#  Antisemitism in a New Testament Text 

 





May 13, 2025

 

 

**A New Testament Source for Modern Antisemitism**

Antisemitism has been on my mind lately — as is the case for so many of us, in the shadow of the violence engulfing Israel and Gaza for well over a year, with tremors shaking societies in the West. My own university, Harvard, has just issued a 311-page report, [*Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias*](https://www.harvard.edu/task-force-on-antisemitism/), after very unwelcome events on campus after October 7, 2023.

I had not expected the issue to shadow my ministry in my regular parish, in Sharon, MA. I was there for the 7:30am Mass on Sunday, May 11, to preside and preach. The day dawned warm and sunny, for a welcome change. It was Mother’s Day. Catholics everywhere were celebrating our new pope, American-born Leo XIV. There was much to celebrate!

But all week long, as I prayed over the readings and pondered what I would say in my homily at the early Mass, I could not avoid being pulled back again and again to the first reading, from Acts of the Apostles 13, a text that reports an unhappy split between the Jewish community and the Gentile community in the earliest Church. In Antioch, Paul and Barnabas go to the synagogue on the sabbath day, and Paul is invited to speak. He gives a powerful discourse on the history of Israel, and on the ministry, passion, wrongful death, and resurrection of Christ. The events recounted in the reading seem like a report on an unhappy and bitter divorce of a couple that in most ways were very much alike:

“The next sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy; they contradicted what was spoken by Paul, blaspheming. Then both Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying,

“It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” (Isaiah 49.6)

“When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and praised the word of the Lord; and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers. Thus the word of the Lord spread throughout the region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, and stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their region. So they shook the dust off their feet in protest against them, and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 13:44-52)

At Mass I first acknowledged the positive side of the reading. The Gospel is recognized as good news for all people, and Christians are right to want to share it with everyone who will listen — even if today, we must do so only in humility and with greatest respect for the people of other faiths around us. We who are Gentiles must be profoundly grateful.

But on a Sunday morning, what must bother all of us is the very negative presentation of “the Jews” in the reading. The long 13th chapter of Acts earlier on has already shown the tensions. It has already narrated clashes between Paul, a Jew, and some of the Jews of Asia Minor. In Paphos, they meet the Roman proconsul, Sergius, who is with “a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus”, who argues with Paul and tries to prevent Sergius from conversion. But Bar-Jesus is blinded, left groping in the dark. After that, he mentioned no more — a symbol of Jews in the dark?

They go to Antioch, a major town with many Jewish but a majority of Gentile residents. Paul preaches eloquently in the synagogue, telling the story of Israel from the time of the Exodus to the establishment of the Jewish people in Canaan — after God “had destroyed seven nations” there. (13.19) He speaks of the judges and rulers of Israel, and of King David, and finally of Jesus, born of the lineage of David. He recounts the coming of Christ and his rejection, and crucifixion and death at the hands of the “residents of Jerusalem and their leaders” who, “even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed.” (13.28) Listeners are impressed, and invite them back for the next Sabbath — leading to the scene recounted in the Acts 13 reading before us on Sunday.

This second time, the rush to violence is immediate. “The Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy; and blaspheming, they contradicted what was spoken by Paul.” It is then that Paul and Barnabas lose patience and dismiss those Jews who show themselves to be “unworthy of eternal life“, and turn to the Gentiles. The scene ends with “the Jews” inciting a persecution, so that Paul and Barnabas “shook the dust off their feet in protest against them, and went to Iconium.” The rupture has reached a decisive point.

I am not a New Testament scholar or specialist in Jewish-Christian relations. Many a fine scholar has explained chapters such as Acts 13, which has been the topic of many conversations among Jews and Christians in recent decades. All to the good. But I could see, all week long, and on Sunday morning, that we must not allow such passages to be read in church without comment. When people show up for Mass on Sunday, we cannot assume they know the Acts well, or that they are up to date on the decades of dialogue between Catholics and Jews since Vatican II. It may seem to many that the point is simply that Jews reject Christ, and so the Church is for the Gentiles. Not so cruelly simple! We can respect the story that is told, but we should worry about its slant, the opening to the Gentiles linked to the idea that “the Jews” — some Jews — rejected Christ and were guilty of his blood.

And so, in a short homily, I tried to point out the constructive and the destructive elements of the account, and to remind the congregation and myself that the sad incidents in Acts 13 cannot be taken as eternally and essentially true, as if all Jewish people are to be defined as false, or blasphemers, or unworthy of eternal life, or out to harm Christians. Our duty is to look back with sadness on what happened. Surely the opening of the good news to the Gentiles did not have to entail any absolute break with Jewish communities. Nor can a break occurring 2000 years ago be used to justify hostility or suspicion now.

A reading at a Sunday Mass in a Catholic parish may seem far removed from the woes of 2023-24 on the Harvard campus, or any campus. But traumatic events such as the October 7 attack and slaughter of innocent Jews, and the still greater killing of thousands and thousands of people in Gaza, bring out the worst in people under stress. Antisemitism has many ancestors, but one of them is our (mis)use of our own New Testament. In fear, in anger, some may fall back into old attitudes, as if “the Jews” are the problem, guilty deniers of Christ. When we read aloud passages such as Acts 13, we need immediately to stop and point out what such readings do not tell us about our Jewish sisters and brothers today, in our towns and cities, and on campuses such as Harvard. Troubles at Harvard? One source, slender but deep-rooted, may be passages such as Acts 13.

Harvard also issued a report on [*Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias*](https://www.harvard.edu/task-force-on-anti-muslim-and-anti-arab-bias/) on campus — the topic for another blog, as we recall the good and bad histories of Christians and Muslims through the centuries.