General & Miscellaneous Christian Theology, Theology, Jewish, Antisemitism, Early Church - History, Christianity - General & Miscellaneous, General & Miscellaneous Judaism, Jesus Christ

Christian Antisemitism

Name: Christian Antisemitism
Author: William Nicholls
ISBN: 9781568215198

by William Nicholls

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Overview

In Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate, Professor William Nicholls, a former minister in the Anglican Church and the founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, presents his stunning research, stating that Christian teaching is primarily responsible for antisemitism. As Nicholls states, these conclusions 'can now be fully justified by the most up-to-date scholarship, Christian as well as Jewish.' Nicholls writes, 'Many Jewish writers have said, quite simply, that the Nazis chose the Jews as the target of their hate because two thousand years of Christian teaching had accustomed the world to do so. Few Christian historians and theologians have been sufficiently open to the painful truth to accept this explanation without considerable qualification. Nevertheless, it is correct.' Christian Antisemitism traces, over two millennia, the growing domination of Western culture by the Christian 'myth' (as Nicholls calls it) about the Jews, and shows how it still exerts a major influence even on the secularized 'post-Christian world.' Nicholls shows, through scrupulous research and documentation, that the myth of the Jews as Christ-killers has powered anti-Judaism and antisemitism throughout the centuries. Nicholls clearly illustrates that this myth is present in the New Testament and that 'it has not yet died under the impact of modern critical history.' Also included in this remarkable volume is Nicholls' research regarding the Jewishness of Jesus. He writes, 'Historical scholarship now permits us to affirm with confidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a faithful and observant Jew who lived by the Torah and taught nothing against his own people and their faith...the Romans, not the Jews, were the Christ-killers.' In Part I, 'Before the Myth,' Nicholls explores the life of Jesus and his teachings as found in the New Testament. Was Jesus the founder of Christianity? Did he offer teachings against his people? Did he believe himself?

Synopsis

About the Author, William Nicholls

Professor William Nicholls is a former minister in the Anglican Church and the founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia.

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Editorials

Professor José Faur

Professor William Nicholls is one of those rare thinkers capable of combining extraordinary scholarship and erudition with a deep understanding of human nature and human aguish. Above all, he is a man of remarkable courage, a courage stemming from his own sense of morals and faith. Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate is a work with no precedent and no equal. At one level, it is a brilliant, breathtaking chart of the history of Christianity, from its birth to modern times, and the legacy of hatred that it promoted, in both its religious and secular forms. At a second level, this book is designed to delineate Christian responsibility, not only for the butcheries and persecutions of the past, like the Spanish Portuguese Inquisitions, but also and specifically for the destruction of six million Jews during the Holocaust. As a Christian, deeply committed to the faith of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Professor Nicholls not only feels the rage for this historical travesty but also the moral, nay, the religious charge, to face up to the burden of this responsibility and to redress this wrong. Written in a scintillating and swift, stripped-down prose, this is a luminous and compelling book that could change forever Christian perception of itself and bring a propitious change in Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism.

A. Roy Eckardt

Professor Nicholls' history of the Christian origins and perpetuation of, and the church's continuing responsibility for, the antisemitic myth—including that myth's secularized and racist forms—is a marvel of contemporary historical and moral scholarship. We are given a comprehensive, definitive accounting of Christian hate for Jews from its beginnings to today—all in some 500 pages—together with compelling proposals for religious and theological reform and renewal. This historical exposition extends as well to the many moral, theological, political, and psychoanalytic dimensions of the question of antisemitism. We may expect this work to remain authoritative for a long time. It is a gem.