With anti-Semitism frequently in the news it is fascinating to find a book like this which investigates the topic in depth. In this powerfully argued piece of scholarship, subtitled ‘The History of a Way of Thinking’, Nirenberg contends that anti-Judaism is not an irrational exception but one of the basic tools with which the whole structure of Western thought has been constructed.

What is more, he believes that “what people have thought in the past…affects what and how people think in the future” (p2).

Defining Terms

Nirenberg uses the term ‘anti-Judaism’ rather than ‘anti-Semitism’, as for him Judaism is not only the religion of a particular group of people, but also a set of ideas and attributes which non-Jews have employed to make sense of and criticise their world. It is using this broader sense of the word that the author presents us with a history of how ‘thinking about Judaism’ has created new issues and problems within critical thinking generally.

The author treats the historical material of each chapter in the context of both its own time and how it would go on to impact the future, shaping worldviews in later periods and other places. Nirenberg starts in Ancient Egypt where he finds the emergence of an anti-Jewish tradition, then examines how the Greeks brought new questions and tools that “would prove highly significant for the kinds of thinking that could be done with Judaism” (p20).

He summarises how the ancient historians began to craft an anti-Jewish polemic through a negative image of Moses and the Israelites who, once they had come out of Egypt, developed practices diametrically opposed to all other people-groups. They were enemies of all the gods and of all mankind generally, not just the Egyptians or the Greeks.

Nirenberg starts in Ancient Egypt where he finds the emergence of an anti-Jewish tradition.

Early Church ‘Fathers’

With this background established, we move into the time of early Christianity and the New Testament. Paul’s doctrines on the Christian believer’s relationship to Judaism are examined; Nirenberg does not believe that Paul intended to attack Judaism as such, but that his new emphasis (for instance, on circumcision) would certainly lead others to make that deduction. Judaism was stuck in the material and temporal world, whereas Christianity pointed to a spiritual reality and a new creation.

The chapter on the early post-apostolic Church shows how a new myriad of teachers with often incompatible ideas made the task of discernment difficult for ordinary believers. The Jews could easily be presented in negative terms, without much contradiction. Threats to Judaism readily emerged through the writings and teachings of people such as Origen, Marcion, John Chrysostom, and even later figures such as St Ambrose and St Jerome.

We next move on to Jewish enmity in Islam and, in particular, in the construction of Muhammad’s biography and the later traditions, whose political elaboration stood in opposition to the Jews. The author asserts that “Early Islam understood its conquest of the Jews as proof, both prophetic and political, of Muhammad’s claim to succeed Moses” (p161).

Middle Ages to Modernity

By the time we reach the Medieval era we have become “used to seeing the Jews cast as confounders of truth, master hypocrites, and even agents of the devil” (p183). But even this cannot prepare us for what is to come next. A complicated story begins to emerge of various rulers, who saw themselves as either protector or exterminator of the Jews. Which they chose depended on their own agenda and political dilemmas. Money was also often a key factor!

Later chapters consider Spain and the Inquisition, and the Reformation, including Luther and his writings. Much of this will be familiar but has to be repeated in an historical survey of this nature. Perhaps less familiar or expected is a whole chapter on Shakespeare and his play The Merchant of Venice. A fascinating section, especially for the literary specialist.

Nirenberg contends that the period known as the ‘Enlightenment’ and the subsequent era of ‘modernity’ changed nothing regarding anti-Judaic views. Instead these eras merely “translated them into new terms, embedding them in the philosophies and sciences with which they claimed to make a new and more critical sense of the cosmos” (pp301-2).

Nirenberg contends that the period known as the ‘Enlightenment’ and the subsequent era of ‘modernity’ changed nothing regarding anti-Judaic views.

The Power of Ideas

Other main features of the later part of the book include the Wars of Religion and the English Civil War, as well as the key figure of Spinoza and the French Revolution. In places there is a lot of reading for little extra gain in terms of the author’s main thesis, but that is often the case in large-scale historical works.

One of the strengths of the book lies in its examination of the ‘causal power of ideas’. Its final chapters include the rise of certain philosophers, from Kant to Heine, and how their ideas increasingly relegated the truths of Judaism to mythology. How this led to the de-Judaisation of German society and education is well explained. The writings of Marx and other critical thinkers are described as a “strong magnifying glass” to highlight the ideologies of the age.

Higher Anti-Semitism

In the realm of theology, the so-called ‘Higher Criticism’ of the Jewish scriptures is seen by Nirenberg as a form of “Higher Anti-Semitism”. The attempt of scholarship to purge the world of the Old Testament God has had profound consequences.

Regarding the Holocaust, Nirenberg states: “I do not believe that the history of thought I have attempted to sketch in these pages determined why Germany moved from anti-Semitism to genocide…But I do believe that the Holocaust was inconceivable and is unexplainable without that deep history of thought” (pp458-9). This is worth a discussion or two in itself!

Overall this academic book tackles an immense and complex subject in an intelligible way and is worth a place on the shelves of any who want to gain a better understanding of both the past and the present, and possibly the future too.

‘Anti-Judaism’ (610pp) is available from Amazon and the Book Depository for £12 (paperback). Also available as a hardback, audiobook and ebook.