Paula Fredriksen is a scholar who denies that Jesus engaged in anti-Judaism. She briefly outlines the history of Christian anti-Judaism thus:
Christian antipathy toward Jews and Judaism began when Christian Hellenistic Jewish texts, such as the letters of Paul and the Gospels, began to circulate among total outsiders, that is, among Genetiles without any connection to the synagogue and without any attachment to Jewish traditions of practice and interpretation. At that point, the intra-Jewish polemics preserved in these texts began to be understood as condemnations of Judaism tout court. The next stage intensified the process, by taking this outsider's perspective to the text of the Septuagint. By the early second century, the engagement of intellectuals enriched the controversy by putting it on a philosophical basis, thereby integrating what otherwise might have remained secondhand name-calling into comprehensive, rational, total worldviews. Christian theologies of many different sorts werre thereby born.
This historical assesment contradicts much of what Fredriksen claims in her own article, not to mention what is within the quoted passage.
First, Fredriksen apparently does not count the very words of Jesus in passages such as Jn 8.44 as showing 'Christian antipathy toward Jews and Judaism'. If Jesus did say such a thing, then how could such antipathy begin only when such texts began circulating among total outsiders? Of course, there is a legitimate question about whether the historical Jesus did such things. I cannot prove that Jesus did say those things. But Fredriksen offers us nothing to prove that Jesus did not say those things, especially in light of the fact that she admits that there are 'intra-Jewish polemics preserved in these texts'. If Jews of Jesus' time were abusing each other in this manner, then is it at least possible that Jn 8.44 may preserve an 'authentic' oral tradition about what Jesus said? And if those intra-Jewish polemics do go back to Jesus himself, then why could one not say that anti-Jewish antipahty or polemics in Christianity began with Jesus?
Second, there is nothing about condemning Judaism tout court that requires some post-Jesus movement. The idea of collective characterization of entire groups is certainly found in pre-Christian Jewish traditions. In Deuteronomy one finds the following characterizations and actions encompassing entire ethnic groups:
An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever: Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.
(Deut. 23.3-4)
Evil moral attitudes could also be viewed as inherent, as in Jeremiah:
And if thou say in thine heart, Wherefore come these things upon me? For the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made bare. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
(Jer. 13.22-23)
Despite debates about the questions of the extent to which 'race' and 'racism' existed in the ancient world, there is little question that people could be viewed as inherently evil or bear other moral characteristics on the basis of their ancestry or genealogy.
There is also evidence that sects could view themselves as so separate from other Jews that they could speak of other co-ethnic members in the third person. Note this compliant in Isaiah: 'For thou art our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer from of old is thy name' (Isa 63.16). Clearly, the speaker presumes some historical relationship to Abraham and Israel, but yet speaks of Abraham and Israel as not acknowledging the speaker's group. Once such a differentiation is made, it would not take but another step to use other derogatory descriptors that the speaker could apply to Abraham and Israel, as collective entities.
The idea of collective punsihment is pre-Christian, and could involve entire ethnic groups and religions. At the greatest scale, such collective punishment is inflicted on all life in Noah's Flood in Genesis 6-7, which could count as a case of biocide or ecocide. Colelctive punishment is encoded in the Decalogue: 'I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments' (Exod. 20.5-6).
Similarly, Yahweh issues a list of horrific punsihments applicable to the entire Israelite nation if they do not obey his commandments. Note these curses: 'And the Lord wil scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known' (Deut. 28.64). Such punishments outlined in Deuteronomy 28 were viewed as in effect in many Second Temple texts, such as in Daniel:
We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments: Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee.
...
As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.
(Dan. 9.5-13)
New Testament texts continued such ideas of collective punishment. One illustration is in Acts 2, where Peter speaks in Jerusalem to 'Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven' (v. 5) assembled for the feast of Pentecost. These Jews come from Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Egypt and Rome, among other places. Yet, Peter considers them responsible for the death of Jesus: 'Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified ['Iesoun on umeis estaurosate] (Acts 2.36). The use of the second person plural (umeis) pronoun as the subject of the Greek clause shows that Peter had no trouble attributing Jesus' death even to those who may not even have been present at the crucifixion.
Given such a continued belief in collective characterizations and punishments, why could't any historical Jesus think that Judaism was just as described in Jn 8.44? Why is it rethorical, metaphorical or exaggerated language rather than descriptive of his actual beliefs? If Jesus is following polemic or theological Jewish traditions advocating collective punishment and characterizations, then such characterizations would not be outside of his tradition at all. And if Jesus is simply continuing such ideas of collective culpability and punishment,
then Fredriksen's historical scheme is fundamentally flawed.
