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Where is God in all this? Political and Religious Appropriation of Hebrew Scriptures by Christianity and Islam
Introduction
This piece follows a series on the beginnings of anti-Jewish sentiments through the ages.[1] On the scale of global politics in ancient times, the emergence of Christianity in the first century CE and Islam in the seventh century CE represents two of the most significant transformations in world history including a religious one. Both religions, while developing distinct theological frameworks, constructed their identities through deep engagement with and reconfiguration of Jewish scripture – the Tanakh. Although Christianity and Islam developed distinct doctrines, they share similar beliefs. They also share structural patterns in their development. This article seeks to confront the roots of anti-Jewish sentiments from both Christianity and Islam.
I. Shared Foundations: The Jewish Scriptures as Source Material
1. Christianity’s Reinterpretation of the Tanakh
Christianity’s foundational claim rested on the assertion that Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew Bible’s (Tanakh) prophecies. Christian leaders increasingly reframed Hebrew scriptures to validate Jesus’s identity and to establish Christianity as a new religious path distinct from Judaism. Yet as scholars such as Daniel Boyarin argue, early Christian authors frequently reinterpreted passages outside their historical and literary context to justify the emerging messianic theology of the nascent Church.[2] For example, Matthew 1:22–23 cites Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of a virgin-born messiah, despite the original Hebrew ‘almah’ signifying a “young woman” and the passage referring to an eighth-century BCE political crisis in Judah, furthermore, the subject woman was Prophet Isaiah’s wife who was pregnant at the moment.
Paul’s letters—some of the earliest Christian writings—demonstrate an even more radical reworking of Jewish scripture. In Galatians 4, Paul allegorizes the story of Sarah and Hagar to invalidate the Sinai covenant, a revolutionary reinterpretation that reframed Jewish identity and law as obsolete.[3] Jacob Neusner notes that Paul’s project represented a decisive break: the Torah became spiritualized and universalized, severed from its national and legal foundations.[4] Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr argued that Jewish interpretations of the Tanakh were fundamentally mistaken and that Christians alone possessed the texts’ true meaning.[5] In the Epistle of Barnabas, Jewish commandments – circumcision, kashrut, Sabbath – are reinterpreted allegorically as spiritual symbols of Christ, and Jews are said to have misunderstood their purpose from the beginning.[6]
These reinterpretations were not neutral theological exercises. They served to legitimize a new religious belief increasingly detached from Jewish authority structures and increasingly oriented toward a Gentile audience within the Roman Empire, with an effective downplaying of Jewish spirituality.
2. Islam’s Reframing of Biblical Narratives
Islam likewise adopts and reformulates characters and narratives from the Tanakh. The Qur’an retells the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, and Solomon, but with significant theological and narrative modifications. As Reuven Firestone notes, the Qur’anic versions of these stories serve the explicit function of validating Muhammad as the final prophet and the Qur’an as the final revelation.[7] Islam also emerged in a region populated by Jews and Christians, and the Qur’an reflects significant knowledge of biblical figures and stories. Yet the Qur’an seldom quotes the Hebrew Bible directly; instead, it engages a mix of Jewish midrashic tradition, oral lore, and altered biblical narratives.[8]
Islam acknowledges that the Torah (Tawrat) was originally a divine revelation but accuses Jews of tahrif—altering, concealing, or misinterpreting scripture.[9] Donner, notes that this charge is central to Islamic theology, serving to validate Muhammad’s prophetic authority and the Qur’an’s role as the final and definitive revelation. For instance, the Qur’an identifies Abraham (Ibrāhīm) as a proto-Muslim who rejected Judaism and Christianity (Qur’an 3:67). This recasting of biblical patriarchs establishes a lineage of monotheism culminating in Islam, while simultaneously subordinating Judaism’s claim to the patriarchal tradition. Moreover, Islamic tradition reframes the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) as the binding of Ishmael – striking example of narrative adaptation for theological legitimacy. Firestone argues that this shift strengthens Arab genealogical claims to Abraham and sanctifies Mecca as a divinely chosen center.[10]
Christians claimed that Jews misunderstood their own scriptures; as well, Muslims argued that Jews had corrupted or forgotten divine truth. In both religions, their reinterpretation served to justify the emergence of a new monotheistic faith claiming continuity with, but superiority to, Jewish tradition. Thus, both Christianity and Islam construct themselves not merely through reference to the Tanakh but through selective reinterpretation designed to confer authority on new religious-political movements, squelching Jewish spirituality. Both believe they have the last authoritative “new” revelation replacing or fulfilling (claiming connection) the previous one the original, obsolete or “corrupted.”
II. Political Motivations Behind the Use of Jewish Scripture
1. Christianity’s Imperial Trajectory
New Testament texts have been determined to have been written away from Judea in Roman controlled areas of the empire, in koine Greek, and along the Mediterranean, in areas known today as Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Syria.[11] Yet their narrative is that Christianity began as a Jewish sect in Roman Judea. Albeit the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple and Hebrew texts and documents in 70 CE catalyzed profound challenges. As Paula Fredriksen notes, early Christians increasingly defined themselves in opposition to Judaism, developing theological claims that facilitated appeal to non-Jewish audiences.[12]
Before the New Testament was canonized, Chistian influencers of the time wrote out their ‘Septuagint,’ replacing the Hebrew Bible as authoritative. To defend belief in Jesus as the messiah, Christian theologians constructed elaborate interpretive frameworks – conceived genealogies – in which Hebrew prophecies were read allegorically or typologically as foreshadowing events in Jesus’s life. This process was a necessary element for the belief’s legitimacy. Jews already possessed an ancient scripture recognized across the Mediterranean as authoritative. For Christianity to be legitimate, the influencers claimed the same scriptural foundation as the Tanakh while asserting a fresh and superior interpretation.
By the time of Constantine in the fourth century, Christianity had become deeply entangled in imperial politics, as imperial priests and scribes were all along. The Council of Nicaea (325 CE) sought not only theological unity but political unity under imperial authority. As Neusner mentions, Eusebius portrays Constantine as using Christianity to bind the empire together, with supersessionist theology[13] legitimizing the new Christian imperial order.[14] Christian claims to fulfill Jewish scripture therefore did double work by seeking to validate Christian theological identity and delegitimizing Jewish religious and political authority. The resulting system subordinated Jews socially and legally within the Christian empire. Medieval canon law, drawing on patristic anti-Jewish rhetoric, [15] institutionalized restrictions on Jewish life, culminating in expulsions, destruction of Jewish texts,[16] forced conversions, and the Crusades.
After Constantine legalized Christianity in the fourth century, political motives amplified theological polemic. Christian emperors issued laws restricting Jewish civil rights. Bishops such as John Chrysostom preached virulent anti-Jewish sermons to prevent Christians from attending synagogues or participating in Jewish festivals.[17] Augustine, though more restrained, still portrayed Jews as a “witness people” destined to wander in humiliation until the end of time—an idea that rationalized Jewish marginalization under Christian rule.[18] Political power and theological identity became mutually reinforcing.
By the second and third centuries, Christians promoted a theological doctrine known today as supersessionism: the idea that the Church replaced Israel as God’s true covenantal people.[19] The Old Covenant, Christians claimed, prepared for the New; the Jewish people had forfeited their special status by rejecting Jesus who they see as a Christ; and the Church inherited the blessings originally promised to Israel. Such views shaped Christian identity for centuries and laid groundwork for pervasive anti-Jewish sentiment in medieval Christian civilization.
2. Islam’s Expansion and Scriptural Legitimacy
Islam’s emergence in seventh-century Arabia likewise blended spiritual and political ambition. Fred Donner’s research argues that the early Islamic movement utilized monotheistic rhetoric to unify tribal groups into a new political entity.[20]The Qur’an’s appropriation of Jewish figures provided the new community with scriptural antiquity and divine legitimacy.
The Constitution of Medina (622 CE) further illustrates the political use of scriptural identity. Muhammad asserts political authority over Jewish tribes by defining his prophetic office as the culmination of the biblical revelation.[21] Islamic empire-building accelerated under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates, where Qur’anic narratives were used to justify both military expansion and the subordinate status of Jews and Christians as dhimmī. As Mark R. Cohen notes, the theological claim that Jews were recipients of an earlier, superseded revelation structured their second-class legal position in Islamic lands.[22]
Thus, Islam’s engagement with Jewish scripture functioned as ideological scaffolding for the construction of a vast new empire. Islam’s engagement with Jewish tradition served a similar identity-forming purpose. Muhammad’s early preaching shared multiple features with Jewish practice – fasting, dietary concerns, ethical monotheism. Early Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem, indicating a desire for recognition by Jewish groups.[23] But when Jewish tribes in Medina rejected Muhammad’s prophetic claims, Islam’s communal identity shifted sharply. The qibla changed from Jerusalem to Mecca.[24] New revelations criticized Jews for rejecting prophets or altering scripture. These polemics helped demarcate the emerging Ummah, distinguishing Muslims from other monotheists.
III. Spiritual Rhetoric as Political Justification
1. Christianity’s Use of Prophecy and Fulfillment
Christianity’s political utility stemmed from its scriptural narrative of fulfillment: the Church superseded Israel as the new chosen people. Augustine’s “witness doctrine” argued that Jews must survive in humiliation as testimony to Christian truth.[25] This theological indoctrinated position justified Christian rule as divinely ordained.
Christianity’s growth in the Roman Empire was not only religious but political. As Christianity spread among Gentiles, the movement had to explain its relationship to a legally recognized religion – Judaism – while appealing to Roman audiences suspicious and critical of Jewish ways and faith. Christian texts such as the Gospels gradually portrayed Jews as hostile to Jesus, shifting blame for his death from Rome to the Jewish people.[26] This polemical move served a political purpose of vilifying the Jewish people and elevating the Christian faith on the narrative of a martyr with attributed divine character if not god himself. John Chrysostom went further, denouncing synagogues as “brothels and dens of beasts.”[27] Though spiritual in rhetoric, his sermons served political purposes by discouraging Christians from association with Jews and reinforcing ecclesial authority. These theological positions fostered societal norms that supported Christian political dominance to the extent of validating the horrors experienced by Jewish people as God ordained, e.g., witness doctrine. These theological positions also have solidified the witness belief that lingers in our current time.
2. Islam’s Construction of Prophetic Finality
Islam’s assertion that Muhammad is the “seal of the prophets” (Qur’an 33:40) provided a theological justification for political leadership. Sidney Griffith notes that prophetic finality was essential for establishing the authority of the umma over rival Jewish and Christian communities in Arabia.[28] Qur’anic polemics against Jews—such as accusations of scripture falsification (Qur’an 2:75; 3:78)—functioned both as spiritual critiques and political delegitimizing of Jewish authority in Medina. Thus, spiritual rhetoric in Islam, as in Christianity, reinforced political consolidation.
Islam’s rise in seventh-century Arabia likewise combined religious and political aspirations. Muhammad’s movement unified previously divided tribes under a new religious identity. His successors, the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs, expanded quickly across the Middle East, encountering long-standing Jewish and Christian communities. The caliphate used Islamic revelation to justify political rule. Victories were interpreted as signs of divine favor, and Jews and Christians became dhimmi, protected but subordinate subjects who paid the jizya tax and acknowledged Muslim dominance.[29] Although the dhimma system provided protection, it institutionalized Jewish inferiority. Qur’anic passages criticizing Jews’ rejection of divine truth reinforced the political hierarchy of Muslim over non-Muslim. Thus, like Christianity, Islam’s attitude toward Jews was shaped partly by political necessities tied to governance and communal identity. Scriptural reinterpretation and polemical narratives served this political and religious social purpose.
IV. Anti-Jewish Sentiment in Early Christianity and Islam
1. Christian Texts and the Development of Anti-Judaism
The New Testament itself contains elements that were later used to justify anti-Jewish sentiment. John’s Gospel refers to “the Jews” collectively as opponents of Jesus (e.g., John 8:44), and Matthew 27:25 has been historically interpreted as assigning collective guilt for Jesus’ death. Patristic writers amplified this hostility. Tertullian mocked Jewish unbelief,[30] while Origen accused Jews of literalism and spiritual blindness.[31] These early tropes became embedded in Christian culture and policy. Peter Schäfer notes that Christian anti-Judaism evolved into anti-Semitism as theological polemics intertwined with imperial law.[32]
Anti-Jewish attitudes emerged early in Christian apostolic and patristic writings.[33] The Gospel of John refers to “the Jews” as hostile to Jesus in ways that later Christians interpreted as applying to all Jews. The Gospel of Matthew’s portrayal of Jews calling for Jesus’s blood (Matt. 27:25) was later used to justify the idea of collective Jewish guilt. Second-century authors intensified the rhetoric. Justin Martyr described Jews as “blind,” while Tertullian accused them of killing the prophets. Origen argued that Jewish unbelief was divinely ordained as punishment. Chrysostom’s homilies went further, describing Jews as “lustful,” “murderous,” and “servants of the devil.”[34] Such polemics shaped medieval Christian law, culture, and violence, influencing everything from theological discourse to social restrictions and anti-Jewish myths.
2. Anti-Jewish Elements in the Qur’an and Hadith
Early Islamic historians such as al-Ṭabarī recount conflicts between Muhammad and Jewish tribes, including the execution of the Banū Qurayẓa, episodes that cemented adversarial Jewish-Muslim narratives.[35] Mark R. Cohen describes Islamic anti-Jewish sentiment as “ambivalent,” less virulent than medieval Christian hostility but still grounded in theological notions of Jewish inferiority.[36] Islamic scripture and tradition contain a mixture of reverence for biblical figures and criticism of Jewish behavior.
While the Qur’an contains verses praising Jews Abraham, Moses, and David (e.g., Qur’an 5:69), it also includes criticisms that became foundational for Islamic anti-Judaism. Some verses depict Jews as rejecting prophets (Qur’an 2:91), breaking covenants (Qur’an 2:83–86), or being cursed for disobedience (Qur’an 5:60) and altering scripture. Hadith literature often intensifies negative portrayals.[37] A frequently cited narration in Sahih Muslim speaks of a future apocalyptic conflict in which Muslims kill Jews – a text later used rhetorically in various Islamic political movements.[38] These criticisms originally referred to specific communities in Arabia but were expanded by medieval commentators. Qur’anic exegetes such as al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir interpreted verses about Jewish rejection as timeless truths about the Jewish people.[39]
It is worth noting that although Jewish communities in isolated periods existed without hostility under Muslim rule, nevertheless they remained second-class subjects. Restrictions in clothing, housing, and private and public religious behavior were imposed in many periods, justified by religious doctrine.[40] Islamic anti-Judaism contributed to negative stereotypes, social hierarchies, and periodic violent outbreaks of persecution.
V. Structural Similarities in the Formation of Christianity and Islam
Both Christianity and Islam assert that they supersede Judaism. For Christianity, the New Covenant replaces the Old; the Church replaces Israel. For Islam, the Qur’an replaces earlier scriptures; the Muslim umma replaces the Israelites as God’s chosen community. This structural supersessionism required both traditions to reinterpret or condemn Jewish scripture, Jewish law, and Jewish authority.
They share using Jewish history as legitimizing their framework. Both religions claimed continuity with ancient Israel while accusing Jews of abandoning their own tradition. For, Christianity, the Jews misinterpreted their scriptures and rejected their messiah. For Islam, the Jews corrupted scripture and rejected their final prophet. These claims served political needs in legitimizing Christian and Islamic authority, delegitimizing rival Jewish communities, and creating unified religious identities that transcended ethnic boundaries. They also developed anti-Jewish narratives. Scholars such as Gavin Langmuir argue that religious polemics often functioned as political tools.[41] The result was a dual legacy in both traditions.
Conclusion
The history reveals two most prominent religions – Christianity and Islam – arriving in competition with the predecessor Judaism. They strived to authenticate new religious claims. Despite having different doctrines, they share striking similarities in addition to their origins and development. Both emerged asserting political authority and enforcing social cohesion, ignoring crusades, sieges, and wars. Each used the Hebrew scriptures as a wellspring of symbolic authority – appropriating, adapting, and reinterpreting Jewish texts to establish legitimacy. They employed spiritual rhetoric to justify political expansion and governance over populace. I rest that their shared patterns show the political dimensions of religious formation and the roots of hatred towards Jewish beliefs.
While they continue to reinterpret their asserted relationships to Judaism, their formative centuries demonstrate how new religions often build themselves from scriptural appropriation, political institutional power, but appearing as acting for God. Christianity and Islam sought to supersede the Jewish faith and people, whose texts they adopted to assert their claims. Ineluctably, the pursuit resulted in a conquest over claims of knowing the divine best, but where is God in all this?
J.B. Lorenzo 12.31.2025
#comparativereligion #religion #christianity #Judaism #Islam #Quran #newtestament #Jewishhistory #Jewish-hatred #hebrewscriptures #faith #christianityhistory #islamhistory #anti-semitism #christianrootsofanti-semitism #IslamicrootsofantiJewish
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[1] Word from Vine blog at https://wordfromvine.com; J.B. Lorenzo, Apostolic and Patristic Era anti-Jewish sentiments Early Writings and Christianity https://wordfromvine.life/apostolic-and-patristic-era-anti-jewish-sentiments-early-writings-and-christianity/
[2] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 55–78.
[3] Galatians 4:21–31.
[4] Jacob Neusner, Jews and Christians: The Myth of a Common Tradition (Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1991), 14–29.
[5] Neusner, Jews and Christians.
[6] Reuven Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 4–12.
[7] Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands, 4–12.
[8] Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 185–205.
[9] Fred McGraw Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 56–93.
[10] Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands, 4–12.
[11] Ephesus (Asia Minor/modern Turkey) – where Paul spent a significant time in his third missionary journey and is believed to have written 1 Corinthians (circa 54-55 AD) and Galatians; Macedonia (Greece) – The letter of 2 Corinthians was likely written from Macedonia, possibly Philippi, as Paul traveled through the region; Corinth -(Greece/Achaia), where the Apostle Paul is believed to have written several letters to Thessalonians (50-51 AD) and his letter to the Romans (57 AD); and Rome (Italy) – where Paul is said to have been in prison while under house arrest in Rome (circa 60-62 AD) and wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and possibly 2 Timothy. All of these locations thousands of kilometers from Jerusalem and all written was in koine Greek. Of the Gospels: Mark and Luke are said to have been written in Rome, with Matthew and John in and around Ephesus. Considering distance, lapsed amount of time, and written in koine Greek a different language, yet popular, it is telling how Romanesque is the origin of the new testament. Narratives written years, decades, if not over a century later about an event that occurred around Jerusalem thousands of kilometers away without supporting contemporary confirming accounts of the occurrence. All within the authority of the Roman empire.
[12] Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
[13] While the specific term “supersessionism” (also known as replacement theology) is modern, the theological concept dates back to the 1st and 2nd centuries. It was not started by a single individual but evolved through the writings of early Christian Fathers as the church became increasingly Gentile-dominated. Supersessionism was the mainstream view for most of Christian history, supported by figures like Justin Martyr, Augustine, and Martin Luther, Calvin, carrying into culture in the Enlightenment by individuals like Voltaire, and Kant. Islam teaches its own form of supersessionism, positing that the Quran is the final, pure revelation that corrects earlier “corrupted” Jewish and Christian scriptures (the doctrine of tahrif). See Lorenzo, https://wordfromvine.life/christian-theological-antisemitism-from-patristic-thought-through-enlightenment-culmination/
[14] Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 1.28–32; See also, Neusner, Jews and Christians.
[15] J.B. Lorenzo, Fate of the Hebrew Scriptures in Hostile World – https://wordfromvine.life/the-fate-of-jewish-scriptures-in-a-hostile-world/
[16] Crusades (11th-13th Century CE): Led to massacres and systematic burning of the Talmud and Hebrew books in France and Rome (e.g., 1242, 1244). After the 12th century, major burnings of Jewish texts, particularly the Talmud, occurred in France (1242) under King Louis IX and Pope Gregory IX, and in Italy (1553) by the Roman Inquisition in cities like Rome, Venice, and Bologna, fueled by accusations of blasphemy and commercial rivalries. Later, during the Nazi era in the 1930s, Jewish books, including sacred texts, were burned in Germany as part of the Nazi regime’s cultural purge, culminating in the Holocaust.
[17] John Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos, Homily 1.
[18] Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 29–56.
[19] Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands, 4–12.
[20] Donner, Muhammad and the Believers.
[21] R. B. Serjeant, “The Constitution of Medina,” Islamic Quarterly 8 (1964): 3–16.
[22] Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 27–53.
[23] Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 27 – 53.
[24] Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 27 – 53.
[25] Augustine, City of God, 18.46. The “witness doctrine” (or blood curse) in Christianity, primarily stemming from Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be on us and on our children!”), alleges collective, perpetual Jewish guilt (deicide) for Jesus’ crucifixion, leading to centuries of Christian-fueled violence, discrimination, and justification for antisemitism, portraying Jews as God-killers eternally responsible for Christ’s death, despite its rejection as official dogma.
[26] Augustine, City of God, 18.46.
[27] John Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos, Homily 1.
[28] Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 29–56.
[29] Griffith, The Bible in Arabic.
[30] Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos, 1–3.
[31] Origen, Contra Celsum, 2.4–7.
[32] Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 88–116.
[33] Lorenzo, Apostolic and Patristic Era anti-Jewish.
[34] Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos.
[35] al-Ṭabarī, Ta’rīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, trans. Michael Fishbein (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), vol. 7: 97–126.
[36] Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 54–78.
[37] Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 54–78
[38] Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Hadith 6981.
[39] Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 88–116.
[40] Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Hadith 6981.
[41] Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 21–49.