Kakistocrat

I know an entry like this will make some people cringe, but the fact is, when I want to talk about Stevie Smith, or Giovanni Guareschi, Graham Greene, or take pot-shots at James Joyce, no one else seems interested. When I instead suggest that certain individuals are exploiting the message of salvation or that perhaps Pius XII’s canonization should not proceed until the archives have been made available to credible historians, comments seem to be higher. So read this as a strategic continuation to New Testament Anti-Judaism, where I over viewed the various types of New Testament Anti-Judaism, and called the reader to be familiar with it when he/she encounters it, so as to rise above it.

The Beatitudes (which begin the Sermon on the Mount) have a message for a variety of types of people (the poor in spirit, the gentle, those who mourn…), but they culminate in a ninth message, a more specific one, which instead of speaking in generalities as the previous eight have, instead use the pronoun ‘you.’

Observe:

Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you. (Matthew 5:11-12).

This repeated charge (the persecution of the Prohpets) is a peculiar one, precisely because the persecution of the prophets, while certainly occurring, was hardly commonplace, and when it did occur (in the case of Elijah, for example) it came not at the hands of the people, but of the monarch.

Clues to Matthew’s intention may be gleaned from Luke’s rendering of this passage, and by noting the differences something is suggested about the intention of each.

Happy are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as a criminal, on account for the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, then your reward will be great in heaven. This way the way their ancestors treated the prophets. (Luke 6:22-23).

The Lucan Jesus calls his listeners to ‘dance for joy’ on the day that, on account for the Son of Man, they are hated, driven out and denounced as criminals. This day has come for the audience of Luke. On account of the Son of Man, they have begun to be excluded from the synagogue, and with such an excommunication, the pax romana will no longer protect a Christian person. This forms part of the reason why Luke may have written his Gospel, namely, to show that followers of Jesus are not a threat to the Roman Empire. Matthew’s audience however has already left the synagogue and exclusion is not their current problem, for its very presupposition justifies the author in not mentioning it. Though exlcusion has occurred, what is and will continue to occur is persecution, and in having Jesus comfort his apostles by telling them that the prophets were perecuted in a similar manner, Matthew’s intention is clear. He is simply telling his Christian audience to expect to be treated with hostility by the Jewish community, and had the missionaries of his day, met, in the Jewish people, a more positive and receptive audience, he would have had no need to relay this slightly differently worded beatitude. His message is primarily pastoral, and in comforting those who are being persecuted, he is reminding them that one with God is a majority.

Matthew’s revisionist history (about the fate of the biblical prophets) is employed simply to pass the persecuted Christians off in the same light as the Biblical prophets. It has no interest in whether the claim actually happened. Inclusion of this passage (and the creation of it, I suspect, apart from Jesus) is solely strategic, and while still slanderous against the Jewish leadership, and therefore problematic, it is neither abrogating nor subordinating in itself. However, once extended into the greater context, it cannot be overlooked that if Christians have already been excluded from the Temple, and if the apostles are to be seen as echoing the prophetic voices of those who in the past spoke within the Jewish community, then there is the suggestion from Matthew, that God is now speaking through voice that are outside the Jewish community, because they have been rejected by them. One can easily understand why the Jewish people can be sensitive to this, and certainly an accusation by them about the nature of Matthew’s polemic, and the suggestion that it is abrogating, when seen in this light, cannot simply be passed over as oversensitive.

K.

Declaring him to be in possession of "heroic virtues," the Vatican’s Congregation of the Causes of Saints, has moved Pope Pius XII one step closer to official sainthood. As Pope from 1939 to 1958, Pius’s legacy hinges on the question of his perceived silence during the Holocaust.

While plenty has been written both in support and condemnation of Pope Pius XII, only last year were the Vatican archives from his era made fully accessible. Because the question of his silence has still not been adequately addressed, until it has been, and particularly until the Jewish people have been themselves convinced of his "heroic virtues" (perhaps by Yad Vashem’s formal identification of him as a righteous gentle), only then should the case for his sainthood proceed.

While saint-making is an internal Church matter, the potential sainthood of Pius XII, precisely because of his perceived silence during the Holocaust, has consequences beyond the Church, and in light of the relative good relations with the Jewish people that have lasted now some forty years, I do not think it would be wise, or consistent with Christian charity, to recognize the still-present wounds within the Jewish community and proceed by continuing Pius XII’ canonization.

What do you think?

(This is less of a discussion regarding Pius actions during the Holocaust, then it is a discussion of the wisdom of canonizing him while the verdict is still out on his perceived silence).

K.

It is no great secret that many Jewish people throughout history have been victims of forced baptisms, crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, and other horrors which one would certainly hope have peaked in the Holocaust. This culmination has caused larger Christian communities to finally come to publicly regret their past misdeeds, and while this change of heart is no doubt welcomed, some (like the Jewish New Testament scholar Samuel Sandmel) maintain that it is precisely "the presence of anti-Semitism in the New Testament [that gives reflective Christians] the occasion for rising above it."

In looking to the Gospels it is necessary to distinguish between the forms of anti-Judaism that are rather difficult to ignore. A three-fold categorization has been offered by a number of individuals.

Prophetic Polemic, the first, suggests that given the diversity of thought and interpretation within a particular religious tradition, disagreements are bound to arise. In the case of first century Judaism, when the large number of competing sects is considered, the likelihood of such disagreements is further enhanced. The debate that occurs will be emotional, and at times violent, yet regardless of how fierce competing evaluations of one another’s views are, no leveled criticism will necessarily amount to a condemnation of the religion that all fly under the banner of. The Biblical prophets are to be seen as examples of prophetic polemic, because they do not attack Judaism itself, or the Law, but rather the failure of Israel to follow the true terms of the Law devoutly. Jesus in his criticism of the hypocrisy of the religious leaders is also identifying himself with the prophetic polemics.

Subordinating Polemic not only criticizes the interpretation and faithfulness that a people attaches to central symbols, but in fact it also subordinates such symbols to another value. Despite the diversity of Jewish groups in the first century, it is accurate to recognize that the centrality of the Torah and temple, as well as the importance of both circumcision and the dietary law, would have transcended particular differences. But when such central symbols are subordinated to another (as appears to happen in Jesus’ treatment of the Law, and his formula you have heard it said, but I say to you [Matthew 5]) , this form of polemic is occurring.

The final categorization, Abrogating Anti-Judaism, accepts all of the assumptions of subordinating prophetic polemic and adds to this a belief that Israel has been rejected by God for not accepting the subordination of their symbols to Jesus. In such a view, no longer does Israel hold status with God as a special people, for a ‘New’ Israel has been ordained and has replaced them. Where subordinating polemic sought to convert Israel precisely because it was God’s people, those forms of abrogating anti-Judaism brush Israel aside, claiming that value is found now in the redefined community of God, which is the Christian community. This attitude has been interpretted to exist in certain New Testament passages.

While a faithful Jew, sensitive to the countless past abuses that have occurred in the name of Christianity, may have difficulty reading certain New Testament passages without superimposing their own collective past experience onto them, it remains important to recognize that the New Testament does possess a variety of forms of anti-Judaism. Though such criticism exists, and though the merits of such criticism make for interesting debate, none leveled against the Jews in the New Testament is grounds for justifying the abuses that have occurred in the name of those who profess to follow Jesus.

K.