If you want to solve a problem, sometimes you have to make it bigger. This does not always work out well, but sometimes a bigger problem reveals answers because the larger context reveals larger patterns. Let us proceed with looking at two mysteries in the hope that we will find this to be the case here. Both of these mysteries relate to the overall problem of how we as contemporary readers of the Bible view the relationship of the New Testament and the Jews. Let us look at this mystery from a few Bible passages, threaded together with a bit of commentary. Let us set up our mystery by looking at two passages.

The first is Matthew 27:15-25: “Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to releasing to the multitude one prisoner whom they wished. And at that time they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. Therefore, when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew that they had handed Him over because of envy. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, “Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him.” But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” They said, “Barabbas!” Pilate said to them, “What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said to him, “Let Him be crucified!” Then the governor said, “Why, what evil has He done?” But they cried out all the more, saying, “Let Him be crucified!” When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.” And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.””

The second passage is Romans 11:11-32: ” I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! For I speak to you Gentiles; inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them. For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.” Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.”

There is a lot that can be said about these two passages, and has, but let us consider them as parallel passages because they represent a tension in how we view the problem of the Jews from the viewpoint of Christianity. Figures as notable as Martin Luther have believed that is was merely the treatment of the Jews that served to divide them from Christians, and his disillusionment after his views were rejected by German Jewry led to a great deal of anti-Semitism later in life. On the one hand, we have a passage that has been used as a justification of all kinds of abuse against the Jews throughout history, and on the other hand, we have a passage that has often led to unrealistic expectations of the conversion of the Jews in later generations. Without understanding the context of both of these passages, we will tend to be caught in a good cop-bad cop routine where our good feeling towards other faiths is based merely on their conversion to our ways, and where their resistance will be taken to justify harsh and repressive actions against them. Yet ultimately neither of these passages means quite what they are often viewed to be.

Let us turn these passages in opposite order, as the second passage is far more straightforward to understand. For one, it is clear that the conversion envisioned for Israel is only after the fullness of the Gentiles has come on, and that is a very late phenomenon, as other passages of the Bible (see, for example, Ezekiel 37) make plain. So, no matter how dynamic someone thinks their evangelism to be, one must temper expectations and let God do the calling. No one can respond to any sort of evangelism unless God calls, and our most effective way of helping with that process is through the godly example of our lives, the extent to which we as branches of the olive tree bear fruits of the Holy Spirit. Far too much stress has been placed on matters of marketing, and not nearly enough on the fundamentals of showing godly love for others and living a life by which God’s ways speak in a more convincing language than smooth rhetoric.

Having said that, let us turn to the more vexing problem of who it was that pronounced a curse on themselves and their children and what relevance that has for us today. First, let us note that the Bible has a strong asymmetry between the blessings and the curses that follow through generations. The most obvious example of this is in Exodus 20:4-6, which reads: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Here we see that the sin of a person is only visited to the third or fourth generation but mercy and grace are shown to the thousands of generations, or basically forever. From this we can see that whatever curse was placed on the people who urged Pilate to put Jesus Christ to death was a curse that ended a long time ago, when the temple was destroyed in 70AD, and has no relevance for how Jewish people should be viewed or treated today.

More specifically, the first passage itself deals mostly with the leaders of the Jews. It is the leaders of the Sanhedrin, the ones who (illegally [1]) tried Jesus Christ and condemned Him to death to preserve their own political power and avoid the revolutionary implications of Christianity. It is they who brought Jesus to be condemned by Pilate, so that the Romans (and hence Gentile realms in general) would be under the same curse as the Jewish leadership (in this light, it is significant that the Julio-Claudian dynasty was exterminated at roughly the same time as the Jewish temple leadership, just before 70AD), and it is they who stirred up the crowd to demand that Jesus Christ be crucified instead of Barabbas. Moreover, it is these Jewish leaders who are consistently called “the Jews” (mostly in the Gospel of John) as opposed to the more general terms used for the ordinary commonfolk, who were called names like “the multitude” or “the people” or “the crowd.”

There is one implication of this that I would like to briefly discuss, and that is the fact that it was the religious elite that was called “The Jews” in the Gospel, and not the ordinary people. In the same way that nations around the world use “The Americans” to discuss their anger at the moral corruption and political corruption (including invasions and subversion) of the political and cultural elite of the United States of America, when this condemnation does not necessarily apply to the ordinary Americans who have little knowledge or interest, in general, in most foreign affairs, so too the Bible refers to the Jews to discuss the corrupt elite of the Jewish nation during the late Second Temple period. The fact that this leadership and its corruption brought upon the entire nation a harsh judgment suggests that the quality of leaders is of immense importance for our nation and for the world at large. Let us heed that lesson while there is time to reverse any decree of judgment against us, if it is not already too late.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/book-review-the-trial-of-jesus-from-a-lawyers-standpoint-volume-1/