Main | God’s Precarious Presence »
September 13, 2002
Supersessionism
This past June, Purdue was host to a conference on Violence and Religion that brought people here from far away places. The particular violence in mind was the violence of Christianity against Judaism over the centuries, if I understood things right. The Shoah, the result of Hitler’s hatred, was able to succeed because a climate of anti-Judaism was in place.
But René Girard, the scholar whose theory of mimesis and scape-goating was celebrated at the conference, has written about patterns of religious violence inherent in human society long before Anti-Judaism smoldered in the Western world. Sadly, we in the Western world are too well acquainted with inter-religious violence. In 1947, the city in which I was born in India, was the scene of a horrendous blood bath, with Hindus turning against Muslims going north to Pakistan. More recently we witnessed the tragedy of Muslim vs. Christian Serbs in the former Yugoslavia.
But the issue I want to talk about today is not just religious conflict. It is the particular controversy between Jews and Christians that has a theoretical basis. This theory has been called supersessionism.
Supersessionism is the view that Christianity is the true, exclusive, authentic, and legitimate continuity of the faith that began with Abram, took express form in the Divine revelation to Moses, and worked out in the story of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore: God repudiated the Jewish people because they rejected Christ. As a consequnce of that rejection, God invalidated the covenant with Israel, replaced the law of Moses with the Law of Christ, made a new and eternal covenant with the Church, and made Christians the exclusive and rightful heirs of all God’s promises. Historically, the twin ideologies of Christian supersessionism and triumphalism have supported a teaching of contempt for Judaism and the Jewish people that has marred the history of the relations between Jews and Christians in violent and tragic ways.
Those of you who may have followed the discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholarly community will remember John Strugnell, a Christian and the Harvard professor who was editor of the Scrolls, who expressed in the most blatant terms his hostile view of Judaism. I quote from his 1990 interview with Avi Katzman of the Israeli paper, Ha Aretz, that appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1991. Katzman asked him what annoyed him about Judaism. Here is Strugnell’s reply:
The fact that it has survived when it should have disappeared. For me the answer [to the Jewish problem] is mass conversion.
Katzman pressed on, "But what annoys you about it?"
It’s the subsistence of the group, of Jews, of the Jewish religion. It’s a horrible religion. It’s a Christian heresy, and we deal with our heretics in different ways. You are a phenomenon that we haven’t managed to convert–and we should have managed..
We’re all used to university professors sometimes announcing strong and even repugnant opinions without a blush, but this startled even those who agreed with him. I was impressed with Herschel Shanks gracious editorial comment that had compassion for the man, but contempt for his views.
Supersessionism has been front-page news of late. Our local paper reported in its August 31st issue the much publicized disagreement between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church on whether Christians should try to convert Jews.
The U.S. Bishop’s Committee for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs and the National Council of Synagogues, representing Conservative and Reform Judaism, issued a joint statement in early August that triggered controversy between Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic Christians. The joint statement recognized the "divinely-given mission to Jews to witness to God’s faithful love." Hence, "campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church." The Southern Baptist Convention disagrees. So do a lot of other Christians who are not Southern Baptists.
Perhaps you can understand that Alexander Pope’s couplet ran through my head often in the past weeks: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
Angels might well fear to tread where I walk today because they are more nearly privy to the councils of God than any of us are. They no doubt speak in hushed tones to one another when we speak boldly and loudly.
Bill Placher, an esteemed professor of religion at Wabash College wrote a book called so suggestively, The Domestication of Transcendence, that touches on the kind of difficulty I feel in approaching this subject. It purports to offer not merely the views of religious people, but the outlook of God. Josephus wrote of Abraham, whom Christians too claim as their forebear, "He was a man of ready intelligence on all matters, persuasive with his hearers, and not mistaken in his inferences."
It is the inferences we draw from our theories about God’s purposes that become like the scent of red herrings. It is nothing new that there should be developments within a religion, and that adherents of later developments should believe they have eclipsed earlier developments. The inferences that are drawn from perceptions of development that may be troubling to people whose convictions are rejected.
The Hebrew Bible presents the development of a clear theme of a younger son superseding the older. It is a development that continued to influence Judaism outside Biblical times. The second-century BCE sectarians at Qumran believed their Judaism was the right extension of the religion of the Bible. Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, looked on the Zealots–who thought they were alone right, with contempt. This outlook affected earliest Christianity in a more subtle way before it exploded on the human stage in the fourth century. It is part of the seriousness of devout people that they believe they are right, and others who differ are wrong. But when these inferences domesticate God, making God a party to inferences that prompt violence, great tragedies unfold.
I wonder what was in the mind of the Apostle Paul, when he wrote in I Corinthians 13, "If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries, and have all knowledge . . . and have not love, I am nothing." In the Epistle to the Romans, his theoretical masterpiece that touches on the relationship between Jews and Christians, he likens the new trajectory from the religion begun with Abraham, or should we say with Adam, to a wild olive branch grafted onto Judaism. He did not say that the new replaced the old, or that the olive tree of Judaism was cut down. Instead, Gentiles were grafted on to the olive tree of the faith that unfolded in the Hebrew Bible. Paul compared Adam and Christ. By the first came death, by the second came life. Yet, he wrote as a Jew. He saw Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of a pattern in Scripture. But he was concerned that wrong inferences not be drawn from this view. Without love, your ideas, even your grand ideas about God are nothing and gain nothing. He wrote this when Christianity was still very young, a struggling weak religious minority in the Roman world. He wrote this as he saw pride and factions beginning already to develop in the fledgling Church.
But Paul’s view of "right knowledge" has not been the idea that has prevailed in the spread of Christianity. Knowledge, or the perception of having knowledge, is power. Religious power may corrupt more than mere power..Sept. 11th should be an object lesson to us all of the evil that attends an ardent view of Divine knowledge from which hateful inferences are drawn. None of us is immune to this, however much we’d like to think we are immune. There are far too many illustrations of this evil in Christian history. When we domesticate God’s eye view of things, how evil may be the result!
While my theme today has specifically to do with the unique relationship between Judaism and Christianity, it has broader implications. Judaism and traditional Christianity are not the only two related religions on the smorgasbord.
Other related religious systems now claim to supersede Christianity. Islam claims to have superseded both Christianity and Judaism. Moses and Jesus it accepts as prophets, but Mohammed had more recent revelation than both. Islam is having great success; it is the fastest growing religion of all, taking into its embrace people who were formerly Christians.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, born more recently than Islam, sends its winsome pairs out on missions in the flush of their early adulthood because it believes it has the last word on God’s intentions for the inhabitants of this planet. Other confident and devoted isms too send their minions knocking at our doors.
Sometimes I think of the second century cynic, Lucian, who wrote a satire, "Philosophies for Sale." There he derided the hucksters of ideologies in the market-places of Greek cities. They stood up on their soap boxes coaxing passers-by to buy their take on things.. It can seem that way today as solemn people pronounce confidently their contradicting takes on ultimate reality.
But today I must address the subject of Christian supersessionism. Did Christianity supersede Judaism, its older twin brother that developed after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE? Particularly in light of the virulent anti-Judaism that has been a part of the story of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity since the early fourth century, this question haunts us.
Were it merely a matter of two religions disagreeing with each other, the Jews could shrug and say, "That’s just your opinion," to claims by Christians that their faith made Judaism obsolete. But then Christians gained power in the Roman Empire, and flexed their muscle against Jews.
We read the sermons of St. John Chrysostom in 4th century Antioch, and are startled to find venom against the synagogue mixed with the sweetness of the Gospel. He spoke from his pulpit these words: "Do not be surprised if I have called the Jews wretched. They are truly wretched and miserable for they have received many good things from God yet they have spurned them and violently cast them away. . . There is no difference between the theater and the synagogue." It is evident that Chrysostom was concerned that so many Christians were attracted to the synagogues in Syria. I have not chosen to read the uglier things he wrote. Elias Bickermann wrote, "The contemporaries of Chrysostom did not yet know that they were opening the Christian period." Had Chrysostom known what would follow, I wonder if he would have moderated his rhetoric.
Christian anti-Judaism turned to muscle flexing in a vicious crescendo in the Crusades. Christian hostility spun out a web of rarely-abated cruelty during the Middle Ages. Worst of all, Christendom either expressly supported or did little or nothing to stop the evil of the Holocaust. Particularly after the Shoah, Christian supersessionism has become a very practical issue. Did Christianity supersede Judaism? It sounds like supersessionism is an evil word.
But Christians didn’t make up the idea of supersessionism. Within the Hebrew Bible it is clear that the religion begun with Abraham and taught by Moses superseded the religion of merely national deities that abounded in the ancient Middle East. Melchizedek blessed Abram by El Elyon, God most High possessor of heaven and earth. Bible scholars have suspected that El Elyon may not have been the deity who spoke to Abraham, but a Canaanite god. El Elyon is co-opted in Genesis as the Creator of heaven and earth worshipped by the Jews. The Psalmist David wrote in the 16th Psalm, "Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows." The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the high God above all gods. The 22nd Psalm reads: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations." The 136th psalm refers to Israel’s God as µyhlah yhlo"a, "the God of gods."
But the theme is not merely of Israelite religious superiority. In the prophet Isaiah we read of the world’s share in Israel’s welcome, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people." Proselytism was implicit in Israel’s covenant of blessing.
. What the Christians call Jesus’ "great commission," —"Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel," was an extension of Jewish proselytism. Judaism was very appealing to many Gentiles in the ancient world. The legend described in the Letter of Aristeas, that tells of the translation of the Hbrew Bible into Greek, the Septuagint, was at least partially derived from the fascination of the Egyptians with the Law of the Jews. There wa a large Jewish population in third-century BCE Alexandria. Gentiles called "God-fearers" gathered to synagogue worship and believed in the God of the Jews, but never went through the rites of conversion. They were a significant presence in Israel. Some Jewish proselytism was by force. King Herod the Great descended from Idumeans forcibly converted to Judaism by the Hasmoneans. Two of the great sages of Judaism, Shemiaiah and Abtalion, the fourth of the Pairs descending from the Men of the Great Synagogue, mentioned in M.Aboth 1: 10-12, were descendants of the Assyrian/Babylonian King Sennacherib. Apparently they were converted by Jews taken into Babylonian exile. They taught Torah to R. Hillel and R. Shammai, the first of the Tannaim. R. Aquila the second century translator of a fresh Greek version of the Hebrew Bible was a proselyte from Pontus.
It was fitting that the Jews should engage in proselytism because despite their being descendents of the family of Jacob, theirs was a universal message.
In the first covenant God made with Abraham, he was told that all nations of the earth would be blessed in his seed. In the second covenant, this is confirmed. God’s covenant extended not just to Abraham’s immediate family; it extended from the Nile to the Euphrates. Isaiah foretold that "In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage." Jesus remarked to the Scribes and Pharisees that they "traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte." Jesus’ "great commission" to His disciples followed the centrifugal force of Judaism from the confines of the hereditary nation to the world.
What was the status of Gentile converts in Judaism? Alan Segal cites the Tannaitic Commentary on Deuteronomy, Sifre 86b, and BT Baba Kamma 38a:
‘Rabbi Jeremiah said: Whence can you know that the gentile that practices the law is equal to the high priest? Because it said, ‘which, if a man do, he shall live through them’ (Lev. 18: 5). And it says, ‘This is the Torah of man’ (II Sam. 7: 19). It does not say, ‘the law of the priests, Levites, Israelites,’ but ‘This is the law of man, O Lord God.’ And it does not say, ‘Open the gates and let the priests and Levites and Israel enter,’ but it says: ‘Open the gates that the righteous gentile may enter (Isa. 26: 2); And it says, ‘This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter.’ It does not say, ‘The priests and the Levites and Israel shall enter it,’ but it says, ‘The righteous shall enter it’ (Ps. 118: 20). . . So even a gentile, if he practices the Torah, is equal to the high priest.
Christians have made much of prophecies in the Hebrew Bible that they believe point to Jesus as the Messiah. Jews don’t see these prophetic messages in the same light. But there is another indisputable theme that may be more suggestive than the message of the prophets.
Jon Levenson, a Jewish professor at Harvard Divinity School pointed out in his book, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, that supersessionism was built into the fabric of Israelite history. The favor of primogeniture, the rights of the eldest son, are continually upset in Biblical history. Cain, the older brother, resented that his younger brother, Abel, who received the Divine favor for his sacrifice. Levinson wrote, "Abel loses his life precisely because he is the son in whom God found favor" (p. 74).
Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, was superseded by his second son, Isaac, as the one to carry in his seed the blessing God gave to Abraham. Ishmael was born to Hagar, Sarah’s maid, but Sarah intended that her maid should bear a son to bear the continuity of Abraham’s blessing. Later Mosaic law insisted that the son of a favored wife who was born later than the son of a less favored wife should not be given precedence over the his older brother. This rule was needful because in fact, the rights of the elder son had regularly been taken by the younger son. Abraham’s son, Isaac, had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau was born first, but Jacob received both the birthright and the blessing of his father. Jacob had twelve sons. The eldest Reuben is eclipsed by Jacob’s fourth son, Judah–who sires the line of King David. The first son born to Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel, occupies the focus of twelve chapter’s of the Book of Genesis. Joseph towers over his older brothers in significance. Jacob places his right hand of blessing on Joseph’s younger son, Ephraim, rather than on the older son, Manasseh.
Moses was younger than his brother, Aaron, yet God chose Moses to be Israel’s great leader and law giver. Josephus proposes that Moses was bothered that God chose his older brother, Aaron, to be the first High Priest after the Tabernacle was built–as though he feared the rights of the older brother actually being given to Aaron. Psalm 133 poignantly describes the restoration of good will between Moses and Aaron, as Moses pours plentifully the oil over Aaron’s head. The psalm begins, "How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!"
David, Israel’s great king, was the youngest son of Jesse. Samuel had to probe, in fact, to find the ruddy faced lad who was out tending his father’s herds when the prophet came to find Israel’s successor to King Saul. Solomon was David’s third son. Indeed, Levenson remarks, "The list of non-first-borns who attain special eminence reads like a roster of the great names of early Israel: Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Judah, Joseph, Ephraim, Moses, Eleazar, Ithamar, Gideon, David, Solomon. Levenson concludes: "Nowhere does Christianity betray its indebtedness to Judaism more than in its supersessionism."
The theme is far from superficial. It is more than simply a succession of younger sons replacing older ones. The parallels connecting Isaac, Moses, Joseph, and Jesus are the kind a good novelist might unfold, only the Bible is not a novel. Jesus’ life unfolded in ways like Isaac’s, Moses’, and Joseph’s. Like Moses, he was born humbly, nearly killed in infancy, suffering rejection by his own family and people, forgiving–as Joseph put it to his brothers, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good." Each rose to a prominence and usefulness that no one imagined before they were born. Levenson’s remark about Christianity’s indebtedness to Judaism in its supersessionism does not come from a Christian apologist.
The faith centering on Jesus Christ claims this heritage. The earliest Christians read the Israelite prophets and saw hints of the birth and purpose of Jesus. It might seem that the development of a "New Testament canon" was an explicit supersessionist statement. But then does one have to say the same of the development of the Mishnah and Talmud? Though the oral Law is thought to have been there implicitly at Mt. Sinai, when Moses got the Law from God, the Mishna and Talmud evidently "add to" the written law, something that Moses warned never to do.
Jews who came to believe Jesus was the Messiah used interpretive techniques used by fellow Jews, the pesher interpretation in particular in the development of the writings that came to be known as the Gospels. Pesher interpretation saw immediate pertinence to ancient prophecies. "This is what was spoken by the prophet . . ." "Today this Scripture is fulfilled." The community at Qumran made of pesher a vital part of its apocalyptic outlook.
The Qumran community was outspoken in its sense of being the rightful outgrowth of the religion of the Hebrew Bible. Had this community enjoyed political and military power, I wonder how it might have used this muscle. But it had no power, so its strong views never resulted in suppression of nascent Rabbinic Judaism.
Krister Stendahl wrote of the "high voltage eschatology with all the habits of demonizing the Other that comes with the territory [that] added weight to the claim of divinely authorized (re)interpretation, (re)assessment, and (re)adjustment of the tradition to which it claimed to be the legitimate heir. This claim to exclusive continuity at Qumran is the very spine of supersessionism."
But I have a different view of Christianity than this.
I am sorry that the word supersessionism was ever coined, or that later followers of Jesus made supersessionist inferences about Judaism. The tasteless remarks of John Strugnell have no place in the religion of Jesus. Jews certainly don’t begrudge the fact that Christianity arose out of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew, as was the Apostle Paul. Jesus and Paul died thinking of themselves as Jews. After the resurrection the New Testament doesn’t tell us Jesus announced that Judaism was superseded. He ascended into heaven a Jew still. It was the great number of Gentiles incorporated into the early sect of Jews that called Jesus "Lord" that surely prompted the expansion of this sect into Christianity. Who knows what might have happened in Rabbinic Judaism if an massive influx of Gentiles had changed the demographics and introduced unimagined new situations to Johanan ben Zakkai and his fellow rabbis at Javneh.
Gil Baillie’s book, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, published in 1995, attempted eloquently to defuse the violence aroused by Christian supersessionism. Baillie proposed that the death of Jesus ended the cycle of violence of the sacrificial system. In Judaism, Baillie argued, "beginning in the Hebrew Bible, and coming to full and definitive completion in the New testament, the mythology of scapegoat sacrifice was ultimately exposed and thus rendered ineffectual by a tradition that gradually took the astounding position of identifying with the victim." Christianity, he proposes, has superseded not only Judaism, but the whole cycle of violence in human society, by identifying with the Ultimate Victim, God made flesh. Thus Christianity is the final chapter in the story of God’s ways with people. Understandably, Baillie’s irenic proposal offers little comfort to any who are offended at the idea that their religion is no longer even relevant.
I want to close with a modest proposal. I realize than this term was coined by Jonathan Swift, who offered, in severe irony, an unthinkable "modest proposal" to the problem of starvation in 18th-century northern Ireland.
I thankfully claim the heritage bequeathed to the faith I hold from Judaism. I claim the message of the prophets and the remarkable succession of the younger over the older brother that unveils a steady theme through the pages of the Hebrew Bible. I believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Suffering Servant, the scion of the tribe of Judah born in Bethlehem.
But I remember that Jesus taught us that "the kingdom of heaven is within you (plural)." I remember that Jesus told Pilate, "If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." I remember that Jesus clearly taught us that pre-eminence pre-eminently means service, and most certainly not domination. I remember that Jesus chided two disciples who asked for prominence. I remember that Jesus told His disciples to tell good news, rather than bad news. I remember that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount proclaimed a topsy turvy ethic that Christians have found impossible to follow. It said bless your enemies, do good to those who despitefully use you. I remember that Jesus taught His disciples a practice of religion that was not ostentatious–pray not around the flagpole or at a demonstration, but pray in your closet.
I am troubled that Christianity often seems arrogant rather than humble. I am troubled at the close identification of Protestantism and patriotism, that narrows the circle of God’s preference to American Christians. This sounds suspiciously selfish and solipsistic. I would say to fellow Christians, what if Christianity seemed much less "in your face," and much more "in your heart." It seems an insult to Jesus that the word supersessionism ever was claimed by His followers. It tells of an attitude I find offensive and reject. The Apostle Paul may have sensed this attitude when he reminded early Christians that "the gifts and call of God are irrevocable." God did not revoke the covenant with Israel, because God does not revoke covenants. He fulfills them. How then, this will work out in the end you and I may have some inferences about. But the story is God’s to tell, and we are the dramatis personnae only.
Stuart D. Robertson
September, 2002
Posted by admin at September 13, 2002 03:03 PM