Christians believe that Christ's death redeems and forgives. Yet the same blood shed on the cross has been used to stain Jews with lasting, incomparable guilt. The gospel narratives of the Passion cast the Jews as responsible, directly and indirectly, for the death of the Son of God. The stigma of "Christ killer"-the notion that all Jews, at all times and in all places, share in the collective responsibility for the Crucifixion-has plagued Jews ever since and is the source of much Christian anti-Semitism. Jeremy Cohen traces the Christ-killer myth from ancient times to the present day, touching on the Gospels and their roots in Hebrew Scripture, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and much in between. The greatest of the church fathers, the Crusades, the notorious blood libels of the Middle Ages, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, Christian mysticism, art, and popular piety, Passion plays, and modern film all have a place in this well-documented, richly illustrated volume. Cohen seeks neither to explain Jesus' death nor to pass judgment on anyone for it, but rather to understand how the identification of Jews as Christ killers has functioned as an edifying "myth" for the Christian community. His insightful analysis reveals the deep spiritual truth believers find in this aspect of the Passion story while simultaneously uncovering the remarkably far-reaching impact it has exercised on the Western world. Cohen combines religious, historical, and political perspectives to understand how the Christ-killer myth has become a dominant factor in the way Christians and Jews perceive each other. While a great deal has been written about Christian anti-Semitism, its roots, and its horrific consequences, this is the first volume to provide an in-depth examination of the powerful story that has fueled the fires behind the hatred.

Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen

History

Cohen, Jeremy

World

Oxford University Press

In Living Letters of the Law, Jeremy Cohen investigates the images of Jews and Judaism in the works of medieval Christian theologians from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas. He reveals how—and why—medieval Christianity fashioned a Jew on the basis of its reading of the Bible, and how this hermeneutically crafted Jew assumed distinctive character and power in Christian thought and culture. Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, which constructed the Jews so as to mandate their survival in a properly ordered Christian world, is the starting point for this illuminating study. Cohen demonstrates how adaptations of this doctrine reflected change in the self-consciousness of early medieval civilization. After exploring the effect of twelfth-century Europe's encounter with Islam on the value of Augustine's Jewish witnesses, he concludes with a new assessment of the reception of Augustine's ideas among thirteenth-century popes and friars. Consistently linking the medieval idea of the Jew with broader issues of textual criticism, anthropology, and the philosophy of history, this book demonstrates the complex significance of Christianity's "hermeneutical Jew" not only in the history of antisemitism but also in the broad scope of Western intellectual history.

Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity

Europe

University of California Press

In Living Letters of the Law, Jeremy Cohen investigates the images of Jews and Judaism in the works of medieval Christian theologians from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas. He reveals how―and why―medieval Christianity fashioned a Jew on the basis of its reading of the Bible, and how this hermeneutically crafted Jew assumed distinctive character and power in Christian thought and culture. Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, which constructed the Jews so as to mandate their survival in a properly ordered Christian world, is the starting point for this illuminating study. Cohen demonstrates how adaptations of this doctrine reflected change in the self-consciousness of early medieval civilization. After exploring the effect of twelfth-century Europe's encounter with Islam on the value of Augustine's Jewish witnesses, he concludes with a new assessment of the reception of Augustine's ideas among thirteenth-century popes and friars. Consistently linking the medieval idea of the Jew with broader issues of textual criticism, anthropology, and the philosophy of history, this book demonstrates the complex significance of Christianity's "hermeneutical Jew" not only in the history of antisemitism but also in the broad scope of Western intellectual history.

The friars and the Jews: The evolution of medieval anti-Judaism

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Cornell University Press

Discusses the meaning and context of Genesis I:28 and traces its influence on the Jewish and Christian traditions

Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text

Religion & Spirituality

Cornell Univ Pr

Winner of the 1990 National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship "This innovative, interdisciplinary book reconstructs the career of Genesis I:28 in Judaism and Christianity, from antiquity through the Reformation. Jeremy Cohen tracks the text through all the Jewish and Christian sources in which it figures significantly--in law, exegesis, homily, theology, mysticism, philosophy, and even vernacular poetry. 'Brilliant.'"--American Historical Review

"Cohen argues that it was in the thirteenth century that a fundamental shift occurred in the Christian perception of both Judaism and Jews in Western Europe, and he attributes this change to the activities of the newly-formed mendicant orders―the Dominicans and Franciscans. In order to make this case as effectively as he does, the author has to approach his problem from two different perspectives―that of the historian of the medieval church, and that of the Jewish historian. Each of these approaches has its own scholarly literature, its own emphases, its own particular blind spots. It is the principal quality of this book that it focuses a steady, clear light on those dark corners, and will make sense to a variety of readers.... Cohen's views will be taken seriously. Indeed, the calm and sensible tone of this book may help stimulate a new scholarly debate."―American Jewish History

The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism

Social Research in Communication and Law (Commtext Series)

It is not unusual for communication and media researchers to study law or legal issues, nor is it uncommon for legal scholars to study communication law. But it is something of a departure for the two to come together as has been accomplished in this innovative volume. Social Research in Communication and Law is a practical guide for conducting research involving both legal and communication questions. Offering rich citations and examples from existing literature, this engaging volume shows communication law scholars how to make more effective use of the methodologies employed in communication science. Topics addressed include reconciling communication and law, social research approaches to libel and theories pertaining to freedom of

Gleason, Timothy

Sage Publications, Inc.

How are martyrs made, and how do the memories of martyrs express, nourish, and mold the ideals of the community? Sanctifying the Name of God wrestles with these questions against the background of the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland during the outbreak of the First Crusade. Marking the first extensive wave of anti-Jewish violence in medieval Christian Europe, these "Persecutions of 1096" exerted a profound influence on the course of European Jewish history.
When the crusaders demanded that Jews choose between Christianity and death, many opted for baptism. Many others, however, chose to die as Jews rather than to live as Christians, and of these, many actually inflicted death upon themselves and their loved ones. Stories of their self-sacrifice ushered the Jewish ideal of martyrdom—kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's holy name—into a new phase, conditioning the collective memory and mindset of Ashkenazic Jewry for centuries to come, during the Holocaust, and even today.
The Jewish survivors of 1096 memorialized the victims as martyrs as they rebuilt their communities during the decades following the Crusade. Three twelfth-century Hebrew chronicles of the persecutions preserve their memories of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, tales fraught with symbolic meaning that constitute one of the earliest Jewish attempts at local, contemporary historiography. Reading and analyzing these stories through the prism of Jewish and Christian religious and literary traditions, Jeremy Cohen shows how these persecution chronicles reveal much more about the storytellers, the martyrologists, than about the martyrs themselves. While they extol the glorious heroism of the martyrs, they also air the doubts, guilt, and conflicts of those who, by submitting temporarily to the Christian crusaders, survived.

Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Jewish Culture and Contexts)

Asia

University of Pennsylvania Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cohen, Jeremy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cohen, Jeremy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cohen, Jeremy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen

Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity

Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity

The friars and the Jews: The evolution of medieval anti-Judaism

Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text

Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text

The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism

Social Research in Communication and Law (Commtext Series)

Social Research in Communication and Law (Commtext Series)

Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Jewish Culture and Contexts)