Is The New Testament Anti-Semitic?

St. Paul The Apostle

It is often stated by liberals that the New Testament is an anti-Semitic document. Those who make this accusation often confuse anti-Judaism with anti-Semitism. They are not the same thing but liberals often confuse them. I don’t blame them specifically because they’re just following what they’ve been taught by other liberals who came before them.

If the New Testament where anti-Semitic, it would teach us to hate Jesus, Mary, Paul, Peter, James, and many others. Christians don’t hate those people at all. In fact, we love them more than ever. Nazi Germany was anti-Semitic because they rounded up anyone who was Jewish by birth and sent them to camps. It didn’t matter if they were an Orthodox Jew, an atheistic Jew or a Jew who converted to another religion. Edith Stein was born a Jew, converted to Catholicism and became a nun. She suffered the exact same fate as many Orthodox and secular Jews.

Those who say that the NT is anti-Semitic, often point to John 8:44, which reads:

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.

Those who point out this verse, often never speak of the context, which is Christ exposing false believers who were hypocrites. Also, they hardly ever point out the other verse in John just a couple of chapters earlier that’s pro-Jewish. In John 4:22 we read:

You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews.

Salvation is of the Jews? That doesn’t sound very anti-Semitic to me.

Another example brought up is that of when Jesus Christ viciously attacks the Pharisees in Matthew 23. When you read the chapter, you can see that he’s very angry at these religious hypocrites; but that’s exactly what they are! He’s not condemning them for being born Jewish. He’s attacking their hypocritical religious practices, which has nothing to do with them being Jewish by birth. They also weren’t the only Jewish religious group at the time.

To say that the NT is anti-Judaism is a different argument than saying its anti-Semitic. After all, many Jews are anti-Judaism. Israel Shahak was a firm critic of the Jewish religion and could easily be considered anti-Judaism. Was Israel Shahak anti-Semitic? Not in your life! Also, he didn’t critique Judaism from a Christian perspective but from a secular perspective. That is what distinguishes his criticism from that of the NT.  Regardless, both cases are anti-Judaism and not anti-Semitism.

A Christian cannot be anti-Semitic. It is found nowhere in the NT or in Christian tradition. When you hear someone say: “Christianity has come a long way from it’s 2,000 history of anti-Semitism”, expose the lie. If they want to say anti-Judaism, that would be valid, but anti-Semitism is simply a lie.

A Jewish convert to Christianity once put it plainly. He wrote:

There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

– Galatians 3:28