Jésus et Israël

Jésus et Israël (1948) is a book published by French historian Jules Isaac (1877–1963) – three years after the end of WWII and his survival in the Holocaust[1][2] as an Auschwitz prisoner. The book was translated into English in 1971.

Overview

The book has 600 pages, analyzing the history of antisemitism and Christianity by comparing the New Testament to Catholic and Protestant commentaries,[3] some of which were considered by Isaac as having distorted the relationship between Jesus and the Jews[4] and led to antisemitism among European Christians.[3]

Content

Preface

In his book's preface, Isaac wrote,

[The book] was born of persecution [. ...] It is the cry of an outraged conscience, of a lacerated heart. It is addressed to men’s consciences and hearts. I sorrow over those who will refuse to hear it.

Conclusion

At the end of his book, Isaac asked Christians to urgently "recognize their initial responsibility" for anti-Judaism's evolution into antisemitism,[5] which ultimately caused the Holocaust,[5] adding that[5]

[t]he glow of the Auschwitz crematorium is the beacon that lights, that guides all my thoughts.

In an Appendix to his book, Isaac included his Eighteen Points, which he deemed necessary for correcting the Christian teachings.[6]

Eighteen Points in Jésus et Israël
  • 1. Give all Christians a basic knowledge of the Old Testament and its Jewish origins.
  • 2. Explain that much of Christian liturgy drew its foundations from the Old Testament.
  • 3. Do not omit that God had first revealed himself through the Old Testament to the Jews and later to the Christians.
  • 4. Judaism is not a degenerative faith. Christianity was born of it.
  • 5. The myth of Jewish historical dispersion, because of death of Jesus, is wrong. The Jews had been largely dispersed from Israel for almost 500 years before Jesus.
  • 6. The Gospels text use of the word Jews is too broad in its context. The Jews of Jesus' experience were limited to the Temple Jews and a small crowd before Pilate. The misreading of the Gospels blankets all Jews, everywhere, equally and erroneously.
  • 7. Jesus was a Jew.
  • 8. Jesus lived as a Jew.
  • 9. Jesus recruited his Apostles from the Jews.
  • 10. Jesus, throughout his ministry, only sought to gather adherents from the Jews.
  • 11. Do not teach that Jesus was rejected by the Jews, before and during his trial and crucifixion, because the vast majority of the Jews had no knowledge of Jesus.
  • 12. Jesus was not universally rejected by the Jewish leadership. The Gospels recognize he was rejected by a section of the Priests who were not unanimous against Jesus.
  • 13. There is nothing in the Gospels of a universal condemnation of the Jews.
  • 14. Be aware of the false charge of Deicide.
  • 15. The Gospels make clear that the High Priest and his supporters acted without the knowledge of the people.
  • 16. The trial of Jesus was a Roman trial, not a Jewish trial. The Jewish people, as a whole, did not even know of the trial or its brutalities.
  • 17. The procurator of the Roman trial was Pontius Pilate, with full control over life and death, not the Jews. The fourth Gospel acknowledges that the accusation and the trial involved the High Priest and his supporters alone.
  • 18. The accusation, "His blood be on us and our children," cannot balance against Jesus' words of forgiveness on the Cross: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."[7]

At the Seelisberg Conference of Christians and Jews in 1947, his Eighteen Points became part of the Ten Points of Seelisberg adopted by the Conference. The Conference was followed by Isaac's formation of the L’Amitié Judéo-Chrétienne in 1948 for "the promotion of Christian-Jewish understanding."[8]

Reception

Some critics pointed out that antisemitism existed in pre-Christian times,[9] i.e. not unique to Christianity,[9] when many antisemites were pagans.[9]

Later work

In response to critics, regardless of their intent, Isaac wrote Génése de l’Anti-Sémitisme in 1956[10] – translated into English as Has Anti-Semitism Roots in Christianity? in 1961[10] – in which he agreed that pagan antisemitism existed before Christ but made it clear:[10]

[Pagan antisemitism was] directed at a people considered separatist and unassimilable [. ... while] Christianity added theology to historical xenophobia and condemned Jews "as a people of deicides to be cursed, punished, driven into exile.

Teaching of Contempt

The last book of Isaac in his life was L'Enseignement de Mépris – published in 1962.[11][12] In the book's final chapter, Isaac stated two principles:[13]

Isaac's two principles in The Teaching of Contempt
  • 1. All authorities are agreed that anti-Semitism is by definition unchristian, even anti-Christian. A true Christian cannot be an anti-Semite
  • 2. There is a Christian anti-Semitism. Whether conscious or subconscious, it is perennial and virulent, of great scope and intensity. It may be affirmed with complete confidence that the majority of Christians – or those recognized as such – are anti-Semites. For even in the best Christians, even in those who fought most courageously against Nazi anti-Semitism, it is easy to distinguish traces of a kind of subconscious anti-Semitism.

Reviews

In his review, theologian Ray Summers (1910 – 1992) summarized Isaac's last book as such:[14]

The thesis of the book is that the contempt in which Jewish people are held by such great numbers of people and the persecutions which they have experienced through nineteen hundred years are to be traced to a Christian source — the charge that the Jewish people are a 'deicide' people, that they 'killed God'.

References

  1. ↑
    • Shapiro, P.A. (2007). "Faith, murder, resurrection: The Iron Guard and the Romanian Orthodox Church". Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253116741. OCLC 191071016. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
    • Laqueur, Walter (July 30, 2009). "Towards the Holocaust". The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 9780195341218. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
    • "Deportation of Hungarian Jews". Timeline of Events. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 25 November 2017. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
    • Brosnan, Matt (12 June 2018). "What Was The Holocaust?". Imperial War Museum. Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
    • "36 Questions About the Holocaust". Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles. Retrieved 2024-10-14.
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1
  4. ↑ Sometimes referred to as Israel in his book.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Jules Isaac, Jesus and Israel, trans. Sally Gran, 2nd ed, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1971), 400.
  6. ↑ Carolyn Wesnousky, "Under the Very Windows of the Pope”: Confronting Anti-Semitism in Catholic Theology after the Holocaust" (2012), 63. and Judith Rice, “Jules Isaac & Pope Benedict XVI.”
  7. ↑ Judith Rice, “Jules Isaac & Pope Benedict XVI.”
  8. ↑ Review of Jesus and Israel. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Review of Jesus and Israel. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Review of Jesus and Israel. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  11. ↑ The English translation The Teaching of Contempt: Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism was published in 1964.
  12. ↑ “A short introduction to Jules Isaac”
  13. ↑ Jules Isaac, The Teaching of Contempt (Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1964), 21-24.
  14. ↑ Ray Summers, Review of The Teaching of Contempt: The Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism by Jules Isaac in Journal of Church and State Vol. 6, No. 3 (Autumn 1964), 382.
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