Judaism

Biblical Judaism does not begin with speculation about God: it begins with a call and a Covenant. That is Israel's decisive conviction and the founding datum that the Christian faith receives without reserve: God is not an idea, an energy or a projection; he is the living Lord who speaks, acts, liberates, judges and leads his people through history.

Abraham and the promise

In the 19th or 18th century before Jesus Christ, according to the traditional dating, God calls Abram to leave Ur and Haran:

"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (...) By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." — Genesis 12:1-3^[3]

Abraham is not only the biological ancestor of Israel: he is the model of faith for Israel and for the Church. Saint Paul calls him the "father of all believers" (Rom 4:11) because he believed before he saw. Circumcision is given to him as the sign of the Covenant (Gen 17), Isaac is born against all expectation (Gen 21), and the averted sacrifice on Moriah (Gen 22) becomes, in the Christian reading, the first profound prefiguration of the Father's sacrifice in handing over his Son.

Abraham's election is not an ethnic privilege but a mission: to be a blessing "for all the families of the earth". This universal dimension of the promise is, from the very beginning, what prevents Judaism from being a tribal religion and what prepares the Christian opening to the nations.

Moses, the Exodus and the gift of the Law

Four centuries later, the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob are slaves in Egypt. Jewish and Christian tradition receives Moses as the author of the Pentateuch and affirms the historicity of the Exodus — its short chronology places it around the 15th century before Jesus Christ (1491 in Ussher's calculation); the 13th-century dating used here as a reference point is the one proposed by a large part of modern historiography: it is within this framework that God raises up Moses. The most widespread historical-critical hypothesis proposes a much later redaction of the narrative; here are its limits: it rests on methodological presuppositions — notably the exclusion of miracle and prophecy as explanatory categories — which the traditional reading does not share, and not on direct documentary proof. The theophany of the burning bush reveals a Name that will remain the centre of monotheistic confession:

"I AM WHO I AM. (...) Say this to the sons of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" — Exodus 3:14^[4]

The Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, the march through the desert, the gift of the Torah at Sinai and the Covenant sealed with blood structure Israel's memory forever. The Decalogue (Ex 20; Deut 5) becomes the moral grammar of the people. The feasts — Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles — rhythm the sanctification of time. God's presence dwells in the Tent and then in the Temple, through the Ark of the Covenant, the place of his encounter with his people.

The Torah is not only a moral code: it is a way of life before God. It governs prayer, feasts, dietary prescriptions (kashrut), circumcision, the Sabbath, social justice and sacrificial worship. Even today, in rabbinic Judaism, the study of the Torah is a sacred activity in its own right: it is read, sung, commented upon and lived on.

The Davidic monarchy and the Temple of Jerusalem

After the conquest of Canaan and the unstable period of the Judges, Israel gives itself kings. Saul first, then David (around 1000 BC), who establishes Jerusalem as capital and receives the founding promise of an eternal throne:

"When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. (...) Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever." — 2 Samuel 7:12-16^[5]

This is the Davidic promise, the principal source of Israel's messianic expectation. The Messiah will be the "son of David". His son Solomon (around 970-931 BC) builds the First Temple, the central place of sacrificial worship. Nearly four centuries later, in 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar destroys it and deports part of the people to Babylon. This first destruction of the Temple opens a decisive spiritual crisis: can the Covenant survive without a Temple?

The prophets and the expectation of the Messiah

It is the great prophetic tradition that answers this crisis in depth. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets and Daniel hold Israel fast in the hope of a divine faithfulness greater than human unfaithfulness. They announce a return, a Messiah, a Suffering Servant, a New Covenant written on hearts, a universal outpouring of the Spirit.

"Behold, the days are coming — oracle of the Lord — when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. (...) I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." — Jeremiah 31:31-33^[6]

At the return from exile, from 538 BC onwards, a Second Temple is rebuilt. The so-called Second Temple period (515 BC – 70 AD) sees the birth of several Jewish currents: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots. It is also the time of the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible produced in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, which becomes the reference Scripture of Hellenistic Jews and then of Christians.

At this time, the expectation of a Messiah becomes a dominant trait. The exact nature of this Anointed One remains debated: a Davidic king restoring Israel? An eschatological priest? A teacher of righteousness? A heavenly Son of Man? The diversity of hopes is attested by the Qumran manuscripts, discovered in the Judean desert from 1947 onwards, which include in particular the Great Isaiah Scroll copied around 125 before Jesus Christ.^[7] These scrolls prove that the prophetic chapters announcing the Suffering Servant or the coming of the Messiah were already circulating, in their present form, before the birth of Jesus.

It is into this world — a believing people, wounded, occupied by Rome, crossed by diverse spiritual currents, faithful to the Scriptures and straining towards the coming of a Saviour — that Jesus of Nazareth is born, preaches, dies and rises.

Christianity does not present itself as a new religion replacing Judaism, but as the fulfilment of the promises made to Israel. That is the deep meaning of the Greek word pleroma: Jesus does not abolish, he brings to fullness (Mt 5:17). But the fulfilment recognized by the first Christians — a crucified and risen Messiah, the Son of God made man, opening salvation to the nations — is not the fulfilment that many in Israel expected. The separation has a name: Jesus.

Jesus the Jew among Jews

Everything in the life of Jesus is Jewish. He is born into an observant family, attends the synagogue, goes up to the Temple, follows the liturgy, reads the Scriptures in the language of his people. His mother utters the Magnificat in the pure tonality of the biblical canticles. His words are woven from Scripture: he quotes Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel. His prayer is Jewish; his morality is Jewish; his table is Jewish.

"Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them." — Jesus, Matthew 5:17^[8]

This affirmation, spoken in the Sermon on the Mount, conditions the entire Christian reading of Judaism: Christianity has no right to despise the Law, because it is its Law; it has no right to reduce the Old Testament to an obsolete document, because it is its first Scripture; it has no right to present Jesus as a man foreign to Israel, because Jesus is Israel assumed to the very end.

The messianic claim of Jesus

Jesus claims — more or less openly depending on the passage — the identity of the Messiah. He takes up the title of "Son of Man" in the heavenly sense of Daniel 7; he accepts Peter's messianic confession (Mt 16:16); he enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey, fulfilling Zechariah 9:9; he acts as though he had authority over the Law, over the Sabbath, over the Temple, over the forgiveness of sins.

At the trial before Caiaphas, Jesus shifts messianic language towards an affirmation of divine identity. Pressed by the high priest, he answers:

"Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am; and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." — Mark 14:61-62^[9]

It is this affirmation, combining Daniel 7 and Psalm 110, that triggers the accusation of blasphemy. The rupture, at its centre, is not political or national: it is theological. First-century Judaism can admit a prophet, a sage, a wonder-worker; it can hope for a Messiah; but it cannot admit, without breaking strict monotheism, that a man should claim to sit at the right hand of God. "He has uttered blasphemy," declares the high priest (Mt 26:65). And Jesus is handed over to the Romans as a pretender to kingship.

Why the awaited Messiah was not recognized

The question is a delicate one, because for centuries it has been badly put. Four elements must be carefully distinguished.

1. The Crucified One is a scandal for messianic expectation

The dominant expectation of the Messiah at the turn of the era is that of a liberator of Israel: a son of David who drives out Rome, restores kingship in Jerusalem, re-establishes the Temple in its splendour, gathers the dispersed tribes and brings universal peace. Saint Paul does not deny it; he observes it:

"For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles." — Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:22-23^[10]

A Messiah who dies on a cross — a cursed punishment according to Deuteronomy 21:23 — and who dies without politically liberating Israel, is not recognizable within the majority framework. The Christian reading is that Israel expected a different Messiah from the one who came, and that the universal redemption of hearts precedes the final restoration of the Kingdom — which remains promised for the glorious return.

2. Jewish messianic paths were diverse

Second Temple Judaism never had a single messianic doctrine. Qumran perhaps awaited two Messiahs (royal and priestly); apocalyptic currents awaited a heavenly Son of Man; others awaited a prophet like Moses. The diversity of expectations made the recognition of a single Messiah all the more demanding, since the criteria varied. Several messianic pretenders appeared between Judas the Galilean and Bar Kokhba (132-135 AD), all refused or fallen.

3. The divine claim of Jesus seems to break monotheism

For a faithful Jew, the absolute oneness of God — proclaimed in the Shema Yisrael (Deut 6:4) — is non-negotiable. The Christian affirmation that Jesus is "God and man", the "eternal Son of the Father", can seem to betray this oneness, even though the Catholic Church defends precisely a Trinitarian monotheism and not a disguised polytheism. The rupture over the divinity of Jesus remains, even today, the sharpest point of contention in Jewish-Christian dialogue.

4. Historical responsibilities are narrow, not collective

The Gospel and the Church firmly recall: the Jews as a people are not responsible for the death of Jesus. The trial involved a restricted Sanhedrin, a Roman prefect (Pontius Pilate) and a mobilized crowd. The Catechism establishes this with a clarity worth quoting:

"Taking into account the complexity of the historical picture of Jesus' trial as made plain by the Gospel accounts, and whatever may be the personal sin of the players in the trial (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) which God alone knows, one cannot attribute responsibility for it to all the Jews of Jerusalem, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd. (...) Still less can responsibility be extended to other Jews in space and time." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 597^[11]

And the Church adds, in the same paragraph, that she "does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torment of Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone".^[12] The sin that crucifies Christ is human sin; the grace of Calvary has no ethnic culprit.

The year 70 AD is, in the history of Israel, a catastrophe of a magnitude hard to imagine. The Roman legate Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, takes Jerusalem at the end of the First Jewish-Roman War and destroys the Second Temple. Sacrifices cease. The Sadducean priesthood disappears. Israel's liturgical centre is annihilated. The Ark — which the accounts of the return from exile (Ezra, Nehemiah) no longer mention, a sign of its disappearance with the fall of the First Temple in 587 — is no longer the only absence: it is the Temple itself.

"And you, Jerusalem — would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. (...) They will dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation." — Jesus, Luke 19:41-44^[13]

This prophecy, uttered some forty years before the event, is cited by Christians as one of the arguments for the messiahship of Jesus — not to humiliate Israel, but to recognize the rightness of a prophetic voice. The destruction of the Temple was, moreover, announced as a messianic event both in the Gospel and in Daniel 9 (see below, the section on the arguments).

Yavneh, the canon and the rabbinate

Deprived of the Temple, Judaism recomposes itself around another figure: the rabbi. At Yavneh (Jamnia), on the Palestinian coast, Pharisaic masters — Yohanan ben Zakkai, then Gamaliel II — reorganize Jewish life around the synagogue, the study of the Torah and prayer. The canon of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) gradually stabilizes around the end of the 1st century and the 2nd century, according to the classical hypothesis of a fixing at Yavneh (Jamnia) — a hypothesis debated today, the process of canonization having probably been longer and less centralized.^[14] Sacrificial theology is interiorized: prayer, study and almsgiving replace sacrifice in the Temple. This is the birth of rabbinic Judaism, whose contemporary heirs are the Orthodox, Conservative and Liberal currents.

Birkat ha-Minim and the separation from Christians

Around 85-100 AD, within the eighteen daily blessings (Amidah), a curse against the minim ("heretics") is added. Several studies maintain that it specifically targeted Jewish Christians (notzrim) by forcing them to betray themselves publicly during common prayer.^[15] The liturgical rupture between the synagogue and the disciples of Jesus then becomes institutional. Before 70, Jews and Jewish Christians still pray together; after 100, this is almost no longer possible. The parting of the ways, long dated to the end of the 1st century, is today regarded by a large part of historians (see notably D. Boyarin, Border Lines, 2004, cited in the note) as a longer process, completed only in the 3rd or 4th centuries; but Yavneh marks the decisive turning point.

Talmud, Mishnah, Halakha

In the following centuries, rabbinic Judaism produces an immense literature:

• the Mishnah (around 200, by Judah haNasi), the first rabbinic codification of the Oral Law;
• the Jerusalem Talmud (5th century) and above all the Babylonian Talmud (6th century), commentary and discussion of the Mishnah;
• the Midrashim, vast collections of homiletic exegesis;
• halakha (practical law) and aggadah (edifying stories and teachings).

This tradition has a notable particularity: it mentions Jesus on rare occasions and in polemical fashion. The most discussed passage is:

"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before, the herald had cried out before him: 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery, seduced Israel and led it into apostasy. Let whoever knows anything in his defence come forward and plead for him.' But no one came forward in his defence, and he was hanged on the eve of the Passover." — Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 43a^[16]

This passage, whose historicity as a testimony about Jesus is debated and whose dating is late, paradoxically presents a twofold interest: it attests, in a non-Christian Jewish source, the execution of Jesus on the eve of Passover, which converges with the Gospel chronology. And it presents Jesus as a seducer of Israel — that is, within the polemical framework of self-justification for the rupture.

Maimonides and the thirteen articles of faith

In the 12th century, in Cordoba and then in Cairo, the great master Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) — physician, philosopher and Talmudist — formulates the thirteen articles of faith that Jewish liturgy will take up in the hymn Yigdal. They condense the Jewish creed. Three are particularly important for our subject:

• the 2nd: God is one and unique (absolute oneness, without internal plurality).
• the 12th: "I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and though he tarry, I will await him every day."^[17]
• the 13th: God will raise the dead.

Maimonides' position condenses the Jewish position regarding Jesus: the Messiah has not come, because the classical criteria of messiahship (universal peace, restoration of Israel, end of idolatry, ingathering of the Jews to the Holy Land, rebuilt Temple) are manifestly not fulfilled. For Christianity, these criteria will be fulfilled in eschatology; for rabbinic Judaism, they are the very criteria of messiahship, and their absence proves the non-messiahship of Jesus.

This objection is a serious one. An honest Catholic answer must take it seriously, not caricature it, and answer it with the distinction between the first coming (redemption of hearts and opening of universal salvation) and the glorious return (visible completion of the Kingdom) — a distinction not foreign to Judaism, but which Christianity assumes within a Christological economy.

The history of relations between Christians and Jews after 70 is, on the ground, the history of a long wound. It must be looked at without evasion. The Church has repented publicly and solemnly, through the voice of the recent popes; a serious Catholic article must acknowledge these sins without relativizing their gravity.

Christian anti-Judaism: the birth of contempt

From the first centuries onwards, several Greek and Latin Fathers develop a new kind of anti-Jewish polemic: not the criticism of religious errors, which would be legitimate, but the teaching of contempt, presenting the Jewish people as a whole as "deicide", "reprobate", "witness to the falsity of its own reading". Saint John Chrysostom (4th century), Saint Augustine (5th century), then medieval theologians, fuel this discourse. At the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), discriminatory measures are imposed (wearing of a distinctive sign, exclusion from certain offices). The Crusades (11th-13th centuries), though directed against the Muslims, see massacres of Jews in the Rhineland (1096) and elsewhere. Expulsions multiply: England 1290, France 1306 and 1394, Spain 1492, Portugal 1497.

The Spanish Inquisition, instituted in 1478, focuses largely on the marranos — Jews baptized under constraint or out of opportunism and suspected of secretly Judaizing. The tragedy of this history is that, in the name of Christ, it multiplied acts contrary to the Gospel.

The document "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" (Vatican, 16 March 1998) substantially recognizes the heavy historical responsibility of Christians in the secular persecution of the Jews: discriminations, humiliations, ghettos, expulsions and pogroms gravely stained the Christian conscience.^[18]

Modernity, Enlightenment, emancipation

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the emancipation of the Jews in Western Europe (French Revolution 1789, Napoleonic laws 1806-1808, Italian Risorgimento) breaks down the legal walls of the ghettos. Jews gain access to citizenship, universities and civil professions. But religious anti-Judaism then mutates into racial antisemitism — the term is coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr. The racial pseudoscience of the 19th and early 20th centuries prepares the unimaginable.

The Dreyfus affair (1894-1906) crystallizes the French fracture. The historian Jules Isaac, of whom we shall speak again, is marked by this affair and by the First World War.

The Shoah

The industrial genocide of the Jews of Europe by the National Socialist regime, between 1941 and 1945, claims about six million victims. The Hebrew term Shoah ("catastrophe") is henceforth the proper name of this abyss. The Shoah is not the work of the Church; it was conceived, planned and executed by a pagan and anti-Christian regime. But it would not have been technically possible without centuries of European anti-Judaism, from which the Christian heritage is not absent. That is what the Vatican explicitly recognized in 1998.

Pope Pius XII, whose role is the object of serious historical debate, contributed — through the concrete actions of the nunciature, convents, monasteries, and instructions given in Rome — to the rescue of tens of thousands of Jews; the rabbi and historian Pinchas Lapide even advances the figure of 700,000 to 860,000 lives saved thanks to the action of the Church under Pius XII, a debated estimate that does not settle the argument over the absence of stronger public declarations.^[19] The chief rabbi of Rome himself, Eugenio Zolli, paid tribute to him by converting to Catholicism in 1945 and taking his first name (Eugenio) as a sign of gratitude.

In Antisemitismo (Rome, 1945), the former chief rabbi of Rome praises in lyrical terms the action of Pius XII, whom he compares to an army commanded in the name of Christian charity.^[20]

The Vatican II turning point

After the war, the French Jewish historian Jules Isaac (1877-1963), who lost his wife and daughter at Auschwitz, devotes his life to denouncing what he calls the Christian "teaching of contempt". He publishes Genèse de l'antisémitisme (1956), then L'Enseignement du mépris (1962). On 13 June 1960, he is received by Pope John XXIII, to whom he hands a memorandum proposing the preparation of a conciliar text on the place of the Jewish people in the Catholic faith. The audience is decisive; John XXIII entrusts Cardinal Bea with the study of the matter, and it is from this meeting that paragraph 4 of Nostra aetate will be born, five years later.^[21]

On 28 October 1965, at the close of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church promulgates the declaration Nostra aetate. It is a short text (five paragraphs), but paragraph 4, devoted to relations with the Jewish people, is one of the most significant magisterial acts of the 20th century. It must be quoted precisely.

The conciliar text

Nostra aetate § 4 first recalls that the roots of the Christian faith are Jewish:

"Sounding the depths of the mystery of the Church, this sacred Council recalls the spiritual bond linking the people of the New Covenant with Abraham's stock. The Church of Christ acknowledges that the beginnings of her faith and election are to be found, in keeping with the divine mystery of salvation, in the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets." — Vatican II, Nostra aetate, § 4^[22]

It then affirms that the Jews remain dear to God:

"Although the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion. (...) The Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture." — Vatican II, Nostra aetate, § 4^[23]

It condemns antisemitism:

"The Church, mindful of her common patrimony with the Jews, and moved not by any political consideration, but solely by the religious charity of the Gospel, decries all hatreds, persecutions and displays of antisemitism levelled at any time or from any source against the Jews." — Vatican II, Nostra aetate, § 4^[24]

This is, in solemn Catholic magisterium, the clearest condemnation of antisemitism ever formulated by a Council. It has doctrinal status and is not a mere pastoral posture.

"Our elder brothers" — John Paul II at the synagogue of Rome (1986)

On 13 April 1986, John Paul II visits the Great Synagogue of Rome — the first pope to enter a synagogue in modern times (Rome, 13 April 1986). In the presence of Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff, the pope utters one of the most emblematic phrases of Jewish-Christian dialogue:

"The Jewish religion is not 'extrinsic' to us, but in a certain way is 'intrinsic' to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers." — Saint John Paul II, address at the synagogue of Rome, 13 April 1986^[25]

The expression "elder brothers" (sometimes rendered "our elder brothers in faith") becomes the reference formula of Catholic dialogue with Israel. John Paul II returns to it on several occasions; the elderliness thus designated is not only chronological, it is spiritual.

Repentance and purification of memory

John Paul II presides, during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, over an act of purification of memory that includes an explicit request for forgiveness for the wrongs suffered by the Jews in the course of history. Into a crevice of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, on 26 March 2000, he slips a prayer text:

"God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant." — Saint John Paul II, prayer at the Western Wall, 26 March 2000^[26]

Benedict XVI: the Jewish depth of Jesus and the memory of Auschwitz

The pontificate of Benedict XVI (2005-2013) takes up and deepens the legacy of John Paul II. Three decisive gestures mark this pontificate. On 19 August 2005, in the midst of World Youth Day, he visits the Cologne synagogue — his first visit to a non-Christian place of worship — and recalls there that "our shared spiritual heritage is very great and profound. Jews and Christians must take care of their roots by appreciating and respecting one another".^[27] On 28 May 2006, he visits Auschwitz-Birkenau, "as a son of the German people", and delivers a moving meditation on the silence of God, quoting Psalm 44 and the cry of the Jewish people under the Shoah.^[28] On 17 January 2010, he in turn visits the Great Synagogue of Rome, twenty-four years after John Paul II.

But Benedict XVI's own contribution to the Catholic view of Judaism lies, perhaps more than in acts, in his major theological work: the trilogy Jesus of Nazareth (2007-2012). Volume 2, published in 2011, devotes a decisive development to the question of Jewish responsibility in the death of Jesus and deconstructs, starting from the New Testament's own exegesis, the antisemitic reading traditionally given to Matthew 27:25, "His blood be on us and on our children":

"If according to Matthew 'the whole people' said this, the Christian will remember that the blood of Jesus speaks a different language from that of Abel (Hebrews 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment, but is reconciliation. It is not shed against anyone, it is shed for many, for all." — Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 2: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, 2011^[29]

The reading is decisive: Benedict XVI does not read Mt 27:25 as an ethnic curse but as a prophetic word turned around by grace. The blood of Christ is shed for this people, not against it. This is, in a pope's ordinary magisterium, one of the most profound re-readings of the verse most instrumentalized by the Christian anti-Judaism of past centuries.

Evangelii gaudium and today's doctrine

Pope Francis, in Evangelii gaudium, gives the Catholic view of Judaism one of its clearest formulations:

"We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for 'the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable' (Rom 11:29). The Church, which shares with Judaism an important part of the sacred Scriptures, looks upon the people of the covenant and their faith as one of the sacred roots of her own Christian identity. (...) As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion; nor do we include the Jews among those called to turn from idols and to serve the true God." — Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, § 247^[30]

The document of 10 December 2015, "The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable", published by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism on the 50th anniversary of Nostra aetate, extends this line by affirming two things that must be held together: the uniqueness of salvation in Jesus Christ and the singular status of the Covenant with Israel, without absolute incompatibility.^[31] We shall return to this when speaking of mission.

A serious Catholic cannot look at the Jewish people without gratitude and without love. This section is deliberately short, dense and direct: it states what the Catholic faith requires in the Christian's interior attitude towards Israel.

A biblical debt

Everything that nourishes Christian prayer comes from Israel: the Bible (Old Testament), the Psalms recited in the Liturgy of the Hours, Easter, the feasts of the Spirit (Pentecost) and of light, monotheism, messianic eschatology, the expectation of the resurrection, the covenant, the circumcision of the heart, prophecy, wisdom, reasonable worship. Without this heritage, neither the New Testament, nor the liturgy, nor Catholic theology stands. Saint Paul says of the Jewish people:

"They are Israelites; and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ." — Saint Paul, Romans 9:4-5^[32]

Whoever despises the Jews despises, in reality, his own faith. That is what Pope Pius XI said forcefully in 1938, to Belgian pilgrims contemplating a Roman missal:

"Antisemitism is inadmissible. Spiritually, we are Semites." — Pius XI, to Belgian pilgrims, 6 September 1938^[33]

A chosen people, not revoked

The Church was long tempted by a "substitutionist" reading (theologia supersessionis) according to which the new Church had simply replaced Israel. Vatican II and the post-conciliar magisterium firmly reject this reading. The Covenant with Israel has not been revoked; it is brought to fullness in Christ, but the Jewish people remains the people of God in a mysterious way that the Church confesses without fully mastering.

"When one considers the future, God's People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: the expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 840^[34]

An absolute duty of respect and of combat against antisemitism

All antisemitism is, for a Catholic, a sin against faith. Nostra aetate affirmed it. John Paul II recalled it at Yad Vashem in 2000. Benedict XVI repeated it in the Cologne synagogue in 2005 and in Rome's in 2010. Francis has never ceased repeating it. The attitude to observe is clear:

• no collective accusation;
• no caricature;
• no reading of Christian history that conceals the wrongs done to the Jews;
• no indulgence towards anti-Jewish conspiracy theories;
• on the contrary, active gratitude, study of the Jewish Scriptures, dialogue, remembrance.

This takes nothing away from the mission of the Church, which is to propose Christ to all. It specifies how this must be done.

This is the most delicate part of the article. It must be handled with a double requirement: complete respect for the Jewish people and complete fidelity to Christ. These two fidelities do not oppose each other. They demand each other.

An authentic expectation that deprives itself of its joy

The greatness of Jewish messianic expectation is, precisely, that it is authentic. The Pontifical Biblical Commission writes this explicitly:

"Jewish messianic expectation is not in vain, and can become for us Christians a powerful stimulant to keep alive the eschatological dimension of our faith." — Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, 2002, § 21^[35]

But this expectation, from the Catholic point of view, has already received its decisive fulfilment: Jesus of Nazareth died and rose, and his Gospel is proclaimed to all nations. Rabbinic Judaism still awaits what the Church confesses as already come and already given. There is something here that can, without any contempt, be called a "loss": not that Israel is guilty of this non-recognition, but that it deprives itself, over time, of a joy for which it had been prepared.

This sadness the apostle Paul himself felt, as a Jew, for his brothers:

"I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. (...) Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved." — Saint Paul, Romans 9:2-3; 10:1^[36]

This sadness is in no way contempt. It is a burning hope. It is the hope that every Jew, like every man, may meet the one who is, for Catholic faith, his awaited Messiah.

The scandal of the separation

The rupture between the synagogue and the Church is, in the mystery of salvation history, a scandal. Not a moral scandal to be imputed to a people; a scandal in the biblical sense — a stumbling block that calls into question both the disciples of Christ (through their betrayals) and the Jewish people (through its non-recognition). The apostle Paul designates this scandal when speaking of the cultivated olive tree and the wild graft.

"So do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you." — Saint Paul, Romans 11:18^[37]

The warning holds today as well: a Christian who believes himself "superior" to the Jews boasts at the expense of his own root and ignores Christ.

Why want to share the joy of faith

If Christianity is true — that is its confession — then sharing Jesus with the Jews is neither contempt, nor colonization, nor hostility. It is, on the contrary, an act of brotherly love. The Church conducts no organized mission towards the Jews as towards pagans, because the theological situation is unique. But it does not give up bearing witness to Christ before the people of Israel:

"The Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews. (...) This difference in approach does not mean that Christians should refrain from bearing witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews; they should however do so in a humble and sensitive manner, aware that they are addressing the people bearing a special Covenant, and that God reserves a mystery concerning them to himself alone." — Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable, 10 December 2015, § 40^[38]

Christian witness towards the Jews must therefore be humble, discreet, respectful, not institutionally organized, conscious of the mystery surrounding Israel. But it remains a witness. The Christian who truly loves his elder brothers cannot hide from them what he believes he has found in Jesus.

The invitation to recognize Jesus as Messiah cannot be made by appeal to the heart alone. It must pass through intellectual arguments. This part soberly considers what can be said — not to humiliate Judaism, but to set out what makes, from the standpoint of a reason examining the sources, the messiahship of Jesus probable, indeed, to many, convincing.

For the technical detail of the prophecies, the reader is referred to the dedicated study: The prophecies announcing Jesus in the Old Testament, which presents 41 major messianic prophecies.

1. A prophetic convergence without equivalent

The first argument is convergence. No other religious figure in history stands at the crossroads of such a series of prior textual expectations, preserved and copied by a people that, in its majority, did not recognize Jesus. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, copied around 125 BC, and the Greek Septuagint, completed in the 2nd century BC, guarantee that the major prophetic texts — Isaiah 7, Isaiah 53, Daniel 7, Daniel 9, Micah 5, Psalm 22, Zechariah 9 and 12 — were already received as Holy Scripture before the birth of Jesus.

This convergence includes:

• identity: son of the virgin (Is 7:14), son of David (2 Sam 7:12-16), son of God (Ps 2; Ps 110), born in Bethlehem (Mic 5:1);
• time: the sceptre of Judah until he comes to whom it belongs (Gen 49:10), seventy weeks before the destruction of the city (Dan 9:24-27);
• mission: light to the nations (Is 9:1), good news to the poor (Is 61:1);
• Passion: Suffering Servant (Is 52-53), pierced hands and feet (Ps 22:17), betrayal at table (Ps 41:10), thirty pieces of silver (Zech 11:12), tomb with the rich (Is 53:9);
• resurrection: "thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol" (Ps 16:10);
• universality: entry of the nations into the Covenant (Hos 2:25; Is 66:18-21).

None of these traits, taken in isolation, is demonstrative. Taken together, they form a convergence whose probability of random coincidence is, to put it prudently, extremely low.^[39] This is the classical apologetic argument of the Fathers, the medievals and Vatican Council I.

2. Daniel 9 and the calendar of the seventy weeks

Chapter 9 of the book of Daniel — which Jewish and Christian tradition holds to be the work of the prophet Daniel in the 6th century BC, and which the most widespread historical-critical hypothesis dates at the latest to the 2nd century BC — announces a messianic chronology:

"Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy. (...) And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." — Daniel 9:24-26^[40]

Detailed interpretation differs according to the readings proposed — messianic reading (see notably R. T. Beckwith, 1981, cited in the note) or Antiochene reading defended by the most widespread historical-critical hypothesis — on the starting point, the exact length of the weeks, the symbolic or literal reading. But the objective elements are remarkable: an Anointed One must be cut off before the destruction of a city and a sanctuary. Now, Jesus was crucified around the year 30, and the Temple was destroyed in 70. It is very hard to explain how a text written several centuries earlier — and preserved as such within Jewish tradition itself — announces such a configuration without entering the realm of loaded coincidence.

3. The end of sacrifice and the destruction of the Temple

During the public ministry of Jesus, the Temple is still functioning. Forty years later, it is destroyed, the Sadducean priesthood disappears, Israel's sacrificial system comes to an end and it is never restored. For Christianity, this is no coincidence: the true Temple is henceforth the risen Body of Christ (Jn 2:19-21), and the true sacrifice is his death offered once for all, made present in the Eucharist (Heb 9:11-14; CCC § 1366).

For rabbinic tradition, the sacrificial system is suspended, awaiting the Temple to be rebuilt. But the fact remains: a priestly people lost its sacrificial priesthood at the very turning point when a new Jewish community proclaimed that this priesthood had been fulfilled in the cross of a Messiah. It is very hard to ascribe this to mere historical chance.

4. The Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53

Chapter 53 of Isaiah is, perhaps, the strongest scriptural argument. It describes, in an earlier prophetic language, the destiny of a just Servant, despised, bearing the faults of the multitudes, "wounded for our transgressions", "crushed for our iniquities", "like a lamb that is led to the slaughter", and yet who "shall see his offspring" and "make many to be accounted righteous".

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. (...) He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. (...) The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." — Isaiah 53:4-6^[41]

The majority rabbinic interpretation identifies this Servant with collective Israel. The Christian reading sees Jesus in it. But there is a decisive detail: the text distinguishes the Servant from the "we" who speak ("he was wounded for our transgressions" — we is Israel; he is someone else). No purely collective reading of Israel accounts for this structure. What the text calls for is an individual Servant, just, suffering for Israel. And who, in history, matches this description?

5. A Jewish community proclaiming a crucified Messiah in Jerusalem

The first Christians are Jews. Peter, James, John, Paul, Mary, Mark, Matthew, Luke — all Jews. They proclaim that Jesus is risen in Jerusalem, in the city where anyone can check the tomb. They proclaim it a few weeks after the events (Pentecost, around 33). They are ready to die for this proclamation — and many of them do indeed die as martyrs (Stephen, James the Less, Peter, Paul).

For the serious historian, this datum is massive. That monotheistic Jews, raised in the strict Shema Yisrael, should end up confessing a crucified man as Lord and God, in Jerusalem itself, a few days' walk from Golgotha and the tomb, and should maintain this confession despite persecution — this cannot be explained by a slowly developed myth. At the very least, an event of reality is required.

6. The testimony of Jews who recognized Jesus

Christian history is marked, at regular intervals, by Jews who recognized Jesus as Messiah and bear witness to it with particular lucidity. Not in rupture with their Jewishness, but in its fulfilment. A few figures:

• Saint Paul, former Pharisee (Phil 3:4-7), persecutor of Christians, struck down on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). His Letter to the Romans (chapters 9-11) is the matrix of all Catholic theology on Israel.
• Alphonse Ratisbonne (1814-1884), Strasbourg Jew, engaged, atheist, who mocked Christianity and who, on 20 January 1842, in the Roman church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, sees the Virgin Mary and is converted within minutes; he becomes a priest and founds, with his brother Théodore, missionary works.^[42]
• Saint Edith Stein (1891-1942), German Jew, philosopher, pupil of Husserl, atheist then converted after reading the Life of Saint Teresa of Avila; Carmelite, deported and killed at Auschwitz in 1942 "as a daughter of Israel and a daughter of the Church". She is canonized by John Paul II in 1998 and declared co-patroness of Europe in 1999.^[43]
• Eugenio Zolli (1881-1956), chief rabbi of Rome from 1940 to 1945, baptized on 13 February 1945 under the first name Eugenio in homage to Pius XII for his role in the rescue of the Jews.^[44]

Eugenio Zolli left a particularly illuminating testimony, because it comes from a man who knew Judaism from the inside, at its highest level:

In his autobiography Before the Dawn (1954), Zolli explains that he did not renounce Judaism: in his eyes, Christianity is the fulfilment of the synagogue — the synagogue was a promise, Christianity the fulfilment of that promise, and the one does not go without the other.^[45]

These conversions do not prove the messiahship of Jesus like a mathematical theorem. But they bring down a widespread argument: a Jew's conversion to Christianity is not, by nature, a betrayal of his people or his faith. For those who lived it, it was the opposite: access to the fullness of their own tradition.

7. Classical Jewish objections and Catholic answers

Several Jewish objections must be treated honestly.

Objection — The Messiah is a man, not God

This is the fundamental argument drawn from the Shema Yisrael. Catholic answer: the Christian faith introduces neither a second God, nor a demigod, nor the divinization of a man. It confesses one God, in the plurality of relations he reveals within himself — Father, Son, Spirit. This doctrine is not foreign to biblical dynamics: the Word and Wisdom of God have, in Proverbs 8 and ancient Jewish wisdom, a real substance; the Son of Man of Daniel 7 comes "with the clouds of heaven" and receives "dominion and glory and kingdom" — divine attributes. The Angel of the Lord sometimes speaks as God (Gen 16; Ex 3). There is, in the Old Testament, a depth in God that Christian revelation recognizes and names.

Objection — The Messiah must bring universal peace, which Jesus did not do

This is Maimonides' great objection. Catholic answer: the first coming of the Messiah is that of the redemption of hearts and the opening of salvation to the nations; visible universal peace belongs to the glorious return. This is precisely the grammar of the two comings, which is not unknown to ancient Jewish thought: rabbinic literature distinguishes a Messiah ben Joseph, a suffering figure put to death, and a Messiah ben David, a glorious figure (see notably Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a) — a distinction read here as a reading hypothesis, and not as a dogma of Judaism. The Catechism recalls in § 674 that "the glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by 'all Israel'".^[46]

Objection — Christians tortured the Jews, so their Messiah cannot be the right one

Catholic answer: the holiness of Christ is not suspended on the sins of his disciples. If one judged the truth of a religion by the empirical holiness of its adherents, no religion would survive the examination. The Church recognizes these sins (see § IV of this article), repents of them and asks forgiveness. The greatness of repentance does not justify the crimes committed; it recognizes the depth of their gravity.

Objection — Daniel 9 was interpreted with reference to Antiochus Epiphanes

This is the principal historical-critical argument. Answer: even admitting the Antiochene interpretation for the final redaction, the realization of a chronology weighing on an Anointed One cut off before the destruction of the Temple remains remarkable, independently of the redactor's initial intention; and the Christian reading, which sees in this sequence a sign of the messianic coming, was not invented a posteriori but read from the first centuries onwards.

Objection — Christians misquoted the Hebrew Scriptures

This is a serious objection, requiring honesty. A few New Testament quotations of Isaiah or the Psalms follow a reading that is no longer that of the Masoretic text received later. But the Septuagint, the source of many of these quotations, is a Jewish translation prior to Jesus, reflecting the reading of it by the Jews of Alexandria. The textual debate changes nothing about the overall convergence.

8. The convergent case

None of these arguments, taken separately, is demonstrative. Together, they form a convergent case: prophetic convergence, chronological convergence, historical convergence (Temple destroyed in 70), convergence of the massive fact of a first-century Jewish community confessing a crucified man as Lord, convergence of notable Jewish conversions through the centuries, convergence of the spiritual testimony of converted Jewish saints.

For a Catholic, this convergent case does not prove faith (faith always presupposes grace and a free act), but it makes the Christian confession rationally more probable than the expectation of a Messiah still to come. And it makes, for a Jew who examined the sources with patience, the question of the messiahship of Jesus unavoidable.

The apostle Paul, Jew, Pharisee, passionate reader of the Scriptures, never gives up on his people. He devotes three entire chapters of the Letter to the Romans to a single subject: the mystery of Israel. This passage, even more than Nostra aetate, is the matrix of every Catholic view of Judaism.

The cultivated olive tree and the wild graft

Saint Paul uses a decisive image. Israel is a cultivated olive tree, God's olive tree. Christianity is not a competing olive tree: it is a wild graft grafted onto this olive tree.

"But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you." — Saint Paul, Romans 11:17-18^[47]

The image forbids Christians any form of arrogance towards Israel.

All Israel will be saved

Paul then states a hope that the Church faithfully holds without mastering it:

"Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved. (...) For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable." — Saint Paul, Romans 11:25-29^[48]

The precise meaning of the expression "all Israel" is debated (ethnic Israel? spiritual Israel? both?), but the overall meaning is clear: God's expectation for his people is not closed, and divine faithfulness, which does not take back its gifts, keeps a future for the Jewish people in the mystery of universal salvation. The Catechism follows this line in § 674: the coming of the glorious Messiah awaits recognition by "all Israel".^[49]

A hope for Christians, an invitation for Jews

This mystery authorizes neither haste, nor contempt, nor manipulation. It forbids, on the other hand, thinking that the present situation, in which most of Israel does not recognize Jesus, is the final horizon. Catholic faith holds these two convictions together: God has not revoked his Covenant with Israel; and the full fulfilment of Israel's promises passes through recognition, at the end of time, of the Messiah. This is a hope, not a strategy.

The Church does not give up proposing Christ to all, but it recognizes that the relationship with the Jewish people is singular. The 2015 document "The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable" clarifies this singularity.

• No organized institutional mission towards the Jewish people as is conducted towards other religions. The word "mission", in the classical sense, is not fitting.
• But a witness that is discreet, humble, fraternal, open. A Christian who loves his Jewish brothers cannot hide from them what his faith confesses, but must propose it with respect, without pressure, and conscious of the mystery surrounding their destiny.
• A dialogue that is theological, biblical, historical. The Catholic-Jewish dialogue commissions have worked for several decades on the Bible, the Scriptures, history, and live questions (Shoah, contemporary Israel, contemporary antisemitism).
• A purified memory, looking without denial at the Christian faults committed in the course of history and solemnly repenting of them.
• A prayer for the Jews, which remains in the liturgy of the Church, particularly on Good Friday, in a formulation that since 1959, and even more since 1970, has carefully set aside the ancient expression "perfidi judaei".^[50]

In substance, the Directory for Catechesis (2020), like the 1985 Notes, invites Christians to recognize in their own Bible, their own Easter and their blessing of bread and wine the living heritage of Judaism — and Jews to discover a Jesus profoundly Jewish in all his teaching. This mutual rediscovery is the soil in which common hope can grow.^[51]

Judaism holds, in the Catholic view, an absolutely unique place. It is the faith of the people of the Covenant, the biblical root of Christianity, the historical soil from which come Jesus, Mary, the apostles, the Scriptures and the prayer of the Church. Every Christian who prays the Office, celebrates the Eucharist or opens the Bible holds something that comes to him from Israel.

The divergence over Jesus nevertheless remains decisive: for the Church, he is the promised Messiah, Son of God and universal Saviour, the "fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets". This confession is neither retracted nor negotiated. But it is borne, on the ground of encounter with the Jewish people, in an attitude commanded by the Gospel itself: gratitude towards Israel, absolute rejection of all antisemitism, unreserved respect, patient dialogue, hope of an eschatological fullness in which "all Israel will be saved".

One last word remains, to be said with humility. If Catholic faith is true, the finest service the disciples of Christ can render their Jewish brothers is neither flattery nor silence: it is, in a discreet and brotherly voice, to propose the joy of having recognized, in Jesus of Nazareth, the awaited Messiah. This proposal is made without pressure, without contempt, in remembrance of the wounds inflicted, and in the awareness that it is God who acts. But it is made. And it is made, because whoever loves cannot keep for himself what he believes he has received for all.

• The Bible — unity of the Old and New Testaments.
• The prophecies announcing Jesus in the Old Testament — 41 messianic prophecies.
• Did Jesus really exist? — extra-biblical sources on Jesus.
• The divinity of Jesus — the central Christological question.
• The Resurrection of Jesus — central point of the Christian faith.
• The Council of Jerusalem — opening to the nations without the Mosaic Law.
• The destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 — the end of the sacrificial priesthood.
• Christian anti-Judaism and the role of Pius XII — historical re-readings.
• Why Catholicism is the true religion — relationship between Catholic truth and other religions.