Why Didn't the Early Jews Believe in Jesus? Part Two

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Why Didn't the Early Jews Believe in Jesus?  Part Two
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Until my late teens I knew virtually nothing about Jews or Judaism.  When I got to college and heard others refer to Jewish people what I did hear was often in the form of jokes and innuendo.   About this time I also became aware of attitudes toward Jewish people from my own family;  how, for example, “more and more Lampls are appearing in the phone book, but they are all Jewish”.  The bottom line was that all too often when I heard a reference to Jews, it was pejorative.    

When I joined a college fraternity my ‘big brother’ was Jewish and I liked him a lot.   I have Jewish in laws and Jewish friends.   But I had to come to grips with this powerful force that had entered my soul as an “othering” of the Jewish people.  Why this anti-Semitism?    How would I erase this image of my being part of an ‘us’ and Jews being a ‘them’?  

On a trip to Germany years ago to live with some German friends I recall asking them why anti-Semitism was such an entrenched part of their culture.   The answer amazed me, “because the Jews killed Jesus.”  I had never heard this before.   Yet, now after decades of trying to understand, I can see the history behind this statement.  

The Old Testament gives us a great picture of how the Jewish people survived the hatred of many nations.   And in the Gospels we read about the collaboration of the Jewish leaders and the Romans.  However In the year 381 AD, after 60+ years of toleration since Emperor Constantine took the throne, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.  As another reminder that the merging of church and state is a really bad idea, Roman citizens found it easier to blame Jews for the death of Jesus instead of themselves for the crucifixion of Jesus.  

As the centuries passed this mantra, “the Jews killed Jesus,” became accepted truth until even the some of the most brilliant of Reformers spewed some of the worst anti-Semitism, statements that today would probably be prosecuted as incendiary hate speech.   In 1543 Martin Luther himself wrote, ““what should we do with the damned rejected race, the Jews?  First their synagogues should be set on fire, second their homes should likewise be broken down, third they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmud (it goes on)”   Is it any wonder that the German National Socialists of the 1930’s so easily sent Jews to their deaths?  

Were you, as I was, introduced to Jews and Judaism, with the undertone that they were a “them”, that they don’t fit with “us”, that they should be “othered”?   If so how are you dealing with what was put into your mind?   Is there anything, anything at all in your attitudes, thoughts, ideas, that contribute to the perpetuation of an anti-Semitic worldview?  

In short I wonder if it is not we Christians who are most responsible, not only for Jewish resistance to the Gospel (which in its earliest years was not a resistance but a wide acceptance) but also in significant measure through our words, actions and inaction for the rising tide of anti-Semitism that we are witnessing today in the western world.     

As for myself, I have come to realize that I am accepted by God because a Jew, Jesus, obeyed Torah, kept the covenant that I could never have kept and this Jew, who did everything right, counts His perfect obedience as my perfect obedience and it is because of that I have eternal life.   I am proud to be an honorary Jew, grafted into the tree of Judaism.  (see Romans 11:17).  In fact I have even done a little research into my ancestry wondering if the Lampl family into which I was born might trace its origins back to the Jewish roots that so many other Lampls claim as their heritage.   The following prayer of Pope John 23 at Vatican 2 over 50 years ago is a wonderful prayer that worth revisiting:  

                         “We realize now that many, many centuries have dimmed our eyes
                          so we no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people and we no longer
                          see in their faces the features of our first born brothers. We realize that
                          our brows are branded by the mark of Cain.  Centuries long Able has lain
                          in blood and tears because we have forgotten Thy love.  Forgive us the
                          curse that we have unjustly laid on the Jewish people in the name of the
                          Jesus.   Forgive us so that with our curse, with our treatment of the Jews,
                          we do not crucify Thee a second time.   Amen"

 
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