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| Michael Brown |
Michael Brown in his book "Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Vol 1" writes in a question and answer format. His dialogue on supersessionism is an interesting read.
Q. The real problem with the New Testament is the notion that God is finished with the Jewish people, that they are now the synagogue of Satan, having been replaced by Christians who are the true Jews and the New Israel.
A. Although it is easy to see how you came up with this idea, it is incorrect and without foundation. This doctrine, known as replacement theology or supersessionism, has been taught at times by many church leaders, but it remains an unbiblical view. Again, I’ll respond point by point for clarity’s sake.
Does the New Testament say that God is finished with Israel? Absolutely not! As we saw earlier, Paul, in the fullest treatment of this question in the New Testament, emphatically rejected this notion. Rather, he explained to his Gentile readers that his people Israel had only stumbled temporarily, explaining that they were partially hardened (see Romans 9–11; for the concept of God hardening his people in the Tanakh, see Deut. 29:4; Isa. 6:9–10). The hardening was partial in at least two ways: (1) It was only temporary, and in the end, Israel as a nation would turn back in faith; and (2) it did not apply to all the people. After all, virtually all of Yeshua’s first followers—amounting to many thousands—were Jews.
In keeping with this concept of Israel’s final restoration, Jesus prophesied to his disciples that “at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man [the Messiah] sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging [or leading, ruling] the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). The tribes of Israel will be part of God’s endtime kingdom. It is because Yeshua’s disciples knew this that shortly before he ascended to heaven they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Rather than rebuking them and calling them stupid for thinking for a moment that God would ever restore the kingdom to Israel, he said, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). In other words, it’s none of your business to know when this will happen. Instead, he told them their job was to go into all the world and tell everyone that the Messiah had come (Acts 1:8).
It is true that Jesus taught that “many will come from the east and the west [meaning Gentiles], and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:11–12). But this was saying nothing more than that many Jews, who should have been the first to recognize the Messiah, will be rejected and left out because of their unbelief, while many believing Gentiles will enjoy Israel’s blessings in their stead. The entire context of Yeshua’s ministry makes this clear.
Q. “But didn’t Paul teach that the church was the new Israel?”
A. Not at all. Rather, he taught that Gentile believers in the Messiah became fellow members of the household of God along with Jewish believers, but they remained Gentiles. Read through Romans 9–11, where Paul addresses Gentile believers as Gentiles, talking to them about his people Israel: “I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people [Israel] to envy and save some of them” (Rom. 11:13–14).
It is true Paul applied some of the spiritual descriptions of Israel to Gentile Christians, but he never said the church was Israel or, more importantly, that the church had replaced Israel. I have documented this in detail in my book Our Hands Are Stained with Blood. As I noted there,
Many people have feelings and impressions about what the Scriptures teach. But the facts are the facts: While the New Testament often describes Israel and the Church in similar terms—both are pictured as the children of God, the bride of God, the chosen people, etc.—on no definite occasion does the New Testament ever call the Church “Israel.” In fact, out of the 77 times that the words “Israel” and “Israelite” occur in the Greek New Testament, there are only two verses in which “Israel” could possibly refer to the Church as a whole: Galatians 6:16, where Paul speaks of the “Israel of God” and Revelation 7:4, where John speaks of the 144,000 sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel. This is saying something! Seventy-five “definites” and only two “maybes.” I wouldn’t want to side with the “maybes”!
As for the verses open to dispute, in Galatians 6:16 the King James Version, the New King James Version and the New American Standard Bible [important, contemporary Christian translations] all imply the same thing: “The Israel of God” does not refer to the whole Church. It refers to believing Jews. The same can be said for the description of the 144,000 sealed in Revelation 7:4. It most probably describes the final harvest of Jews worldwide. Elsewhere in the Book of Revelation “Israel” means “Israel” (Rev. 2:14) and the “twelve tribes of Israel” mean “the twelve tribes of Israel,” as distinguished from the “twelve apostles” (Rev. 21:12–14).
The same point can be made even more emphatically with regard to the use of the term Jew in the Greek New Testament: It occurs more than 190 times, referring in general to ethnic, national Jews, or specifically to Judean Jews or to Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.
Q. “What about Romans 2:28–29, where Paul says that those who are Jews outwardly (meaning in the flesh) are not Jews, whereas a true Jew is one who is a Jew inwardly (meaning spiritually)? According to Paul himself, if I don’t believe in Jesus, even though both my parents are Jewish, I’m not a Jew, whereas a Gentile Christian is a Jew.”
A. Again, your interpretation is wrong. In context, Paul is addressing Jews living in Rome, and his question has to do with who is a real Jew in God’s eyes. Is it the Jew who is circumcised in body only, or the Jew who is circumcised in spirit as well? Thus the New International Version rightly translates these verses as follows: “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God” (Rom. 2:28–29).
Do you see Paul’s point? It would be like me bringing three men before you, two from Africa and one from America. One of the Africans is a devout atheist, the other a devout Christian. The American is also a devout Christian. If I asked you, “Which of these men is the spiritual African?” you would reply, “The African Christian!” You wouldn’t think for a moment that the American Christian was the spiritual African, would you? In the same way, if I brought before you a Jewish atheist, a God-fearing Jew, and a God-fearing Gentile Christian and asked you, “Which of these is a spiritual Jew?” you would say, “The God-fearing Jew.”
That was Paul’s point. Between two Jews, one who is circumcised in his flesh but does not know and serve the Lord, and one who is circumcised in his flesh and knows and serves the Lord, who is the true Jew, the real Jew in God’s sight? Who is the spiritual Jew? You wouldn’t think for a second he was speaking of a spiritual Gentile.
Q. “Okay, I’ll admit your interpretation makes sense, but what about those verses in which Jews who oppose Christians are referred to as the ‘synagogue of Satan’? If that’s not anti-Semitic, nothing is.”
A. Once again, I have no doubt that the verses to which you refer have been used by anti-Semites, just as verses in the Tanakh that call our people a “sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption” (Isa. 1:4) have been used against us. Still, you might be surprised with the facts behind the “synagogue of Satan” accusation.
This description is found just twice in the New Testament, Revelation 2:9, where Jesus comforts believers in Smyrna who were experiencing intense persecution and even martyrdom (“I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan”), and Revelation 3:9, where Jesus encourages suffering believers in the city of Philadelphia (in Asia Minor), assuring them, “I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you” (Rev. 3:9).
On the one hand, there is the possibility that the people to whom Yeshua referred—and who were causing real hardship for these Christians in Smyrna and Philadelphia—were actually not Jews at all. This would be similar to a modern-day cult such as the Black Hebrews: They strongly oppose both Jews and Christians and claim to be the real Jews, the true Israel, when in fact they are not. As to being called a synagogue, it is important to remember that the Greek word used here could simply mean a meeting place, as in James (Jacob) 2:2—“Suppose a man comes into your meeting” (Greek, synagoges).
On the other hand, it could well be that Yeshua was speaking of his own kinsmen but using biting, prophetic hyperbole, just as when the Lord said through the prophet Hosea, “You are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hosea 1:9), and again, speaking of Israel as his wife, “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband” (Hosea 2:2). In both of these verses, God completely repudiates his people/wife Israel, only to immediately promise Israel’s restoration (see Hosea 1:10; 2:16). The lesson we learn is that sometimes, when our people continually disobeyed the Lord and broke his covenant, he spoke of them as if they were not his people at all. In the same way, when the Messiah’s own people actually tried to stop Gentiles from hearing about him (and this did happen; see, e.g., Acts 14:1–20), he could say of them, “You claim to be Jews but are not; you’re really a meeting place of Satan.”
“But that’s so harsh!” you say.
Yes, it does seem harsh, but no harsher than the accusation in the (Jewish) Dead Sea Scrolls that Jews who opposed their (Jewish) group were part of the “congregation of Belial.” (Belial was synonymous with Satan.) And it is certainly a lot less harsh than the Talmudic claim that Jesus is now in hell, burning in excrement (see b. Gittin 56b–57a).
In any case, this is where we get to the root of the problem. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, they were written primarily for their own believing community, consisting only of Jews. When the New Testament was written, it was written for a different believing community, consisting of Jews and Gentiles. Over the process of time, this community of believers (called the church) became increasingly Gentile and, hence, increasingly ignorant of its Jewish roots, the very thing Paul warned about (see Rom. 11:17–26 and the discussion above, 2.7). Ultimately, some of this church turned hostile to its Jewish roots, utilizing texts that at most provided evidence of a very selective anti-Judaism, and, more than eighteen hundred years later, were used to fuel the fires of racial anti-Semitism.
As a follower of Jesus, I grieve over this misuse of my sacred Scriptures, and I stand against any so-called Christian who would misuse them in this way today. I also believe there should be a greater sensitivity in modern translations of the New Testament, not altering a word that was written but translating with special clarity in light of the terrible history of misinterpretation that we have described in part.
But that is only part of the grief I experience. You see, as a Jew, I agonize over the fact that our people as a whole missed the Messiah when he came, instead turning against him. How awful it is! We broke the Sinai covenant over and over again, we rejected prophet after prophet, even killing some, and then we rejected the Messiah, delivering him up to be crucified. So both the church and the Jewish people have sinned!
There is only one way to make things right: Let everyone who claims to be a Christian demonstrate it by showing the love of the Messiah to his own Jewish people, utterly repudiating even the slightest hint of anti-Semitism, and let every Jewish person turn back to Yeshua—our one and only Messiah—in repentance and faith.
Let me close this rather lengthy answer with an observation. As I mentioned earlier, I can honestly say that in almost thirty years in the church, I have rarely, if ever, met a “Christian” anti-Semite, and when I have told Christians about the horrors of anti-Semitism in church history, they were utterly shocked. Moreover, when I shared with them that many Jews actually believe the New Testament itself is anti-Semitic, they were dumbfounded. These people who carefully studied the New Testament for years never came to any anti-Semitic conclusions. The thought of such interpretations never even dawned on them.
This should give you pause for thought, and it should help explain to you why, at this critical juncture in Jewish history, Israel’s best friends are Bible-believing, New testament-reading Christians. I know this is the opposite of what you have been taught, but it’s the truth. The gospel truth.
Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (170–175). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
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