© 1989 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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‘Christian Confrontations with the Holocaust’
THE HOLOCAUST AND THE GOSPEL TRUTH*
Riverdale, New York
The Gospels have been the main source of division between Jews and Christians during the past two millennia. In recognition of this and with impetus from the encounter with the Holocaust, these past four decades have produced much new scholarship. This scholarship attempts to diminish or reverse the negative fallout from Gospel themes such as Pharisaic law versus Christian love, scribes and hypocrites in contrast to purity and spirituality of apostolic faith, and the ultimate source of hostility — the deicide charge. However, these new teachings have failed to seep through all levels of the community, are not easily accessible, unless one labors directly in the field, and seem almost insignificant and weak in relation to ‘the Gospel truth’.
The instinctive desire of Jews, therefore, would be for Christians to edit their Gospels, an improbable suggestion. Still, we are compelled to pose the central question for Jewish-Christian relations: How can we get past ‘the Gospel truth’?
What is needed then, is not a rewriting but rather a new formatting of the Gospel text, parallel to the Jewish pattern. The written Torah is never taught without layers of interpretation, the oral Torah, so much so that the average Jewish lay person hardly deems it necessary to separate Midrash from Revelation.1
*This is a revised version of the paper presented at the ‘Remembering for the Future’ Conference. Oxford 10–13 July.