The Gospel of John Set Free: Preaching Without Anti-judaism

John the Evangelist and his Christian community had recently gone through very hard times with their Jewish neighbors. Had John and other Christians had their way, they would have at a minimum have still been regarded as Jews -- Messianic Jews to be sure, believing that the Messiah of Israel had come and that he was Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son. Other Messianic Jews had continued to be regarded as Jewish. But the other Jews who controlled access to the local synagogue had expelled John and his fellow followers of Jesus. John's people were no longer fellow-worshippers of the followers of Moses. John was emotionally scarred and bitter.***In THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE: PREACHING WITHOUT ANTI-JUDAISM, Roman Catholic theologian George M. Smiga of Ohio explains how elements of that small but contentious, early Christian-Jewish quarrel spilled over into John's Gospel -- with disastrous centuries-long consequences still with us today souring Christian - Jewish interactions. ***Possibly as a result of the fight that expelled him and his fellow believers from their synagogue, John preached a uniquely unbridgeable gulf between light and darkness, between believers in Jesus and any and all who did not receive him as Messiah of Israel. *** By the time John wrote, the temple in Jerusalem was long destroyed and its central liturgical and legal role in Jewish religion and culture was a thing of the past. There were no more high priests, temple guards, other staff, merchants selling animals for sacrifice or temple Scribes. The aristocratic, largely perhaps pro-Roman Sadducees, once closely linked to temple worship, had ceased to dominate Jewish practice. The previously somewhat marginalized seven schools of Pharisees (Jesus's personal torah was regarded as close to at least one of those schools) now increasingly dominated a splintered Judaism. John's late first century enemies were Pharisees. But John's enemies were not necessarily Jesus's foes a half century earlier. *** In Father Smiga's view, John made a bad mistake when he read back into the days of observant Jew Jesus of Nazareth the quarrels that Christian John & Co. had mounted with neighboring Jews. Jesus had been cynically put to death not by non-existent Jewish legal authority but rather by the personal decision of Roman procurator Pontius Pilate -- and on a cross at that, a peculiarly Roman punishment for crimes against the state. Pilate had appointed the Chief Priests of the Jewish religion. They and their staff were therefore beholden to Pilate and were expected as their first duty to keep the peace. After seeing Jesus welcomed with palms on his last entry into Jerusalem, "the authorities" (Greek: hoi archontes), a faction of the Rome-beholden Temple aristocracy, warned Pilate that they needed his help to keep the lid on, to assure that the Jesus people did not disturb the peace during traditionally nationalistic Passover worship in Jerusalem. *** In writing up his life of Jesus, light of the world and son of God, John rather carelessly misrepresented the main, most lethal opponents of Jesus during Jesus's three year long public ministry. John at times misidentified them as Pharisees (political "outs" in Jeus's day), at other times simply "the Jews" (Greek: hoi Ioudaioi). And John threw those very dubious title about as if all Pharisees or indeed every single Jew in the world was determined to snuff out the one, true light of the world, to injure or kill their true Messiah and thus to deserve severest punishment. *** Father Smiga's book is conceived as an aid to Roman Catholic preachers. It identifies and clarifies (including by means of Rabbinical interpretations) every passage of John's Gospel in all the major Masses prayed during the currently enforced three year liturgical lectionary cycle. Smiga then examines each passage in each text for signs of possibly misleading anti-Jewish sentiment or argumentation and shows preachers how to mitigate the damage. *** And damage there has been down the centuries, starting with early Church fathers, and culminating in the writings of early fifth century patriarch of Constantinople and Doctor of the Church, Saint John Chrysostom. *** Since the 1960s, following the lead of the Second Vatican Council, Catholics have been re-examining their attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. No longer is it permissible to see Catholicism as having "replaced" Judaism as the best and only way to worship God. For Jews of good conscience, the faith of Moses remains an authorized path to God. Preachers must take care not to categorize Jews as Christ Killers. For every sinner of every religion cast a stone at their redeemer. African and Third-World Catholics are in error when they substitute their own ancient traditions for Judaism as the root of Christianity. ***This book, modest in intent, is quite good. It lends itself to illumination discussion by Jewish-Christian study groups. -OOO-