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toward the dislocations occasioned by the Roman domination of Palestine, this sense of the harrowing
fate in store for those in the wrong seems to have intensified. The literature of the Qumran community
shows us graphically this intense perception of "us" and "them," of those Jews destined for reward and
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those slated for punishment.
We of course lack any historical sources that derive directly from the earliest phase in the history
of Christianity, when the followers of Jesus saw themselves as part of Palestinian Jewry and felt
themselves to be the correct interpreters of the covenant between God and the Jewish people.[3] It
seems nonetheless highly likely that Jesus and his early followers
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would have fit themselves into the traditional Jewish sense that projected reward for proper
comprehension and fulfillment of the covenant and punishment for distorted understanding and
behavior. Some of the Gospel fulminations against the Pharisees and Sadducees, while stemming from
sources that postdate the splitting off of the Christian community from its Jewish matrix, may well
reflect earlier internal Jewish realities and sensibilities.
With the emergence of gentile Christianity and the growing gulf that separated the Jewish and
Christian communities, however, the conviction that Christians had appropriated the riches of the
Jewish past and that Jews had lost that heritage replaced earlier notions of proper Jewish
understanding of the covenant.[4] Not surprisingly, the Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament book
that focuses on the movement of Christianity beyond the confines of Palestinian Jewry, is most
emphatic in its assertion of Christian reward and Jewish punishment. Indeed, this is the note on which
the entire book concludes. The closing episode in the Acts of the Apostles portrays Paul in Rome
attempting to attract Jews of that city to the Christian vision. According to the author, "some were
won over by his arguments; others remained skeptical." Before the group of Jews dispersed, Paul
made a final statement to them:
How well the Holy Spirit spoke to your father through the prophet Isaiah when he said: "Go to this people and say: You
may hear and hear but you will not understand; you may look and look, but you will never see. For this people's mind
has become gross; their ears are dulled, and their eyes are closed. Otherwise, their eyes might see, their ears hear, and
their mind understand, and then they might turn again and I would heal them." [5]
This is a vigorous condemnation of Paul's Jewish contemporaries, drawn from Isaiah's great vision
of the divine throne room, with God seeking an emissary to his erring people. It is worth recalling the
continuation of Isaiah's vision. The prophet has agreed to serve as the Lord's messenger and has
received the chilling message noted by Paul, a message of divine wrath so intense that God precludes
the possibility of an understanding that might lead to repentance. Seemingly stunned by the intensity
of this divine anger, the prophet asks: "How long, my Lord?" How long will this dullness of mind and
spirit last? The divine answer is once more harsh in the extreme.
Till towns lie waste without inhabitants
And houses without people,
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And the ground lies waste and desolate
For the Lord will banish the population
And deserted places are many
In the midst of the land.[6]
Now, it is widely agreed that the Acts of the Apostles postdates the Roman-Jewish war, the defeat
of the Jews, and all the pain and dislocation that defeat entailed. The Isaiah passage just cited seems
to describe a situation of desolation that corresponds nicely to the Christian perception of the Jews
after 70, a perception of destruction and exile flowing from sinfulness, specifically the sinfulness
associated with rejection of the promised Messiah.
Since we have cited the Acts of the Apostles, which can fairly be called the first history of the
Church, we might well note also the fuller and more mature multivolume history of the Church,
penned in the fourth century by Eusebius of Caesarea. It is a rich and stimulating work, drawing on a
wide range of sources and addressing a broad spectrum of issues. The core objective of this
multifaceted work was "to record in writing the successions of the sacred apostles, covering the period
from our Savior to ourselves." In this work, it is striking to note the extent of interest in "the fate
which has beset the whole nation of the Jews from the moment of their plot against our Savior."[7]
Descriptions of the calamities that befell the Jews from the time of Jesus down through Eusebius's own
day are extensive, and the rationale for inclusion of these lengthy accounts is clear: the harsh fate
suffered by the Jews was projected as sure evidence of the workings of providence in history, with the
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