Some reflections on Jewish Universalism

Abstract

The accusation that Judaism is insular, ritualistic, misanthropic, and particularist is almost as ancient as Judaism itself. The idea seems to have first emerged in the third century BCE, around the same time that Jews throughout the Hellenistic world were establishing diasporan communities. Although Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans accused these Jews, and their Judean kin, of being insular and misanthropic, the argument that Jewish particularism posed an existential threat to a universalist system is primarily a making of the Church Fathers. Molded by second-century figures such as Justin and Tertullian, and expanded by John Chrysostpm and Augustine in the fourth century, this idea presents Judaism as a symbolic force whose essence opposes and undermines the universality of Christianity. Ironically, the argument that Judaism is excessively legalistic presupposes gnostic ideas that the Church rejected in the fourth century that separate the Old Testament from the New Testament on the basis that the latter knows only a lower god that is angry and retributive, while the former encounters a higher deity that is nurturing and forgiving. Though the Church rejected these gnostic ideas, it tolerated the notion that Jesus worked in opposition to a Jewish value system rather than within one, and that his relationship with the Pharisees was one of fundamental opposition. The presumption that Judaism is particularist while Christianity is universalist continues to find expression in theological and cultural discourse today. (from Introduction)