Antisemitism in the Bible?

OPINION:

Is the New Testament antisemitic?

That is certainly the charge you might have heard in recent decades or read online. The charge takes on added urgency given the recent attacks on Israel and the consequent war in Gaza. And the charge is made more poignant given the return of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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The accusation of an antisemitic New Testament is sadly a charge well-earned even if not well-founded. There is a noted history of antisemitism among some Christians in the past, perhaps most notably the Christian participants of Nazi Germany. I recently met a lovely man who was born the son of Holocaust survivors. As a child, he wasn’t allowed to go outside unattended for fear that Christians would kidnap and torture him. That fear came from a very real place.

It seems like most people who think the New Testament is antisemitic do so because of an understandable assumption: If a group of Christians do something heinous, it must be because their holy book encourages them so. But is that true in this case?

No verse in all the New Testament has been accused of contributing to antisemitism more than Matthew 27:25. In this passage, a crowd of Jewish people is shouting at the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to crucify Jesus. Pilate fails to dissuade them. Given a choice, they choose to release a murderer named Barabbas rather than the innocent Jesus (Matthew 27:15-26). Eventually, Pilate gives into the crowd but washes his hands of what he considers an unjustified sentence: “I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your responsibility!”

“His blood is on us and our children!” the people respond.

And it is this phrase that has been used to interpret and even justify antisemitic hate throughout the centuries. According to this belief, the Jewish people are forever cursed for being “Christ-killers.”

The point here is not to get complicit Christians “off the hook” for their antisemitism and its consequent crimes. Rather, it is to set the record straight on a passage that continues to be willfully misunderstood to support antisemitic arguments that it actually refutes if properly understood. If this argument is a defense of anything, it is a defense of Matthew’s Gospel. And if it is a polemic against anything, it is one against antisemitism, specifically the antisemitism of those who at some level share my own faith.

Evaluating Matthew 27

There are several reasons to reject the view that Matthew 27 intends to teach an eternal curse on the Jewish people. And there is at least one very good reason to suspect that it teaches the opposite. We will focus on this latter point, but other considerations are available elsewhere.

“The Gospel According to Matthew” was written by Matthew, a Jewish apostle of Jesus, to a largely Jewish audience of Jesus followers. Matthew’s Gospel has a lot to say about blood, and his Jewish audience would have had a significant relationship to notions of “blood” in Israel’s life. This would include the sacrificial gift of innocent blood to cleanse the land of Israel and individual Israelites themselves from the contamination of sin. Moreover, the original Passover saw the innocent blood of a lamb protecting Israel from the specter of slavery and death. And so, it is not just blood taken that Matthew wishes to discuss, but blood given.

Like the middle of an hourglass into which all things merge and out of which all things flow, the key to all the blood-talk in Matthew is found right in the heart of his Gospel.

“This is the blood of the covenant,” Jesus proclaims, “which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”  – Matthew 26:28

Put simply, the blood that was soon to be spilt is the blood that was given for the world’s healing; God’s Kingdom has come, his will has been done.

So, in a significant sense, the Jewish people calling for Jesus’s blood that day were correct. The blood would indeed be upon them and their children, though not how they expected it. In this, they were inadvertently prophetic. Of course, the symbolism was there the whole time. They are Barabbas, the murderer who is pardoned by Jesus’s sacrifice. We all are, Jew and Gentile alike. And for the Jewish people there, and everywhere, and all of humanity, Jesus’s blood is upon us.

Yes, the Gentiles are guilty as well, for it was Gentile soldiers and leaders who ultimately ignored Jesus’s innocence, ordered his crucifixion, relished in the scourging, and heaped insults upon the crucified Jew. And indeed, such an act appears much worse than eating forbidden fruit. Such an act would invoke a curse. But God turns this curse into a blessing.

You see, the very human act that brought a curse leads to the act that forgives it because, again, the blood that was taken was ultimately blood that was given. It is a free gift, a sacrifice that was not ours to give but one from which we reap the benefits. “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” the Apostle John would later write. “And not only for our sins but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). He came in love, was raised on a cross, and opened his arms to the whole world. He was an atoning sacrifice and the redemptive blood of Passover. It was a profoundly Jewish way of saving the world.

The New Testament is not antisemitic, but Christians can be. When they are, they do so in direct opposition to the Jesus they claim to follow. But as we have seen, the New Testament is not the tale of an eternal curse on the Jewish “Christ killers,” for Christ was killed by us all. In this death we share blame. But Christ gave himself for all. And in that we share hope.

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Derek Caldwell is a researcher and content creator for Embrace the Truth. Embrace the Truth knows people of all ages and walks of life have sophisticated questions regarding faith, reason and culture. The organization offers thoughtful answers to thoughtful people with questions and doubts.