared with that of other polemical writings from antiquity. See Luke T. Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989): 419–41. This comparative perspective is certainly important and useful, but in the end, it cannot really get at the core problem. The Gospel of John, after all, unlike most other polemical writings from antiquity, is not an obscure historical text, consulted only occasionally by a handful of highly specialized scholars; it is, rather, a ubiquitous “living” narrative, arguably considered sacred and authoritative by billions of people. 11.  A full range of interpretations is provided by the thirteen essays published in Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, eds., Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000 (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001). The literature on the (possible) anti-Judaism of John is vast. Among the many other important studies are Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser, eds., The Gospel of John and Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008); Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 157–75; William R. Farmer, Anti-Judaism and the Gospels (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999); and Adele Reinhartz,

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Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (New York: Continuum, 2001). 12.  Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 69–106, is an extremely important and frequently overlooked historical study of this terminology and surrounding issues. 13.  Ibid., 114, which cites Josephus, The Jewish War, 2.510, 4.105. 14.  See especially Adele Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, eds. R. Bieringer, Didier Polleyfeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vannevuille (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum), 213–27. 15.  See Paul Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 53–54, 114–17. Note that the words christianos (Christian) and ekklesia (assembly, but usually translated as “church”; rendered by Luther not as Kirche [church] but as Gemeinde [congregation/community]) do not appear in the Gospel of John. Nathanael, one of the chosen disciples of Jesus, mentioned only in John, is called (at 1:47) an “Israelite” (not a “Jew”). 16.  Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews,” 220–21. 17.  For further support of this idea, see the remarkably insightful essay by Ruth Sheridan, “Issues in the Translation of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 132 (2013): 671–95. 18. Marissen, Lutheranism, 22. 19.  See also R. Alan Culpepper, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Theological Problem for Christian Interpreters,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, eds. R. Bieringer, Didier Polleyfeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vannevuille (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum), 61–82, at 74. 20.  This narrative from the Gospel of John is heavily alluded to in the penultimate movement of Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ (BWV 67), Bach’s other surviving cantata for Quasimodogeniti. 21.  In the canonical gospels, Jesus is often depicted as prefacing what he says with “Amen I say to you,” typically rendered by Luther as “Wahrlich ich sage euch” and by the King James Bible as “Verily I say unto you.” In the Gospel of John, and only in this gospel, to stress even further the fundamental truth of whatever Jesus says, the expression is always doubled: “Amen, Amen, I say to you” (this happens twenty-five times). 22.  It would have gone without saying for Luther and his followers that only the true church could be “his [the Savior’s] church” and that the Roman Catholic Church did not fall into this category; far from needing protection, it was the principal aggressor. 23.  Johannes Müller, Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb—Das ist: Ausführlicher Bericht von des Jüdischen Volckes Unglauben, Blindheit und Verstockung (Hamburg, 1644), 1386. Bach owned both Müller’s book and Luther’s eight Jena volumes. 24.  The passage Müller quoted can be found conveniently in Martin Luther, “Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (1543),” in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesa-



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mtausgabe, vol. 53, edited by F. Cohrs and O. Brenner (Weimar: Böhlau, 1920), 412–552, at 482, lines 8–10. 25.  See facsimile 102 in Cox, ed., The Calov Bible of J. S. Bach. 26.  Michael Marissen, Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 14–15. 27.  See Adele Reinhartz, “Introduction and Annotations: The Gospel According to John,” in Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 152–96, at 178. The once widely accepted contention, formulated in its most influential form by J. Louis Martyn in 1968, that the aposynagogos passages in the Gospel of John are a response to the established practice of cursing heretics as part of the regular Jewish liturgy (the so-called birkat ha‑minim) is no longer given credence by most scholars in the field, who now assume that, to the extent that the birkat ha‑minim was already in general use at the time, which is in any case doubtful, it would not have been directed against followers of Jesus. Versions of the birkat ha‑minim that target Christians are clearly of a much later date. See Ruth Langer, Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat Haminim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 127–29. 28.  August Pfeiffer, “Von der Excommunication oder von dem Kirchen-Bann,” in Evangelische Christen-Schule (Leipzig, 1724), 988–1001, at 992. Bach owned this volume. 29.  Pfeiffer, “Von der Excommunication,” 993–94. 30.  See Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 3–15, 92–113, 236–50, and 302–3; on Cantata 44, see 239. The sarabande, a slow triple-meter dance, is marked by fourbar phrases in which there is typically an agogic accent on the second beats in bars 1 and 3 and a point of repose on the first beat of bar 4. 31.  See Marissen, Lutheranism, 17. Baroque dance expert Meredith Little readily identifies the phrase structure of “Ach, mein Sinn” with the sarabande; Little and Jenne, Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach, 243–44. 32.  See Peter M. Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 140. 33.  Martin Luther, Operationes in Psalmos, 1519–21, in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5, edited by Ernst Thiele (Weimar: Böhlau, 1892), 41, lines 6–7. 34.  For a convenient and remarkably insightful overview of the Lutheran slurring of Roman Catholics as “Jews,” see David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 246–68; Martin Luther, Colloquia oder Tischreden, so von Johann Aurifaber mit Fleiß zusammen getragen (Halle, 1743), ch. 27 (cols. 1300–1430) bears the title Vom Antichrist oder Pabst (“On the Antichrist or Pope”). Aurifaber’s compilation went through a great many editions, one of which Bach owned. Consider, too, Philipp Jacob Spener, Gerechter Eifer wider das Antichristische Pabstthum (Frankfurt, 1714), a book Bach also owned. 35. Luther, Colloquia oder Tischreden, 2308.

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36.  Josef Reinhold, “Jüdischer Messebesuch und Wiederansiedlung von Juden in Leipzig im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Judaica Lipsiensia: Zur Geschichte der Juden in Leipzig, edited by Manfred Unger (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1994), 12–27. 37.  Consider, for example, how John Butt, in his influential book, Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 150–51, seeks to validate on dramaturgical (that is, on artistic) grounds his speaking slightingly of hearing the musical settings of the so-called crowd choruses in Bach’s St. John and Matthew Passions as specifically anti-Semitic: In recent years . . . the [great artistic] success that Bach seems to have achieved in setting the words of the crowd [in the passion narratives from the Gospels of John and Matthew] has led some to hear the music as specifically anti-Semitic (insipid music would seemingly have been more acceptable [to these apparently somewhat philistinic listeners]); . . . the text-music relationship is [believed by these listeners to be] clear enough for this music to be subject to . . . [the] revealing [of] hidden cultural . . . biases of which the [composer] was not necessarily conscious.

(See also 157–59, Butt’s extended authorial “impersonation”—in truth, I would say, a caricature—of an anti-Jewish construal of the music in the biblical choruses from Bach’s St. John Passion; for partly counterbalancing commentary, however, see 160.) It is worth making clear that hearing the music of Bach’s Passions as specifically antiSemitic is not just a recent phenomenon, and I would also point out that the contempt for Jews perceived in Bach’s music has typically been understood not as a hidden but as a manifest quality of the work; I would further note that, before the end of World War II, any anti-Jewish sentiment that might be sensed in Bach was typically put forward as a good thing. For blistering, but representative, examples among the leading earlier writings on Bach, see Carl Hermann Bitter, Johann Sebastian Bach (Berlin: Wilhelm Baensch, 1881), 2:110–14, which argued that, in his Passion music, Bach “depicted the Jewish people in its distinctiveness, [a people who are a] potent force which, from wherever it floods unleashed, will respect no bounds and will violate divine and human law with scorn”; Bitter went on to say that the “fanaticism” and “terrorism” [Terrorismus] of Jews “[is musically confronted, however,] in the calm greatness of the chorales, with the ideal community,” the Church, which is “a becalming contrast against the wildly-roaring torrent of Jewry”; indeed, Bitter fundamentally claimed, at 2:90, that “in this basic [Jews-against-Christians] configuration of the [musical] work, one must clearly see the hand of the master, his touch of genius.” The classic Bach biographer Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1873–80), 2:357–79, wrote likewise about contempt for Jews in Bach’s musical settings as an overt, readily discernable (and welcome) thing. 38.  See, for example, Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, “Wrestling with Johannine Anti-Judaism: A Hermeneutical Framework for the Analysis of the Current Debate,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, eds. R. Bieringer, Didier Polleyfeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vannevuille (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum), 3–37, at 37. 39.  See Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews,” 227.

Chapter Eight

“My Kingdom Is Not of This World” Johannine Jesus Films and Christian Supersessionism Richard Walsh John is the canonical gospel that Jesus films rely upon most heavily—or, at least, resemble most clearly. This is the case even though the overall shape of those Jesus films that are more than passion plays is typically Synoptic, moving from infancy materials or John’s Baptism through a Galilean ministry to a fateful trip to Jerusalem, typically introduced by a triumph and temple incident. Certain passages unique to John appear only rarely in the movies. John’s prologue, for example, appears in few films, exceptions being The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Gospel of John (2003), and Son of God (2014). Numerous other matters peculiar to John do, however, appear quite often. Johannine narratives that appear in numerous Jesus movies include the woman taken in adultery, the resurrection of Lazarus, the footwashing, the resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene, the saying “my kingdom is not of this world,” Pilate’s “What is truth?” query, the Ecce Homo scene, John’s support of Mary at the cross, the saying “it is finished,” and the spear thrust (see table 8.1). Of these, the woman taken in adultery, the resurrection of Lazarus, the saying “my kingdom is not of this world,” and the saying “it is finished” appear most often. One could balance these Johannine peculiarities with a list drawn from the Synoptic Gospels, but not with one that is uniquely Matthean, Markan, or Lukan. Furthermore, Johannine elements intrude where they should not. While almost all Jesus films use scripts that harmonize the canonical gospels (and, of course, add other narrative elements), filmmakers do, on occasion, produce films ostensibly relying on only one canonical gospel. Examples include Campus Crusade’s The Jesus Film, relying on Luke; David Greene’s Godspell, following Matthew; and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According 165

Table 8.1.  Johannine Peculiarities in Film1 Johannine Peculiarities

Films

Woman taken in adultery2 (John 7:53-8:11)

Intolerance (1916) The King of Kings (1927) King of Kings (1961) The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) The Messiah (1975) Jesus of Nazareth (1977) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) Jesus (1999) The Gospel of John (2003) The Passion of the Christ (2004) Son of Man (2006) Son of God (2014) Killing Jesus (2015)

Resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-57)

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905) From the Manger to the Cross (1912) The King of Kings (1927) The Greatest Story Ever Told The Messiah Jesus of Nazareth The Last Temptation of Christ The Miracle Maker (1999) Jesus The Gospel of John Son of Man Son of God

The footwashing (John 13:1-20)

From the Manger to the Cross Godspell (1973) The Messiah The Gospel of John The Passion of the Christ Killing Jesus

Garden resurrection appearance to the Magdalene3 (John 20:11-18)

The King of Kings King of Kings (1961) Jesus of Nazareth The Miracle Maker Jesus The Gospel of John The Son of God

My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36)

King of Kings The Greatest Story Ever Told Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) The Messiah Jesus of Nazareth The Last Temptation of Christ

Johannine Peculiarities

What is truth? (John 18:38)

Ecce homo (John 19:4-6)

John’s support of Mary at the cross (John 19:25-27)

It is finished (John 19:30)

Spear thrust (John 19:34)

Films Jesus of Montreal (1989) Jesus The Gospel of John The Passion of the Christ Son of God Killing Jesus The King of Kings King of Kings The Messiah Jesus of Nazareth Jesus of Montreal Jesus The Gospel of John The Passion of the Christ Son of God The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905) From the Manger to the Cross The King of Kings The Messiah Jesus of Nazareth The Gospel of John The Passion of the Christ The King of Kings The Gospel according to St. Matthew (1964) King of Kings The Greatest Story Ever Told Jesus of Nazareth Jesus The Gospel of John The Passion of the Christ Son of God The King of Kings King of Kings The Greatest Story Ever Told Jesus of Nazareth The Last Temptation of Christ The Miracle Maker The Gospel of John The Passion of the Christ Son of God Killing Jesus Risen (2016) The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ The King of Kings The Gospel of John (continued)

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Table 8.1.  (continued) Johannine Peculiarities

Films The Passion of the Christ Son of God Killing Jesus Risen

This table does not cover every Jesus film. The Jesus films surveyed here are the eighteen Jesus films available on DVD discussed in Jeffrey L. Staley and Richard Walsh, Jesus, The Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD (Louisville, KY and London: Westminster John Knox, 2007), a few more recent films (Son of Man, Son of God, Killing Jesus, and Risen) and Roberto Rossellini’s The Messiah, now available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aAIQmt88Ig). 2 The oldest Johannine manuscripts do not contain this story and, in the judgment of most critics, it is not Johannine. Most translations and all critical commentaries note the story’s problematic nature. To the bible-reading public, however, it is Johannine as it appears in modern biblical translations, despite brackets or notes indicating its non-Johannine status. Accordingly, it is included here as a Johannine incident. 3 Matthew (28:9) and Mark (16:9-11) also report resurrection appearances to Mary Magdalene; however, John’s scene is the most elaborate and memorable, and the one cinema favors. 1

to St. Matthew, also reprising Matthew.1 All three have significant Johannine intrusions. The Jesus Film begins and ends with shots of Earth from outer space, alluding to the cosmic content of John’s Prologue.2 The opening also includes a scrolling intertitle quoting John 3:16–17.3 The citation is apropos for the evangelistic film, but it jars alongside the narrator’s claim that the film’s story comes entirely from Luke. Matters are similarly Johannine (and evangelistic) at the film’s end. The camera ascends into space, looking down upon the Earth, as an unseen Jesus recites John 11:25–26. Godspell has even more Johannine intrusions.4 The film opens with John the Baptist gathering disciples. Soon thereafter, these disciples shift their allegiance to Jesus (compare John 1:35–37).5 During Jesus’s last evening with his disciples, he tenderly removes the face paint that he applied at the onset of the ministry in a scene that recalls John’s footwashing (13:1–11). Finally, the confused disciples sing “Where are you Going?” to Jesus, the title and lyrics of which recall John 14:5.6 The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) follows the Gospel of Matthew closely. Johannine intrusions are evident, however, in rather traditional characterizations. For example, the film’s Judas is quite Johannine. He has the money bag (John 12:6; 13:20), and he is the disciple who complains about the anointing woman’s waste of money (12:4–6). At one particular moment, the film’s Mary is also Johannine: at the cross, John, quite visibly supports her (19:26–27). While these Johannine peculiarities and intrusions indicate John’s cinematic importance, more significant evidence can be found in the Johannine nature of some deeper cinematic structures. Some of these extend beyond



“My Kingdom Is Not of This World” 169

Jesus films to other films and into U.S. and other modern mythologies. The structures are (1) the stranger from afar; (2) the light of the world; (3) the darkness comprehended it not; and (4) the victorious passion. These four structures converge in the Johannine idea that Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world and in subsequent Christian spiritualizing. Consequently, they also tilt Jesus films toward Christian supersessionism. STRANGER FROM AFAR The stranger from afar is an ancient and widespread literary trope. The best gospel examples are the Jesus-phantasms in gnostic gospels (for example, Acts of John 93, 97–102; Second Discourse of Great Seth 50, 20; 55, 15–56, 35; and Apocalypse of Peter 81–83) and in John’s prologue. This trope may be implicit in the other canonical gospels, but it is hardly as obvious.7 Despite their miraculous auras, the Jesuses of the Synoptic Gospels all belong clearly to a this-worldly historical setting. By contrast, John’s Jesus is the Word from above, the descending revealer, divine glory tabernacling in this world (1:14) though he is not of this world (8:23). If anything, cinematic Jesuses differ even more from normal, worldly humans, than John’s Jesus does.8 At least, critics agree that the films hardly ever present a believably human Jesus.9 Some even label the entire Jesus film tradition gnostic.10 Accordingly, the cinematic Jesus, like the Johannine, is a stranger from afar. The opening and closing camera work of the original release of The Jesus Film is paradigmatic of cinema’s general characterization. The camera in the film’s introduction looks down on the Earth from a divine perspective, from the perspective from which the Son is sent. The finale’s camera (and Jesus) return heavenward—with an unseen Jesus still speaking in a Johannine manner. Between these two heavenly camera sequences, the Jesus story unfolds in a historically realistic world—to which, the introduction and conclusion clearly say, Jesus does not belong. The Greatest Story Ever Told is also a historical epic, yet its Jesus does not emerge on the scene as a historical character.11 Instead, the film opens, after a musical prelude and the credits, with a black screen and then a shot of the interior of a church dome, rendering scenes from Jesus’s Passion (see figure 8.1). A voice-over delivers the words of John 1:1–5. As the camera pans down from the dome to a Greek inscription, Max von Sydow, the actor playing Jesus, adds, “I am he,” translating the inscription and interrupting the narration between John 1:1 and 1:2. The narrator continues the voice-over with John 1:2 as the camera reaches and focuses on the

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Figure 8.1.  The heavens or church dome from which Jesus comes into the film in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

apse’s priestly image of Jesus, which strongly resembles Max von Sydow. A dissolve to a starry sky accompanies the reading of John 1:4b (“the life was the light of men”). As the narrator speaks of light shining in darkness (John 1:5a), a star becomes the flame of a flickering oil lamp in a cattle stall. The camera focuses on a baby’s hand as the narrator offers the film’s title, and the hand explodes into a nimbus of light. The Christ child, the otherworldly—and ecclesial—light, has arrived in a dark world from the heavens, or, from the otherworldly church. Reinforcing the stranger from afar imagery, the adult Jesus first appears in the shadows of a Jerusalem street as the camera focuses on the sick and oppressed who cry out for deliverance. Only his white garment suggests his identity. Shortly thereafter, he appears in dramatic close-up for John’s baptism. His abrupt appearance stops the Baptist’s preaching in mid-rant. In the lengthy baptismal scene, reflected light dances across Jesus’s face, but not that of John the Baptist. Before Jesus leaves for the wilderness, John says that the world is sleeping, waiting for Jesus to awaken. In the wilderness, the Dark Hermit, Stevens’s Satan figure, tempts Jesus at night in a dark cave. Often only the Dark Hermit’s face is visible in the cave’s recesses. Jesus is far more visible in the cave’s entrance, sometimes with a brilliant, yellow full moon behind him. As the temptation ends, the rising sun illumines Jesus’s face as the Baptist’s voice rings through the wilderness: “arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee” (Isa. 60:1). Jesus climbs to the top of a mesa, to the accompaniment of soaring music, to be silhouetted, like countless Western heroes, against a sky of cloud and light. In voice-over, von Sydow/Jesus intones: “All the tribes of the Earth shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, power, and great glory” (see figure 8.2).12 The preparation is over; the ministry begins, but only after this lengthy reminder of the film’s Johannine strangerprologue.13



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Figure 8.2.  The triumphant Jesus silhouetted against the sky in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

As in The Jesus Film, the finale of The Greatest Story Ever Told returns Jesus to the ethereal heavenly realm to which he belongs. A monstrous, larger-than-life risen Jesus appears in the sky above his disciples in Galilee to the accompaniment of the Hallelujah Chorus.14 Von Sydow adopts the pose of the priestly Jesus in the church apse with which the film began. As Jesus teaches, medium shots of various disciples catch shadows leaving their faces as if they are coming more fully into the light. Jesus vanishes, but his voice continues, and a dramatic shaft of light pierces dark clouds. A slow dissolve returns to the opening Jesus image in the church.15 Music continues but the screen is now black. One does not have to read this film’s stranger in a Johannine or docetic mode—although that is the film’s overwhelming impression. Stevens might be employing common cinematic patterns, depicting Jesus, as he did Shane in 1953, as an exotic stranger (rugged frontiersman) coming from above (the mountains) to liberate helpless people (farmers) from oppression (by a ruthless cattleman and his hired guns) and then leaving those people just as abruptly because he simply does not belong to their (domestic) world.16 In other words, the stranger from afar is a common cinematic trope, particularly beloved of the Western (and science fiction) genres.17 Not surprisingly, theologians and others often read such films as Christ-figure films.18 The stranger from afar is a subset of the larger cinematic motif of the stalwart individual versus a corrupt society (see below), an important story pattern in popular U.S. mythology (and other modern mythologies) that celebrates the individual over the group/society. The stranger from afar arises from and massages the moods and motivations of this mythology. The stranger Jesus, however, sits uneasily next to notions that Jesus was a first-century Jew. Ironically, while Jesus films typically foist themselves off as historically realistic, the stranger trope places Jesus in that setting only temporarily and halfheartedly (see John 8:23).19 Accordingly, Jesus films,

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like many scholarly life-of-Jesus histories, depict Jesus in opposition to his Jewish culture/society (although given populist modern mythology, never its people).20 Virtually rootless, the cinematic Jesus belongs to everyone and thus to no one or, actually, to modernity (and its mythology) and to modern film’s Western European audience. Jesus films then may well be cinema’s first “white-washers.”21 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD John’s prologue describes its protagonist as the Son of God twice (1:14, 18), as the Word twice (1:1, 14), and as Jesus only once (1:17). The protagonist is associated with light more persistently (1:4–5, 7–9). Jesus is never the Word again in John;22 but he is repeatedly the Son and, in an extended discourse section, the light of the world (8:12–9:41). That Johannine discourse moves from Jesus’s claim that he is the light of the world through the healing of a blind man. The Johannine notion that Jesus is also the divine glory, first introduced in 1:14,23 further extends the notion of Jesus as a tabernacling theophany.24 And, Jesus’s last public statement before his Passion (12:23–50) combines the notion of his glorification (see below) with yet another claim to be the light that has come into the world (12:46; see also 12:35–36). While the cinematic Jesus seldom comes literally from above, he appears frequently in or as dramatic light (he is the only one with a light nimbus behind him in The Greatest Story Ever Told’s last supper). He or his cross literally glows in a dark world through careful costuming and lighting, special camera techniques, and careful editing. DeMille pursues this imagery blatantly. The opening credits of the 1927 silent film The King of Kings are set against a backdrop in which light breaks through a dark horizon. The backdrops of many subsequent intertitles reiterate or slightly vary the theme. More dramatically, viewers first see Jesus—almost eighteen minutes into the film—through the healed eyes of a little blind girl. The evangelist Mark, depicted as a young boy, has already been healed of his lameness by Jesus— although off screen. He leads the blind girl to the Virgin Mary and then to Jesus for healing. Light pierces the darkness. An intertitle from John 12:46 declares, “I am come a light into the world that whoever believes in me shall not abide in darkness.” Light envelopes the little girl. With closed eyes, she declares she sees the light. As the girl’s eyes slowly focus, Jesus emerges out of a nimbus of light. The entire Mark–little girl sequence nicely recasts the healing of the lame man in John 5 and the blind man in John 9 as children’s stories. DeMille continues the motif of Jesus as the light of the world by photographing him



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throughout the film in a gauzy, ethereal light, giving him an apparitional cast and distinguishing him from his darker, more material surroundings. The resurrected Jesus emerges from the tomb in a burst of light. His resurrection appearance to the disciples in a locked room recalls his first appearance to the little girl. A cross on the closed door suddenly glows with light and then morphs into Jesus as he appears to his awed disciples (see figure 8.3). The cinematic Jesus is ubiquitously the light of the world. While this revelation owes much to John, perhaps it also owes something to cinema’s own reliance on projected light. Film arrests the viewer as light and color emerge from the dark (in the projection days of yore)—as a new, never-before-seen world comes into view. Like John, more than any other gospel, cinema itself is signs, wonders, glory, talisman, spectacle—all made possible and bursting forth in and out of light.25 Thus, cinema is itself a revelation. As it reveals Jesus—or, for that matter, any character or story—as the light of the world, cinema hallows itself. It offers a view to another, better world and promises also to transform the audience’s dark world. Cinema itself, then, is the light of the world. Thus, early filmmakers, like D. W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein, argued for the salvific (and unifying) quality of film. Scholars of religion and film note that film

Figure 8.3.  The resurrected Jesus glows in The King of Kings (1927).

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has myth-ritual qualities and functions and that even its escapist entertainment may rejuvenate and enliven its audiences. I will not pursue these ideas further, but I will quote from M. Darrol Bryant’s intriguing argument that watching film may well be a chief ritual of technological society: [Film is] a response to the ambition of a technological civilization to discover the alchemical formula that could wed the machine to the transmutation of nature and the deification of human culture. In a word, as we sit and watch a film, we are participating in a central ritual of our technological civilization. [Film provides] a magically transformed and ordered world where the discontinuity between desire and reality is overcome. In the movies, boy gets girl, the lawman gets his man, the mistreated gets revenge. In film intimate and harmonious contact with the elemental powers that order things is reestablished: the human world is brought into line with the forces that rule our lives.26

Film is one of the ways that our culture participates in its (technological) sacred, re-creating itself, animating proper beliefs (in technology), affirming its hope that technology can transform the world for the better, and, in short, generating the moods and motivations necessary to its self-creative performance.27 THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT If the Johannine Jesus is light come into the world, the world apart from him is dark, as John 12:46 specifically says. The divine light is a mysterium tremendum, an inbreaking of the sacred, completely beyond human ken. It follows, then, that the Johannine world cannot comprehend it (1:5 KJV). All the Johannine Jesus’s conversations end in misunderstandings. Slow-witted Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus “by night” (3:1), is emblematic. The dark world, however, is not simply the human condition; it comes to refer to those not part of the enlightened Johannine community, those not born from above, those who are divinely determined yet culpable, as indicated by the lengthy reflection on Isa. 6:9–10 in John 12:36b-43 and the specific reference to people loving the dark, rather than the light (3:19–21; see also 9:39–41). The Johannine Jesus is so divine that those outside the Johannine community cannot be understood except as the evil other. They belong with Satan (8:44–47). Thus, the Johannine Judas is the vilest of the gospel Judases. He is a devil (6:70–71) and a thief (12:6); he does the devil’s bidding (13:2, 27); he is unclean (13:11) and unchosen (13:18). He leaves the supper table, the Johannine narrator says, either pointlessly or symbolically, “at night” (13:30; compare 3:19–21). In the end, he is one with Satan (13:27) and stands and then falls (back) with the opposition (18:6).28



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Cinema is thoroughly Johannine here. In keeping with Jesus’s visual divinity, those around him look on in awe or craven hostility. They come to the light or move away toward the darkness and shadows. As in John, so also in film is Judas the exemplar of this darkness. Thus, at the supper in From the Manger to the Cross, only Judas looks away from the well-lit Jesus—toward the audience. Commanded by an imperial, standing Jesus, he flees the supper table before communion. In the streets, he enters shadows, which ultimately become a completely black screen. The Greatest Story Ever Told deploys darkness similarly. After the temple cleansing, Jesus teaches in the temple court at night beside a fiery altar, holding a torch and declaring, of course, that he is a light come temporarily (John 12:36) into the world and that no one who believes in him will be in the dark any longer (12:46). At the Last Supper, Judas leaves furtively while preparations are being made. He lurks outside until Jesus arrives. When Jesus goes into the room, the door is closed behind him and a shadow passes over Judas’s face, leaving him outside—in the dark. In the streets, he almost runs into the Dark Hermit lurking in the shadows. The scene is so dark that one can barely see the Dark Hermit’s eyes glowing in the dark. The betrayal arrangement that follows is also conducted almost completely in dark shadows. Stevens’s Judas may not be quite as evil as those of John and From the Manger to the Cross, but he represents the world’s distance from the light. He ultimately betrays Jesus, he says, simply because Jesus is so impossibly good. More recent films like The Passion of the Christ and Son of God continue to consign Judas to the dark. The former viciously traces Judas’s dark descent into a living hell. The latter is more like From the Manger to the Cross, as it repeatedly presents Judas against deeply black backgrounds and even uses Olcott’s technique of moving from Judas to a completely black screen. Like the Johannine Judas, this Judas carries a money bag and comes to Jesus with torch-led guards. Even more significantly, while this Judas does participate in Jesus’s Eucharist, he retches up the sop given him by Jesus in dark streets en route to the betrayal. Even when other Jesus films do strive to depict Judas more humanly and more sympathetically, he remains the one ultimately left outside—in the dark. In the cinematic Jesus world, as in John, to be apart from Jesus is to be in the dark. This world is not truly human; it is just the dark backdrop for the spectacle of the light of the world. The cinematic spectacle, like biblical theophanies, deploys shock and awe. It overwhelms. It allows no questions or meaningful, understandable opposition. To see is to believe. Even believers often must look away from the painful light. The faces of those who see glow. While not a Jesus film, Ridley Scott’s recent Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) nicely displays the technique. As Malak, the

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film’s representation of the deity, informs Moses of the tenth plague, Moses walks away in disgust. He will have no part in this. Malak then brings him to heel, quite simply, by turning night into brilliant day. Spectacle is all. John, of course, is the gospel of spectacle, the gospel of divine glory. There too one can only believe what one sees (or reads or hears). John claims differently. It claims to value belief, without sight, over belief with sight (20:29), but when one pairs spectacular John with Jesus films, matters seem remarkably similar. One sees (or hears) and one believes or one is damned, one is left outside the spectacle in the dark. Perhaps, this common setting, lighting, palette, and use of spectacle are not supersessonist per se. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) uses similar techniques without being supersessionist. But, when one combines those techniques with the gospel story and, particularly, with John’s glorious Passion, Christian supersessionism is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid. VICTORIOUS PASSION Roman crucifixion is hardly glorious, unless one embraces the torture’s gloryto-imperial-Rome intent. The gospel passions rewrite this Roman glorification as the story of Jesus as God’s faithful martyr, but only audacious John says this glorifies Jesus (and God). The other gospels decently draw the cover of darkness over the scene.29 If this darkness is theophanic, as some contend, it is ambiguously so. Recognizing this lack of theophanic clarity, DeMille has spectacular, heavenly light break forth gloriously out of this darkness—after Mary prays for the light’s return.30 John’s Passion is Jesus’s action. He decides when it begins (12:23), after repeatedly denying that his hour has come, and when it ends (19:30). His crucifixion lifts him up (3:14–15; 8:28; 12:32–36), beginning his ascent to the world above, and is the earthly climax of his glorification. While neither the noun or verb form of glory appears in the Passion proper (John 18–19), the association of glory with Jesus’s death (or that of the Son of Man) by John 12:23–36 and throughout the farewell speech in John 13–17 renders the Johannine crucifixion Jesus’s transfiguration. Clearly, the darkness does not comprehend—either understand or overcome—this light (1:5 KJV). Film, like the Fourth Gospel, is certain of Jesus’s victorious passion— even, or most obviously, in the gruesomely violent The Passion of the Christ. There, the crucifixion echoes the opening sequence in which Jesus triumphs over the snake/Satan by rising from the ground to stomp the snake’s head (see John 3:14–15). At the cross, Jesus, battered almost beyond recognition, looks heavenward and breathes his last audible gasp. The camera switches imme-



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diately to a god’s-eye perspective as a single raindrop or teardrop forms and falls to Earth, starting the earthquake (and returning ambient sound), which is, as in Gibson’s precursor DeMille, an almost apocalyptic judgment scattering the Roman soldiers, destroying the temple, and entrapping Satan in a desolate landscape. It is no wonder that the film later has only the briefest possible resurrection scene, to the accompaniment of Braveheart-like martial music. The King of Kings’ earthquake, which sends the hung Judas into the abyss, is similar testimony to Jesus’s victory over his enemies. Even Caiaphas, the film’s villain, admits this before a torn, burning temple veil. Although it is not easy to see—I watched the film several times without seeing it before a sharp-eyed student pointed it out to me—a cross of light ascends from a broken menorah (see figure 8.4). Before commenting on that obvious supersessionism, I must say that the cross is almost always a sign of Jesus’s victory in cinema (even in fictional films in which it may point to a Christ-like suffering savior figure). While D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance reads history as a succession of suffering innocents, it allows itself a moment of hope in its epilogue as it imagines the end of war and injustice. Love triumphs as a cloudy cross of light appears in

Figure 8.4.  A cross of light ascends from a broken menorah in The King of Kings (1927).

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the sky. In the more recent Son of Man, Jesus’s followers protest an oppressive regime and Jesus’s death at the hands of ruffians trying to consolidate their own political power by crucifying Jesus’s corpse. The cross reveals the regime’s murder of Jesus and, thus, is Jesus’s and his community’s triumph. The victorious Passion is, of course, in harmony with cinematic tropes appearing beyond Jesus films. As Adele Reinhartz has argued, many, if not most, Jesus films are part of the larger cinematic genre of the biopic.31 Such films depict the lives of great individuals, those who have changed history by their commitment to some new or unpopular cause. Such figures face opposition, hostility, and sometimes death at the hands of their society, but demonstrate their fidelity to the cause and their cause’s value in some public trial that brings about the social recognition of them and their cause. Following this cinematic pattern, Jesus films typically present Jesus’s Passion as such a victorious trial, and, in fact, do so far more clearly than the Gospels, other than John.32 This victory is spiritual or Christian. At least, Jesus does not triumph over Rome.33 He does not liberate his people. If one thinks of him as a messianic king, he fails. John resolves the issue by having Jesus tell Pilate that “his kingdom is not of this world” (18:36). Lest anyone miss this important point, the Jesus of The Greatest Story Ever Told says these words twice: in a private audience with Pilate and again in the Ecce Homo scene. Almost all Jesus films endorse this claim for the simple reason that modern religion, particularly in its U.S. forms, is overwhelmingly personal, private, and subjective.34 Approved modern religion does not meddle in social, political issues. It is a matter for the individual or for those that form a like-minded sect. John is, of course, the gospel most palatable to such modern constructions of religion— although John is hardly as tolerant of other people’s religious choices as an ideal modern religionist should be. This subjective, privatized understanding of faith is so common in Jesus films that slightly different denominational forms of it appear in films as widely different in ideology and audience as The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Jesus Film, Jesus of Nazareth, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Jesus. The most blatant affirmation of Jesus’s spiritual victory is in the long meditation on the conflict between the spirit and the flesh in The Last Temptation of Christ. The film ultimately assigns Jesus to the spirit and Judas, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus’s opposition to the flesh. While more complex than many cinematic treatments of both Jesus and Judas, it still ultimately consigns Judas and Jesus’s opposition to that which does not comprehend the spirit.35 At least, while Judas literally stands over and dictates terms to Jesus in the film’s early moments, by the film’s end, he can only look on and up to Jesus in awe.



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This spiritualized victory is inevitably supersessionist. So, too, is the biopic treatment of Jesus, for it uniformly sees in Jesus the triumph of his cause, which is almost always seen as (Western) Christianity. The justification, I suppose, is Christianity’s ultimate adoption by Rome and by many subsequent Western governments/cultures. Cinema tends to see Christianity, like the United States itself, as the inevitable march of history. DeMille’s cross of light rising from the menorah says it all. Jesus films, like John, leave little room for difference, dissent, opposition, or others. SUMMARY In summary, John dominates Jesus films—or, at least, coheres well with the cinematic tradition—through shared structural motifs (stranger from afar; the light of the world; the darkness comprehended it not; and the victorious Passion). These motifs fit narrative patterns in cinema about the salvific stranger and the great individual who leads a reluctant society to a new cause/identity. They also reflect cinematic technology (light and darkness), spectacle, and genres (the epic and the biopic). These structures also are consistent with major elements in modern (U.S.) myth and constructions of religion like individualism and spirituality. Jesus film, then, is both Johannine and modern— or a modern Johannism. Unfortunately, these structures are also at home in Christian supersessionism, if not inevitably evocative of it. Audiences accept this supersessionism as they thrill to a Johannine Jesus film’s otherworldly savior, who is completely alien to his Jewish context; wonder how anyone, except the inveterately evil, could not accept the heavenly light; and think that he conquered this (Jewish) opposition, even in his death. For those for whom such Jesus films are the gospel, Judaism’s continuance can hardly be anything but a dark (Johannine) mystery. Thus, Johannine films lead audiences—likely unwittingly—to Christian supersessionism. NOTES 1.  The Campus Crusade film is an example of a film made by translation and missionary societies, which adhere to one gospel text, for pedagogical and evangelistic reasons. Typically, such films are of little cinematic interest. The Gospel of John is something of an exception because it was released theatrically, instead of going straight to DVD, and features a cinematography and soundtrack appropriate to such a market. It also employed highly trained actors and the well-known Christopher Plummer as narrator. For discussion, see Jeffrey L. Staley and Richard Walsh, Jesus, the

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Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 144–52. 2.  In its original release. The version now available at the Jesus Film Project website (https://www.jesusfilm.org/) begins in outer space, and then moves to the creation of Adam and to various other Old Testament stories before turning to Luke. The John 3:16–17 reference is not there. In this version’s finale, the camera pulls away skyward from Jesus’s last resurrection appearance. The epilogue shows stills from the film with an evangelistic voice-over that includes Johannine references (among others). The film’s original opening can be seen in the video available at https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=HodqXGFhDXE. That version does not include the original ending.  3. From the Manger to the Cross and The Gospel of John also foreground John 3:16.  4. Lukan intrusions are more obvious and important. The film’s “sermon” is more Lukan than Matthean, and the first and last parables enacted in the film are Lukan. See Richard Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film (Harrisburg: Trinity, 2003), 69–93.   5.  Furthermore, the baptism of Jesus and the disciples takes place in Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain, which is named after the pool in Jerusalem mentioned in John 5.   6.  This point will be discussed further below. The Godspell Jesus, like the Johannine one, determines the time of the Passion (forcing Judas to start the crucifixion). The film’s Passion is so incredibly non-violent (Judas binds Jesus to a chain-link fence with red ribbons) that the death is simply an anti-climactic necessity. If one thinks the disciples’ song (“Oh God, You’re Dead”) addresses Jesus as divine, then this Passion, like John’s, is simply a glorification. (On the difficulty of a certain interpretation of this song, see Staley and Walsh, Jesus, The Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination, 197n.12.) Notably, the disciples sing “Long Live God” as day breaks and they take Jesus’s corpse from the fence.   7.  Mark begins in medias res with a Jesus who appears suddenly on the stage out of nowhere (or Galilee); Matthew and Luke begin with strange infancy narratives that present their Jesuses as unnaturally born.   8.  If films like Jesus Christ Superstar and The Last Temptation of Christ raised questions about Jesus’s deity, Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and offerings like Son of God, have returned bold assertions of Jesus’s deity.   9.  Filmmakers setting out to make a Jesus film routinely claim that they intend to present a fully human Jesus. See the discussion of Paul Verhoeven’s attempts to bring a human, historical Jesus to film in W. Barnes Tatum, Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond, 3rd ed. (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 2013), 307–10. Something always subverts the attempt. Perhaps it is the Johannine stranger. For the claim that film has yet to present a historical Jesus, see Ibid., 298–99, 304–10. For Jesus movies as biopics and the Hollywood Jesus’s failure to fit the biopic mold, see Adele Reinhartz, Jesus of Hollywood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 10.  See Richard C. Stern, Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric DeBona, Savior on the Silver Screen (New York: Paulist, 1999). 11.  The Gospel of John’s prologue presents a Jesus ready for his close-up. A voice-over of John 1:1–5 accompanies a beach sunrise. The sun crests the horizon



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with 1:1b and is fully risen at 1:4b–5 (the life was the light of all people). The screen fades to black between 1:5a and 1:5b (light shines in darkness). As the prologue continues, the camera shows John the Baptist and various people. The shadow of a walking Jesus, the sun seen through palm trees, and Jesus’s feet appear in concert with John 1:8b–9. The walking Jesus’s POV accompanies 1:10. One sees the walking Jesus’s feet again with 1:11a and Jesus’s POV and his shadow near the end of 1:11b–13. A shot of the walking Jesus’s shadow leads to a pan up to the first full shot of Jesus and then a head shot of Jesus with 1:14. A full shot of the walking Jesus accompanies 1:16. A split screen shows Jesus in profile close-up and a dissolving walking Jesus with 1:17. Jesus in close-up profile appears with 1:18. Son of God opens with visuals of the aged John, the film’s narrator, and his voiceover of selections from the Johannine prologue, but its visuals focus on creation, Heilsgeschichte, light in darkness, and incarnation. This Heilsgeschichte treatment presents a Jesus who has repeatedly come among men, a depiction that is even more evident in The Bible, the 2013 TV miniseries that spawned Son of God, as the actor playing Jesus in The Bible and in Son of God appears in (or voices the words of) various Old Testament theophanies. See Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, “God at the Movies,” in The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, 2 vols., ed. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 2:299–326 (301–302). 12. This speech drastically liberalizes passages like Matt. 24:20 and Rev. 1:7, which speak of people mourning when they see the heavenly Son of Man (or his sign). 13.  That Max von Sydow plays Jesus further intensifies this Jesus’s alien aura—at least, it likely did for popular audiences in 1965. Von Sydow was already an accomplished actor in European films, working primarily with Ingmar Bergman (for example, in The Seventh Seal [1957]), but this was his first Hollywood role and thus the Swede’s introduction to Hollywood audiences. Von Sydow’s Jesus is a (European) sophisticate. Highly poised, von Sydow’s Jesus processes stately through the film, aloofly above all the other actors and action. He does not belong in the world, among humans. Accordingly, Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha, worries that Jesus is “too good,” and the film’s Judas betrays “the purest, kindest man I have ever known.” Before this lofty Jesus, Judas—and everyone else—feels and is (visually) unworthy. See Richard Walsh, Three Versions of Judas (London: Equinox, 2010), 86–88. Further, throughout the film, Stevens frames Jesus through windows and doors, almost as if he wishes to remind the audience of Jesus’s distance from them. See Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark, 168n27. 14.  Compare the risen Jesus who appears above a modern city in the finale of The King of Kings, as well as the Jesuses whose heads reach into the heavens in the Acts of John 90 and the Gospel of Peter 10.40. 15.  It might be worth noting that neither the Lukan nor Johannine followers initially recognize the resurrected Jesus. He is a stranger or a gardener. 16.  See Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark, 159–64. 17.  See, for example, Pale Rider (1985), Eastwood’s reprise of Shane. One can list any number of films, from genre after genre, deploying this trope: for example, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); The Green Mile (1999); K-Pax (2001).

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18.  On Christ figures, see Lloyd Baugh, Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film (Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1997), 109–233; Richard Walsh, “A Modest Proposal for Christ-Figure Interpretations: Explicated with Two Test Cases,” Relegere 3, no. 1 (2013); Adele Reinhartz, Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2013), 148–74. 19. The same might be said of the historical epic generally, which combines the attempt at historically realistic settings with fictional plots and characters. That historical realism does not guarantee Jesuses who belong to first-century Judaism is evident in Jesus of Nazareth. That film invests more time and effort in setting Jesus in a first-century Judaism than any other film of which I am aware. (The Messiah does so differently and less successfully by beginning the story with the institution of the Israelite monarchy.) Nonetheless, Jesus of Nazareth is more obviously supersessionist than any other film I know. It moves from a messianic Judaism to the Petrine church of the resurrection as if it were the inexorable march of history (or God). On film’s failure to present Jesus’s Jewishness, see Reinhartz, Jesus of Hollywood, 46–51, 63, 252–56. 20.  Scholars have repeatedly castigated historical Jesus studies for anti-Semitism and for covert Christian theologizing because they, so often, render Jesus as unique, and, thus, a covert deity strange to his historical setting. The romantic individualism of modern mythology is also at work here. 21.  Black cinematic Jesuses do exist: for example, Black Jesus (1968); Color of the Cross (2006); Son of Man. 22.  The word(s) of Jesus is quite common in John. The motif that Jesus’s disciples continue in or are in his word (see, particularly, John 14–17) and that his opponents have no place in it (for example, John 8:27, 43–47) is closest to the Johannine prologue’s treatment of the divine word (see 1:10–13). 23.  John 1:14 describes the protagonist by referring to the wilderness tabernacle, the tent where God and Israel or Moses met (Exod. 29:42–46). John 1:14 asserts that the Word lives or dwells or tabernacles among us, using a verb of the same root as the noun for tent or tabernacle. Further, the Word has a glory, which is like the glory of the only begotten Son but also like the divine glory (cloud and fire) that filled the tabernacle (Exod. 40:34–38). This glory is a theophany or a revelation (John 1:16–18) and is suggestively close to the Prologue’s earlier emphasis upon the light of the world because of the glory’s attendant cloud and fire and also because it makes Moses’s face shine (Exod. 33:7–11; 34:29–35). Perhaps this flow of thought explains the otherwise sudden comparison with Moses in John 1:17. Light, Moses, and shining faces also occur in the Synoptic Gospels’ transfiguration stories (Matt. 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36). 24.  According to Raymond Brown’s well-known commentary on John, the first twelve chapters of John are a revelation in “signs,” while the remainder of the gospel is the revelation of the son’s glory. See Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John, 2 vols., The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970), 1:cxxxviii–cxliv. In fact, as the narrator associates the first sign (2:11), and Jesus connects the last sign (11:4), with the revelation of his glory, glory is never very far from the Johannine Jesus.



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25.  Cinema is enviably well-situated technologically to present Jesus as the light coming into the world—although one could certainly argue that the light at the end of dark tunnels in Romanesque architecture and the many-colored light cascading down from Gothic architecture’s stained glass are important cinematic precursors. 26.  M. Darrol Bryant, “Cinema, Religion, and Popular Culture,” in Religion in Film, ed. John R. May and Michael Bird (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), 101–14 (102, 109–10). 27.  On the expression of U.S. identities in Hollywood Jesus films, see Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark, 173–85. For the biblical epic, see Michael Wood, America in the Movies, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Reinhartz, Bible and Cinema, passim; and idem, “Holy Words in Hollywood: DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) and American Identity,” in The Bible in the Public Square, ed. Carol Meyers, Eric Meyers, and Mark Chancey (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 123–35. 28.  On John’s depiction of Judas, see Richard Walsh, Three Versions of Judas (London: Equinox, 2010), 72–73, 128–31. 29.  John is the only gospel not to have darkness at the cross. Cinema often opts for this darkness, and sometimes adds Johannine tinges as well. For example, Pasolini fades to black at the cross before Jesus’s cry of dereliction and a voice-over cites most of Isa. 6:9–10. John is the only gospel to associate this prophecy with Jesus’s death (see John 12:20–50). Barabbas (1961) moves from an eclipse at Jesus’s cross to another at Barabbas’s and devotes the film’s intervening story to an exploration of Barabbas’s life in the shadows and the dark—away from Jesus. 30.  The result is like shifting from one Rembrandt etching of the crucifixion to another. 31.  See Reinhartz, Jesus of Hollywood, 3–40. 32.  At least, for Matthew and Luke, Jesus’s victory is hardly evident before his resurrection. 33.  See Reinhartz, Jesus of Hollywood, 51–63, 253. 34. Many critics have argued that U.S. popular religion is essentially gnostic. See Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark, 162–85; and Three Versions of Judas, 131–38. 35.  This portrayal, like that of many other films, reprises the De Quincey Judas. See Walsh, Three Versions of Judas, 108–19.

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Subject Index

Page references in italics indicate illustrations; page references in bold indicate tables. Alt Right movement, 98–9 Antichrist, notion of, 158, 159 anti-Jewish preaching: in modern sermons, 87, 89–91; practical approaches to, 106–7; re-emergence of, 102; teaching in classroom about, 98; theological justification for, 88–9 anti-Judaism in Christianity, 91 antisemitism: attitude of churches to, 107; comparison to racism, 102, 106–7; denouncement of, 98–9; roots of political, 101; white nationalism and, 98–9 aposynagogos (fear of expulsion from the synagogue), 78, 155–57 Arab Christians, relations of Israel and, 41 Aronofsky, Darren, 176 Bach, Johann Sebastian: apologetics of, 160; attitude towards Jews, 154–55; career, 147; library, 147; marginal notes in Calov Bible, 154–55; personal beliefs, 147–48; reception of the Fourth Gospel by, 148; St. John Passion, 147, 158

Bach’s cantatas: Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt (Cantata 68), 148; Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats (Cantata 42), 153–55; aria “Ach, mein Sinn,” 158; Exaudi (the Sunday after Ascension), 147; Jesus featured in, 153, 154; Jesus’s followers featured in, 155; Jews featured in, 153, 154; melancholy da capo aria, 158; persecution of disciples by the Antichrist, 158, 159; Quasimodogeniti (the First Sunday after Easter), 147; Sie werden euch in den Bann tun (Cantata 44), 153, 155–60 Bamberg Gospels, John miniatures in, 120, 120, 121 Barabbas (film), 183n29 Beloved Disciple, xiv, 78, 96 Bernward Gospels: cosmological imagery of, 121; John miniatures, 120; scenes from Christ’s earthly life, 121 Bible, medieval production of the, 116 The Bible, (TV miniseries), 181n11 Birkat ha-Minim, 4, 16n10, 60 201

202

Subject Index

Black Church traditions, 106 Black Lives Matter, 100 Bonport Bible: account of the Fall, 127, 128; Adam and Eve scene, 130; baptismal theme, 128; creation scenes, 126–28; crossing of the Red Sea, 115; display of orbis terrarum (T-O) map, 128; divine Trinity in, 126–27, 127; Ecclesia and Synagoga images, xxii, 113, 114, 115, 115, 118, 138–39; Genesis illustrations, 113, 114, 115, 116, 125; image of Noah’s ark, 115; inscriptions labeling the figures, 140n5; portrayal of Adam and Christ, 126–27; portrayal of Moses, 115; visualization of God, 126–27, 127 Byzantine iconographic tradition: Christ (Pantocrator) surrounded by prophets, 33; comparison to Western religious art, 26, 27–8; Crucifixion of Christ in, 26, 29; depiction of figures, 26; depiction of Gospel scenes, 24, 26; devilish images, 32; Healing of the Blind Man, 26, 27; Healing of the Paralytic, 26, 27; image of Jews in, 43n26; image of Judas in, 28, 29; Ladder of Divine Ascent, 31; Last Supper, 26, 28, 29; Meeting at Jacob’s Well mural, 26; Moses and the Unburnt Bush, 37; Mother Maria of Paris next to Prophet Daniel, 40; portrayal of the Nativity of Christ, 24, 25; raising of Lazarus in, 26, 28, 30; “signs of infamy,” 30; theological focus of, 28 Byzantine liturgical reforms, 36

76; Easter readings, 75; editions of, 71, 85n26; Holy Week readings, 75; Johannine vocabulary, 76; Lent readings, 72; Martha and Mary, appearance of, 79; portrayal of Jewish–Christian relations, 80–1, 84n15; publications of, 71; readings from the Gospel of John, 72, 73–4, 74; readings in conjunction with Old Testament, 76–7; references to Jews, 79; references to John’s Gospel, 83n11; reform of, 71; vs. Revised Common Lectionary, 83n8, 83n10; three-year cycle of readings, 71–2; use of the Gospel of John in, 77–8, 82; verses absent from, 78; women’s appearance in, 79–80, 84n17; Year A readings, 75–6; Year B readings, 72, 74, 76; Year C readings, 75 children of light, 12 Chludov Psalter, 30, 30 Christ-believers: alienation from the Jews, 5, 11–12, 17n16; division among, 16n10; persecution of, xvi– xvii Christian fragility, 87, 88, 92, 93, 98–9, 101 Christian privilege, 87, 106, 107, 110n35 Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Zakynthos, 40 Common Lectionary, 71. See also Revised Common Lectionary The Community of the Beloved Disciple (Brown), 50 cross, as expression of Christ’s divinity, 36

Campus Crusade film, 165, 179n1 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 81 Canadian lectionary, 75, 80, 81, 82n1 Catholic Lectionary: Christmas Masses, 83n9; distinctive aspect of,

Damaskinos, the Archbishop of Athens, 40 dark world, 174 Dead Sea Scrolls, 7, 12 The Death of the Messiah (Brown), 50 DeMille, Cecil B., 172, 176, 177, 179



Subject Index 203

Ecclesia and Synagoga: as antithetical states of spiritual being, 123; artistic tradition of depiction, 113, 133–34; in bibles, depiction of, xxii, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 132, 134– 35, 138–39, 140n4, 140n6; Christ enthroned with, 132; confrontation between, 113, 138; in crucifixion scene, 121–22; hierarchical arrangement of, 123, 130–31, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135 Eisenstein, Sergei, 173 epigenesis, concept of, xvi Exodus: Gods and Kings (film), 175–76 expulsion from the synagogue, xvii, xviii, 4 films: episodes from Gospel of John in, 165, 168–9; myth-ritual qualities of, 173–4. See also Jesus films French Bible, pictorial reference to Genesis in, 123, 124 From the Manger to the Cross (film), 175 Galileans, 150–51 Genesis, illustrations of, 113, 114, 115, 116, 123, 124, 125, 133, 135, 137 Giant Bible (at Montalcino): depiction of Moses, 135; Ecclesia and Synagoga image in, 132, 135; Hebrew inscription in illustration, 135, 137; opening to Genesis, 135, 137 Gibson, Mel, 177 Glossa ordinaria (medival collection of Biblical glosses), 125 gnostic spirituality, 20n48 gnostic tradition: esoteric reimagining of Jesus in, 13; Gospel of Truth and, 12; influence on the Fourth Gospel, 7–8, 19n46; “perfect human” in, 9 Godspell (film), 168, 180n6 The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film), 165, 168

Gospel of John: anti-Jewish rhetoric of, xvii, xviii, 7, 49–50, 101, 149–50; aposynagogos references, 14–15, 78; in artistic tradition, reception of, xxi– xxii; association with Lenten season, 72, 75; authorship problem, xiv, 93; comparison to polemical writings of antiquity, 161n10; definition of “authorities” in, 99–100; and discourse of the heavenly revealer, 7, 8; divine glory in, 176; in Eastern Orthodox tradition, xix–xx, 21; expulsion references, xvii; farewell discourses, 4, 5; gnostic tradition and, 7–8, 19n46; Greek Christian commentaries on, 21–4; historical context of, 93–4; historical-critical work on, 97–8; hostile references to the Jews in the, 49, 51–64, 57, 65, 66, 92–3; impact on JewishChristian relations, xxii–xxiii, 80; importance of in the Christian canon, 141n8; Jewish authorities in, 94–5; juxtapositions of “the disciples/ believers,” 149; juxtapositions of “the Jews,” 149; language of, 161n10; in lectionary cycle, readings of, xxi, 53, 54–6, 73–4; Lutheran reading of, 148, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161n9; in medieval art, 116–17; narrative impression, 96; number of verses in, 77; paradoxical texts, 65–6; place of compilation of, xiv; positive depictions of “Jews,” 151–52; references to Genesis, 118; references to the Jews, xiv, 49, 51, 53, 57; scholarship on, xvii–xx, 117–18; two level reading of, 60; use of hoi Ioudaioi in, 3–4, 5–6; visual expression of the prologue, 117–18 The Gospel of John (film): Johannine motifs in, 165, 180–81n11; production of, 179n1 The Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles (Brown), 50

204

Subject Index

The Greatest Story Ever Told (film): Dark Hermit figure, 170; depiction of church dome, 170; depiction of darkness, 175; finale of, 171; Jesus images, 169–71, 170, 171, 171, 172–73; John’s prologue in, 165; opening scene, 169; stranger from afar imagery, 170 Greek patristic: commentaries on Jews, 22–4, 39, 40; interpretation of the Gospel of John, 22, 23, 24 Greene, David, 165 Griffith, D. W., 173, 177 Gryphius, Andreas, 159 Handel, George Frideric, 155 Harding Bible: characteristics of, 134– 35; Ecclesia and Synagoga images, 134, 135; “O” at the beginning of the Song of Songs, 135, 136 Harding, Stephen, 116 Hasapis, Philomenos, 41 heavenly revealer, 11, 14 Herod Antipas, 94, 95 History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Martyn), 60 hoi Ioudaioi: interpretations of, 4–5, 6, 51, 57; translations of, 3, 81 Holy Week in Christian tradition, 62 homiletics, 93–4, 95, 97 Intolerance (film), 177 Ioudaios/Ioudaioi: connotation of references to, 52–3; interpretations of term, 17n13, 52, 150–51; as Jesus’s opponents, 6; as Jewish authorities, 51–2, 151; as keepers of true tradition, 103; negative stance towards, xviii Isidore, of Seville, 123 Jerome, 126, 135 Jesus: appearance among the Jews, 153; arrest of, 62–3; burial of, 64; cinematic image of, 169, 171–72,

173, 180n6, 183n25; “cleansing” the temple, xv; death of, xv; encounters with Jews, xvi, 59, 62–3, 64; encounters with Pilate, 3, 178; formation of narrative about, 14; glorification of, 176, 182n24; as God’s Messiah, 148; as heavenly revealer, 14; as “the King of the Jews,” 90; kingdom of, 63–4, 178; as the light of the world, 172–73, 182n23, 183n25; as Paraclete, 6, 17n15; persecution by the Jews, xv, 61, 153–54; self-identification of, 152; separation from disciples, 9; spiritual victory of, 178–79; as stranger from afar, 169, 180n7; teaching in the temple at Hanukkah, 61; trial of, 62, 63, 96; warning of disciples by, xvii The Jesus Film (film), 165, 168, 169 Jesus Film Project, 180n2 Jesus films: Apostle Mark in, 172; canonical gospels in, 165; Christian supersessionism in, 169, 177, 179; cinematic technology of, 179; crucifixion theme in, 176–77; darkness motif in, 169, 174–76, 183n29; depiction of footwashing in, 166; Ecce Homo scene, 167, 178; garden resurrection appearance to Magdalene, 166; historical realism in, 171, 182n19; Johannine themes in, 166–68, 168–69, 180n2; John’s support of Mary at the cross, 167; light of the world motif, 169, 172–74; myth-ritual functions of, 174; as part of genre of biopic, 178; resurrection of Lazarus in, 166; spear thrust depiction, 167–68; stranger from afar imagery, 169–72; structural motifs, 169, 179; techniques, 175–76; understanding of faith in, 178; victorious passion motif, 169, 176–79; woman taken in adultery motif, 166



Subject Index 205

Jesus of Nazareth (film), 182n19 Jewish apocalyptic texts, 7 Jewish authorities, role in Passion narrative, 94–5, 99 Jewish–Christian relations, xiii, 39, 41, 85n26 Jews: anti-Christian polemics, 103; association with demon, xvi, xviii, 129–30; in Bach’s cantatas, 148–49, 153; in Byzantine art, 43n26; in Byzantine state, 27; in Christian art, image of, 39; Christian privilege view of, 102; as common people, 52; encounters with Jesus, xvi, 59, 62–3, 64; eradication from Christian discourses, 13–14, 17–18n16; in Gospel of John, depiction of, 148– 52; in Gospel of John, references to, xiv, 52–3, 54–6, 57, 57–8; as group manifesting unbelief, 52; identification with “them,” 99–100; Johannine use of the term, 51–2; King of, 62; in modern scholarship, 39–40, 50; Orthodox writers on, 22; persecution of Jesus by, xvi, 61, 153–54; in public discourse, xix; rejection of Jesus by, 90, 91; religious divisions, 5; as religious leaders, 58; resistance to conversion, 138; response to Pilate’s verdict, 62; Rouen massacre of, 138; vs. Samaritans, 57; as temple authorities, 58–9; trauma of synagogue expulsion, 4 Johannine tradition, 14 John, the Apostle: attitude to the Jews, 102–3; devotional cult of, 117; as literary persona, 117; reflection on internal Jewish issues, 96–7; standard ancient polemic of, 95–6 John, the Baptist, xv, 72, 94 John, of Patmos, xiv Joseph, of Arimathea, 64 Judas Iscariot: ambiguity of character of, 8–9; association with darkness,

175; cinematic image of, 175, 178; in gnostic texts, 9; in John’s Gospel, depiction of, 174; relation to Jesus, 10, 18n32; superior status of, 10 Just, Felix, 83n11 The King of Kings (film): cross of light, 177; depiction of Jesus, 172, 173, 181n14; light of the world motif, 172–73; opening credits, 172; victorious passion motif, 177 Klepinin, Dimitri, 40 Ku Klux Klan, 98 The Last Temptation of Christ (film), 178 Lazarus, resurrection of, xv, 79, 152, 165 lectionary, explanation of the term, 82n1 Lectionary for Mass, 77 Lectionary for Ritual and Votive Masses, 84n14 light of the world motif, 172–74 Luther, Martin: notion of Antichrist, 159; translation of the Bible by, 148, 161n9; translation of the term Ioudaios, 151; view of Jews, 159; vision of the true church, 162n22 Lutheran theology, view of Jews in, 159–60 marginalia in medieval books, 138, 146n56 Martha and Mary, 61, 79, 152 Mary Magdalene, 79, 80, 165 Metrophanes III, Patriarch of Constantinople, 40 minoritized people, racialization of, 103 Moses: as agent of Jews, 123–24; in Catholic Lectionary, references to, 59; cinematic image, 176; in medieval manuscripts, depiction of, 115, 123–24, 128, 134, 182n23; in Orthodox liturgical texts, 38 Müller, Johannes (Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb), 154

206

Subject Index

Nicea, First Council of, 34 Nicea, Second Council of, 43n26 Nicodemus (Pharisee), 64 Noah (film), 176 Nostra Aetate, xiii, xix, 78, 80 Notre-Dame du Bonport (Cistercian abbey), 113, 116 Odbert, Abbot of Saint-Bertin, 118 Odbert Gospels: crucifixion scene, 121– 22; Ecclesia and Synagoga images, 118, 119, 122; emphasis on darkness, 121; evangelist portraits, 118, 120 “On the Use of Vernacular Languages in the Publication of the Books of the Roman Liturgy” (Liturgiam Authenticam), 81–2 Orthodox Christian–Jewish relations, 38–9 Orthodox Church: autocephalous branches of, 41–2n1; Easter celebration, 32; lack of centralized authority, 21; liturgical texts, 32–8; opposition to Nazis, 40; Passover celebration, 32; relations with Judaism, 21, 38–9 Orthodox liturgical texts: calls to reform of, 34; Christ’s sunkatabasis, 35–6; continuity with the Old Testament, 32; crucifixion in, 38; frequent themes in, 35; of Holy Week and Pascha, 32–8; impact of Johannine tradition on, 34–5; Mary and the burning bush in, 37; Moses in, 38; presentation of Christ in, 33–4; Qissat Mujadalat al-Usquf (“The Account of the Disputation of the Priest”), 36–7, 38; resistance to Jews, 32 Ottonian Gospel books: cosmological imagery of, 118; Ecclesia and Synagoga images, 118; frontispieces, 120; post-crucifixion episodes, 121 palm tree, symbolism of, 159 Papinianus (Gryphius), 158–59

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 165 The Passion of the Christ (film), 88, 175, 176–77 Passion Narratives for Holy Week, 81 Passover celebration, 32, 34 Peter, the Chanter, 123 Pfeiffer, August, 157–58; Evangelische Christen-Schule, 157 Pharisees, xv, 3, 23, 49, 61, 62, 101, 104 Pilate, Pontius, 62, 63, 81, 89–90, 96, 178 Plummer, Christopher, 179n1 post-racial society, illusion of, 101–2 preaching, xx, 65, 104–5, 107 Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, 95 racial fragility, 88 racial privilege, 88 racism vs. anti-Semitism, 102, 106–7 Raymond Brown, “the Jews,” and the Gospel of John (Cronin), 50 A Retreat with John the Evangelist (Brown), 50 Revel-Neher, Elisabeth, 27 Revised Common Lectionary: Advent readings, 58; vs. Catholic lectionary, 83n8; Easter readings, 61–2, 64; Good Friday readings, 62–3; Holy Week readings, 64; hostile references to the Jews, 53, 58–64; Lent readings, 58–9, 60–1; publications of, 71; readings from the Gospel of John, 53, 54–6, 74, 75; readings for Season after Pentecost, 59–60, 63–4; women’s appearance in, 80 Revised Lectionary for Mass, 83n4 The Revised Lectionary of the Roman Missal for Sundays and Solemnities, 71 Richard I, the Lionheart, King of England, 116 Robertson, Pat, 98 Robinson, Jay, 88 Rouen Jewish community, 138



Subject Index 207

Samaritan woman in Gospel of John, xiv, xviii, 152 Scott, Ridley, 175 Second Vatican Council, 71, 78 sermons: anti-Jewish, 89–91; Internet resources for, 88 The Seventh Seal (film), 181n13 Simon Peter, 80 Skobtsova, Maria, 40 Son of God (film), 165, 175, 178, 181n11 Spencer, Richard, 99 Stevens, George, 170, 171, 175 stranger from afar (literary trope), 169–72 Sunday Catholics, xxi, 71, 74, 75, 78, 79, 83n7 Sunday Lectionary. See Catholic Lectionary Sydow, Max von, 169, 170, 171, 181n13 Synagoga: condemnation of, 137–38; identification with the demon, 128–29, 130; as representation of darkness, 122; visual analogy to

Eve, 131, 133. See also Ecclesia and Synagoga Talmud, 103 Trinity in Bible illustrations, 126–27, 127 “two-level drama,” xviii, 49 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, 106, 107 US Conference of Catholic Bishops, 102 Uta Codex, 120 Verdun homily, 130–31 Victor, Pope, 34 Weekday Lectionary, 84n14 white fragility: church programs addressing, 103–4; definition of, 88; manifestation of, 101; as replacement to Christian fragility, 93 white privilege, 87–8, 103–4, 110n35 white supremacy, 98–9, 100, 107 woke, notion of being, 91–2

Index of Sources

BIBLICAL SOURCES Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Genesis 1:1 115, 124, 127, 128 1:9–10 118 1:26–27 127 1:27 128 2:10–14 118 2:21–22 128 4:13–14 120 7:38 120 19:34 120 Exodus 3 37 3:14 38 14:15 84n18 15:1 84n18 15:20 84n18 16:2–4 76 16:4 59 16:12–15 76 16:15 59 17:3–7 76 29:42–46 182n23

33:7–11 182n23 34:29–35 182n23 40:34–38 182n23 Numbers 20:13 124 Deuteronomy 4:24 36 13:6 156 21:23 38 2 Samuel 22:44 154 1 Kings 4:42–44 76 19:4–8 76 Psalms 1:5 174, 176 69:21 30 78:24 59

209

210

Song of Songs 14 135 Isaiah 6 120 6:9–10 174, 183n29

Index of Sources

40:28 38 60:1 170 62 77 Ezekiel 16:3 130

New Testament Matthew 12:14 3 14:5 94 15:10–20 105 16:21 36 17:1–8 192n23 18:20 153 21:46 10, 94 24:20 181n12 24:27 128 24:42–43 92 25:1–13 123 25:13 92 26:41 92 27:62 3 28:15 3, 4 Mark 9:2–8 182n23 11:1–10 73 12:12 94 13:35–37 92 14:38 92 15:43 64 Luke 7:1–10 78 9:28–36 182n23 16.14 101 22:2 10 24 80 24:1–12 75, 84n19 John 1–14 117 1–5 74, 121

1:1–18 73 1:1–14 54, 55, 56 1:1–5 7, 169, 180n11 1:1–2 19n45 1:1 124, 125, 127, 169, 172 1:1b 181n11 1:2 169 1:4–5 149, 172 1:4b–5 181n11 1:4b 170 1:5 121, 149 1:5a 170, 181n11 1:5b 181n11 1:6–28 72 1:6–8 55, 73 1:7–9 149, 172 1:8b–9 181n11 1:9 65 1:10–13 182n22 1:10 121, 181n11 1:11 57 1:11a 181n11 1:11b–13 181n11 1:12 57, 65, 149 1:14 35, 121, 169, 172, 181n11, 182n23 1:16–18 182n23 1:16 181n11 1:17 149, 172, 181n11, 182n23 1:18 172, 181n11 1:19–28 55, 73 1:19 52, 55, 57, 58, 72 1:29–42 54 1:29–34 73, 74



Index of Sources 211

1:31 52 1:35–42 73, 74, 76 1:35–37 168 1:43–51 55, 74 1:47 52 1:49 52 2 151 2:1–11 56, 74 2:2 79 2:6 56, 79 2:11 57, 182n24 2:12 77 2:13–35 75 2:13–25 73 2:13–22 55 2:13 55, 79 2:18 52, 55, 57, 58 2:20 52, 55, 57, 58 2:23–24 65 2:23 57 3 128 3:1–17 54, 55 3:1–10 78 3:1–8 52 3:1 52, 54, 55, 174 3:5 128 3:10 52 3:12–14 35 3:14–21 55, 73, 75 3:14–15 36, 176 3:16–18 74 3:16–17 168, 180n2 3:16 65 3:18 148, 149, 149 3:19–21 149, 174 3:19 149 3:25 52 3:36 149 4 26, 26, 57 4:1–4 77 4:5–42 54, 75, 76 4:9 54, 79 4:21–23 57, 152 4:22 52, 54, 57, 79, 152 4:23 152

4:39 79 4:42 5 4:43–54 78 5 26, 27, 151 5:1–9 56 5:1 79 5:10 52 5:15 52 5:16 52, 154 5:18 52, 57, 95 5:19–24 13 5:24 149 5:35 149 5:45–46a 13 5:46 35 6 77, 151 6:1–21 55 6:1–15 74 6:4 55 6:16–23 78 6:24–35 55, 74 6:25–35 56 6:35 55 6:36–40 78 6:41–51 55 6:41 52, 55, 59 6:51–59 74 6:51–58 55 6:52 52, 55, 59, 60 6:56–59 55 6:70–71 174 7 151 7:1–10 52 7:1 52, 78 7:11 52 7:12 3 7:13 52 7:15 52 7:33 62 7:35–36 52 7:35 52 7:37–39 54 7:47 3 7:50–51 52 7:53–8:11 166

212

Index of Sources

8 7, 8, 22, 23 8:1–11 73, 75 8:12–9 172 8:12 149 8:19 7 8:21–22 62 8:22 52 8:23–25 129 8:23 35, 149, 169, 171 8:24 7 8:27 182n22 8:28–29 36 8:28 176 8:31–47 148 8:31–32 52 8:31 23, 52, 57 8:32 23 8:38–47 42n13 8:42 172 8:43–47 182n22 8:44–47 174 8:44–46 23 8:44 7, 19n34, 22, 23, 57, 66, 78, 129, 149 8:48 52 8:52 52 8:55 19n34 8:56–57 52 8:57 52 8:59 52, 78 9 26, 27, 49, 80, 172 9–14 74 9:1–41 54, 73, 75 9:5 149 9:18 52, 54, 60 9:22 4, 16n10, 52, 54, 60, 78, 81, 155, 156, 157 9:22a 52 9:22b 52 9:39–41 174 10–15 75 10:1–10 54, 73 10:11–18 55, 73 10:19–21 52

10:19 52, 56 10:22–30 56 10:22 79 10:24 52, 56, 61 10:27–30 73 10:30–33 52 10:30 61 10:31 52, 61 10:33 52 11 28, 122, 151 11–18 80 11:1–57 166 11:1–45 54, 73, 75, 79 11:4 182n24 11:7–8 52 11:7 54 11:8 52, 54, 61 11:9–10 149 11:18–19 52 11:19 54, 152 11:25–26 168 11:31–36 152 11:31 52, 54 11:32–44 55 11:33 52, 54, 55 11:35–36 52 11:35 35 11:36 54, 55 11:45–46 52 11:45 54 11:47–52 62 11:52 149 11:53 52 11:54 52 11:55 79 11:57 3 12:1–11 54, 55, 56 12:1–8 75 12:4–6 168 12:6 168, 174 12:9–11 52 12:9 54, 55, 56 12:11 54, 55, 56 12:12–16 73 12:13 52



Index of Sources 213

12:20–50 183n29 12:20–36 54, 55 12:20–33 73, 75 12:23 176 12:23–50 172 12:23–36 176 12:28–34 35 12:32–36 176 12:32–34 35, 36 12:35–36 149, 172 12:35 149 12:36 149, 175 12:36b–43 174 12:42 16n10, 52, 64, 78, 151, 156 12:44 148 12:46 149, 172, 174, 175 12:48 149 13–17 176 13:1–20 166 13:1–17 54, 55, 56 13:1–15 73, 75 13:1–11 168 13:2 174 13:11 174 13:18 174 13:20–36 56 13:20 168 13:21–32 54, 56 13:23 117 13:27 174 13:30 174 13:31–14:31 4, 9 13:31–14:3 19n45 13:31–35 56 13:31–33a 73, 84n15 13:31b–35 54, 55, 56 13:33 4, 52, 54, 55, 56, 61 13:34–35 73, 84n15 13:34 66 14 75 14–17 182n22 14:1–14 54 14:1–12 73 14:2–3 9

14:5 168 14:6 65 14:8–17 56 14:15–21 54, 73 14:15–16 74 14:16 17n15 14:19 9 14:21–29 56 14:22–33 78 14:23–29 73 14:23b–26 74 14:25–27 56 15 75 15:1–16:4a 4 15:1–10 5 15:1–8 55, 73 15:9–17 55, 73 15:20–25 154 15:26–16:44 156 15:26–27 55, 74 16:2 4, 16n10, 52, 78, 156, 157 16:2a 156 16:2b 156, 159 16:4b–33 4 16:4b–15 55 16:9 148 16:12–15 56, 74 16:12–13 17n15 16:51–58 74 16:53 74 16:60–63 74 17 83n11 17:1–11a 73 17:1–11 54 17:5 19n45 17:6–19 55 17:11b–19 73 17:20–26 56, 73 17:24 19n45 17:26 4 18:1–19:45 73 18:1–19:42 54, 55, 56, 57, 62, 75 18:1–19:37 104 18:4 53

214

Index of Sources

18:6 174 18:9–19:42 77 18:12 52, 57 18:14 52, 57, 62 18:20 52, 53, 57, 62 18:28–19:16 36 18:31 3, 52, 57, 62, 81, 158 18:31b 158 18:33–37 55 18:33 52, 53, 55, 57, 62, 63 18:33b–37 74, 76 18:35 52, 53, 55, 57, 63, 96 18:36 3, 52, 55, 57, 62, 63, 149, 166, 178 18:38 3, 52, 57, 62, 167 18:39 52, 53, 57, 62 19 26, 151 19:1–16 88 19:3 52, 53, 57, 62 19:4–6 167 19:5–6 24 19:6 90 19:7–9 90 19:7 3, 52, 57, 62, 81 19:12 52, 57, 62 19:14 3, 52, 62 19:14–16 89, 104, 105 19:15 90 19:19–21 63 19:19 52, 53, 57, 62 19:20–21 52, 53, 62 19:20 52, 57 19:21 62 19:21a 52, 57 19:21b 52, 57 19:21c 52, 57 19:25 79 19:25–27 167 19:25–17 79 19:26–27 117, 168 19:30 167 19:31 52, 53, 57 19:34 167 19:35–36 3 19:38–42 55

19:38 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 62, 64, 157 19:39–40 52 19:40 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 62, 64, 79 19:42 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 64 20 153 20:1–18 54, 55, 56, 73, 75 20:1–9 75 20:2 117 20:10 77 20:11–18 166 20:19–31 54, 55, 56, 73 20:19–23 54, 74 20:19 52, 54, 55, 56, 64, 75, 81, 99, 153, 155, 157 20:29 176 20:30–31 63 20:31 76, 148 21 96 21:1–19 56, 73 21:7 117 21:19 80, 81 21:20–25 78 21:20 117 21:24 117 Acts 1:15–26 18n32 3 91 13:29 64 1 Corinthians 5–10 128 10:1–2 128 10:2–4 128 10:5 133 10:9 133 11 128 2 Corinthians 3:14 89 11:24 94

Index of Sources 215



Ephesians 5:22 84n17

4:14 5 2 John 1:7 159 7 12

1 Thessalonians 5:6 92 1 John 1:7–2:2 17n15 2:15 65 2:18 12, 159 2:22 12, 19n34, 159 3:11–12a 7 4:1–3 12 4:3 159

Revelation 1:1 13 1:7 181n12 5:1–16 13 16:15 92 Philippians 2:6–11 13

RABBINIC SOURCES Mishnah Pesahim 7.1–2 44n36

EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE Augustine, of Hippo: Augustini liber super Ioannem, 121; Tractatus in Euangelium Iohannis, 121, 123, 129, 130 Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria: Commentary on John, 22, 23, 24 Irenaeus: Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), 8 John Chrysostom, 22, 24;

Adversus Judaeos, 23; Homilies on John, 23 Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, 13 Melito, of Sardis: On Pascha, 32, 33, 34 Origen, 24, 128; Commentary on John, 22 Peter Comestor: Historia Scholastica, 125, 138

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA AND GNOSTIC SOURCES Acts of John, 169, 181n14 Apocalypse of Peter, 169 Apocryphon of John, 8, 9, 11 Gospel of Judas, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13–14, 18n32, 19n43

Gospel of Peter, 181n14 Gospel of Truth, 8, 12, 13 Heracleon, 22 Nag Hammadi Codices II, 11 Second Discourse of Great Seth, 169

216

Index of Sources

OTHER AUTHORS Plutarch: Moralia, 43n11

Index of Modern Authors

Anderson, Paul, 52, 53, 99 Ashton, John, 3 Attridge, Harold, 12

Hahn, Heather, 110n40 Hamburger, Jeffrey, 117, 118 Hess, Amanda, 91–2

Berger, Pamela, 139n2 Bernauer, James, xiii Boespflug, François, 117 Boyarin, Daniel, 5 Brosend, William, 97 Brown, Raymond E., 4, 5, 7, 12, 17n15, 49, 50, 182n24 Bruckner, Matilda, 139n2 Bryant, M. Darrol, 174 Bultmann, Rudolf Karl, 4, 6, 8, 15

Johnson, Luke Timothy, 23 Jonas, Hans, 20n48 Just, Felix, 83n11

Clark, Mark, 125 Cronin, Sonya, 49, 50 Culpepper, R. Alan, 80, 94, 96, 99 DeConick, April, 7, 8, 20n48 DiAngelo, Robin, 88 Dunderberg, Ismo, 9 Dunn, James D. G., 60

Kitzinger, Beatrice, 122, 141n13 Kohler, Kaufmann, 51 Kreps, Anne, 12 Kühnel, Bianca, 117 Kysar, Robert, 17n16 Langer, Ruth, 16n10 Langton, Stephen, 125 Lipton, Sara, 133, 139n2 Lorde, Audre, 97 Luz, Ulrich, 3, 4 Martyn, J. Louis, 4, 44n34, 49, 60, 93, 163n27 McIntosh, Peggy, 87–8 Morgan, Phil, 89

Ferguson, Tom, 110n35

Nirenberg, David, 107

Gosse-Kischniewski, Annick, 141n7 Green, Emma, 106

Papadeas, George L., 44n37 Parkes, James, 44n34 217

218

Index of Modern Authors

Reinhartz, Adele, 44n34, 82n1, 178 Revel-Neher, Elisabeth, 27–8 Robinson, Jay, 88 Rowe, Nina, 122, 137–38 Ruether, Rosemary, 91 Rylaarsdam, David, 44n41 Saperstein, Marc, 45n58 Schuller, Eileen, 92, 95, 104 Schulze, Hans-Joachim, 147 Sed-Rajna, Gabrielle, 135 Seidler-Feller, Chaim, 65 Sloyan, Gerald, 77

Stendahl, Krister, 65 Stirnemann, Patricia, 139n1 Tuit, Ron, 89 Tuper, Derrick, 90 von Wahlde, Urban C., 51, 52, 53, 99 Ward, Eric K., 98 Werckmeister, Otto Karl, 131, 133 Załuska, Yolanta, 117 Zumstein, Jean, 19n45

About the Contributors

Michael Azar is assistant professor of theology/religious studies at the University of Scranton. His areas of research and teaching include: the gospels; apocalyptic literature; early Christian exegesis, theology and liturgy; early and modern Jewish–Christian Relations, and Christianity in the Middle East. He resides in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Azar is the author of Exegeting the Jews: The Early Reception of the Johannine “Jews” (2016). R. Alan Culpepper is dean and professor emeritus at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University and research fellow in the Department of Old and New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. He is currently writing the commentary on Matthew for the New Testament Library. Marcia Kupfer is an independent scholar. Her research in the history of medieval art centers on pictorial narrative, cartographic representation, and Christian–Jewish polemic. She has published Romanesque Wall Painting in Central France: The Politics of Narrative (1993) and The Art of Healing: Painting for the Sick and the Sinner in a Medieval Town (2003). Marcia will soon complete Art and Optics in the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a prequel to the book on medieval world maps that is her project for the IIAS Research Group, The Visualization of Knowledge in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Amy-Jill Levine is professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science in Nashville, Tennessee. Her books 219

220

About the Contributors

include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. She is co-editor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament. Michael Marissen joined the Swarthmore faculty in 1989 and since then has also been a visiting professor on the graduate faculties at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. His research has been supported by fellowships from agencies in Canada (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), England (Woolf Institute), Germany (D.A.A.D., and Humboldt Foundation), and the United States (National Endowment for the Humanities, and American Council of Learned Societies). He has written several books on Bach and on Handel including Bach & God (2016) and Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah (2014). Pheme Perkins is professor of theology at Boston College. She specializes in Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity; hellenistic philosophy; Pauline epistles; Johannine writings; Resurrection and early Christian eschatology; Nag Hammadi corpus; Gnosticism; Irenaeus. She is currently working on commentaries on 1 Peter, as well as Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, and on the Gospel of Thomas. Adele Reinhartz is professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and a research fellow in the Department of Old and New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Adele is the author of Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (2002) in addition to other works on New Testament as well as on the Bible and film. Her most recent book is Cast out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (2018). Eileen Schuller is professor emeritus and Senator WilliamMcMaster Chair in the Study of Religion at McMaster University. Her research and graduate teaching have focused on the area of Judaism in the Second Temple period, particularly the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially prayer and hymnic texts, and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, including topics related to women in these texts. Schuller has been involved in the edition and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She is now working on a commentary on the Hodayot for the Hermeneia series (Augsburg Fortress). Schuller has been associate editor for a number of projects, including The HarperCollins Study Bible and The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, and is currently associate editor for The Paulist Biblical Commentary.



About the Contributors 221

Richard Walsh is professor of religion and codirector of the honors program at Methodist University, Fayetteville, North Carolina. His interests include interpretative theories, reception history, Bible and film, and the Gospel of Mark.