Christianity started as a Jewish sect. Despite this, or in some ways because of this, there is a strongly anti-Jewish message very early on in Christian history. What started as a debate between different Jewish communities became something different as Christianity became Gentile, and then became an imperial religion with considerably power.
I think the key passage is 5:39-40, "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life."
This is the message of the whole of the Gospel of John, repeated again and again.
Think of the famous prologue, "In the beginning was the Word" so adored at Christmas services. But we miss that the whole point of that passage is that, "he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."
And another famous passage: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me." What this primarily means is that no gets to the Father through Jewish religion.
God's relationship with the Jewish people has ended. That's what the author wants to tell you.
Throughout the Gospel "the Jews" are the baddies, the ones to be feared, the ones who finally kill Jesus. This is despite the fact all the goodies in this story are Jewish too. And despite the historic fact that the Romans killed Jesus.
I'm not a New Testament scholar (and if you want to direct me to good resources on this, please do) but all this has led me further and further to the conclusion that the Gospel of John is irredeemably antisemitic, and despite being very well written and somewhat beautiful in times in its language, has done more harm than good to Christianity.
It's irredeemably antisemitic. It's the primary source of Christian antisemitism. And that's exactly what it was trying to be.
Let's bin it.
Or at least, let's radically decentre it from Christianity, and only very very rarely include it in worship.*
The good news is the Gospel of John has almost nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. Almost no words in John's Gospel coincide with Jesus' recorded words in other Gospels, so we must assume were made up by the writer of John's Gospel.
When we exclude John and get our picture of Jesus from Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Thomas then what emerges is a much more compassionate, much more human, much more wise, and much more Jewish Jesus.
It begins to redeem Christianity of its antisemitism. It creates a Christianity that still affirms God's revelation in the Jewish religion, and by extension in other religions as well. It solves a lot of our most difficult theological problems. It makes it harder for people to claim to be Christian while ignoring the needs of the poor and oppressed.
Binning the Gospel of John makes Christianity a lot better. There, I said it.
*The one exception I'd make to this is the story of the woman caught in adultery. But actually that's an "orphan story" that was floating around on its own that later got edited into the Gospel of John. It doesn't really belong there, which kind of reinforces my point.
How Christianity shaped European antisemitism is something that Christians needed to seriously address after the Holocaust, and to a certain extent have done, though not nearly enough.
In looking at this many Christians have noted how the Gospel of John has particularly troublesome phrases. There's constant negative references to "the Jews". Even though Jesus and the disciples are Jewish, the phrase "the Jews" always refers to those against Jesus. As I say, this insight is in no way original to me. But I think I've come to the view that the problem is much much worse than most Christians want to admit, because the consequences would be too big for Christianity.
I've come to think that the primary purpose of the Gospel of John is to be an anti-Jewish text.
Written much later than the other Gospels, John comes from a time when there is a definite Christian split from Judaism, and the author really wants to make the point that God's revelation is now in the path of Christ and not in the Jewish religion.
This is the message of the whole of the Gospel of John, repeated again and again.
Think of the famous prologue, "In the beginning was the Word" so adored at Christmas services. But we miss that the whole point of that passage is that, "he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."
And another famous passage: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me." What this primarily means is that no gets to the Father through Jewish religion.
God's relationship with the Jewish people has ended. That's what the author wants to tell you.
Throughout the Gospel "the Jews" are the baddies, the ones to be feared, the ones who finally kill Jesus. This is despite the fact all the goodies in this story are Jewish too. And despite the historic fact that the Romans killed Jesus.
I'm not a New Testament scholar (and if you want to direct me to good resources on this, please do) but all this has led me further and further to the conclusion that the Gospel of John is irredeemably antisemitic, and despite being very well written and somewhat beautiful in times in its language, has done more harm than good to Christianity.
It's irredeemably antisemitic. It's the primary source of Christian antisemitism. And that's exactly what it was trying to be.
Let's bin it.
Or at least, let's radically decentre it from Christianity, and only very very rarely include it in worship.*
The good news is the Gospel of John has almost nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. Almost no words in John's Gospel coincide with Jesus' recorded words in other Gospels, so we must assume were made up by the writer of John's Gospel.
When we exclude John and get our picture of Jesus from Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Thomas then what emerges is a much more compassionate, much more human, much more wise, and much more Jewish Jesus.
It begins to redeem Christianity of its antisemitism. It creates a Christianity that still affirms God's revelation in the Jewish religion, and by extension in other religions as well. It solves a lot of our most difficult theological problems. It makes it harder for people to claim to be Christian while ignoring the needs of the poor and oppressed.
Binning the Gospel of John makes Christianity a lot better. There, I said it.
*The one exception I'd make to this is the story of the woman caught in adultery. But actually that's an "orphan story" that was floating around on its own that later got edited into the Gospel of John. It doesn't really belong there, which kind of reinforces my point.
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