Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen

Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen by Cohen, Jeremy
Review by: Erika Tritle
The Journal of Religion, Vol. 91, No. 1, The Augustinian Moment (January 2011), pp. 99-101
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 Book Reviews

for applying philosophical interpretation to the standard texts of Judaism” (33).

Specialists would take exception to this characterization, and it might mislead
nonspecialists. The question of whether or not Nahmanides in his biblical com-
mentaries was diametrically opposed to Maimonides’ philosophical interpre-
tations, as a straightforward reading of the commentaries would indicate, is a
hotly debated issue in the scholarly literature. While it is legitimate for Caputo
to choose one side in this debate and state that in fact Maimonides’ and Nah-
manides’ views are reconcilable, she must not ignore the other position. Con-
trast her characterization with one Bernard Septimus quotes in the name of
Baer: “The attack against rationalism . . . is most pronounced in Nahmanides’
commentary to the Pentateuch. His vigorous opposition to the allegorical in-
terpretation of the Torah is expressed on every page of this work” (“‘Open
Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Nahmanides and the Andalusian Tradition,” in
Rabbi Moses Nahmanides: Essays in his Religious and Literary Virtuosity, ed. Isadore
Twersky [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983], 13). While Baer and
Septimus note Nahmanides’ apparently strong opposition to Maimonidean ra-
tionalism in his commentaries, Caputo’s characterization ignores this basic fact
(see, e.g., Nahmanides’ comments on Gen. 18:1 and Lev. 1:9).
Similarly, Caputo offers a sweeping characterization of Nahmanides’ exegesis
of the Pentateuch: “Among the guiding principles behind his analysis of exe-
getical models was a drive to uncover the peshat or plain sense of the scriptures.
The peshat, he argued, should be universally accessible as long as the reader
approached the text after having previously arrived at the appropriate hierarchy
of interpretive sources” (56). In fact, scholars typically characterize Nahmani-
des’ Torah commentary as a unique blend of peshat, rabbinic traditions, and
philosophical and kabbalistic interpretations. Unfortunately, Caputo provides
no proof for her substitute portrayal, which should be forthcoming either from
his actual commentaries or some secondary study of his work. A bald statement
of opinion, lacking such substantive support, weakens her position and puts
her entire analysis into question.
In short, Caputo raises stimulating questions about a very complex figure
and his writings. Her treatment of the documents is refreshing and invites
further research on the subject.
NAOMI GRUNHAUS, Yeshiva University.

COHEN, JEREMY. Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big
Screen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 313 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

This latest book by Jeremy Cohen traces the development and career of the
myth of the Jewish Christ killer from its appearance in the passion narratives
of the Gospels, through medieval blood libels and scholastic disputations, and
into twenty-first-century passion plays, films, newspaper articles, and conciliar
decrees. This is a book of epic scale, not only spanning millennia of history
but also traversing a wide range of written and visual forms of evidence. Such
an enterprise risks overreaching its capacity to cover responsibly and adequately
any one piece of the story, but Cohen is careful throughout to identify the
parameters of inquiry and qualify the extent of its implications. The advantage
of such an ambitious undertaking is that, having set his parameters and made
his qualifications, the author can make meaningful and provocative connections
between the present day and attitudes and events from the past—between the

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The Journal of Religion

Gospels, the Holocaust, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), be-
tween medieval Christian accusations that Jews ritually murdered Christian boys
and modern-day theories of international Jewish conspiracy.
Paralleling the more extensive subject matter, Cohen addresses a wider au-
dience than in previous books such as The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca, NY, 1982)
and Living Letters of the Law (Berkeley, 1999). He hopes the work “will stimulate
thought and interest across an array of traditional boundaries: between aca-
demic and nonacademic, Christian and Jew, religious and secular” (7). The
effort to appeal to a nonacademic audience extends to the book’s format, which
includes limited endnotes and lists of suggestions for further reading by chapter
in place of extensive footnotes. In general, this is likely an effective strategy
for inviting a wider audience to the discussion without sacrificing scholarly
integrity. However, Cohen’s claim that we should understand the Gospels and
in particular their passion narratives as myths rather than as historical docu-
ments, a claim that undergirds the rest of his study, would have benefited from
more extensive explanation. Cohen defines “myth” as “a story that expresses
the ultimate truths and values of a community” whose “factual accuracy makes
little difference” (16; cf. 27). He claims that the perception of the Jews as
blind—and worse, diabolical—killers of Christ and persistent enemies of Chris-
tianity is rooted in the New Testament passion narratives, which developed and
expanded to dominate elite and popular understandings of Jews and Judaism
and to “affect the lives of real men and women” (4). This perception does not
signify “gospel truth” but rather reflects an interpretation of Jesus’s last days
in Jerusalem, an interpretation that arose in the sociopolitical contexts of a
later generation (see 15ff.). Cohen attempts to avoid undue offense to certain
of his religious readers by repeating that the term “myth” does not imply that
the Gospels are not true but rather calls for a revised understanding of their
truth. Nevertheless many potential readers, even those in the “established
churches” whose approach to the Gospels Cohen rallies to his defense (15),
may be unfamiliar with the methods of New Testament scholarship that support
Cohen’s claim. More explanation of the reasoning and evidence behind these
conclusions would more effectively convince some of this readership; I do not
think his nonacademic audience would have objected to such explanations,
especially where Cohen challenges their most basic assumptions about how to
read the Bible.
Those readers willing to engage Cohen in his reading of the Gospels as myth
will find a wealth of evidence and argument to stimulate urgent reflection. This
study raises important questions for Christians and for students of religion to
consider: general problems such as the ethics of religious beliefs and traditions
and the possibility of changing a tradition’s approach to its most sacred texts,
and problems specific to the Christian religion such as the necessity of an
antagonistic—even a malicious—“other” for the past and continued vigor of
Christianity and the casting of the Jews as that other, as well as the role of
violence in the foundational Christian story and in subsequent Christian de-
votion.
Another problem Cohen addresses is the degree to which human beings have
undergone fundamental change over their history. The historian examines the
evidence and concludes that change has been minimal: “Reason, science, en-
lightenment, progress, and all the other bywords of modern civilization that
we believe distinguish us from our medieval predecessors have not succeeded
in overcoming a way of thinking about Jews that extends back to the first

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 Book Reviews

Christian centuries” (119). In support of this conclusion one could look at

reactions to the most recent production of the Oberammergau Passion Play,
which opened in May 2010. Objecting to continuing efforts to revise the script,
efforts spurred in part by Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League,
Harmony Grant Daws of the Evangelical Christian Web site “The National Prayer
Network” writes, “Nothing could more clearly state unbelieving Jewry’s intent
to make the New Testament itself unspeakable, unacceptable . . . illegal” (http:
//truthtellers.org/alerts/adlrewritesnewtestament.htm).
Most of Christ Killers focuses on the career of the Christ-killer myth—its var-
ious interpretations, manifestations, and implications for human lives. But there
are some who simply will not enter into sustained and fruitful conversation
with scholarship such as Cohen’s, as Daws reveals in her piece: “This is about
the Bible, plain and simple.” Cohen expresses his own suspicion that the Christ-
killer myth will continue largely intact, since “committed to the divine revelation
inherent in its Scriptures, the Catholic Church cannot but maintain its com-
mitment to the essential ‘facticity’ of the Crucifixion story, and this leaves little
room for maneuvering to rid the story of its offensive implications” (180). This
finally becomes a debate over how to read scripture, a debate that extends back
to the very composition of those sacred texts and whose own history has been
and must continue to be the object of study. Nevertheless, in the absence of
agreement over hermeneutics, we can trust that Cohen’s book will continue to
“stimulate thought and interest across an array of traditional boundaries” and
at least hope that it “contributes . . . to mutual understanding between [Jews
and Christians]” (7).
ERIKA TRITLE, Chicago, Illinois.

GUTIERREZ, CATHY. Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2009. viii⫹218 pp. $55.00 (cloth).

Cathy Gutierrez has written a concise yet wide-ranging study of Spiritualist ideas
and culture during the heyday of the movement, from about 1850 until the
early twentieth century. She addresses her book primarily to scholars of Amer-
ican religion and culture, from whose works she quotes nearly as often as she
does from primary sources, and who will discover here many fresh insights.
Above all, she succeeds in complicating the claim, too often treated as unex-
ceptionable, that nineteenth-century Americans looked only to the future.
Her title indicates her concern with the “American Renaissance.” She refers
not, however, to the American “literary awakening” associated especially with
Ralph Waldo Emerson but to what she identifies as a “renaissance of the Re-
naissance” in nineteenth-century American culture (4). She finds not only a
renewed popular interest in Renaissance memory practices and esoteric reli-
gious ideas, but a broad Renaissance-style sensibility at once “enraptured with
the past and with the classics in particular” and thrilled by “a cultural blossom-
ing, an endless horizon of possibilities” (3). Although Gutierrez may better
perhaps have discussed a “naissance of the Renaissance,” because the concepts
of both an “Italian Renaissance” and a “New England Renaissance” date from
1860–80, her basic point remains provocative and intriguing: nineteenth-cen-
tury American culture was Janus-faced.
She argues that Spiritualism flourished in such a cultural environment be-
cause it expressed and dramatized so well the prevailing “double helix” con-

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