In the New Republic, David Nirenberg has a review essay on Paula Fredriksen’s new book, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism:
‘Why and how did relations between Christians and Jews ever become so terrible in the first place?” Medieval Christian theologians thought that the answer to this question, posed in the prologue to Paula Fredriksen’s remarkable book, was to be found at the dawn of time. Cain murdered Abel, jealous that his earthly sacrifices were rejected by God in favor of his younger brother’s more spiritual ones. The innocent Abel prefigured Christ, while Cain prefigured the deicidal Jews, his fratricide the first of their many acts of perfidy against God and his prophets. Medieval rabbis also explained the conflict between Christians and Jews as sibling rivalry, this time between Isaac’s twin sons Jacob and Esau. The slightly elder Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of stew, but then regretted the bargain and raged at Jacob’s assumption of God’s promise. Esau’s descendants were the gentile Christians, who inherited his penchant for persecuting Israel. Some rabbis even read Genesis as a “how-to manual” for the survival of future suffering. When Jacob divided his camp out of fear of Esau’s attack, he was teaching the Jews of later millennia to divide their population among many lands, so that if they were destroyed in one nation they might persist in another.
Continue reading at the New Republic.