We Jews know Jesus in a way – in the impulses and emotions of his essential
Jewishness – that remains inaccessible to the Gentiles subject to him.
(Martin Buber, Christus, Chassidismus, Gnosis, 1963)
Galileans were staunch nationalists and, according to rabbinic evidence were also quarrelsome and aggressive among themselves; though even their critics admitted that, in contrast to the Judeans who "cared for their wealth more than for their glory", they preferred honour to financial gains.1
And since Jesus was a Galilean, it may have been Galilean chauvinism that was responsible for his apparent antipathy towards Gentiles. For not only did he feel himself sent to the Jews alone:2
I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.(Matthew 15:24)he qualified non-Jews, though no doubt with oratorical exaggeration, as "dogs" and "swine":3
Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you.(Matthew 7:6)When the man from Gerasa (one of the ten Transjordanian pagan cities) whom he had freed from demonic possession begged to be allowed into his fellowship, Jesus replied with a categorical refusal:
Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.(Mark 7:27)
It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.(Matthew 15:26)
Go home to your own folk... 4Moreover, the twelve apostles charged with proclaiming the Gospel were expressly forbidden to do so either to Gentiles or to Samaritans:5
Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.(Matthew 10:5-6)The authenticity of these sayings must be well-nigh impregnable, taking into account their shocking inappropriateness in an internationally open Church. The attitude that inspired them was in any case clearly inherited by those disciples who, to start with, instinctively rejected the idea of accepting the Roman Cornelius among their ranks,6 and displayed continuing suspicion towards the supra-nationalist Paul. To quote a modern writer: "Had Jesus championed or evidenced a point of view where Jew and Gentile stood alike, it is extraordinarily difficult to understand how his followers could have proved so obtuse."7 Be this as it may, a slant of such a kind in a man otherwise influenced by universal ideas, a teacher who encouraged his followers to love not only their friends but also their opponents in imitation of the God who causes the sun to rise on good and bad alike, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust,8 requires some thought...
______________
1. Mishnah Nedarim 5:5; Babylonian Talmud Nedarim 48a; Jerusalem Talmud Ketuboth 29b.2. Matthew 15:24.
3. Matthew 7:6; Mark 7:27; Matthew 15:26
4. Mark 5:18-19; Luke 8:38-9.
5. Matt. 10:5-6. That Jesus was prepared to cure the (probably Jewish) servant of the Roman centurion cannot be invoked to mitigate his anti-Gentilism. Perhaps the most striking feature of the story concerns his astonishment that a pagan could be so full of trust. Cf. Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10.
6. Acts 10:1-48.
7. M. S. Enslin, The Prophet from Nazareth (1961), pp. 160-1.
8. Matt. 5:44-8.
