Christians & Our Lies: 

Overcoming Supersessionism in Christian Readings of the Hebrew Bible

By: Lisa W. Davison, PhD
Remind & Renew 2017

I begin with a disclaimer. If what I’m about to say leads some of you to declare
me a heretic, and that’s okay. You are not the first nor will you be the last. It is not
my intention to disparage anyone’s faith or relationship with the Holy, but rather to
share what I’ve learned from years of study and of listening, especially from listening to
the words of survivors standing in the Concentration Camps of Poland.
The history of Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions is well-documented, with
the climax of such behavior ending in the horrors of the Holocaust and Hitler’s attempt
at genocide that resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews. Many people have argued
that Hitler was not Christian and that, therefore, Christianity cannot be blamed for his
actions. While I do doubt Hitler’s understanding of “being a follower of Jesus”, there is
no denying that he was a baptized member of the Church and was raised in an
ostensibly “Christian” nation. More important, though, is that Hitler did not create “anti-
Semitism”, nor was he the first to suggest that Jewish people were the source of all
evils in the world. No, it was Christianity that provided the fertile soil for Hitler’s seeds
of hatred against the Jewish people and anyone else deemed inhuman to grow.
Certainly, there were “righteous gentiles,” who resisted Hitler and the Nazi
regime, but the dominant teachings of the church that accused Jews of deicide –
labeling them as Christ killers -- prepared Christians to accept the Nazi dogma that the
Jews were not fully human and could be eliminated. The assertion of “blood libel”
(which claimed that all Jewish people bore the guilt of Jesus’ crucifixion) was grounded
in a gospel text, specifically Matt 27:25, and gave Christians ammunition for the
church’s organized persecution of Jews, beginning at least by the 7 th century CE. Other
lies about the Jews, spread by Christians, included the accusation that they regularly
broke into sacristies to “desecrate the host” and that they would seek out Christian
children to sacrifice, so they could use their blood during the Passover. Such hateful
untruths were the justification for the centuries of pogroms against the Jewish people
and were the constant diet of Christians in the centuries that led up to Hitler and his
final solution.
Much has been written and said about the role of the Catholic Church in the
Holocaust, and we Protestants too often have claimed innocence for such
condemnations of the Jews. However, with just a little research, we find that our own
Protestant hero, Martin Luther, did his fair share of fertilizing the soil with his anti-
Jewish teachings and supersessionist interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.
Nowhere is this more evident than in his treatise entitled, “On the Jews and
Their Lies,” published in 1543. Early in his career, Luther was known for being tolerant
of the Jewish people because he was convinced they could be converted to Christianity.
However, in his later years, after realizing that his evangelism was not as successful as
he had hoped, his attitude and tone radically changed. After spilling vials and vials of
ink writing his insults and accusations against the Jewish people, along with some
horrible eisegesis of biblical texts, Luther provides his recommendations of what should
be done about the “Jews.” Here are just the first 4 of his 7 suggestions: {what follows
are Luther’s own words}
• First . . . set fire to their synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt
whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of
them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God
might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such
public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.
• Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue
in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged
under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they
are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile
and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
• Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such
idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them

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 • Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss
of life and limb.1

Luther’s writing is terribly offensive, obscene really, and reveals the kind of blatant
anti-Judaism that conjures up images of Hitler and the Holocaust. When faced with the
atrocities of the concentration camps and the extermination of 6 million Jews, the
Catholic Church officially apologized for their part in the rise and success of Nazism. In
like manner, many Protestant denominations have offered official statements of
remorse containing promises to get rid of anti-Jewish teachings in the church,
specifically supersessionism. Certainly, many of the mainline Protestant churches and
the Catholic Church no longer perpetuate the traditional Christian accusations against
the Jews. This kind of overt anti-Jewish propaganda causes most faithful and
thoughtful Christians to cringe; however, there is still more to be done.
In the shadow of the gas chambers, gallows, and ash heaps of the Holocaust our
biblical interpretation also must change. The explicit and implicit supersessionism of
our sermons, liturgies, and hymns must be addressed. So, what is supersessionism?
This way of expressing Christianity’s relationship to the Jewish faith can take at least
two different forms: at its most basic understanding, superssionism argues that
Christianity has replaced Israel/the Jewish people as God’s chosen ones. In a bit more
nuanced form, supersessionism makes the claim that Christianity has fulfilled, and thus
improved on, the teachings of Judaism. The former is found in some NT texts as well
as in interpretations that claim that the “New Covenant” established by Jesus has
superseded or even cancelled-out, the “old covenant” God had with Israel. The latter
form is found in the tendency of Christian interpreters to villify Judaism in order to
make Jesus appear to be the great liberator. Thankfully, there are now many resources
for helping Christians read the New Testament in anti-supersessionist ways.
What has not always been recognized is the role Christian use/abuse of the Hebrew
Bible played and continues to play in Christian anti-Jewish teachings, teachings that still

1
Taken from “On the Jews and Their Lies,” written by Martin Luther in 1543. The text can be found here
http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres9/Luthereng.pdf.

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contribute to the idea that Jewish people are “less than.” Still, in the 21st century, too
many Christians read the Hebrew Bible through a lens of supersessionism, negating the
value of these ancient texts that we share with the Jewish people, using them only as
“evidence” of why Christianity is the better religion. Such misappropriation of the
Hebrew Bible manifests itself in sermons, liturgies, hymns – especially Christmas carols,
and curricula. Perhaps one of the most glaring examples is in the structure of the
Revised Common Lectionary, where readings from the Hebrew Bible typically are paired
with New Testament texts often either to draw a sharp contrast between the Old and
the New or to demonstrate how the words of the Hebrew Bible have been fulfilled in
the person of Jesus. This structure also supports the false dichotomy too many
Christians proclaim between the “Wrathful God of the Old Testament” and the “loving
God of the New Testament.”
It is the problem of supersessionist readings of the Hebrew Bible that I would like to
address this morning. In what follows, I will identify five things Christians often get
wrong about the Hebrew Bible, which contribute to supersessionism, and then I will
offer suggestions for how we can overcome them.

First, Christians misread the Garden Story

Christianity not only has misread Gen 2-3 but has also put far too much
emphasis on the garden, a story that is never mentioned again in the Hebrew Bible.
The traditional Christian interpretation of Gen 2-3 is that humans were created immortal
with only one command: don’t eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil lest
you die. The serpent (that is obviously the devil) deceived the woman into eating of
that tree and she “tempted” the man into eating as well. Even though they did not die
as God had said, they were understood to have experienced a “spiritual” death for this
original sin. Because of this behavior, humans were condemned to mortality and fell
from this original state of life with God. The continual stain of sin and the punishment
of death was the wretched state of humanity until Jesus came and paid the price for
humanity’s sin and overcame the power of death through the resurrection. There are
some possible holes in this understanding, not the least of which is that humans still

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die. The basic Christian interpretation not only ignores the words of the text but also
reads into it ideas that it does not support.
When one takes off the glasses of Christian supersessionism and reads Gen 2-3
again, everything changes. We realize that the word “sin” never appears in these
chapters; its first occurrence is in relation to the choice Cain will make about what to do
with his anger with Abel in Gen 4. We also find that humans are never cursed as a
result of their disobedience; only the serpent & the ground are. According to the story,
humans were created as mortal beings, or else the presence of the tree of life would
not have been necessary. Since the first humans chose knowledge over the ability to
live forever without free will, they and we now live with the awareness of our mistakes
as well as those of others. We have a conscience. In a compassionate move, the Holy
banishes humanity from the garden to protect us from eating of the tree of life and
having to live with this knowledge forever (Gen 3:22-23). Death is not a punishment; it
is a grace. What if Christians reclaim this creation parable as a lesson about how
humans are given freewill and thus must be held accountable for the choices we make
and cannot blame it on someone/thing else? What if we allow the story to remind us
that death is not the ultimate enemy and that we are to live life fully in this reality,
working for God’s kindom to made manifest in this world, instead of focusing on getting
the prize of going to heaven?

Second, Christians have an incomplete understanding of Torah & the Commandments

The all too common phrase, “Law” & “Gospel,” is a great example of this
Christian misuse of the HB. Too often Christianity has portrayed itself as a religion of
grace, of faith not works righteousness. The contrast is built around the idea that
Israel was enslaved to the law that God gave to them through Moses. These
commandments have been misunderstood as a burden for the Jewish people. Jesus,
then, came to free them from this legalistic religion in which Israel thought that it could
earn salvation through the keeping of the law. Ironically, it is often the very Christians
who proudly proclaim that they are no longer “bound” by the law who want to post 10

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of those commandments in public places and to make two particular ones as still
binding.
This approach is grounded in a mistranslation, and misunderstanding, of the
word “torah.” This Hebrew word means “teaching” not “law.” The fact that the first 5
books of the HB are called “Torah” and contain more than commandments is clear
evidence that this translation of “law” is wrong. The Torah contains the teachings that
God gave to the descendants of Abraham & Sarah as a way of showing them who God
is and how they were to live lives that reflected the God they worshipped. Keeping the
613 commandments was never understood as a prerequisite or requirement for God’s
forgiveness or salvation. And, the commandments were always meant to be adaptable
and not written in stone. Even within the Hebrew Bible we see them being changed,
like in the story of the Daughters of Zelophehad when inheritance laws were rewritten
to allow daughters to inherit their father’s property in certain circumstances. While we
no longer seek to keep all 613 commandments, Christianity cannot afford to dismiss
them too quickly. For within them, we find valuable teachings about hospitality,
economic justice, the importance of the Sabbath and loving the stranger. It is from the
Torah that Jesus chose the 2 so-called “greatest commandments” from Deut 6:5 –
“Love God with all you are”; and Lev 19:17 – “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Third – Christians Have a Misconception of Israel’s Sacrificial System

Many Christians claim that Jesus’ death was the ultimate sacrifice meant to pay
the price for humanity’s sinfulness, and thus appeasing God so God could forgive us.
This claim is based on the misconception of Israel’s sacrificial system found in too many
Christian interpretations – where the sacrifices are presented as Israel’s faulty attempt
to buy God’s forgiveness through tangible offerings like grain & oil, but most especially
through the sacrifice of animals. This interpretation has some serious theological
problems; like, the fact that Israel’s God was not like humans or other gods, which
require sustenance, so what good would meal offerings be to the Divine. In addition,
the Holy had granted forgiveness to persons who lived before the institution of the

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sacrificial system, and prophets like Amos stated clearly that God did not require a
sacrifice to forgive.
The system of sacrifices in Ancient Israel was not about what God demanded or
needed. Rather, these rituals were intended for the people as a way for them to
acknowledge their wrong, so they could accept the forgiveness God had already given.
Perhaps most important, is that the Hebrew Bible is very clear that the one thing God
would never want, nor accept, was a human sacrifice (e.g., Deut 12:31), a fact
confirmed by prophets (e.g., Mic 6:7).
What if we were to understand Jesus’ death not as a human sacrifice but rather
as the empire-sanctioned execution of a political dissident who preached radical
messages and refused to be silent? What if, rather than glorifying Jesus’ death, we
focus more on his life and teachings? What if Christianity were less about believing
John 3:16 and more about embodying of Matt 25:31-40?

Fourth – Christian Insistence on a Prophecy – Fulfillment Reading of the Bible

Traditional Christianity has looked to the prophets in order to “prove” the
significance of Jesus, which was based on a misunderstanding of the role of a prophet.
Most Christian teaching about the biblical prophets has been that they were predicting
future events that had been finally fulfilled in the birth, life, death, & resurrection of
Jesus. Thus, those who originally received the prophetic messages were not the
primary intended audience. Unbeknownst to Hosea, his words “out of Egypt I called my
son” were not providing hope for people facing a formidable enemy and probable exile.
No, this was a prediction of Jesus and how his parents fled to Egypt to avoid Herod’s
murderous attempts. This kind of supersessionist reading perpetuated the claim that
the Jews, in their rejection of Jesus, were “blind” to what was predicted in their
scriptures. Not only was it a misrepresentation of what prophets were called to do, but
it also completely robbed the Jewish people of these treasured texts of their canon
The prophets of Israel were not future tellers but were forth tellers who gave
theological commentary on their world. While there was an element of future
orientation within the words of Israel’s prophets, that was not their primary function.

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Their interest in the future grew out of their concern for the present. Unlike the
traditional views of the Church, they were not predicting an event that would not take
place for centuries. Isaiah, in Ch 7:10-16, was not referring to a mysterious virgin birth
but rather to a young woman already pregnant in the time of King Ahaz. If the primary
meaning of this message was that in 800 years a person who be born to somehow save
people from sin, then the words had no power for King Ahaz who had to make a
decision about how to respond to very real imminent threats. God, through Isaiah,
gave assurance that by the time this child, who would remind the king and the people
that God is With Us/ Immanuel, was a toddler, the current external threat would be
gone, so Ahaz should trust in God. Despite the claims of beloved Christmas hymns and
Handel’s Messiah, Micah was not predicting that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, and
it is the “way” spoken of in Isaiah 40 that is in the wilderness not the voice of John the
Baptist. When we no longer limit the prophets to predicting a singular event, their
words of challenge and comfort can speak both to the past and to our current situation.

Fifth – Placing Restrictions on Divine covenants

Christianity’s claim to have a “new” covenant has traditionally been interpreted
as replacing the “old” covenant that God had with Israel. This supersessionist approach
not only promotes an exclusivist view that Christianity is the only way, but it also
severely limits the Holy by implying that God can only maintain one covenant at a time.
Whereas, we humans maintain multiple covenants (to our families, our job, our friends,
etc.), we do not afford the Divine the same ability. This replacement theology is
founded upon a basic misunderstanding of “covenant” (berith) in the Hebrew Bible, and
a failure to recognize that these ancient stories attest to the multiple covenants the
Holy makes and keeps with humans and creation. It ignores the specification of several
covenants within the Israel’s stories as berith ‘olam, eternal covenants, that can never
end: examples include the post-flood covenant, the Davidic covenant. The dominant
Christian narrative has narrowly focused on the covenant with Sarah & Abraham and
their descendants, presenting it as the only covenant God made & kept. However, in

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Gen 16, we read about the Holy making a covenant with Hagar & her son, Ishmael; one
very similar to God’s covenant with Israel’s ancestors.
Christianity’s insistence on an either/or approach to life, engenders a way of
seeing the world that puts boundaries around people, land, and resources. It makes us
feel empowered to put limits on God’s grace and love. This is not how the Holy views
the world. The Divine has a both/and perspective. No matter how hard humanity tries
to limit God’s covenantal love, God raises the possibilities for covenant exponentially.
God makes a covenant with Noah, and with Abraham and Sarah, and with Hagar and
Ishmael, and with the Israelites at Sinai, and with King David, and with those whose
lives were changed by an itinerant prophet from Nazareth, and with whomever God
chooses.
So how can Christians read/teach/preach the Hebrew Bible with integrity, in ways
that acknowledge the inherent worth of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, while also
claiming them as part of our faith heritage as well. We must respect the texts as they
are without jumping to Jesus or the New Testament. They contain valuable information
about the Holy, humanity, and Creation; they are a rich resource for how to make
justice happen and love passionately all of God’s people. We need to read the prophets
as speaking to their own time and place (first & foremost), before we consider how
their messages continued to speak to other generations, including our own. We should
follow the advice given by Walter Harrelson & Rabbi Falk, in their book Jews &
Christians: A Troubled Family. They argue that any Christian reading/preaching of the
HB must leave intact a meaning for the Jewish community. If it doesn’t, then it is a
misuse of the bible. In their own words: “The bible of the Jews cannot be claimed as
applicable only in the form of Christian interpretation.”2
So, what if we who seek to follow the ways of Jesus define our faith not by how
we are superior to Judaism or (other religions)? What if we understand ourselves as
faith siblings with our Jewish neighbors, sharing in the common desire to work with the

2
Walter Harrelson & Randall Falk, Jews & Christians: A Troubled Family (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1990), 69.

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Holy toward a time when the Divinely-intended Shalom is a reality for all of Her
creation? Imagine how our world might look then?

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