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Presentation Before the Performance
of Bach's Passion of St. John
Handel Choir of Baltimore, April 5, 1992
Christoper M. Leighton
There are those who maintain that the Saint John Passion of Bach should no longer be performed in public! Antisemitism, the argument goes, is deeply embedded in our culture, even though most of us are unaware of its enduring influence. Bach picks up and passes along the nefarious image of the Jewish people that is enshrined in the Gospel of John. Indeed, the music amplifies the pathos of the passion narrative -- intensifying the listener's sympathy for the plight of Jesus while at the same time heightening an antagonism for his enemies. The power and the beauty of the libretto endow a sinister stereotype of the Jew with respectability. In our time, to play a great work of art that profiles the Jewish people as evil and murderous is immoral. Perhaps our children or our children's children will tame the rhetoric of contempt. Perhaps they will eventually overcome the legacy of this hatred. But until then, we must be very cautious and do all in our power to prevent the circula-tion of a message which gives bigotry such lofty and sublime expression.
On the other hand, there are those who are offended by judgments that would in effect censor an exquisite masterpiece. They note the dangerous excesses of the vigilante who assails any view that has the slightest odor of political incorrectness. Those who want to ban Bach's Passions claim that they want to protect us from ourselves. But the public does not need to have its ears plugged up! The public does not benefit from restrictions that silence either theological or musical expression. The public needs to be educated so that it can understand the tensions, interpret the issues and evaluate the risks.
In addition there are those who insist that the threat of antisemitism is grossly exaggerated. To be sure there are random acts of violence performed by crazies. But the days of persecution are behind us and are now invoked simply to win the sympathies the general popu-lation is said to owe its victims. Yet a society in which political advantages are scored whenever a special interest group can play its suffering off against others promotes insidious rivalries. For goodness sake, they insist, let's not grind our cultural classics into fodder to feed a politics of polarization.
Still another group, comprised of good, up-standing, deeply committed Christians, bristles at the idea of removing Bach's Passions from the public stage. The assertion that the gospel proclamations of either Matthew or John are anti-Jewish strikes them as an outrageously unfair accusation. The evangelists narrate a message of love and hope, forgiveness and recon-ciliation. This group insists that to focus attention on some dramatic moments of conflict and then to label the text antisemitic or anti-Jewish is to misread the work, indeed to surrender to the forces of paranoia.
Finally, there are those who are not particularly interested in the politics of artistic expression. Nor do they want to get embroiled in a theological disputation. They come because they love the music. If anything, they resent a noisy debate that might distract them from the aesthetic thrill that Bach delivers.
Herb Dimmock, on behalf of the Handel Choir of Balti-more, was kind enough to invite me to trudge into this quagmire. I trust that you can already see that here we have a mess, much easier to step into than out of. I can find no way around the confusion. So if you bear with me, we'll wade into some ambiguous territory, try to resist the gravitational pull of uncertainty, and see if we can get to the other side. My remarks will center on John's Gospel, for Bach plays the supporting role in this drama. He simply gives flight to the words of the evan-gelist. First, we'll examine some of the ways that the Fourth Gospel has shaped the church's perception of the Jewish people. I will highlight a couple of images that continue to capture the imagination of the church so that we can ponder the power that resides in this rhe-torical tradition and confront a very troublesome legacy. Then I want to circle back and reconsider the historical setting of John's Gospel. What social, political, and theo-logical factors undergird the conflicts in John's Gospel? How might a better understanding of a contagious con-flict from the late first century immunize us from distortions that have been woven into the fabric of our Western heritage, our art and architecture, our music and literature, indeed many of our finest cultural trea-sures? Can we gain the theological, as well as historical, perspective that might lead us out of this ethical morass?
We Christians hold the Gospel of John as sacred. We insist that a liberating word lies at the heart of the gospel proclamation that inspires a community to sacri-fice itself for the sake of others. Nevertheless, the very scriptures that drive home a message of love have been used to legitimize a policy of enmity, for the fact is that John has some contemptuous things to say about the Jews. You see, the Gospel was composed in the heat of a fierce dispute. Most New Testament scholars maintain that John's Gospel was completed at the end of the first century by a Jewish-Christian who was writing for a community in a city in Syria, Palestine, or Transjordon. This community was apparently forced out of the syna-gogue. The expulsion intensified sectarian impulses within John's community. To authenticate its proclama-tion and explain its rejection, the Johannine community felt compelled to nullify the claims of its adversaries, who are generally referred to simply as "the Jews" (in Greek, hoi Ioudaioi). We thus encounter a Gospel that was written from a defensive posture by a community that thought of itself under siege. The world has been divided into warring camps. Them against us. The forces of light against the forces of darkness, truth against falsehood. The antagonism that divided the Jews from the followers of Jesus has a scope that extends well beyond the rubrics of a normal family squabble. The hostility was portrayed as a cosmic struggle in which the denizens of evil are pitted against the champions of divine truth. This understanding of the world tottering on the edge of history, the world deep in crisis, contributed to the gospel's polemical intensity against the Jews. The end of an era and the dawning of a new day is envisioned; everything is at stake; all depends on the decision for or against Christ. In this cosmic drama, "the Jews" were cast as the enemies. Over the centuries, many of them have become unfortunate casualties, caught underfoot in the Christian scramble for salvation.
Most Christians do not dwell on this. We seldom confront the polemical portrait of the Jews in the Gospels. The full impact certainly escaped my attention until a few years ago when the ICJS hired a Royal Shakespearean actor to recite John's Gospel in its entirety before a mixed audience of Christians and Jews. Every time "the Jews" were mentioned, 67 times in all, the crowd stiffened. To be sure, there are a few positive allusions to "the Jews" and some neutral references as well. Yet "the Jews" appear in a negative context in the overwhelming major-ity of citations. They are the foils who in most cases appear foolish, hardhearted, spiritually blind, or even murderous. "The Jews" of the Fourth Gospel are em-broiled in plots against Jesus. In the fifth chapter they persecute Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath (5:16), and again they seek to kill him in the seventh (7:1), eighth (8:59), and tenth (10:31) chapters. In the eleventh chapter Jesus is warned against entering into Judean territory because "the Jews wanted to stone" him (11:8). The motif of "fear of the Jews" runs through Jesus' public ministry (9:22), his passion and death (19:38), and his resurrection appearances (20:19). Be-cause of their opposition, Jesus reaches a juncture where he can no longer minister openly among the Jews (11: 54).
This polemic against "the Jews" is reinforced by another theme that suggests that Jesus either fulfills or replaces Jewish feasts and institutions. Take a look at the first passage on your handout (chapter 6:30-36). The time is shortly before the Passover. Jesus has multiplied the loaves, and here he substitutes the bread of heaven for the manna of the Exodus. The gifts of old have been surpassed by a new and improved offering. The freedom from Egyptian tyranny that was granted to Moses and his followers pales in comparison to the spiritual freedom offered by Christ.
This theme is repeated in chapter 7 when Jesus replaces the water and light ceremonies of the Feast of Taber-nacles, and again in chapter 10 at the Dedication or Hanukkah, when Jesus is consecrated Messiah and Son of God in place of the Temple altar. The audience is left with the impression that Jewish life and practice were temporary, incomplete, and inadequate. In Jesus the promises of old are brought to fruition, and the de-ficiencies of the ancient tradition are overcome. This motif is echoed in the Epistle to the Hebrews and amplified by the Church Fathers. The Church becomes identified with the "New Israel" and the synagogue becomes obsolete, an empty vessel, a fossil. Why do the Jews fail to see the writing on the wall? Irenaeus pro-vides an answer that has dominated the thinking of the Church. [Text read.] The Jews do not recognize that their tradition has been superseded because they can-not grasp the meaning of their own scriptures, nor comprehend the true significance of their sacred feasts and customs. Traditionally, Christians have had difficulty recognizing that there is more than one way to interpret a text, more than one way to serve God.
One of the most disturbing images of the Jewish people surfaces in chapter 8. [Text read.] In associating the Jews with the Devil, John unleashes a virulent idea. An awareness of the rhetorical practices at the time helps to blunt the polemical edge. After all, Jesus refers to Peter as "Satan" (Matthew 16.23/Mark 8:33), and Paul dismisses the apostles of Christ as "servants of Satan." Nevertheless this image takes on a new and dreadful guise in the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of killing Christian children and using the blood to make matzoth, when Jews were assailed for allegedly poison-ing the wells and spreading the Black Plague. Obviously no normal human being would indulge in such outrageous conduct. Jewish involvement was explained with refer-ence to a popular fantasy that allied the Jews with the Devil. As the agents of Satan, the Jews were portrayed as global conspirators struggling to ravage Christendom and to seize control of the world. This mythic structure survived the onslaught of modernity and secularization. Indeed the fantasy was reinvigorated and given pseudo-scientific respectability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even today an obsessive fear of Jewish power captures adherents to antisemitism.
When we turn to Jesus' passion and death in chapters 18 and 19, the burden of guilt is squarely placed on "the Jews." This emphasis stands in contrast to the Synoptic Gospels, where Jesus' opponents are identified with "the chief priests and elders." The officers of "the Jews" (18: 12) arrest Jesus in compliance with Caiaphus' ironic plan to have one man die for the people (11:50; 18:14). The Jews press Pontius Pilate to have Jesus executed because it is unlawful for them to perform the deed. Notice the progression in the selection from chapter 19. [Text read.] Pilate seeks to release Jesus, but "the Jews" will have none of it. Apart from the prodding of "the Jews," Jesus would not have been crucified -- that is the underlying thrust of John's narrative. Indeed, in the last line of the text you can see that John gives us the impression that in the end "the Jews" did carry out the execution. "Then he [Pilate] handed him [Jesus] over to them [the Jews and their chief priests] to be cru-cified."
The enormity of this crime derives from the affirmations of Jesus that we find in John's Gospel. Remember, only in John is the word "God" directly applied to Jesus (1.1 and 20:28). As the New Testament scholar Daniel Harrington has noted, "The combination of the negative portrait of the Jews and the affirmations of Jesus' divinity in the Fourth Gospel led historically to the description of the Jews as a ‘deicide’ people; that is, a people that killed God." Though the accusation has been condemned in our own time, most noticeably in the Second Vatican Coun-cil's document Nostra Aetate, these negative images were consolidated by the Church Fathers. Justin Martyr interprets the terrible misfortunes that have befallen the Jewish people as divine punishment. [Passage read.] Or note Augustine's words. [Passage read.] Augustine maintained that Jews should not be forcefully converted or killed, but they must be preserved in a degraded condition. Their debasement will thereby provide a useful witness to the world, making unmistakably clear the price that people must pay when they reject Jesus Christ. This teaching provided the doctrinal foundation that legitimized extensive legal restrictions, legislation that pushed Jews to the margins of the society.
The invective reaches a fever pitch in the words of St. John Chrysostom, the golden-tongued fourth-century orator. [Passage read.] Though his sermons were in-tended to prevent his parishioners from going to the synagogue, his rhetoric serves to dehumanize, indeed to demonize, the Jews. Lest Protestants think that their tradition has not been stained by this legacy of hatred, take note of Luther's tirade. [Read final passage.] Un-fortunately, we can see that the Nazis built their antisemitic platform on the hallowed ground of the church. Hitler, it turns out, was not as inventive as most of us have supposed.
I do not want to pin this shocking sketch on the evan-gelist John, as though he is responsible for the atrocities worked in the name of God and Church. Yet I do want to underscore the deadly potential of the rhetoric. Vicious images can boast more lives than a cat. A metaphor can evolve into deadly mutations, and we Christians have a weighty responsibility to prevent their resuscitation.
If we are to protect ourselves, our children, and our neighbors from the infection of prejudice, we must critically examine the traditions we hold sacred. We must relocate the Gospel in its historical context and pay par-ticular attention to the Jewish matrix out of which the Johannine community emerged. I realize that a great deal of biblical scholarship is excessively pedantic. It often goes down like cold oatmeal. Nevertheless, greater sensitivity to the sociological, the political, and the theological pressures can help us to correct the terrible distortions that we have just reviewed.
First, in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jews found themselves deprived of an institution that had given them great distinction, an institution that had long been central to their religious and national life. To compensate for this dreadful loss, to consolidate a fragmented religious identity and to stabilize an imperiled nation, the rabbis of Yavneh com-bined devotion to Torah with elements of the Pharisaic movement. In the process, they tried to restrain those apocalyptic and messianic tendencies that were proving very dangerous. After all, if you think that you are living on the brink of history and can play a role in ushering in the Kingdom of God, you may be more willing to chal-lenge the establishment, i.e., revolt against Rome. Two devastating wars were enough to prove the rabbis right.
In all probability, the rabbis would have regarded John and his compatriots as rivals -- both competing to reconstruct Judaism, both claiming ownership of the tra-dition. John wrote his gospel in the midst of this painful separation, most likely aware that he and his community were losing the contest to take possession of the Jewish heritage. The rhetoric is bitter and intemperate, lamen-tably a common feature among groups who lay claim to the same religious turf. But many New Testament schol-ars insist that we misrepresent the situation if we fail to see the struggle as an internal family dispute. John is trying to convince his brothers and sisters that they are heading down the wrong path. If we construe the nega-tive portrait of the Jews as an indictment pure and simple, we will miss the underlying point of the polemics, which is to persuade fellow Jews to join the Jesus movement.
Second, we do well to note the political pressures bear-ing down on John's community. Disowned by the synagogue and no doubt distrusted by the Romans who, after all, had executed their leader Jesus in a manner reserved for revolutionaries, the followers of Jesus were terribly vulnerable. To allay Roman suspicions, John and the other evangelists shift the responsibility for Jesus' death from the Romans to the Jews. The degree of Jewish involvement is disputed among scholars, but there is little doubt that Jewish culpability was exag-gerated while Roman involvement was downplayed. We need to remember that Pilate was not necessarily the wishy-washy introvert that we encounter in the Gospels. His reign was so cruel that he was eventually removed from office for excessive brutality. John's story may have been written to appease Roman suspicions, to give his community more room to move. Yet the long-term consequences of what at the time was most likely a survival tactic have been catastrophic for Jewish-Christian relations.
Finally, the theological elements of John. Once regarded as the most "Greek" gospel, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has led most scholars to relocate John within the landscape of Jewish sectarianism. The evangelist discerns a confrontation between the forces of good and evil, the children of light and the children of darkness on the apocalyptic horizon. In this world where everything is black or white, there is no room for grey, no room for ambiguity. The Jews are painted into a dark corner.
Furthermore, John finds Jesus at the center of the reli-gious quest. Various Jewish titles -- Wisdom, Lamb of God, Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah, King of Israel -- are unloosed from their original scriptural moorings and attached to Jesus. Furthermore, John maintains that Jesus gives new meaning to the Sabbath, Passover, Tabernacles, and Hanukkah. These developments con-vince the rabbis that the Johannine community is compromising the integrity of the tradition and under-mining faith in the Oneness of God. An impasse was reached. Jews and Christians took different paths and developed distinct traditions. But Christians remained troubled, even threatened, by the Jewish rejection of Jesus. They tried to resolve lingering doubts by pursuing a Christian answer to the Jewish question, an answer that emphasizes conversion and assimilation. We have tried to overcome the differences by obliterating them. The consequences have been devastating. As the Russian theologian Nicolai Berdyaev noted, "Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed it are often engaged in crucifying others." So we do well to ask ourselves if there is not a better way. Are there resources within the tradition to correct the distortions?
By way of conclusion, I would like to mention two correctives. First, let's go back to Martin Luther. He not only enlarges the problem (as you could surmise from the quotation), he also develops a theology of the cross that insists that guilt should not be projected onto others. In answer to the question, "Who killed Jesus?" Christians must respond, "We did!" Bach's music and Picander's lyrics were both inspired by this Lutheran piety. They wrote in order to educate and to edify. By placing the call for Jesus' death on the lips of the chorus or what at the time would have been the congregation, the Christian community confesses its own complicity, its own failings, its responsibility to make amends. At its heart Bach's Passion enhances the community's capacity for self-criticism.
Yet Bach's masterpiece does more than express our solidarity in sin. The music elevates and charges us with hope. What is desperately needed is a theology that complements the creative genius of Bach, a theology that gives new direction to the aesthetic experience. This vision is encapsuled in a story told of Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin, the founder of a famous yeshiva [school for Talmudic study]. When he died there was great excite-ment in heaven. The host of angels came out to greet him and told him there would be no need of a trial. He would be admitted to heaven immediately, so rich was he in good deeds. But Rabbi Hayim brushed aside the invitation and insisted that there had to be a trial for him, just as there is for everyone else. He cited the passage in the Talmud that says that all must be treated equally by the law. At the trial, he was told that, of course, he should be admitted and given a seat of honor in heaven for having established this mighty academy. But Rabbi Hayim argued, on the basis of a passage in the Talmud that deals with the laws of partnership, that if he were entitled to a reward, then surely the students of the yeshiva were as well, for he could not have accomplished what he did without them. The court confirmed that he was right, that the stu-dents were also entitled to a share of his glory. But Reb Hayim then argued that he would not enter heaven unless and until all the people of Volozhin were admitted too, for they had taken the students in and supported them so that they could study. Without them, he said, the yeshiva could not have succeeded. Therefore, they, too, deserved a share of the reward. The Heavenly Court conferred, checked all the references that the Rabbi cited on the laws of partnership and came to the conclusion that he was right: the people of Volozhin were entitled to a share of the glory. Then Reb Hayim argued that all Jews should be admitted with him, since all Jewish householders everywhere contribute in some way to the maintenance of the Torah. But even this did not satisfy him. He argued further that gentiles too have provided a home for Jews, and therefore they too have a share in the Torah. This time he was told that he had asked for too much, that there simply was not enough room in heaven for all, and that what he was asking was not possible until the Messiah comes. "In that case," said Rabbi Hayim, "I will stay outside with them and wait." And until this day his great soul waits patiently at the portals of heaven, studying the law with intensity and praying for the ultimate redemption of all humanity.
The St. John Passion presents a problem inseparable from a long and painful history, a history in which Jews and Christians were pitted against one another. Intense disputes about John, Bach, and the legacy of antisem-itism will continue to surface, as well they should, until we are clear about the seriousness of the issues. We cannot overcome misunderstandings that are deeply embedded in our culture by locking John in the church, keeping Bach under house arrest, and muzzling the choir. Nor can we come to grips with religious intolerance by ignoring its enduring influence or pretending that "it" is simply a Christian problem. The alchemy of the fanatic is awesome: even our most treasured possessions can be transformed and put in the service of hatred. The challenge is to hear the music with discerning ears. The challenge is to educate ourselves so historical analysis, theological reflection, and aesthetic encounter move us to stand in solidarity with those neighbors who wait outside the portals, and to work for a time when all will find a place in God's Kingdom.
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