Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (112 page)

25. Crossan,
Who Killed Jesus?,
1. For a discussion of this dispute between Crossan and Brown, see Horsley and Silberman,
The Message and the Kingdom,
69–70.

26. Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39.

27. Luke 23:47.

28. Koester,
Introduction to the New Testament,
vol. 2, 166.

29. Dunn,
The Partings of the Ways,
18.

30. Neusner,
Telling Tales,
49. Fredriksen is another example of a scholar summing up the Judaism of the period: "Jews everywhere—I generalize, but safely—expressed a broad consensus on what was religiously important: the people, the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple, and Torah. Behind these concepts and subsuming them stood their unique commitment to the imageless worship of the one God of the universe."
Jesus of Nazareth,
62. (One should note, perhaps, that Fredriksen is a lew.)

31. Matthew 23:37.

32. Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
32.

33. Brown,
Introduction to the New Testament,
82.

34. 2 Corinthians 11:24.

35. Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
36.

36. Matthew 5:17–48.

37. Matthew 5:20.

38. Aristotle,
The Poetics,
11.2. As we saw, the Holocaust is the catastrophe (or
shoah
), in the sense of "moment of recognition," of this entire story.

39. James Joyce, cited by Janet Burroway,
Writing Fiction,
11.

40. The phrase gives Marcel Simon the title of his book,
Verus Israel.

41. Isaac,
Jesus and Israel.

42. Elie Wiesel reports his unease when Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Catholic archbishop of Paris and a convert from Judaism, describes himself as "a fulfilled Jew": "Does that mean he is a better Jew than those who have remained Jews?" Wiesel raises the question with the cardinal, who takes the point, and "no longer uses the formula 'fulfilled Jew.'" Wiesel, Sea
Is Never Full,
167–71.

43. For an elaboration of Christian demonization of Jews, see Pagels,
Origin of Satan.

13. Paul, the Martyr of Shalom

1. Wilson,
Paul,
29.

2.1 Corinthians 13.

3. Wilson,
Paul,
173.

4. Ibid., 51–55.

5. Acts 13:7–9.1 am grateful to Krister Stendahl for helping me grasp this point about the names of Paul.

6. Sanders,
Paul and Palestinian Judaism,
549.

7. Isaiah 2:3.

8. Fredriksen,
Jesus of Nazareth,
135.

9. Ibid.

10. Galatians 2:15–16, 3:3.

11. Stendahl, "On Sacred Violence," 261. See also Stendahl,
Final Account: Paul's Letter to the Romans
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).

12.1 Thessalonians 2:16.

13. Stendahl, "On Sacred Violence," 262.

14. Romans 11:25–27.

15. Romans 11:28–29.

16. Koester, "Historic Mistakes Haunt the Relationship of Christianity and Judaism," 26–27.

17. Stendahl, "On Sacred Violence," 261.

18. Levenson,
The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son,
230.

19. In Galatians 1:13 he writes, "For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church." This has been read as if "Judaism" stands in contrast to "Christianity," but Paul could have had no such frame of reference. Instead, he can be understood simply as referring to what, formerly, he thought being a devout Jew required.

20. Acts 21:27–31.

21. Wilson,
Paul,
208. See also Koester,
Introduction to the New Testament,
vol. 2, 323.

22. Gager, "The Parting of the Ways: A View from the Perspective of Early Christianity: 'A Christian Perspective,'" in Fisher,
Interwoven Destinies,
65.

14. Parting of the Ways

1. I am indebted here to Christine Lehmann for her summaries of interviews with Helmut Koester.

2. Lee,
Jesus and the Metaphors of God,
147.

3. It was called Septuagint because legend had it that seventy elders worked on the translation.

4. Koester, Lehmann interviews.

5. Maguire, "The Good Life," in Bowersock et al.,
Late Antiquity,
251.

6. Goodenough,
Jewish Symbols,
vol. 12, 191.

7. Marcus,
The Jew in the Medieval World,
103.

8. Wilken,
John Chrysostom and the Jews,
67.

9. Koester, "Historic Mistakes Haunt the Relationship of Christianity and Judaism," 27.

10. "Blessed be the ashes of that humane theologian," Moses Mendelssohn wrote of Augustine, "who was the first to declare that God was preserving us as a visible proof of the Nazarene religion. But for this lovely brainwave, we would have been exterminated long ago." Quoted by Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
11.

11. Koester, "Historic Mistakes Haunt the Relationship of Christianity and Judaism," 26. Paul van Buren comments on this point: "A Christology for the Jewish-Christian reality needs to emphasize at this point that the context of the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth is
Israel's
Scriptures, not the Church's 'Old Testament.' The Church's 'Old Testament' differs from Israel's Scriptures even when (as in some branches of the Church) the text is a reasonably accurate translation of them. The difference lies in the Fact that the 'Old Testament' is bound together with a 'New Testament' for which it is thought to be a preparation and anticipation. The 'Old Testament' points ahead to Christ as the fulfillment of all the hopes and promises contained in it and so as its total completion—The 'Old Testament' is certainly the context of the anti-Judaic Jesus of the anti-Judaic Church." Van Buren,
Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality,
pt. 3, 31–32.

12. Koester, "Historic Mistakes," 26.

13. Thoma,
Christian Theology of Judaism,
89.

14. Koester, "Historic Mistakes," 26–27. The colleague referred to is Dieter Georgi. Koester concludes, "If both the New Testament and the Mishnah were a tragic mistake, the Christians should be the first to acknowledge that the prophecy of Jesus and the vision of Paul of a renewal of Israel has not been fulfilled. If Paul's acceptance of Jesus implied that God had declared himself to be on the side of the victims of violence, on which side is God now? This question is no longer open for debate."

15. Matthew 5:17.

16. "Such a benevolent typology would rejoice and marvel in the analogous shape of Passover and Easter, of Aqidah and Golgotha, of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount. But the supersessionist drive forced typological interpretation into adversarial patterns where the younger had to trump and trounce the older." Krister Stendahl, "Qumran and Supersessionism—and the Road Not Taken," in
Princeton Seminary Bulletin
19, no. 2 (new ser., 1998), 136.

17. Parkes,
Conflict of Church and Synagogue,
81.

18. Matthew 3:7.

15. The Lachrymose Tradition: A Cautionary Note

1. Quoted by Cynthia Ozick, introduction to
Rescuers,
xi. The story recalls another I heard from Krister Stendahl. Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, a founder of Jewish-Christian dialogue, was asked, "Rabbi, tell me what makes you glad instead of what hurts you." To which he replied, "What makes us glad is if you don't persecute us anymore."

2. Quoted by Cohen,
Under Crescent and Cross,
3.

3. Norman Roth, "The Jews in Spain at the Time of Maimonides," in Ormsby,
Moses Maimonides and His Time,
17.

4. Goodenough,
Jewish Symbols,
vol. 12, 198.

5. Silberman,
Heavenly Powers,
219–28.

6. Gilbert, Atlas of Jewish History, i.

16. The Heart of This Story Is a Place

1. Averil Cameron, "Remaking the Past," in Bowersock et al.,
Late Antiquity,
8.

2. The difference in postwar Soviet and American attitudes toward Germany was also partly a matter of the difference in wartime casualties, the Soviets having suffered something like 20 million dead, compared with about 300,000 Americans.

3. Schnell,
Maria Laach Abbey,
3.

4. Drijvers,
Helena Augusta,
23.

17. The Story of Constantine

1. Keith Hopkins, "Population," in Bowersock et al.,
Late Antiquity,
646.

2. Neusner,
Judaism and Christianity,
15.

3. Richard P. McBrien, "Catholic Church," in
Encyclopedia of Catholicism,
244.

4. Cameron,
Later Roman Empire,
10.

5. Ibid., 43.

6. Béatrice Caseau, "Sacred Landscapes," in Bowersock et al.,
Late Antiquity,
26.

7. Gilbert,
Atlas of Jewish History,
17.

8. For a discussion of the organizational impact of text canonization, see Halbertal,
People of the Book,
19. "But the sealing of the text engenders both the bestowal and the removal of authority ... The moment the text was sealed, authority was removed from the writers of the text and transferred to its interpreters; denied to the prophets and awarded to the Sages. 'Henceforth you must incline your ear to the works of the learned.'"

9. Shaye J. Cohen, "Judaism," in Bowersock et al.,
Late Antiquity,
528.

10. The Roman-imposed name "Palestine"
(Philistina)
evokes the ancient enemy of Israel and gives us the English word "philistine," a hint of the shadow that falls over the area today. See Cohn,
This Immortal People,
67.

11. Ibid., 59.

12. Matthew 28:19.

13. Segal,
Rebecca's Children,
176.

14. This summary is not a historical account but rather the story as it is usually told. My sources are Barnes,
From Eusebius to Augustine,
371–91; Barnes,
Constantine and Eusebius,
261–71; Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
474–85.

18. The Cross and the Religious Imagination

1. Eusebius Pamphilus, "Life of Constantine," bk. 1, ch. 12, 485.

2. Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
477.

3. Cameron,
Later Roman Empire,
48.

4. Brown,
Augustine of Hippo,
49.

5. Romans 6:6.

6. Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:27.

7. John 20:34.

8.
Dialogue with Trypho,
ch. 111, cited by Hershman,
Rivalry of Genius,
61.

9. Zoeckler,
Cross of Christ, x.

10. Vogelstein,
Rome,
39.

11. Eusebius Pamphilus, "Life of Constantine," bk. 1, ch. 28, 490.

12. Ibid., ch. 30, 490.

13. Ibid., ch. 31, 491.

14. The death of Jesus would grip the imagination of the Latin West more than the Byzantine East, where, for example, the same Holy Sepulcher is referred to as the Church of the Resurrection. The cross would take second place to the iconic face of Christ, but when iconoclastic rejection of images sweeps the Byzantine world, the one image excepted was the cross. But in the West the emphasis would be absolute: "It was through the cross, not images, that the human race was redeemed." See Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 3, 132.

15. Vogelstein,
Rome,
102.

16. Neusner,
Judaism and Christianity,
15.

17. Augustine,
The Confessions,
bk. 12, ch. 16, 293. Jerusalem as mother would take root in the Jewish imagination, but as a mother to be mourned: "the Holy City as a female figure of desolation and ruin; the dominant image ... is that of Jerusalem as mother." Ezrahi,
Booking Passage,
34.

18. Neusner,
Judaism and Christianity,
58.

19. Ibid., 144.

20. Smallwood,
Jews under Roman Rule,
543.

21. Brown,
Augustine of Hippo,
125.

22. Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 1, 71.

19. The Vision of Constantine

1. Eusebius Pamphilus, "Life of Constantine," bk. 1, ch. 19, 487–88.

2. Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
476.

3. Cameron,
Later Roman Empire,
171.

4. Eusebius Pamphilus, "Life of Constantine," bk. 1, ch. 43, 494.

5. Ibid., bk. 3, ch. 10, 522.

6. Cited by Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
476.

7. Cameron,
Later Roman Empire,
49.

8. Kelly,
Early Christian Doctrines,
13.

9. Ibid., 83.

10. Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
476.

11. Cameron,
Later Roman Empire,
31.

12. Cited by Barnes,
From Eusebius to Augustine,
376.

13. Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
481.

14. Cameron,
Later Roman Empire,
50.

15. Ibid., 56.

16. Ibid., 50.

17. Ibid., 57.

18. Cited by Frend,
Rise of Christianity,
483.

19. Ibid.

20. Chadwick,
The Early Church,
128.

21. For a discussion of Teutonic "tree piety," see Schama,
Landscape and Memory.
216–18.

22. Chadwick,
The Early Church,
10.

23. Goodenough,
Jewish Symbols,
191.

24. Chadwick,
The Early Church,
11. Moshe Halbertal calls attention to the fact that, while the canon of Scripture was more or less established during the Second Temple period, some diversity among various Jewish groups even on this central question may have continued after the Temple's destruction. Halbertal,
People of the Book,
16.