Jerome and the Jews: Innovative Supersessionism

Jerome and the Jews

Innovative Supersessionism

William L. Krewson

Jerome and the Jews

Innovative Supersessionism

Copyright © 2017 William L. Krewson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-1822-1

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-1824-5

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-1823-8

Manufactured in the U.S.A. August 28, 2017

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Jerome’s Place in Christian Supersessionism

Chapter 1: A Survey of Recent Scholarship

Chapter 2: Return to the Source

Chapter 3: Back to the Hebrew Truth

Chapter 4: Bethlehem . . . Now Ours

Chapter 5: Ask the Jews!

Bibliography

To my loving wife, Bj, and to my daughters, Char and Abby

Acknowledgments

I cannot fail to acknowledge those whose investment in my life has made this book a reality. My thanks to my pastoral mentor and scholar, Dr. William C. Varner, who awakened my interest in the Jewish roots of the Christian faith and opened the door to academia for me. I am also grateful for the generous support of Cairn University’s administration, which encouraged me to pursue doctoral work.

My advisor at Drew University, Dr. James Pain, helped to develop my interest in the early church. My doctoral supervisor, Dr. Virginia Burrus, further refined my concentration on the intersection of early Christian writers with Jewish ideas. Dr. Melanie Johnson-Debaufre also provided helpful guidance with my dissertation.

Finally, my deepest love and admiration goes to my wife, Bj, who listened to the ideas presented here, helped me to refine them, and encouraged me to pursue this work. Omnia in gloriam Dei (1 Cor 10:31).

Abbreviations

CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina

CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

Ep. Epistle

PL Patrologiae Latina

Introduction

Jerome’s Place in Christian Supersessionism

When asked about the Jewish people’s aspirations for regaining the holy land in fourth-century Palestine, Jerome, the late ancient Christian ascetic and exegete, responds by casting perpetual blame on the Jews and redirecting divine blessing to himself: Because you gave preference to these [forbidden] gods rather than the true God, you lost all that had been promised to you. In the gospel, the kingdom of heaven is promised to me.¹ The notion of the Christians as the only rightful heirs to the kingdom of heaven had been developing for almost three centuries before Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus) was born of Christian parents. His birthplace was Stridon, in the northern part of the Roman Empire (in the western Balkans). He may have been born in the early 330s or perhaps the late 340s.² Jerome’s family encouraged him to pursue a classical Latin education, and he studied in Rome under the famous rhetorician Aelius Donatus in about 360. Once trained in rhetoric, Jerome began a career in civil service, but after undergoing religious conversion and a monastic calling around 370 he went to Aquileia in northern Italy and then to the Syrian desert near Antioch. Here he began his study of the Hebrew language under the tutelage of a Jewish convert to Christianity. After several years of increasing conflict with his fellow monks, he settled in Antioch, where he received ordination as a priest in 377. Moving on to Constantinople, he studied under Gregory of Nazianzus and later relocated to Rome in 382. Due to his increasing reputation as a biblical scholar proficient in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, Jerome served as secretary and scholar in residence to Pope Damasus. However, within three years he was forced to leave Rome under suspicion of inappropriate motives with several women who had become his patrons.³ Jerome ventured to Palestine and settled in the city of Bethlehem in 386, where he and his patron Paula established two respective monasteries and lived out the rest of their lives. Jerome continued his massive literary productions of commentaries, translations, and correspondence until his death in 419. Woven deeply into Jerome’s massive literary works is the thread of Christian replacement of and supremacy over those who had earlier been the people of God. This theology of displacement, known as Christian supersessionism, was for Jerome a standard narrative of the Christian church. As we shall see, he gave that inherited narrative new layers and twists, igniting controversy and creating points of contact between himself and Jews.

Defining Christian Supersessionism

Christian supersessionism is the belief that the Jewish people and religion have been entirely replaced by the Christian people and religion, and that divine favor rests only with those (both Jew and Gentile) who follow Jesus as God’s messiah. Jews therefore can find religious legitimacy only as members of the Christian church.

R. Kendall Soulen has described three types of supersessionism found in Christian history.⁴ First, economic supersessionism teaches that the Jewish people prepared the way for the Christian church in the economy of redemption through their Old Testament religion, consisting of shadows and types in preparation for fulfillment in Jesus Christ. This version looks at the Old Testament cultus as foundational and temporary, divinely intended for replacement by the New Testament message. Consequently there is no validity to any current practice of Jewish laws and piety since the presence of Jesus has rendered all such rituals obsolete. This position does not attribute inherent sinfulness to the Jews and their religion; it simply renders post-Christian Judaism as an obsolete phase in the ongoing work of God—its time has expired.

Second, punitive supersessionism logically proceeds from economic supersessionism by declaring God’s judgment on the Jewish people because of their rejection of Jesus as messiah. The Christian church displaces the Jews due to the largely Gentile acceptance of the Jewish messiah and thereby enjoys God’s favor, while the Jews in their rejection fall under God’s wrath. This formulation places God in the role of the Jew hater. Faithful Christians therefore must imitate the divine attitude of retribution against the Christ-killing Jews. Christian proclamation of punitive supersessionism claims divine authority for its stance since to do otherwise would be to also risk divine disfavor. Reflecting this notion of punitive supersessionism is the Adversus Judaeos tradition, a body of literature written by generations of Christians who opposed the continuance of the Jewish race and religion.⁵ These diatribes began in the second century and continued uninterrupted into the period of Late Ancient Christianity and beyond.

Soulen labels a third category as structural supersessionism, in which the standard canonical narrative of the Christian church omits any reference to the God of Israel and the people of Israel. He asserts that the accepted story of the Bible rests on four main points in the plot line: creation, fall into sin, redemption in Jesus through the church, and the consummation of all things in eternity. Consequently, the narrative of Genesis 4 through Malachi is entirely absent. This version of the Bible’s storyline becomes universalistic in scope and has no need for the unique people of Israel. In fact, the Jews are rendered utterly irrelevant. It is this Jewish-free account that is embedded in the historic Christian creeds, which omit the role and significance of the people of Israel in the canonical and ecclesiastical story. A positive word about Israel’s past, present, or future is rare if present at all. When this non-Israel narrative is repeated by the Christian church, the embedded theology of replacement is reinforced. It is not surprising that Christian supersessionism and its attendant anti-Judaism have traveled together to the present day. Although the most obvious and egregious examples of supersessionism are found as expressions of the punitive type, economic and structural supersessionism serve as quiet supporters.

In the fourth century, Christian writers had little conception of theological self-definition apart from the supersessionist paradigm. While some authors might be cited for their virulent rhetoric of displacement in line with punitive supersessionism, such as Ambrose⁶ or John Chrysostom,⁷ such extreme sentiments reveal the widespread influence and magnitude of a theology of contempt within the established church: "The adversos Judaeos tradition represents the overall method of Christian exegesis of the Old Testament. Any sermons, commentaries, or teachings based on scriptural exegesis of the Old Testament . . . will reflect this tradition of anti-Judaic midrash."⁸ In this milieu Jerome was trained and prepared to replicate the Christian message couched in the all-too-familiar vocabulary of replacement and denigration.

Jerome as Innovative Supersessionist

Jerome expresses Christian supersessionism in complex ways. Like other Christian supersessionists, he refers to the Jews in both threatening and triumphalistic tones, typical of economic and punitive supersessionism. However, he cannot wear the label of structural supersessionist since he simultaneously and paradoxically rejects the legitimacy of the Jewish religion and holds a strong appreciation for Jewish connections to the Scriptures. Jerome rhetorically distances himself from Jews yet, at the same time, stays in close proximity to them: If it is expedient to hate any men and to loathe any race, I have a strange dislike to those of the circumcision. For up to the present day they persecute our Lord Jesus Christ in the synagogues of Satan. Yet can anyone find fault with me for having had a Jew as a teacher?⁹ He denigrates the Jews for their rejection of the Christ, yet he honors their guardianship of what he calls the Hebrew truth (Hebraica veritas) and elevates them as teachers of Christians. Jerome embodies a fascinating contradiction that lead to three questions: How can he maintain Christian superiority and yet depend upon the Jews for their Hebrew Scriptures? Why would he argue vehemently for christological fulfillment of Old Testament passages and simultaneously defend certain contemporary Jewish interpretations of the same Old Testament books? What would motivate Jerome to pursue a life of monastic study in the ancient homeland of the Jews, and even hire them to teach him the Hebrew language, grammar, geography, and hermeneutical insights? I propose to answer these questions by examining the ambivalent expression of Jerome’s attachment to and antipathy of the Jews and by offering proposals to explain his position.

First, I will examine his choice of texts for the Christian Old Testament. Jerome performs an unusual feat in his single-handed argument against the divine inspiration of the Septuagint and the elevation of the Hebrew text as the basis for his new Latin translation of the Old Testament. Following in the steps of Origen’s third-century text-critical scholarship, Jerome furthers the task of purifying the sacred texts. Such a project brings him into tension with some church leaders, who castigate Jerome as an innovator of dangerous doctrines. Not only does he consult the Hebrew text of the Christian Old Testament (as Origen and others had done), but he claims its superiority over the supposedly inspired Greek text of the Septuagint. Jerome’s position evolves over a number of years from a preference for the Septuagint to a settled conviction that the Hebrew Old Testament is the most accurate source for his new Latin translation. While there is some disagreement about Jerome’s actual knowledge of the Hebrew language, most agree that he knew Hebrew well enough to legitimize his scholarly works. Various motivations may be behind Jerome’s motivation for reverting to the Hebrew. It may be that he desired the stability of the Hebrew text in contrast to the multiple editions of the Septuagint, or perhaps he wanted to produce a truly Christian translation, unlike the Jewish, pre-Christian Septuagint. By rejecting the supremacy of the Septuagint, and with it the authority of the apocryphal books, Jerome stirs up fierce debate within the Christian church for years to come. An old friend, Rufinus, becomes an enemy over this issue, and the two exchange heated letters in which Rufinus castigates Jerome for hiring Jews as tutors who allegedly trick Jerome into introducing Jewish influences into Christianity. Jerome faces similar opposition from Augustine, who considered the Septuagint authoritative and sufficient. He urges Jerome to cease his Hebrew translation and maintain the Septuagint as the source in order to maintain a church unity centered on the supremacy of the Septuagint and established tradition.

His path to the Hebrew text was not a straight line, however. The ambivalence of Jerome’s textual supersessionism surfaces when the entire range of his statements about the Greek and Hebrew texts are considered. Namely, he makes contradictory statements about the Septuagint—sometimes commending it, but usually condemning it. He consistently chooses the Hebrew text when the Septuagint differs, and as an answer to his critics he composes Hebrew Questions on Genesis to defend his textual selection and to illustrate the rich resources found only in the Hebrew. Only rarely have Christians cared to consult the Jewish text, and now a Christian monk argues in favor of it. With such actions Jerome blurs the traditional boundaries between Jews and Christians. At the same time, he inscribes the differences between Christianity and Judaism by arguing that the Hebrew text provides stronger support for christological interpretations of the Old Testament, in that the apostles quoted from the Hebrew rather than the Septuagint in certain significant passages.

The second expression of Jerome’s ambivalent stance that I will examine is his hermeneutic of recovering ancient Jewish interpretations for Christian consumption. Jerome reflects his Christian predecessors and contemporaries by utilizing a hermeneutic of displacement in order to legitimize the Christian religion. In typical supersessionist fashion, he positions the fulfillment of promises to Israel as exclusively, and allegorically, for the Christian church. In contrast, he simultaneously employs historical exegesis of the dire predictions of judgment on Israel and directs fulfillment squarely on the guilty Jews, those of the past as well as those of his own time. Jerome’s settled presupposition is that the spiritual church replaces carnal Israel, and such reasoning legitimizes his rereading of the Jewish promises as destined for the church and his rereading of the Jewish curses as for the Jews alone. In many of Jerome’s writings he reviles the view, held by both Jewish Christians and some Gentile Christians (whom he names Judaizers), of a Jewish restoration to the land of Israel as a carnal reading and elevates a spiritual interpretation that sees the Christian church as the true referent. Such spiritualized readings are the common heritage of early Christian interpreters who embrace a supersessionistic hermeneutic and develop the rhetoric of contempt, of which Jerome is heir and to which his writings add in great measure.

Like most Christian supersessionists, Jerome lays claim to the heritage of Israel, selectively appropriating Jewish covenants while leaving only a denigrated carnal remainder behind for those from whom he borrows. He erects and reinforces the borders between Jews and Christians by selectively applying the blessings to the Christian church and assigning the curses to the Jews. Jerome is set apart from his contemporaries by his agility to travel back and forth across the border between Christians and Jews to retrieve valuable information for his own use. Acting as both judge and jury, Jerome selects texts and interpretations by navigating between Jewish historical and Christian allegorical readings. His method of selecting which meanings are for the Jews and which apply to Christians is inconsistent and unpredictable. He condemns the Jewish religion, castigates Christian Jews as imposters, and seems to prohibit others from enjoying the type of relationship he establishes for himself with the Jews and their traditions. Such bold moves were novel yet unsettling to the Christian community of the fourth century. They also reflect the depth and color of Jerome’s complex supersessionism. In this stance of innovation and ambivalence, Jerome places himself as the supreme mediator of sacred texts and the master architect of the boundary between Christians and Jews.

The third expression of Jerome’s pioneering supersessionism I will explore is his attempt to inscribe Christian identity onto the Jewish homeland. When Constantine’s mother, Queen Helena, selected sacred places in Palestine for Christian churches, the sacred land of Israel officially became the Christian holy land. Christianized Palestine enriched the lives of believers who made pilgrimage to three sacred places: Jerusalem’s Church of the Resurrection (later known as the Holy Sepulcher), the Church of Eleona on the Mount of Olives (associated with the ascension), and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace. After years of residing in several cities throughout the Roman Empire, Jerome is mystically drawn to the ancient homeland of the Hebrew people. His pilgrimage becomes permanent when he establishes a monastery in Bethlehem and lives out his remaining years. Jerome believes that he and other like-minded Christians who settle in Palestine as pilgrims are the rightful heirs of the Jewish homeland. His supersessionist mindset not only embraces the hermeneutical notion of being a part of the new Israel, but he expands the notion to include the sacred space of Bethlehem in his image of a properly constructed Christian identity. Like the biblical heroes in Joshua’s time, he and other Christians displace the disobedient people of the land and take up their residence as God’s new people. He further Christianizes the map of Palestine by denigrating Jewish cities in their ruined condition and substituting the idealized towns sanctified by Jesus’ presence as recorded in the gospel accounts. These places become the Christians’ promised land, suitable as pilgrimage sites for believers throughout the Roman Empire and made more accessible by Jerome’s new translation of Eusebius’ travel atlas. His letters invite fellow Christians to join him in walking through the holy land as if he were Moses or Joshua leading his followers into the promised land. Jerome continues to perplex his readers when at times he considers the true holy land to be the spiritual Jerusalem in heaven. In another layer of complexity, Jerome situates Bethlehem over against Jerusalem as the most sacred space in the holy land. As in other expressions of his supersessionism, Jerome again reveals his seemingly contradictory disposition in the concept of the sacred space.

The conjunction of text, exegesis, and land form a fascinating web of complexity in Jerome’s formation of Christian supersessionism. In spite of Jerome defining the boundaries that separate Jews and Christians in traditional terms, he continually crosses them at will to form relationships for his personal benefit and his readers’ instruction. In the land of the Jews he hires Jewish rabbis to teach him more of the Hebrew language as well as the meaning of geographical names known only in the Hebrew tongue. Jerome uses rabbis as living encyclopedias of Judaica to mine their prized resources of inaccessible knowledge. His presence in the land naturally feeds his hunger for Judaic background, rabbinic interpretations, and firsthand knowledge that provides source material for his commentaries. To his readers, Jerome lives on both sides of the fence—simultaneously appreciating the Jews for what he can gain from them and deprecating them for what they have done to his Christ. In order to obtain the resources he desires, he creates a personal gateway in the fence to which he alone possesses the key.

In summation, Jerome is set apart from other contemporary Christian writers in the particular depth and complexity of his sustained ambivalence toward the Jews. His position is inherently unstable, and such instability reveals itself in intriguing ways. While maintaining his basic stance of sole Christian legitimacy, he regards the Hebrew language as a divinely chosen means of communication, the Jews as privileged preservers of sacred truth, and their holy land as radiating the sacred impress of divine history and the supernatural power of sacramental presence. He builds relationships with Jewish people in his attempt to profit from their trusted linguistic, theological, and geographical insights. Conversely, Jerome speaks against the Jewish other with vicious language, assigning them and their religion to damnation. The very existence of Jewish Christianity is to him an oxymoron, since he allows no middle ground between the two religions except his own. Jerome is an enigma—he both blurs the line between Christians and Jews yet inscribes it more deeply. The language of supersessionism allows him to sustain these contradictions, and yet his rhetoric of Jewish necessity has within it a constructive path ahead.

1. Ep.

129

.

5

(CSEL

56

:

172

), English translation kindly provided by Dr. Bernard Prusak, Villanova University,

2009

. Other English translations of Jerome’s letters are from St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works; others are from The Letters of St. Jerome, and others are my own.

2. See the critical biographies of Cavallera, Saint Jérôme; Kelly, Jerome; and Rebenich, Jerome.

3. He was convicted in an Episcopal court of clerical misconduct stemming from allegations of opportunism and sexual impropriety (Cain, "Jerome’s Epitaphium Paulae,"

108

).

4. Soulen, God of Israel,

29

–

33

.

5. Listings of these works from the earliest texts to the Middle Ages are found in Williams, Adversus Judaeos, and Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte. Some early authors include Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Origen, Aphrahat, Pseudo-Ephraim, and Chrysostom, along with dialogues of Christians against Jews.

6. He encouraged the burning of a synagogue in Callinicum (Parkes, Conflict of the Church,

166

–

68

).

7. See Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews,

95

–

127

.

8. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide,

121

. For a brief survey of fourth-century writers, see Flannery, Anguish of the Jews,

47

–

65

.

9. Ep.

84

.

3

(CSEL

55

:

123

).

Chapter 1

A Survey of Recent Scholarship

As a fourth-century Christian writer, Jerome’s attitude of hostility to the Jews comes as no surprise. Christian theology had bred a sense of superiority for several centuries before him, and Christian culture had begun to legislate its dominance since the time of Constantine. However, before a study can be made of Jerome’s statements about the Hebrew text, Jewish exegesis, and the ancient Hebrew homeland, the larger backdrop of the Christian culture of supersessionism must be considered as it has been studied in recent times. The context of Jerome’s Christianity and its interface with the Jewish people and their religion has been the subject of several centuries of scholarly thought. In order to understand Jerome’s statements about Jews, and to provide the proper context for appreciating his selective appropriation of their resources coupled with his active relation with living Jews, I will summarize the history of Christian and Jewish relations in the early centuries of the church.¹⁰

Review of the Scholarship of Christian Supersessionism

This review will examine four historical phases of scholarship and include the important literature in each period as well as an appraisal of the presuppositions behind each position. Without an awareness of the flow of thought by historians and theologians, one cannot appreciate the difference between late ancient Christians’ conception of themselves in relation to the Jews and those who afterward read the literature with attentiveness to subsequent history and theological strategies. With an appreciation of the progress of scholarship and its theological implications, there is a growing hope for meaningful conversation and understanding in the contemporary discussions between Christians and Jews.

The First Phase: Christian Supersessionism of Judaism

The critical study of early Christianity began in the nineteenth century with Adolf von Harnack, whose work set the stage for much of the scholarship of the twentieth century.¹¹ His 1902 publication of Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den Ersten Drei Jahrhunderten pioneered the way for much of the subsequent scholarship of ancient Christianity. His uncritical reading of Judaism through the filter of Christian polemic resulted in his own emulation of the supersessionism found in the early texts.¹² Scholars now realize that his Christian supersessionism inspired him to draw conclusions about Judaism of the early centuries without any historical evidence. As an example of his prejudicial stance against Jews, Harnack writes:

As Christianity is the only true religion . . . it follows that it can have nothing in common with the Jewish nation and its contemporary cultus. The Jewish nation in which Jesus Christ appeared, has, for the time at least, no special relation to the God whom Jesus revealed. Whether it had such a relation at an earlier period is doubtful . . . but certain it is that God has now cast it off, and that all revelations of God, so far as they took place at all before Christ . . . must have aimed solely at the call of the ‘new people’, and in some way prepared for the revelation of God through his Son.¹³

Further, Harnack asserts several positions that successive scholarship accepted at face value, one of which is that the synagogue’s expansion throughout the Roman Empire prepared the way for Christianity’s arrival and