The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke certainly portray Jesus in conflict with Jewish groups like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but John gives us a blanket condemnation of the Jewish people. He repeatedly refers to “the Jews” as Jesus’ opponents. In each of the other Gospels, this global, pejorative term is only used five or six times, but John mentions “the Jews” some seventy-one times. And according to John, “the Jews” are responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion and death. 

The explanation for John’s anti-Jewishness can be found in a linguistic and sociological analysis of the community that produced the Gospel of John. Modern scholars have determined that John’s Gospel is a compilation of various oral traditions and documents. Parts of John display an older, “low” Christological tradition in which Jesus is referred to as “the lamb of God,” “rabbi,” or even “messiah,” none of which include the notion of divinity. A rabbi, for example, is a teacher; and the messiah is a human being, chosen by God to rule his people Israel. 

Other, later sources in John evince a “high Christology,” which identifies Jesus with God. So, for example, John has Jesus say, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (NIV) “I am” is, of course, a circumlocution for “God.” Jesus is saying that he is divine, an  assertion for which “the Jews” want to stone him when he makes this claim.

Scholars have hypothesized that the older, Christological passages must have come from a Jewish community in which Christian Jews were a minority. Christians are, of course, notorious for proselytizing. As the Christian Jews tried to convert their fellow “Jewish Jews,” the unity of the community was disrupted. Eventually, the Christian Jewish minority was formally excluded from the community. These “excommunicated” Christian Jews were quite bitter about their expulsion, and—in later passages of John—expressed virulent anti-Jewish sentiments, throwing about the term “the Jews” and building an ideological wall between themselves and their erstwhile colleagues. Now that they were on their own, the Christian Jews developed a high Christology, in which Jesus was no mere rabbi or messiah, but God Himself. This is the Christology that dominates John’s Gospel.

Of course, there is an element of speculation in this scenario, but it seems very probable that scholars are right in positing a break-up of an original Jewish community in which—for a time—Christians were accepted as one type of Jew, later to be cast outside the pale.

Friends have had a somewhat similar experience, dividing numerous times. In fact, we now have the FUM Friends, who generally espouse a high Christology, and liberal Friends, who see Jesus as a prophet or wise man, but by no means God Incarnate. I personally favor the idea of Jesus as prophet, but—in any case—John is my least favorite Gospel. I believe that John, in spite of occasional low Christology, takes us far away from the historical Jesus into a supernatural realm that has much to do with theology and little to do with history. And, for me, history trumps theology.   

(This article was based on Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 2004).
           
~ Richard Russell     

…is the title of a six-part Netflix documentary about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. To tell the story, director Joe Berlinger uses footage from the Nuremburg trial of Hitler’s principal henchmen, flashing back to archival film of the events described in the trial. That archival footage has been colorized so that it seems contemporary rather than black-and-white, grainy film from the distant past. When archival footage is not available, Berlinger presents actors recreating the  events.

He also uses artificial intelligence to reproduce William Shirer’s voice. Shirer was a newsman stationed in Berlin during Hitler’s Third Reich. Excerpts from Shirer’s books come alive as his AI-generated voice narrates the action. Although Berlinger does employ interviews with historians, that action is never impeded by scholarly commentary. The documentary is a drama, frameworked by the drama of the Nuremburg trial. 

This is, of course, a story of unspeakable violence. Besides the harrowing scenes from Nazi concentration camps, there is an unsettling film of the dead bodies of Hitler’s collaborators after the court’s death sentence was executed. The corpses are lined up, lying on the ground, the hangman’s ropes still attached to their necks. In short, those Friends who prefer not to see filmed violence may well want to avoid viewing Hitler and the Nazis.

And yet, the Peace Testimony pre-supposes that Friends have some experience, real or vicarious, of violence. And that experience should be relevant to contemporary events. Hitler and the Nazis makes us aware of the relevance of Nazism. Hitler speaks of “making Germany great again” and Hitler’s Berghof retreat is compared to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. It’s clear that some of the same forces operating in Nazi Germany—polarization and distrust of democratic institutions—are at work here in the U.S. of 2024.

I highly recommend this Netflix documentary, which transcends the documentary format and presents us a history that is alive and riveting.

~ Richard Russell