Horrified by the Holocaust and fearful that the NewTestament, as it has been traditionally understood, may have contributed tothis tragedy, Christian scholars and ministers of all stripes have, in recentdecades, proposed several, “extra-textual” ways of altering that understanding.Eugene Fisher, for instance, the former director of ecumenical affairs for theU.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, warns against reading the passion accounts,which seem to portray all Jews as guilty of Jesus’s death, from the pulpitwithout “adequate catechesis and preparation.” He also recommends that passagesthat reinforce this charge, such as the Parable of the Marriage Feast inMatthew (22:1–15), should be avoided entirely.

Marilyn Salmon, an episcopal priest and writer, similarlycounsels caution when presenting certain incidents in the New Testament,especially in the Gospel of John. She encourages ministers to read from Biblesthat substitute “our people,” “the crowd,” or “the public” for John’sspiritually blind “Jews” and suggests that when they relate stories that appearto accentuate that blindness, such as Nicodemus’ nocturnal visit to see Jesus,that they do so imaginatively, from another, pro-Jewish, viewpoint. Inaddition, both Salmon and Fisher recommend that readers of the New Testament availthemselves of “interpretive tools,” such as study Bibles and scholarlycommentaries, which place the hostility towards Jews present in John and in theother Gospels in a more historically limited, less “everlasting” context.

John Shelby Spong, a retired episcopal bishop, offers amore radical and, for many, a less acceptable approach. He views many of theevents in the Gospels as simply “untenable,” primarily because they represent forhim literary, not historical, efforts to portray Christianity as superior toJudaism. As Spong sees it, there were no literal shepherds, no angels, noguiding star, no magi, no flight into Egypt,” no temptation in the Wilderness—noteven a Sermon on the Mount. He therefore urges his readers to look “beyond theliteral and culturally dependent interpretation of the Gospels” and read intothem what he feels is “their true, more modern meaning”—a meaning that not onlyrefutes anti-Semitism but conforms to current political agendas.

In this episode of Latter-day Saint PerspectivesPodcast, Laura Harris Hales interviews Bradley J. Kramer about his new book, Gathered in One: How the Book of MormonCounters Anti-Semitism in the New Testament. In this book, Kramer reviews howFisher, Salmon, Spong, as well as other Christian scholars and ministers have attemptedto deal with such anti-Semitic elements as the “blood curse” in Matthew (27:25)and John’s claim that the devil is the father of the Jews (8:44), and he contraststheir efforts with the approach employed by the Book of Mormon.  

According to Kramer, the Book of Mormon counters anti-Semiticelements in the New Testament not by avoiding, altering, reimagining, or rejectingits most problematic passages but by joining with the New Testament and by addingto an expanded canon a multitude of pro-Jewish elements. Coming as they do froma scripture of equal stature and status, the many pro-Jewish statements,portrayals, settings, and structuring elements present in the Book of Mormon mixin with their anti-Semitic counterparts in the New Testament and overwhelm themwith their greater power, broader context, wider sweep, and closer connectionsto Judaism as it is practiced today.

In this way, the Book of Mormon discouragesanti-Semitic attitudes and behaviors in the same way the New Testament encouragesthem—literarily, and it does so respectfully, without challenging the NewTestament’s text or undermining its religious authority or reliability. AsKramer writes, just as “the Gospels work together, despite their differences,to provide Christians with a more complete and more religiously accuratepicture of Jesus and his teachings,