Critique of antisemitism

The Critique of antisemitism is the book’s sustained call to read Acts without allowing Luke’s hostile portrayals of Jewish people to pass unchallenged. It does not deny the narrative’s episodes of violence; it asks readers to distinguish the events Luke depicts from the generalized and distorted judgments he attaches to Jewish leaders and crowds. That distinction matters because Christian preaching can turn a literary polemic into a purported description of Judaism, renewing the very harm responsible interpretation should resist.

Reading Luke’s Narrative Critically

The book locates this responsibility within Luke-Acts as a whole. It reads the Gospel and Acts as a large-scale chiasmus: the story begins in Jewish settlements, moves toward Jerusalem and the ascension of Jesus, and ends with the news of the Realm traveling from Jerusalem to Rome, the heart of the old age’s power and a symbol of the gentile world. The structure presents the Realm as a Jewish story that opens outward; it should not be converted into a story in which Judaism is simply the negative foil for the church.

Geography reinforces that interpretation. In the commission of Acts 1:8, witness proceeds from Jerusalem and Judea through Samaria and toward the ends of the earth. The sequence gives Acts its broad narrative shape and represents an increasingly inclusive community: Jewish people, Samaritans, and gentiles all enter the horizon of the mission. Reading this movement alongside the Jewish beginnings of Luke’s story makes the relationship between Judaism and the church one of origin and expansion, not a license to denigrate the tradition from which the story emerges.

That distinction becomes especially important in readings of conflict. The book cautions that an account of a Jewish crowd or council in Acts cannot simply be treated as a transparent portrait of Jewish people or as an accurate summary of Judaism. Preachers must bring Luke’s polemical purposes into view, and should attend to the distance between the values a scene invokes and the broader, more complex tradition the scene risks caricaturing.

The Mob and the Limits of Luke’s Polemic

In the Temple episode, people from Asia accuse Paul of teaching against Torah and of bringing Greeks into a forbidden part of the Temple, having seen him with Trophimus, a gentile. The accusation leads to a violent crowd, while a Roman tribune and soldiers remove Paul from the mob and take him into custody for questioning. The book recognizes the crowd’s attack as a serious event, but insists that the preacher also name Luke’s negative stereotyping of Jewish people. Without that critical framing, the story can make a false generalization appear to be the plain lesson of the scene.

The account’s irony is sharp: Roman arrest becomes the means by which Paul is saved from the crowd, and the Roman soldiers and legal process appear more consistent with the values of the Realm than the mob’s actions. But the book does not treat that contrast as a neutral verdict on Roman power or Judaism. It identifies Luke’s polemic as intensified here, and asks the preacher to examine both the crowd’s violation of ethical and legal principles and the narrative’s representation of Jewish people. Congregations, too, may accuse others of unfaithfulness while acting against their own stated commitments.

The same caution governs the council scene. Pharisees say they find nothing wrong with Paul and allow that he may have received a message from an angel or spirit. The book notes that this is Acts’ final direct reference to the Pharisees and that it leaves them with a comparatively favorable impression, supporting the possibility that Luke seeks some rapprochement with Pharisees of his own day. Yet the scene’s violence and the tribune’s fear that Paul will be torn apart can still distort the council as a whole if presented without comment. The book therefore directs preaching to expose Luke’s polemical intent rather than leave readers with a supposedly representative picture.

Conspiracy, False Witness, and the Church’s Mirror

The conspiracy against Paul makes the problem more explicit. More than forty people bind themselves by an oath and fast until they kill him, believing him to be God’s enemy; chief priests and elders join in a deceptive request that the tribune bring Paul down for further examination, intending that he be killed on the way. The book argues that Luke thereby erodes the credibility of the high priests, elders, and council by casting them as conspirators, liars, and murderers. Such conduct, it observes, dishonors the spirit of Judaism—but Luke’s distorted representation of Jewish people also violates that tradition by bearing false witness.

The passage therefore demands more than condemnation of the plot’s participants. The book warns that Christians can repeat comparable patterns: communities may plot against one another or target people in ways that violate the values they profess, and governments may pursue individuals or groups for death, sometimes with baptized Christians among those leading such efforts. The question of whether violence is undertaken in the name of national security does not exempt it from moral scrutiny. The scene becomes a test of the interpreter as well as a criticism of the actions narrated.

The book also turns the council’s charge of hypocrisy back toward the church. Paul’s image of a whitewashed wall can prompt examination of a community that looks well ordered outwardly but fails to live by its own principles. Likewise, the high priest’s assumption of guilt without hearing witnesses offers a warning against condemning individuals or groups before investigating. The book connects that failure to weakened critical thinking and public discourse in which opponents are attacked without serious engagement with their ideas. Responsible preaching, on this account, requires both scrutiny of Luke’s depictions and habits of genuine inquiry.

From Samaritan Boundaries to Gentile Belonging

The critique is not confined to scenes of conflict. The book places the Samaritans at a boundary in Acts’ geography: they share beliefs and practices with Jewish people while possessing a distinct culture, and their place between the Jewish world and the ends of the earth makes their reception part of the story’s widening movement. It warns preachers against describing Jewish-Samaritan relations as permanently hostile. Although tensions existed, periods of tolerance and cooperation also existed, and the disciples’ entry into Samaritan territory fits Luke’s earlier positive depictions of Samaritans.

The encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch extends that movement along geographical, ethnic, political, and gendered lines. The book recognizes why preachers may use the story to consider exclusion and inclusion, but cautions against claiming that Judaism simply excluded the eunuch while the church welcomed him. Such a contrast oversimplifies ancient Jewish attitudes and can reinforce anti-Jewish sentiment. The church must instead confront its own ambiguity and possible unfaithfulness toward people represented by the eunuch, while treating Judaism’s concerns with care rather than making them a convenient antagonist.

Together, these episodes make the outward journey of the Realm a challenge to the church’s own boundaries and interpretive habits. Inclusion is not a claim the church can safely make about itself by assigning exclusion to Judaism. The narrative’s movement toward people beyond its initial setting requires readers to examine who is welcomed, how difference is described, and whether Christian interpretation repeats a hierarchy the story’s widening geography unsettles.

Repairing the Relationship

The book’s final appeal follows from Luke-Acts’ beginning and ending. Luke’s opening element locates the story in Judaism; its concluding element shows how a movement that began there turned toward gentiles. Because Christian congregations are now almost exclusively gentile, preachers can encourage them to give thanks for Judaism as their parent, repent for the church’s abuse of its relationship with Judaism, and imagine practical steps toward restored communion. That repair is not an ornamental gesture: the relationship itself may become a sign of the Realm.

The Critique of antisemitism thus joins literary interpretation to communal accountability. It asks preaching to name Luke’s polemics, resist turning particular narrative conflicts into an indictment of Jewish people, and scrutinize Christian conduct with the same moral seriousness. The movement from Jewish beginnings toward an inclusive witness does not erase those beginnings. It makes the church’s treatment of Judaism part of the meaning of the journey.