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Prof. Jules Isaac's 'Jesus and Israel'
Demands Rectification of Gospel Bias;
Historian Honored by Theologians
Until MO, Prof. Jules Isaac,
the eminent French scholar whose
seven-volume history of fhe world
was the standard work used in
the secondary schools and uni-
versities in France, was uncon-
cerned about Jewish matters. His
father and grandfather were
French professional army officers
and he himself received the Croix
de Guerre and the Legion of
Honor in World War I. With
Hitler's rise to power he became
concerned and began to think of
his own Jewish backgtound. When
Hitler's forces gained domination
over France in 1940, the holocaust
troubled him. Out of his anguish
emerged the powerful work, "Jesus
and Israel," which has just been
published by Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
"Jesus and Israel" was written
more than 20 years ago. It was
presented by the author to the
late Pope John XXIII in June of
1960, and is believed to have had
its impact upon the Vatican Coun-
cil II five years later. Prof. Isaac
analyzed in his immense study the
Gospels and he proved emphati-
cally that Christian teachings con-
tributed toward the festering of
anti-Seinitism.
Prof. Isaac's argument was
that Christianity disregarded the
Jewishness of Jesus. He argued
that Jesus was completely Jew-
ish, in his observances, in the
language he used, in observing
Jewish laws, in his family back-
ground and in his loyalties.
Nevertheless, anti-Semitism de-
veloped from the misrepresenta-
tions and misinterpretations in
the Gospels.
With his analytical skill that
marked all his historical works,
Prof. Isaac, who died in 1963 at
the age of 86, showed how the
Gospels carried prejudiced ac-
counts about the Jews, how Chris-
tianity's major trials were attri-
buted to Jews thereby extending
the bias.
He argued that Jews were totally
innocent of crimes ascribed to
them in Christian traditions. He
maintained that Jews in that era
did not reject Jesus and that
Jesus did not reject them, that
Jews
did not crucify Jesus or
curse him.
His emphasis was' that Chris-
tianity was of Jewish origin, that
Jesus, a Jew, was born of a
Jewish mother, his teachings were
rooted in Jewish traditions, he
preached in synagogues, his dis-
ciples were Jews, and their Gos-
pels were of Jewish origin.
Prof. Isaac's contention also
was that those who heard Jesus,
who, he believed, also preached
in the temple, accepted him; that
his enemies were the same
small group that opposed the
Prophets when they encountered
the minute opposition, "the same
he would have encountered
among all peoples."
Prof. Isaac was especially ef-
fective in condemning the charge
of deicide against the Jewish peo-
ple. His charge was that "it is a
common observation that error,
legend, untruth, myth fit man's
measure far better than truth, and
hence are more readily prop-
agated in time and space," and
he added that because of this
basic dishonesty. "Hitlerian racism
was propagated." Deeply moved
by the Nazi crimes against the
Jews, he wrote:
"The German responsibility for
these crimes, overwhelming as it
has been, is only a derivative
responsibility, grafted like a most
hideous parasite on a centuries-
old tradition which Is a Christian
tradition. How can we forget that
Christianity, especially from the
11th Century on, practiced a policy
of degradation and pogroms against
44 '
telowbor44.-Nac
the Jews which has extended—
among certain Christian peoples—
into the contemporary era, and
whose survival is observable still
in Poland, with its highly Catholic
history, whose Hitlerian system
was merely an atrociously per-
fected copy?"
Concluding with an 18-point pro-
gram to rectify Christian teach-
ings, Prof. Isaac urged that Chris-
tians be taught among other things,
that their liturgy was borrowe91
from Jewish sources; that "Chris-
tianity was born of a living, not
a degenerate Judaism;" that "his-
tory flatly contradicts the theologi-
cal myth of the Dispersion as pro-
vidential punishment for the Cruci-
fixion;" that Jesus was Jewish,
his name is Jewish, the term
Christ is the. Greek for Messiah,
that Jesus spoke the Jewish
Aramaic dialect; that Jesus was
not rejected by Jews and that
there is nothing to prove "that
the spiritual elite of Judaisre was
involved in the plot against him;
that Jews played no role in the
alleged Jewish trial of Jesus; to
know the exact fact about the trial
that was a Roman one.
Prof. Isaac appended to his con-
clusion the text of the 10 points
adopted in 1947 in Seelisberg,
Switzerland, by the Third •om-
mission of the 'International Emer-
gency Conference of Christians
end Jews in which the libels
against ;Jews in Christian ranks
were refuted and a plea was issued
for basic understanding of the
truth as contrasted by the preju-
dices that were inherent in Chris-
tian ranks.
Thus, Prof. Isaac's important
analyses demand rectification of
the unjust teachings that have
turned Gospels into anti-Semitic
literature.
*
*
Theologians Pay Tribute
to Prof. Isaac's Memory
NEW YORK — Sixty Christian
and Jewish theologians and schol-
ars, including the heads of several
Protestant denominations in the
United States, convened on May 6
to eulogize and discuss the writ-
ings of a man who is credited
with having influenced Pope John
XXIII and Vatican Council II to
reject the charge of collective
Jewish guilty for the crucifixon.
The subject of their appraisal
was Prof. Jules Isaac, the noted
French historian, whose• "Jesus
and Israel," has been. published in
its first English translation by
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
The interreligious symposium,
which began with a luncheon and
lasted throughout the afternoon,
held at the headquarters of the
American Jewish Committee, fea-
tured three major speakers: Mme.
Claire_ Huchet Bishop, long-time
disciple of 'Prof. Isaac, who edited
the English translation of "Jesus
and Israel" and wrote an inter-
pretive forward to the book; the
Rev. Edward H. Flannery, execu-
tive secretary of the Secretariat
for Catholic-Jewish Relations, Na-
tional Conference of Catholic
Bishops; and Rev. Dr. Jaroslav
Pelikan, Titus Street Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, Yale Di-
vinity School.
The Rev. John F. Hotchkin,
newly-elected executive secretary
of the Commission on Ecumenism
and Interreligious Affairs of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops, spoke on "Jewish-Chris-
tion Relations in the Ecumenical
Context." Rabbi Marc 'H. Tanen-
baum, national director of inter-
religious affairs of the American
Jewish Committee, who examined
the impact of "Jesus and Israel"
on the growing international move-
ment of Jewish-Christian under-
standing, was chairman of the
symposium.
terloar,'
'11111%P111WP
Mme. Bishop, who described her-
self as "a French Catholic who
-cannot understand, from a Chris-
tian point of view, crusades, in-
quisitions, passion plays, wars of
religion and pogroms," opened the
symposium with a review of Jules
Isaac's life prior to his writing of
"Jesus and Israel." She pointed
out that he had been totally un-
concerned with his own Jewish
background until Hitler's armies
invaded France in 1940, and then
he began to question how a Nazi
holocaust could take place in a
country that had been Christian-
ized for nearly 2,000 years, she
said.
Speaking as his "spiritual
heir," a term Isaac applied to
her, Mme. Bishop urged the
Christian leaders at the sym-
posium to take action to uproot
the anti-Semitic attitudes that
still prevade the world today.
She stated:
"The battle against Christian
anti-Semitism, conscious and un-
conscious, is not won yet. Where
were the Christians during the
Six-Day War? Has not Oberam-
mergau played to capacity au-
diences, mostly American, in
1950, 60 and 70? Why was there
in 1970 a World Conference of
Christians for Palestine where
only -Arabs were heard and not
Jews? That Arabs should be
heard, we all agree, but why not
the Jews? Why this double
standard which prevades so
many Christians' reactions when
it comes to the Middle East?
Even turning to the Soviet Union,
we can well wonder whether it
would act the way it does re-
garding the Jews had not the
Russian soul been permeated for
centuries by Christian anti-
Semitic brainwashing which sur
vives, unheeded, in the atheist's
subconscious."
Responding from a Catholic
point of view, Father Flannery
referred to "Jesus and Israel" as
"a book unique in Christian his-
tory, indeed the most potent ex-
posure of 'Christian anti-Judaism
ever written by Christian or Jew."
He called for "the destruction of
Christian anti-Judaism and the re-
newal of Christianity," which, he
said, are basically the same thing.
Father Flannery, author of the
prize-winning study, "The Anguish
of the Jews," pointed out that his-
torically many anti-Semitic teach-
ings throughout the centuries had
been evoked as underpinning for
theological doctrine.
Reinforcing Father Flannery's
evaluation of the force of Prof.
Isaac's book, Dr. Pelikan, one of
America's leading Protestant
theological scholars, described
"Jesus and Israel" as "a disturb-
ing book ... -because it addresses
a penetrating accusation to the
concience of Christians, the ac-
cusation that the 'oratorical plati-
tudes' of Christian thinkers and
writers 'led to Auschwitz'."
Dr. Pelikan, who is the author
of the multi-volume study on "The
'Christian Tradition: "A History
of the Development of Doctrine,"
took issue, however, with Isaac's
thesis that history distorted the
facts of Jesus relationship to
Judaism and the Jewish people.
He pointed out that among Jesus'
earliest followers, and even in the
Gospels themselves, there was an
effort to disengage the figure of
Jesus from his Jewish lineage by
denying His humanity and em-
phasing His divinity.
Despite his criticism, however,
Dr. Pelikan called "Jesus and Is-
rael" unique among the biblical
studies of its time" in that it
"took seriously the immediate con-
text of the life and teachings of
Jesus."
DAIA Rejects Defense
of Offensive Programs
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — The
Delegacion de Associones Is-
raelitas Argentinas (DAIA), the
central organization of Argentine
Jewry, has rejected Channel 13's
position that "only" two episodes
in its series "The Beginning and
the End" depicted Jews as vil-
lains.
In reply to the television sta-
tion's charge that the DAIA was
magnifying the issue out of pro-
portion, the Jewish association re-
torted: "We unmagnify but we also
unminimize. None of the criticized
episodes was educational. They
only propagate discrimination."
The DAIA had concentrated its
criticism on the episode titled "The
Frustration," in which a Jew
swindles 150 families through finan-
cial manipulation. The weekly
series dramatizes true cases of cor-
ruption.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
14—Friday, May 14, 1971
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