Twenty-four years ago this week, I was in Jerusalem to cover Pope John Paul II’s epic pilgrimage to the Holy Land for NBC. After going to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to pray at the 11th and 12th stations, I went to dinner with a graduate school classmate, Father Michael McGarry, then the director of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute.
We drove through East Jerusalem to “Philadelphia,” a Palestinian restaurant Father McGarry recommended, where we had a fine meal of local specialties, prepared and served by friendly people who were evidently grateful for our trade (much of East Jerusalem being as dead as a doornail that night). The one discordant note was struck when, on the way out of the restaurant, I noticed a large color poster featuring a photo-shopped picture of John Paul II and PLO leader Yasser Arafat under the headline, “Welcome to the Palestinian Holy Land,” a variant on the “Palestinian Jesus” theme Arafat had been retailing.
Insofar as there was any religious content in this crude, not-altogether-subtle attempt to de-Judaize the one whom Christians recognize as the Messiah—the Messiah promised to the Jewish people and born of a Jewish woman—it hearkened back to the ancient heresy of the Marcionites: a second-century sect that rejected the Old Testament in its entirety. Marcion and his followers claimed that the Creator God of Genesis and the God of the Jewish people’s Exodus was not the “Father” God to whom Jesus prayed; in fact, the Marcionites claimed that Jesus’s mission, as he understood it, was to overthrow and displace this “God of the Law” with the “God of Love.” Marcion rejected three of the four canonical gospels, accepting only an edited version of the gospel of Luke.
And therein lay this heretic’s one positive contribution to Christianity: he forced the Church to clarify its own canon of Scripture, which of course includes the gospels Marcion rejected.
Over the past 1,800 years, other deviant Christian thinkers have tried to “take the Jewish out of Jesus,” so to speak. And lest we think that such perversions today are limited to politicians, consider that, in recent months, some politicized Christian leaders have repeated the canard that Jesus was a “Palestinian” or “Palestinian Jew.” Which, I suggest, makes as much sense as referring to Jesus as a Latvian Jew or a Luxembourgish Jew, since “Palestine” as conceived today did not exist at the time of Jesus, any more than did Latvia or Luxembourg.
Lent is a good time to reflect on the indisputable fact that Jesus of Nazareth, whom we believe to be the incarnate Son of God, was a son of the Jewish people. He was circumcised on the eighth day (Luke 2:21) and presented to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses in the Temple (Luke 2:22ff.) He was raised within the temporal rhythms and rituals of Judaism and learned its sacred writings (Luke 2:41-52). He lived as a faithful Jew and taught as a faithful Jew (“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” [Matthew 5:17]). He was mocked by the Romans who crucified him as “the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37 and parallels).
And he died as a faithful Jew, invoking Psalm 22 and its confession of the ultimate reign of the God of Israel (“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord…”)
Writing as a historian using modern critical tools, Anglican biblical scholar N.T. Wright describes the Jewish self-understanding of Jesus in these terms:
Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given him by the one he knew as ‘father,’ to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, God had promised to accomplish…He would be the pillar of cloud and fire for the people of the new exodus. He would embody in himself the returning and redeeming action of the covenant God.
Or put another way (again by Wright), “Jesus believed that it was his vocation to be the embodiment of that which was spoken of in the Jewish symbols of Temple, Torah, Word, Spirit and Wisdom, namely, [God’s] saving presence in the world, or more fully, in Israel and for the world….” Thus, in his passion, death and resurrection, the “name and character” of the God of Israel “would be fully and finally unveiled, made known.”
Antisemitism comes in many forms these days. If those who invoke the “Palestinian Jesus” don’t grasp that, they might think again.
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The Jews are our older brothers. We should not forget that. Shalom.
Uh huh. Especially Korah, right? Or do you want me to think that rejecting divine revelation was important in Numbers 16, but totally not important now. If you believe that, you probably also believe that we now know more than God did when he commanded capital punishment for certain crimes, forbade homosexual sex, etc. Who knows, that might get you a red cap these days.
King David is our older brother in the Faith. So are Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, etc. Netanyahu is not our older brother in anything.
The Jews are our elder brethren in the Faith. Period. It’s not about politics.
There are Catholic politicians we can feel like disowning at times, and for good reasons, but they still remain our brothers & sisters through Baptism.
Nonsense. Jews are no more our brethren than followers of any other religion, and rather less than most, as Judaism explicitly rejects Jesus Christ. Muslims are least affirm the Virgin Birth and honor Jesus as a great prophet, though they err terribly in rejecting his divinity. All this claptrap from Weigela, or indeed, Pope JP 2 or Pope Francis, is intellectually dishonest and theologically empty political rhetoric. Zionism is trash
Stop trying to justify it by falsifying and perverting out religion.
I recall that someone once said that “salvation is from the Jews.” Who, exactly, was that?
Take your medication.
Reject Jesus Christ? Like fake Christians who lie about Jesus Christ and what it means to be His disciple through their hatred?
Yes yer against Israel and pro “Palestinian”. Lovely (inject politics into everything)….just so you know.
Muslims are NOT our Elder Brothers and sisters. Their sacred text is not scripture. The Jewish text is Scripture. Indeed, as Frank Sheed once said “Judaism like Catholicism is true. Judaism however is merely true as far as it goes.” Islam however is a mix of truth and error. Just saying but hey back the Palestinians if ye like…
Or better yet let’s keep politics out of all this. Just a thought.
No one should use Christ our Lord to promote a political or ideological point of view. It’s good to remember the words of a one-time pharisee, the Apostle Paul who wrote that in Christ “[t]here is no longer Jew nor Greek (i.e. gentile)…all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” All who would claim a special ethnic or national recognition for our Lord would do well to remember that. He is the Lord of all.
Amen.
Me too.
But remember the same Paul said “to the Jew first” and he said “there is an advantage to being a Jew” over being a gentle (since they have promises from God and the OT scripture”.
So that is the paradox in Holy Writ. The Jews are special in one sense and not special in other.
Like God saves everybody equally (Works in the field get the same wage wither they worked from morning or just started two hours before dusk) and he puts some virtuous people above others in Heaven (Martyrs get crowns and some are least vs greater in the Kingdom of Heaven).
So all that is a thing.
Well, nice, thank you, but please witness that Jesus did not have Faith or believe ‘that it was his vocation to be the embodiment of that which was spoken of in the Jewish symbols of…’, He knew in His Person and both natures…after all, He was without Original Sin and always had the Beatific Vision in His Hypostatic Union….
It’s hard enough to imagine how folks perform mental acrobatics about Our Lord’s ancestry but how do they accomplish the same self delusions about His Jewish mother whom they have a devotion to?
a little unfolding of the previous post,
CCC 473.
More from the Magisterium
On Nov. 26, 2006, the CDF issued what is called a “notification” concerning the two books I mentioned above written by Fr. Jon Sobrino, S.J., Jesus the Liberator and Christ the Liberator. Both books contain manifold grave errors concerning multiple points of theology deemed contrary to the Catholic faith.
Among the six major errors or categories of errors the CDF identified was Fr. Sobrino’s denial of Christ having the beatific vision (category No. 5). He claimed Christ had faith rather than knowledge and as such taught Christ to be purely an exemplar of faith for us, even up to giving us the ultimate example of faith on the cross.
he same pontiff, in his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis, says:
But this most loving knowledge of our divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of his Incarnation, exceeds all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was he conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when he began to enjoy the beatific vision, and in that vision all the members of his Mystical Body.
Throughout this notification, the CDF makes clear the Church’s teaching that Christ had the beatific vision from the moment of his conception. But in the process, it also makes clear that the change in language used in more recent magisterial documents does not represent a contradiction. And even more, according to the CDF, this understanding is necessarily connected to our soteriology:
The filial and messianic consciousness of Jesus is the direct consequence of his ontology as Son of God made man. If Jesus were a believer like ourselves, albeit in an exemplary manner, he would not be able to be the true Revealer showing us the face of the Father. This point has an evident connection . . . with . . . what will be said . . . below concerning the salvific value that Jesus attributed to his death. For Fr. Sobrino, in fact, the unique character of the mediation and revelation of Jesus disappears: he is thus reduced to the condition of “revealer” that we can attribute to the prophets and mystics.
Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, enjoys an intimate and immediate knowledge of his Father, a “vision” that certainly goes beyond the vision of faith. The hypostatic union and Jesus’ mission of revelation and redemption require the vision of the Father and the knowledge of his plan of salvation. This is what is indicated in the Gospel texts cited above.
Various recent magisterial texts have expressed this doctrine: “But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was he conceived in the womb of the Mother of God when he began to enjoy the beatific vision” (quoting Mystici Corporis, 75).
. . . Likewise, the Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the immediate knowledge which Jesus has of the Father: “Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father.” “By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal” (quoting CCC 473).
Faith is the belief in things unseen. Remember the words of the Author of Hebrews: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1).
Jesus, though, is God. As God, He has perfect knowledge of all things unseen, excluding nothing. There is literally no ability in Jesus to have faith because He already knows everything seen, unseen, possible, actual, in the past, in the future, and every combination between. He knows things that the rest of us require faith for, specifically the Beatific Vision. One only hopes to enjoy the Beatific Vision. That is why in Heaven, there is no faith; there is only sight. Now you see why it’s important to understand the two natures of Christ are united in the person of Christ: it ultimately means that Jesus, as a man, has all the perfections of God.
For the same reasons, Jesus had no hope. In fact, even His charity transcends our normal experience, for He not only loves, but He is love. The other way of saying this is that Jesus is Himself, for God is His very nature. That is, there is no distinction between God and his nature, so anything God has (love in this case), we can say with absolute correctness that God is, and not just at one instance in time, but for all time in a perfectly present state. This is why, quite amazingly, when God revealed Himself to Moses who wanted to take back a name to describe the God he encountered, he only told him, “I AM”. God is perfectly loving without limit of time, space, or magnitude not because of His own desires, but because of who He is. And that should be an encouragement to us.
So now you know, Jesus had no faith because He already sees every divine thing unseen to creatures.
St. Thomas Aquinas, over 700 years ago, solved this question for us in his masterpiece Summa Theologiae. The particular question arises in Part III, Question 7, Article 3, which deals with the grace in Christ as an individual man. You can read that here.
From catholic answers and ncregister articles.
Blessings
Thank you, Mr. Weigel. The Second Person in the Holy Trinity (and therefore God Himself) is a Jew. He is the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures.
Thank you for using the present tense. He is a Jew, not was a Jew.
Let’s none of us look at the rending of the veil of the Temple and what that meant. Let’s not pay attention to what St. John the Baptist (who was and is, really, our elder brother in the Faith) said in Matthew 3:9. Let’s ignore the Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers (Matthew 21:33-44), even though, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” Let’s pretend(?) we have never read, “Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children”.
Yes, Our Lord (and Our Lady, and St. Joseph, and St. John the Baptist, etc.) lived His earthly life within Temple Judaism … a type of Judaism that does not exist today. Blood sacrifices took place on the high altar until A.D. 70, though I have heard even modern Judaism accepts that these sacrifices were not accepted for 40 years before the destruction of the Temple, which they say was punishment for “hatred without cause”. SOMETHING must have happened that brought about a change even more radical than the change Mt. Sinai brought to Judaism.
Look, it’s clear that by cherry-picking verses, the Jewish people can be made to look like monsters, as has been used so often in the past to stir up violence. Or they can be made to look like people who are somehow genetically saintly. Such cherry-picking is dishonest. They are people, just like everyone else. In fact, after so many centuries, it is a statistical certainty that EVERYONE from Europe, the Mediterranean region, or most of the Middle East has a little of Abraham’s blood in his or her veins, and it is foolish to think that God judges anyone to be (or not to be, that is the question) “Jewish” by the same standards as the State of Israel. God loves “the Jews” differently, perhaps, but not more than He loves the Vietnamese or the Navaho or the Zulus.
Wouldn’t it be something if there were neither Jew nor Greek, but we were all one in Jesus Christ?
Today’s anti-Semitism takes many forms including the preposterous balad-faced falsehood that contemporary Judaism has no connection to ancient Judaism as a way of feeling comfortable with one’s bigotry.
Well Said Mr. Baker.
Edward, could you Elaborate about contemporary
Judaism and Ancient Judaism
God loves us all the same but we’re not all God’s chosen people. The Jews weren’t picked for their saintliness. They’re God’s *chosen* people, not His perfect people.
Jews traditionally use the maternal line to determine “Jewishness” so not having a direct Jewish maternal line doesn’t make you a Jew even though you scored some Jewish DNA through ancestry. But what you say is correct, many folks in the Mid East, Europe, the Americas & elsewhere have Jewish ancestry, often unknown. To survive, Jews assimilated. It’s also true that virtually everyone in the Mid East & parts of the Mediterranean has African DNA markers either from the Eastern slave trade or more remotely. There has been considerable population movement & trade going on since prehistoric times.
Too many people forget our Lord’s Jewish connections. I have thankfully rarely been in contact with people who have expressed an antisemitic remark. But on at least one occasion when I was present when such remarks were made, I looked wide-eyed at them and said, ” You do know that Jesus was Jewish, don’t you?” I hope it might have made them at least think more clearly about the offensive nonsense they were saying. It would not hurt for our priests to address the subject of Jesus’s Jewish heritage and why it is thus incompatible for a Christian to be antisemitic, or express antisemitic thoughts.
I agree LJ. You’d think antisemitism would have died out by now but sadly it seems to be something that continues to flare up amongst Catholics. I don’t see the same problem with evangelical Christians I know. Catholics should know better. It’s very disappointing.
There are groups of neo-Evangelicals who for some mad reason seem to be gravitating towards antisemitism. It’s becoming a thing.
The Church’s silence on the subject is frightening and painful. Why? The Jews are God’s Chosen people and God has never rescinded that. He chose them for His reasons not subject to our approval. We are to love them and pray for their conversion. They cannot convert if they are annihilated. Think of all the horrors in history; the cruelty, violence of so many wars and unspeakable atrocities. Look at our 21st Century terrorist organizations who specially in competitive torture and violence against the most innocent. Just look at ISIS, Hezbollah , Hamas etc. Yet do we harbor such hatred of them as has plagued the Jews for thousands of years. What is the source of such unreasoned hatred? Perhaps I should ask who is the source? I can’t help but believe that Lucifer is involved. If God chose the Jews then Lucifer or Satan wants to capture them. As a Christian Catholic I cannot choose against God. Pray for the Jewish people for from them is or Salvation.
More Catholics are becoming anti-Semitic these days. It makes me sick and I will rage against it till the day I die.
Salvation is from the Jews because the Lord was Jewish. But it doesn’t make the Jews exempt from judgment. And yet, everybody is making excuses for them.
Excuses for what, exactly?? Are you talking about the current war, which they did NOT start?? I have to imagine that if Canada came over the border and killed over 1000 of our people in the most horrific way, raped our women and killed babies, we would not have any interest in listening to ill-informed political hacks urging us to act in a “proportional” way in return. Hiroshima I suppose, was our proportional response for Pearl Harbor.A response our enemies around the world remember to this day. The problem with starting wars is that you cannot control what happens next. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
When Palestinian terrorists murder Jewish young people at a music concert, kill and behead babies, sexually assault women with a force that breaks their pelvic bones, and wire people together and burn them alive, Jewish authorities have a moral right and obligation to punish those crimes. Your antisemitism is inexcusable and morally reprehensible.
You have to look at the news with some discernment or discretion. The more horrific the more spectacular the more unlikely. The stories of the atrocities you mention have been debunked. AI makes fake news real. But even more satanic are the people who come up with all the gore etc
You are a very very misguided person.
You are believing anti-semitic propaganda. The atrocities committed by the Hamas group have been well proven to the world media.Take a harder look and take off your blinders. Further, many of these atrocities were FILMED by the terrorists themselves and then posted online.
Your antisemitism is inexcusable and morally reprehensible.
Being called “anti Semitic” is a worn out insult, and meaningless epithet any more. Educate yourself, and be more specific.
Not was Jewish, is Jewish.
No one is exempt from the judgment of God. All are exempt from the judgment of humans. Judge actions not persons. Judge not lest ye be judged.
I was born and raised Catholic and I will die a Catholic. That said, I do not attack other people’s religions. I find it curious that so many of the posters get jabs in at Jews, Protestants and other religions. Why? Does attacking other religions make you a better Catholic? I don’t think so.
The best way to convert others is your personal example. If you are an exemplary person, keep the Commandments,help the poor, etc.it will have a more positive effect than attacking other people’s religions.
Salvation is served from the Altar. Full stop. Pray for the conversion of the Jews. There is a lot of extra mayhem in the church and the world by all non-believing people; especially those that purport to bear the name of believers: Pelosi, Soros, Durbin, Kerry, Biden, Sunstein, Emmanuel, Kagan . . .
Unless things have changed recently, George Soros is hardly an example of an observant Jew.
A very good Essay , Respectable Mr. Weigel .
Thanks .
Agree!
About Jesus being Jewish
Please read, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/28/easter-jesus-not-palestinian-jew/