Nieuw artikel: ‘Christendom zonder antisemitisme: welke aanpassingen zijn nodig in het onderwijs over de Joden?’

Om af te rekenen met het christelijke antisemitisme deed Jules Isaac 18 voorstellen om de christelijke theologie aan te passen, en beter in overeenstemming te brengen met het Nieuwe Testament. Ook vandaag de dag zijn deze voorstellen nog belangrijk en relevant. In een nieuw artikel is hierover meer te lezen.

Lees de Nederlandstalige inleiding en de Engelse vertaling van de volledige tekst van de voorstellen van Jules Isaac in: Christendom zonder antisemitisme: welke aanpassingen zijn nodig in het onderwijs over de Joden?


Christianity without antisemitism: what changes are necessary in the teaching about the Jews?

During the war Jules Isaac, as he and his wife were forced to hide for the Nazi’s, did extensive research on the roots of antisemitism in Europe. He came to the conclusion that the antijudaism in the Christian theological tradition, and its reflection in many catechism materials and liturgical texts, has contributed vastly to the advancement and normalization of anti-Semitic views. In his study of the original text of the New Testament writings however, Isaac believed that he could not find any support for such teachings. To make an end to Christian antisemitism he made 18 propositions to help Christian theology rid itself from this, and to bring it into accord with the New Testament. In 1947 these 18 propositions formed the starting point for the discussion at the big inter-denominational conference at Seelisberg. This conference had the purpose to come to an adequate approach to tackle antisemitism, and to give an impulse to reconciliation between Jews and Christians. Below you will find the English translation of the complete text of the propositions of Jules Isaac, which are even today still important and relevant.

“The rectification necessary in Christian teaching: eighteen points

 

By Jules Isaac

From his magnum opus ‘Jesus and Israel’.

Christian teaching worthy of the name should

1. give all Christians at least an elementary knowledge of the Old Testament; stress the fact that the Old Testament, essentially Semitic – in form and substance – was the Holy Scripture of the Jews before becoming the Holy Scripture of Christians;

2. recall that a large part of Christian liturgy is borrowed from it, and that the Old Testament, the work of Jewish genius (enlightened by God), has been to our own day a perennial source of inspiration to Christian thought, literature and art;

3. take care not to pass over the singularly important fact that it was to the Jewish people, chosen by Him, that God first revealed Himself in His omnipotence; that it was the Jewish people who safeguarded the fundamental belief in God, then transmitted it to the Christian world;

4. acknowledge and state openly, taking inspiration from the most reliable historical research, that Christianity was born of a living, not a degenerate Judaism, as is proved by the richness of Jewish literature, Judaism’s indomitable resistance to paganism, the spiritualization of worship in the synagogues, the spread of proselytism, the multiplicity of religious sects and trends, the broadening of beliefs; take care not to draw a simple caricature of historic Phariseeism;

5. take into account the fact that history flatly contradicts the theological myth of the Dispersion as providential punishment for the Crucifixion, since the Dispersion of the Jewish people was an accomplished fact in Jesus’ time and since in that era, according to all the evidence, the majority of the Jewish people were no longer living in Palestine; even after the two great Judean wars (first and second centuries), there was no dispersion of the Jews of Palestine;

6. warn the faithful against certain stylistic tendencies in the Gospels, notably the frequent use in the fourth Gospel of the collective term “the Jews” in a restricted and pejorative sense – to mean Jesus’ enemies: chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees – a procedure that results not only in distorting historic perspectives but in inspiring horror and contempt of the Jewish people as a whole, whereas in reality this people is in no way involved;

7. state very explicitly, so that no Christian is ignorant of it, that Jesus was Jewish, of an old Jewish family, that he was circumcised (according to Jewish Law) eight days after his birth; that the name Jesus is a Jewish name, Yeshua, Hellenized and Christ the Greek equivalent of the Jewish term Messiah; that Jesus spoke a Semitic language, Aramaic, like all the Jews of Palestine; and that unless one reads the Gospels in their earliest text, which is in the Greek language, one knows the Word only through a translation of a translation;

8. acknowledge – with Scripture – that Jesus “born under the [Jewish] law” (Gal. 4:4), lived “under the law”; that he did not stop practicing Judaism’s basic rites to the last day; that he did not stop preaching his Gospel in the synagogues and the Temple to the last day;

9. not fail to observe that during his human life, Jesus was uniquely “a servant to the circumcised” (Rom. 15:8); it was in Israel alone that he recruited his disciples; all the Apostles were Jews like their master;

10. show clearly from the Gospel texts that to the last day, except on rare occasions, Jesus did not stop obtaining the enthusiastic sympathies of the Jewish masses, in Jerusalem as well as in Galilee;

11. take care not to assert that Jesus was personally rejected by the Jewish people, that they refused to recognize him as Messiah and God, for the two reasons that the majority of the Jewish people did not even know him and that Jesus never presented himself as such explicitly and publicly to the segment of the people who did know him; acknowledge that in all likelihood the messianic character of the entry into Jerusalem on the eve of the Passion could have been perceived by only a small number;

12. take care not to assert that Jesus was at the very least rejected by the qualified leaders and representatives of the Jewish people; those who had him arrested and sentenced, the chief priests, were representatives of a narrow oligarchic caste, subjugated to Rome and detested by the people; as for the doctors and Pharisees, it emerges from the evangelical texts themselves that they were not unanimously against Jesus; nothing proves that the spiritual elite of Judaism was involved in the plot;

13. take care not to strain the texts to find in them a universal reprobation of Israel or a curse which is nowhere explicitly expressed in the Gospels; take into account the fact that Jesus always showed feelings of compassion and love for the masses;

14. take care above all not to make the current and traditional assertion that the Jewish people committed the inexpiable crime of decide, and that they took total responsibility on themselves as a whole; take care to avoid such an assertion not only because it is poisonous, generating hatred and crime, but also because it is radically false;

15. highlight the fact, emphasized in the four Gospels, that the chief priests and their accomplices acted against Jesus unbeknownst to the people and even in fear of the people;

16. concerning the Jewish trial of Jesus, acknowledge that the Jewish people were in no way involved in it, played no role in it, probably knew nothing about it; that the insults and brutalities attributed to them were the acts of the police or of some members of the oligarchy; that there is no mention of a Jewish trial, of a meeting of the Sanhedrin in the fourth Gospel;

17. concerning the Roman trial, acknowledge that the procurator Pontius Pilate had entire command over Jesus’ life and death; that Jesus was condemned for messianic pretensions, which was a crime in the eyes of the Romans, not the Jews: that hanging on the cross was a specifically Roman punishment; take care not to impute to the Jewish people the crowning with thorns, which in the Gospel accounts was a cruel jest of the Roman soldiery; take care not to identify the mob whipped up by the chief priests with the whole of the Jewish people or even the Jewish people of Palestine, whose anti-Roman sentiments are beyond doubt; note that the fourth Gospel implicates exclusively the chief priests and their men;

18. last not forget that the monstrous cry, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt. 27:25), could not prevail over the Word, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

These eighteen points have in fact served as a basis of discussion for a (Christian) commission, the Third Commission of the International Emergency Conference of Christians and Jews at Seelisberg, Switzerland, in August 1947. From these deliberations emanated the important document known under the title of the Ten Points of Seelisberg.”

Source: ‘Jesus and Israel’, edited by Claire Huchet Bishop, Holt Rinehart and Winston publishers, 1971. (Original ‘Jésus et Israel’, Fasquelle Éditeurs Paris, 1959)


Christendom zonder antisemitisme: welke aanpassingen zijn nodig in het onderwijs over de Joden?

Tijdens de oorlog heeft Jules Isaac, terwijl hij met zijn vrouw moest onderduiken voor de Nazi’s, uitgebreid onderzoek gedaan naar de wortels van het antisemitisme in Europa. Hij kwam tot de conclusie dat het antijudaisme in de christelijke theologische traditie, en de verwerking hiervan in talloze catechesematerialen en liturgische teksten, in grote mate heeft bijgedragen aan het bevorderen en acceptabel maken van antisemitische denkbeelden. In zijn bestudering van de grondtekst van de Nieuw-Testamentische geschriften meende Isaac echter geen ondersteuning te vinden voor deze denkbeelden. Om af te rekenen met het christelijke antisemitisme deed hij 18 voorstellen om de christelijke theologie te helpen zich hiervan te ontdoen, en beter in overeenstemming te brengen met het Nieuwe Testament. In 1947 vormden deze 18 voorstellen het uitgangspunt van de discussie op de grote interkerkelijke conferentie in Seelisberg. Deze conferentie had tot doel om tot een adequate bestrijding van het antisemitisme te komen, en om een aanzet te geven tot verzoening tussen Joden en Christenen. Hieronder vind je de Engelse vertaling van de volledige tekst van de voorstellen van Jules Isaac, die ook vandaag de dag nog belangrijk en relevant zijn.

“The rectification necessary in Christian teaching: eighteen points“The rectification necessary in Christian teaching: eighteen points”

 

By Jules Isaac

From his magnum opus ‘Jesus and Israel’.

Christian teaching worthy of the name should

1. give all Christians at least an elementary knowledge of the Old Testament; stress the fact that the Old Testament, essentially Semitic – in form and substance – was the Holy Scripture of the Jews before becoming the Holy Scripture of Christians;

2. recall that a large part of Christian liturgy is borrowed from it, and that the Old Testament, the work of Jewish genius (enlightened by God), has been to our own day a perennial source of inspiration to Christian thought, literature and art;

3. take care not to pass over the singularly important fact that it was to the Jewish people, chosen by Him, that God first revealed Himself in His omnipotence; that it was the Jewish people who safeguarded the fundamental belief in God, then transmitted it to the Christian world;

4. acknowledge and state openly, taking inspiration from the most reliable historical research, that Christianity was born of a living, not a degenerate Judaism, as is proved by the richness of Jewish literature, Judaism’s indomitable resistance to paganism, the spiritualization of worship in the synagogues, the spread of proselytism, the multiplicity of religious sects and trends, the broadening of beliefs; take care not to draw a simple caricature of historic Phariseeism;

5. take into account the fact that history flatly contradicts the theological myth of the Dispersion as providential punishment for the Crucifixion, since the Dispersion of the Jewish people was an accomplished fact in Jesus’ time and since in that era, according to all the evidence, the majority of the Jewish people were no longer living in Palestine; even after the two great Judean wars (first and second centuries), there was no dispersion of the Jews of Palestine;

6. warn the faithful against certain stylistic tendencies in the Gospels, notably the frequent use in the fourth Gospel of the collective term “the Jews” in a restricted and pejorative sense – to mean Jesus’ enemies: chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees – a procedure that results not only in distorting historic perspectives but in inspiring horror and contempt of the Jewish people as a whole, whereas in reality this people is in no way involved;

7. state very explicitly, so that no Christian is ignorant of it, that Jesus was Jewish, of an old Jewish family, that he was circumcised (according to Jewish Law) eight days after his birth; that the name Jesus is a Jewish name, Yeshua, Hellenized and Christ the Greek equivalent of the Jewish term Messiah; that Jesus spoke a Semitic language, Aramaic, like all the Jews of Palestine; and that unless one reads the Gospels in their earliest text, which is in the Greek language, one knows the Word only through a translation of a translation;

8. acknowledge – with Scripture – that Jesus “born under the [Jewish] law” (Gal. 4:4), lived “under the law”; that he did not stop practicing Judaism’s basic rites to the last day; that he did not stop preaching his Gospel in the synagogues and the Temple to the last day;

9. not fail to observe that during his human life, Jesus was uniquely “a servant to the circumcised” (Rom. 15:8); it was in Israel alone that he recruited his disciples; all the Apostles were Jews like their master;

10. show clearly from the Gospel texts that to the last day, except on rare occasions, Jesus did not stop obtaining the enthusiastic sympathies of the Jewish masses, in Jerusalem as well as in Galilee;

11. take care not to assert that Jesus was personally rejected by the Jewish people, that they refused to recognize him as Messiah and God, for the two reasons that the majority of the Jewish people did not even know him and that Jesus never presented himself as such explicitly and publicly to the segment of the people who did know him; acknowledge that in all likelihood the messianic character of the entry into Jerusalem on the eve of the Passion could have been perceived by only a small number;

12. take care not to assert that Jesus was at the very least rejected by the qualified leaders and representatives of the Jewish people; those who had him arrested and sentenced, the chief priests, were representatives of a narrow oligarchic caste, subjugated to Rome and detested by the people; as for the doctors and Pharisees, it emerges from the evangelical texts themselves that they were not unanimously against Jesus; nothing proves that the spiritual elite of Judaism was involved in the plot;

13. take care not to strain the texts to find in them a universal reprobation of Israel or a curse which is nowhere explicitly expressed in the Gospels; take into account the fact that Jesus always showed feelings of compassion and love for the masses;

14. take care above all not to make the current and traditional assertion that the Jewish people committed the inexpiable crime of decide, and that they took total responsibility on themselves as a whole; take care to avoid such an assertion not only because it is poisonous, generating hatred and crime, but also because it is radically false;

15. highlight the fact, emphasized in the four Gospels, that the chief priests and their accomplices acted against Jesus unbeknownst to the people and even in fear of the people;

16. concerning the Jewish trial of Jesus, acknowledge that the Jewish people were in no way involved in it, played no role in it, probably knew nothing about it; that the insults and brutalities attributed to them were the acts of the police or of some members of the oligarchy; that there is no mention of a Jewish trial, of a meeting of the Sanhedrin in the fourth Gospel;

17. concerning the Roman trial, acknowledge that the procurator Pontius Pilate had entire command over Jesus’ life and death; that Jesus was condemned for messianic pretensions, which was a crime in the eyes of the Romans, not the Jews: that hanging on the cross was a specifically Roman punishment; take care not to impute to the Jewish people the crowning with thorns, which in the Gospel accounts was a cruel jest of the Roman soldiery; take care not to identify the mob whipped up by the chief priests with the whole of the Jewish people or even the Jewish people of Palestine, whose anti-Roman sentiments are beyond doubt; note that the fourth Gospel implicates exclusively the chief priests and their men;

18. last not forget that the monstrous cry, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt. 27:25), could not prevail over the Word, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

These eighteen points have in fact served as a basis of discussion for a (Christian) commission, the Third Commission of the International Emergency Conference of Christians and Jews at Seelisberg, Switzerland, in August 1947. From these deliberations emanated the important document known under the title of the Ten Points of Seelisberg.”

Source: ‘Jesus and Israel’, edited by Claire Huchet Bishop, Holt Rinehart and Winston publishers, 1971. (Original ‘Jésus et Israel’, Fasquelle Éditeurs Paris, 1959)


Over Nostra Aetate

Door J. Bol

De Frans-Joodse historicus Jules Isaac heeft vanaf 1943 de laatste twintig jaar van zijn leven gewijd aan onderzoek hoe de vernietiging van de joden met zo’n gemak heeft kunnen plaatsvinden. Zijn conclusie was even duidelijk als pijnlijk: het christendom heeft eeuwenlang anti-Joodse denkbeelden voorzien van een theologisch fundament en er zo kerkelijk gezag aan verleend. Dit heeft in belangrijke mate bijgedragen aan het ontstaan van een voedingsbodem voor de anti-Joodse politiek van de Nazi’s. Het werk van Jules Isaac resulteerde in 1965 tijdens het Tweede Vaticaans Concilie in de historische verklaring Nostra Aetate. Daarmee verwierp de Rooms Katholieke Kerk achttien eeuwen anti-Joodse theologie. Deze ommekeer werd gevolgd door tal van verklaringen waarin steeds meer kerken afstand namen van christelijk triomfalisme richting het jodendom. Denk onder meer aan de kerkorde van de PKN waarin wordt gesproken over de onopgeefbare verbondenheid van de kerk met het Joodse volk. Lees meer


De heilige missie van Jules Isaac: Jezus en Israël onopgeefbaar verbonden

Dit artikel verscheen in 2015 in het juni nummer van Israël en de Kerk, een uitgave van Christenen voor Israël.

door J. Bol

Komend najaar 28 oktober is het exact vijftig jaar geleden dat de Rooms Katholieke Kerk met de verklaring Nostra Aetate geschiedenis schreef in haar relatie tot het Joodse volk. Deze historische gebeurtenis vond plaats tijdens het Tweede Vaticaans Concilie. Paus Johannes Paulus XXIII riep 25 januari 1959, voor velen volkomen onverwacht, dit concilie bijeen. Het was een persoonlijk initiatief van de nieuwe paus. Slechts weinigen hadden zoiets verwacht van voormalig kardinaal Angelo Roncalli. De Italiaan was nog maar kort tevoren, na het overlijden van Paus Pius XII, op 28 oktober 1958 door de vergadering van kardinalen tot paus was verkozen. Angelo Roncalli is dan al 77 jaar en wordt vanwege zijn leeftijd door velen als een tussenpaus gezien, iemand van wie geen opzienbare stappen verwacht hoefden te worden. Maar dat pakt heel anders uit.
Het Tweede Vaticaans Concilie ging na gedegen voorbereiding ruim drie jaar later op 11 oktober 1962 van start. Het zou iets meer dan drie jaar gaan duren. De verwachtingen zijn hoog gespannen. Het concilie staat regelmatig in de schijnwerpers van de internationale pers. Paus Johannes XXIII is zich bewust van de vele ingrijpende veranderingen in zijn dagen. Dit besef leeft bij veel van de kardinalen en bisschoppen, al zijn er ook conservatieve krachten die alles het liefst bij het oude willen laten. Het koloniale tijdperk loopt op zijn laatste benen, derde wereld landen worden in rap tempo zelfstandige staten. Europa heeft twee verwoestende wereldoorlogen achter de rug. Het hele continent moet na 1945 weer opgebouwd worden. Het zelfvertrouwen van de westerse cultuur heeft ernstige deuken opgelopen Het is ook de tijd waarin de moderne media hun vlucht beginnen te nemen. En waarin Oost en West elkaar met de dreiging van een allesvernietigende atoomoorlog in de houdgreep houden. De Sovjet Unie met haar communistische ideologie was een reële dreiging voor de Westerse wereld en de wereldkerk. De nieuwe paus acht het onontkoombaar dat de Rooms Katholieke Kerk zich grondig bezint over de vraag wat haar antwoord op dit alles moet zijn. De kerk moet ‘bij de tijd’ gebracht worden, ze kan niet gewoon op de oude voet doorgaan. Een bepaalde modernisering wordt onontkoombaar geacht. ‘Aggiornamento’ is het sleutelwoord. Een van de resultaten van het concilie is dat de mis, de rooms katholieke eredienst voortaan niet meer in het latijn maar in de landstalen gehouden zal gaan worden. Ook gaat de Bijbel een veel grotere rol spelen in liturgie, catechese en diaconie. Leken krijgen ruimte om een grotere rol te spelen in de parochies. De kerk wordt in plaats van een instituut nu veel meer als ‘volk van God’ gezien. Er komt openheid voor oecumene, de luiken gaan open naar Protestante en Orthodoxe kerken. Maar er was meer.

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