Was Paul an "Anti-Semite?" What to Make of His Comments in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16?

Note: The following is an excerpt from the script of the Blessed Hope Podcast Season Two/Episode Five: "Labor and Toil, Calling and the Kingdom, Hindering the Gospel" (1 Thess 2:1-16). It has been edited for publication here.

Harsh Words for the Jews in Thessalonica

In verses 15-16 of 1 Thessalonians 2, we encounter one of the most controversial passages in all of Paul’s letters. Paul uses very strong language when he speaks of his own people, the Jews, as those “who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!” Paul’s comments are considered by many of our contemporaries to be “hate speech” and anti-Semitic. People easily take great offense at such language–especially with growing anti-Semitism still found in the long shadow of the holocaust. Several critical scholars have even argued that these words were inserted into Paul’s letter at a later date so as to escape the difficulties this presents.[1] Sadly, the apostle’s words have been twisted on occasion by those who seek to justify violence against the Jewish people. What are we to make of this?

To start with, context is everything. Paul has just recounted to the Thessalonians how he had been treated in Philippi, then in Thessalonica, and even in Berea. This is the only place in his epistles where he speaks of the Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus.[2] In speaking this way, Paul echoes the apostle John, who in his gospel, speaks of “the Jews” as those associated with the chief priests who opposed Jesus throughout his entire messianic mission.[3] John’s reference does not extend to the Jewish people as a whole, but to the priests and scribes who sought to put Jesus to death.

Similar language is found in the Book of Acts, as Luke likewise ties the crucifixion to the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem.[4] It is a fact of history that the Jewish religious leaders led by the high-priest Caiaphas, turned Jesus over to the Roman governor Pilate as a seditious blasphemer who was a threat to the peace and security of Jerusalem during the Passover. It is also a fact of history, that shortly before writing these words, Paul was driven from Thessalonica by a mob (the “fellows of a baser sort” – cf. Acts 17:5) which surrounded Jason’s house and exacted bail from him, while Paul was rescued and fled for his life from the city. Any discussion of Paul’s words here must consider this recent escape from bodily harm at the hands of an angry mob.

Paul’s Love for His People Is Expressed Elsewhere

Paul is not playing the victim nor rashly speaking in anger, although we could understand why he might be angry. He connects what has happened to him at the hands of the Jews from the time of his conversion to Israel’s own history with the fate of those prophets sent by God to call the nation to repentance.[5] Post-conversion, Paul sees matters such as the law, the covenants, and redemption from sin through new eyes–those given him by Jesus on the Damascus Road (cf. Philippians 3:2-11). His own people were perishing in their sins. We know that Paul was heartbroken by this fact as he tells us in Romans 10:1– “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” Yet, he was obviously frustrated by his own people who sought to prevent the gospel from being proclaimed to Jew and Gentile. In Romans 9:3, Paul even expresses his willingness to sacrifice himself if that would somehow lead to the salvation of his people. In Acts 21, Paul shows the utmost respect for the tradition of his fathers by meeting with James and visiting the temple while in Jerusalem.

Furthermore, it is very important to catch the fact that Paul ties the crucifixion of Jesus to the past history of Israel, which includes the death of any number of prophets sent by YHWH to call the disobedient covenant people to consider their sins and repent. As Witherington notes, “v. 15 needs to be seen in the long prophetic tradition of the critique of wicked Jewish leaders who persecute and execute the prophets (e.g., 1 Kgs. 19:10–14; 2 Chron. 36:15; Jer. 2:7–8; Ezek. 14:9–11; 34; Heb. 11:32–38).”[6]

A couple of examples are helpful. Nehemiah lamented of Israel, “nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies” (Neh. 9:26). In Romans 11:3, Paul appeals to Elijah who cried out in despair, “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” Luke also makes the connection between the persecution and death of Israel’s prophets when recounting the words of Stephen at his martyrdom, an event of which Paul heartily approved (Acts 8:1). Stephen challenged the mob, “which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered” (Acts 7:52). Paul is reaffirming what Israel’s own prophets had already said.

Contemporary Concerns Ought Not To Be Read Back Into an Ancient Text

We must be careful not to read modern sensitivities, recent atrocities, and contemporary tribal forms of anti-Semitism back into Paul’s words. Witherington is correct when he writes,

This critique of wicked leaders cannot be globalized such that the one delivering it can be accused of critiquing all Jews. Paul’s critique stands in this long tradition. Furthermore, he associates those who “killed the Lord Jesus” with those who keep him from speaking the gospel to Gentiles. Clearly in neither case can Paul be talking about Jews in general but rather those who oppose Jesus and the gospel.[7]

We cannot take Paul’s words as an anti-Semitic rant. As is clear from the context, the apostle is frustrated with all those who oppose the gospel, and who are repeating the unbelief of his ancestors which has and will bring judgment down upon the nation.

The Judgment Coming Upon Israel Is But One Aspect of the Final Judgement Yet to Come

Paul previously mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 that God’s wrath is coming upon the whole world. Such wrath will fall on those Greco-Roman pagans and their Caesars who persecute Christ’s church, every bit as much as it will befall those Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem who delivered Jesus over to the Romans who then crucified him. The certainty of future judgment and wrath on all who reject Jesus Christ remains today for both unbelieving Jew and Gentile. There is no basis for anti-Semitism in Paul’s comments, since all races, tribes, and tongues are subject to the coming wrath. But this dire warning must be seen against the fact that Christ’s church is composed of every race, tribe, and tongue under heaven. This is a matter of personal guilt before God, not a matter of racial discrimination.

Yet Paul does speak of “ fill[ing] up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last”! This phrase has troubled many a commentator and at first glance does seem to refer to God’s wrath upon Israel prior to his eschatological wrath at the end of the age. Witherington points out the verb (ephthasen) is in the aorist tense and translated in the ESV as “has come,” which indicates that Paul is speaking of a current situation, such as the troubles then unfolding in Jerusalem in CE 48-52, when there was great geopolitical upheaval and a number of Jewish leaders were imprisoned and taken to Rome.[8] But as Weima explains, the current situation for Israel has an important redemptive-historical context.

The Pauline mission (2:15–16a) has a logical outcome: “with the result that they have been constantly filling up the measure of their sins.” Paul here employs an OT theme that is developed also in later Jewish writings: there exists a fixed amount of sins to be committed, after which punishment will be meted out. The verb anaplēroō suggests the picture of a vessel or cup that is in a slow but constant process of being filled up, and once it is completely full, judgment will take place.[9]

Beale concurs that the explanation as to what this “filling up of the full measure of sin” means is found by considering Paul’s words in light of the broader context of redemptive history. He writes,

The answer lies in observing that the concept of “filling up sins” occurs elsewhere at significant redemptive-historical epochs to describe the opponents of God’s plan to subdue the earth with his truth by his redeemed people. God stated in each case that his enemies had to complete a certain amount of sin before they could be considered ripe for definitive judgment, which would always conclude a particular epoch and launch another. For example, God prophesied that Abraham’s descendants would not emerge from Egypt until the sin of the Amorites was “filled up” (anaplēroō, Gen 15:16). Similarly, Daniel 8:23–25 states that judgment will come at the end of the age when sins have been “filled up.”[10]

Since Jesus ushered in a new age in redemptive history but was rejected by his people as predicted throughout the Old Testament, Jesus brought both salvation to and judgment upon that generation who “filled up” the measure of those sins which would bring about the wrath of God. Jesus even identifies his use of parables as such a judgment (cf. Matt. 13:13-15) when he speaks of the meaning of his parables as unintelligible to those who will reject him.

This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.

Both Jesus and Paul echo Isaiah 6:9-10, which reads, “Go, and say to this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”[11]

Beale concludes,

That they fill up their sins always or continually (pantote) suggests that more than the Jewish generation of Paul’s day is in mind. All prior Israelite generations who sinned “throughout time” (a possible translation of pantote) in the same way are in view, though the present generation is the focus, since in them the sin of the nation as a whole comes to climactic conclusion in the rejection of Christ. Thus, the aorist verbal infinitive “fill up” in 2:16 has in mind “an act … already in progress [i.e., in the past history of Israel] and … then brings the action to a conclusion.”[12]

If true, this would mean that Israel’s collective sin has provoked God’s wrath (currently being revealed) and resulting in the nation’s hardening of heart, which culminated to the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of the Sanhedrin and the persecution of God’s people subsequently (i.e., Paul and the early followers of Jesus), as the visible climax of Israel’s sin.[13]

This, it seems to me, fits with Paul’s understanding of the course of redemptive history when Jesus’s messianic mission (his first advent) sets in motion the final epoch in human history (the “last days”) and leads to (as a form of judgment) the diaspora of Israel after 70 CE–the covenant curse falls upon Israel once again leading to eviction from the promised land. The seeds of this judgment were already present in Paul’s day and evident in Israel’s rejection of Jesus and the efforts on the part of many Jews in Thessalonica and elsewhere to hinder the preaching of the gospel.

Keeping Paul’s Words in Their Historical Context Is Key

But if we do choose to lift Paul’s words out of their historical context–and if we do so we must have an agenda which dictates a meaning unknown to Paul–only then can we make the apostle say and mean something most modern folk should never say, namely, we assign to the Jews as a race responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ. You can still get a strong whiff among some today of the charge that Paul and his followers were anti-Semites who set in motion the evil which an Adolph Hitler unleashed during Krystalnacht. There is no doubt that anti-Semitism was, and is, a serious problem.

Several additional things ought to be said. Modern sensitivities aside, a contemporary Jew is no more guilty for the death of Jesus Christ than I am guilty for slavery since I am a white European male whose ancestors settled in South Carolina in the 1740's and held slaves. Anyone who faces the wrath of God will do so because of the guilt of sin–Adam’s sin as well as their own–and not because their ancestors engaged in any number of horrible practices–including chattel slavery.

Since racial discrimination and anti-Semitism have such a long history in North America, Christians ought to be very direct when discussing such things. First, we must make it clear that God’s eschatological wrath is coming upon the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike, upon all who reject Christ and persecute his beloved church. This was Paul’s message and it must be ours as well. There is a judgment day yet ahead.

Second, as Christian citizens living in a pluralistic democratic republic, we must defend the civil rights of all religious and ethnic groups (since their freedom is ours too) while at the same time not conceding the point that other religions are true. We ought to be champions of free speech, which includes our freedom to preach Christ crucified. While at the same time we can use such freedom to persuade others of the truth of Christianity as well as warn them of a coming day of wrath.

Third, there is also a sense in which the Christian witness to Jews is especially important, since Christianity has so often been evoked as one of the reasons for anti-Semitic practices. Martin Luther is often reviled as an anti-Semite. There are many circles in which our reverence for Luther’s Reformation is seen as troubling since Luther supposedly planted the seeds which eventually grew into National Socialism.[14] In that light, it is good and wise do all that is in our power to speak out against anti-Semitism, not because Israel occupies a “favored nation” status in the New Testament (as dispensationlists teach), but because we follow Paul’s stated desire to see his countrymen come to faith in Christ. His prayer ought to be ours. “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Rom 10:1). If we are truly students of Paul, it is imperative that we adopt his attitude toward the Jewish people and work and pray for their salvation while at the same time protecting them from anti-Semites seeking to do them harm.

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[1] Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 83.

[2] Although in 1 Corinthians 2:8, he writes, “none of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,” in reference to all those opposed to Jesus, the Jewish leaders as well as Roman.

[3] Herman Ridderbos, points out that in John’s gospel, “the Jews . . . as so often in the Fourth Gospel refers to the Jewish authorities in their hostile attitude toward Jesus.” See Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 117.

[4] F. F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 46-47.

[5] Seyoon Kim, The Origins of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1982), 67-99; N. T. Wright, Paul (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 108-128.

[6] Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 85.

[7] Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 85.

[8] Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 86.

[9] Weima, “1-2 Thessalonians,” 873.

[10] Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 84.

[11] Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 84-85.

[12] Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 85.

[13] Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 86.

[14] See the discussion in, John Warwick Montgomery, In Defense of Martin Luther (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1970). Though dated, Montgomery’s “defense” anticipates many of the contemporary accusations.