These homilies are about Judaizers, not Jews. He attacks the Jews, using a standard method of classical rhetoricians, to win back their sympathizers to his own camp. Hence the lack of interest in converting Jews, and the irrelevence of the remark "und ebensowenig werden solche Reden faehig gewesen sein die Juden mit Sympathie fuer das Christentum zu erfuellen." That wasn't his purpose. Think "Quartodecimanism".
Actually, compared to later anti-Semitism, these sermons are exceedingly mild. True, they don't support the view that Judaism is on a par with Christianity. Given that Chrysostom believed that Judaism was a false religion, and one which clearly had a major attraction for some of his parishioners, I'm not sure what else he could have said. The florid invective was the Greco-Roman style; most of the offensive statements were just rhetorical devices.
What do the homilies really say? Contrary to the biased introduction, which reads all sorts of later attitudes into the Greco-Roman mind, Chrysostom certainly does not say of the Jews that God "hates them and has always hated them." He does say that he himself "hates them" and urges Christians to do so also, as he often urges Christians to hate sinners. Anyone familiar with Chrysostom's writings knows that this hatred did not mean that he desired to exterminate them or torture them, nor that he regarded them as inferior by nature. If they converted to what he believed to be the true religion, his hatred would at once cease.
HOM. I: The Jews, by rejecting Christ, were changed from children into dogs, the Gentile dogs were changed into children. The Jews refuse to accept Christ, whom they crucified, because they are grown carnal-minded; this is also why they have experienced catastrophes and been slaughtered by the Romans. In O.T. times, they failed to keep the Law; now when it has been abolished they insist on keeping it, but nevertheless during their fasts "dance barefoot" in the square and behave licentiously. [This is of course an interesting passage from the point of view of historians of Jewish liturgy, as are Chrys.'s remarks about the "theatricality" of the synagogue. Hence the oddity of Parkes' statement: "There is no material in these sermons for a study of contemporary Jewish life."] Jews do not worship God, because they reject the Son who alone reveals the Father; that they have the Law and Prophets just makes their impiety worse. What's really bad is that Christians admire them, think of them as holy people with a special relationship to God, attend their festivals, regard their holy places as holy, etc. This is tantamount to sharing their rejection of Christ. No benefit, such as healing powers possessed by the Jews, is worth the blasphemy of endorsing the Jewish rejection of Christ. Beware lest your wives, etc., are getting involved in Judaism, and even leading you into it!
HOM. II: Apart from repeating a lot of Homily I -- Keeping fasts at the same time as the Jews, being circumcized, and otherwise adopting Jewish customs is the same as going back under the Law, which has been abolished.
HOM. III: Do not keep fast at the same time as the Jews, even if that is the former church custom, because the Council of Nicea has declared a new uniform time. Church uniformity is vital. Also the Jewish Passover is invalid if it is celebrated outside Jerusalem, according to the Law, so it's clear that the Jewish rite is unLawful. Lent is not "because of" Pascha or the Crucifixion, but because of our sins, a preparation for the Eucharist; although useful for this purpose, it is not absolutely necessary to have a 40 day fast. Also, the Crucifixion took place on the "first day of the feast of unleavened bread and the day of preparation", which do not always coincide, so the Christian Pascha has no fixed relation to the Jewish year. And finally even if the Church's calendar computations are wrong, uniformity and concord are more important.
HOM. IV: The Jews want to carry off my flock. They urge fasting, but fasting is not good of itself, only when it is commanded by God. Why do you Judaizers want to be Jews when you are Christians? The Jews do not keep the Passover in Jerusalem, and thus they break the Law themselves. During the Babylonian captivity, however, being unable to get to Jerusalem, they did not celebrate the Passover, and thus paradoxically upheld the Law by not celebrating the services. Actually, God never really wanted sacrifices anyway; they were a concession to human weakness, allowed because otherwise the people would have sacrificed to idols instead. By limiting sacrifices to Jerusalem, and then destroying the city, God was weaning the Jewish people away from sacrifices. God is a physician. When the Jews are celebrating "STAY AT HOME AND WEEP AND GROAN FOR THEM." But Judaizers are more blameworthy than the Jews, and worst of all are ordinary Christians who fail to fight Judaizing trends in the Church.
HOM. V: The Jews reject Christ, but they should consider the various prophecies He made which have been fulfilled. That other people resembling Christ -- false messiahs -- have risen up as well is just a plot of the devil. The Jews expect to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. This will not happen, because Christ said it will not and because the whole course of Jewish history has been described in the Prophets. Long detailed exegesis of the various dates in Daniel etc., showing that several destructions of the Temple are predicted at exact times, and that the last destruction, by the Romans, is final. Thus the attempt to rebuild under Julian failed, and note that in making the attempt the Jews admitted that their rites were useless without the Temple.
HOM VI: I speak on behalf of the Martyrs, "who have a special hatred" for the Jews who spilled the blood of Him for whom they shed theirs. [Said in a typically elaborate opening passage.] The Jews cannot say that their exile is a temporary punishment for those sins which they acknowledge, because they did worse things in the past without being exiled. On the contrary, it is because they crucified Christ, a sin they refuse to acknowledge. As the chosen people, the Jews would have been protected supernaturally had they not done this one thing. Nor can they claim that their political misfortunes are just the way things go -- again, God would have protected them from their enemies. Because the Law has been abolished and the miracles have ceased, the Jewish priests today are not really priests, but actors playing a part [an accusation Chrysostom elsewhere makes of numerous Christian sinners]. Synopsis of all five preceding sermons. Convert the Judaizing Christians back to orthodoxy. "Do you wish to see the temple? Don't run to the synagogue; be a temple yourself."
Anti-Semitism is a complex issue in the Fathers, since the position of the Jews, over the centuries, has changed from that of a sometimes violently anti-Christian religious and social force to that of a victimized people. The same Jews who mistreated and victimized the early Christians, something often overlooked in contemporary historical sources, have in our times been the victims of mistreatment themselves. This observation must be seen, of course, through the prism of the Zionist policies pursued in the establishment of the Israeli State and the subsequent violence against the Palestinian people, many of them Orthodox; but certainly, as civilized people, we must recognize and loudly decry the atrocities visited on the Jews (and many other peoples, of course) during WW II. Ultimately, then, as I shall emphasize below, we should not glorify or vilify the Jewish people, but understand them in historical context: sometimes as persecutors themselves, sometimes as the persecuted. A controversial but, I think, very fair book by Bernard Lazare, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), makes precisely my point: that to call anti-Semitism a single thing and to discuss it outside of historical context is to deal wrongly with the historical record. He also rightly points out that anti-Semitism often stems from intolerance within Judaism itself.
As well, it must be remembered that the Fathers of the Church view Jews as the adherents of a religion, as a spiritual entity, not merely as a race. And even when they use the word race, they also mean it in a spiritual way, not simply as we use it today. (Thus "Judaizers" was an accusation made against non-Jews as well as Jews. And sinners are sometimes called a "race.") These distinctions are lost on contemporary dilettantes, who think that the curse on the Jewish race applies exclusively to people of a single blood line, rather than to any person who, like the hypocrites of the Jewish establishment of Christ's time, perpetuate anti-Christian sentiments. A "Jew" can, once more, be a Gentile who makes a mockery of Christianity within the Christian Church. It is obvious, then, that the term "Jew" is used in a number of very special ways in Patristic literature. (We True Christians, in fact, are called, by the Fathers, the "New Israel" and "Israelites," in the sense of remaining loyal to the whole Covenant of God's Providence which the Jewish religious leaders violated and defiled.)
Calling any Church Father anti-Semitic on the basis of ostensibly denigrating references to Jews, therefore, is to fall to intellectual and historiographical simple-mindedness. Applying modern sensitivities and terms regarding race to ancient times, as though there were a direct parallel between modern and ancient circumstances, is inane. This abuse of history is usually advocated by unthinking observers who simply cannot function outside the cognitive dimensions of modernity. My remarks in this regard apply not only to those who find literal anti-Semitism in the Fathers, but also to women, in our times, who, deviating from a true vision of femininity and a Christian understanding of the lofty place of the female in the Church, are quick to characterize statements in the Fathers about the FALLEN nature of women (which are often quite harsh) as symptomatic of a general denigration of females (as though fallen males are not also brutally portrayed in the Fathers). Post-Lapsarian and unrestored nature, whatever the gender of the individual, is corrupt and cannot be described in positive ways. (Restored men and women are another matter, and here equality in Christ prevails, whether as regards race or gender.) A clinical diagnosis of human spiritual ills is not the same thing as precriptive racism or intolerance. To suggest this is unfair.
