Author Description

The relations between Judaism and Christianity are not simply relations between two different religions. Christianity claims that it is the true heir to Judaism, the “New, True Israel” (“Verus Israel”), and sees itself not next to Judaism, but replacing it. The very continuing existence of Judaism is therefore perceived by Christians as a challenge to Christianity, as a refutation of its fundamentals. Christians have always been upset by the question of “Why do the Jewish people continue to exist, even though they should have disappeared?”. The fact that those Jews contemporary to him were precisely the ones Jesus appealed to (“I wasn't sent to anyone but the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24)), precisely those who saw and heard him, the overwhelming majority of them did not accept the preaching of Jesus – represents a considerable theological difficulty for Christianity. With time, this difficulty only increased due to the indifference of the Jews towards Christian preaching. “Their rejection threatened the Christian idea far more profoundly than any pagan rejection. Why, of all people, would Jews be unmoved by the logic, so elaborately displayed in the kerygma (the apostolic proclamation of salvation through Jesus Christ -Z.F.), of their own Scriptures? The truth of Jesus Christ is proven by Jewish Scriptures This essential structure of the Christian claim must be confronted anew by Christians. Why? Because Jewish denial of that claim remains a mortal threat. The entire history of conflict between Judaism and Christianity begins here. And the problem abides. The point, however, is that this phenomenon of Jewish indifference to the coming of one announced as the Jewish Messiah called that kerygma into question from the start. This was true despite the fact that, in the decades after Jesus, there were various tellings of his story…” (James Carroll,Constantine’s Sword:The Church and the Jews, 2001, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 130). The