On the Jews and Their Lies

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On the Jews and Their Lies (German: Von den Juden und ihren Lügen) is a treatise written in January 1543 by Martin Luther, the German theologian, in which he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. Luther argued that Jews should be shown no mercy or kindness,^[1] should have no legal protection,^[2] and that these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.^[3] It is widely regarded by scholars as a significant work in the development of modern anti-Semitism.^[4] Four centuries later, the Nazis used quotations from this pamphlet, which was cited by the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer during the Nuremberg trials,^[5] to justify the Final Solution.

Both the editor and publisher of On the Jews and Their Lies in Luther's Works, express their "great misgivings" about publishing the treatise because of the risk of misuse to "the detriment either of the Jewish people or of Jewish-Christian relations." They state that Luther's work "has played so fateful a role in the development of anti-Semitism in Western Culture," and insist "[s]uch publication is in no way intended as an endorsement of the distorted views of Jewish faith and practice or the defamation of the Jewish people which this treatise contains."^[6]

The prevailing view among historians since World War II is that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries since the Reformation,^[7] although a minority view states that Luther's anti-Jewish writings were largely ignored in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before being embraced by anti-Semites in the twentieth century.^[7][8]

Contents 1 Background and synopsis 2 Influence on modern antisemitism 2.1 Impact on Nazi ideology 3 Selected quotes 4 Lutheran Church repudiation 5 Luther's sources 6 English-language translations 7 Notes 8 External links

[edit] Background and synopsis

Further information: Martin Luther and the Jews

On the Jews and Their Lies, published three years before Luther's death in 1546, in which Luther wrote that he wished to be identified among those in opposition to them:

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them.^[9]

Luther stated in his introductory remarks that he was writing in response to a pamphlet, unidentified by historians, written by an unidentified Jew or Jews, sent to him by Count Wolfgang Schlick of Falkenau:

Dear sir and good friend^[10], I have received a treatise in which a Jew engages in dialog with a Christian. He dares to pervert the scriptural passages which we cite in testimony to our faith, concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and to interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith.^[11]

In the treatise, Luther wrote that Jews are devils, blasphemers, and liars who "lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it," a "miserable, blind and senseless" people, "nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury." "God and all the angels dance when [the Jew] farts." They should be "toss[ed] out… by the seat of their pants," and "eject[ed]… forever from this country." God's anger with them is "so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"^[3]

He wrote that synagogues and Jewish schools must be set on fire to "bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them." Their houses must be "razed and destroyed," their "prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them… their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb," their money, gold and silver confiscated, and no safe conduct on the highways be available to them, because they have "no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home…"^[3]

Jerusalem was destroyed over 1400 years ago, and at that time we Christians were harassed and persecuted by the Jews throughout the world for about 300 years… During that time they held us captive and killed us… So we are even at fault for not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then… We are at fault in not slaying them.^[12]

[edit] Influence on modern antisemitism

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The prevailing sentiment among historians is that this and other antisemitic writings by Luther laid the groundwork for the modern "racial" form of antisemitism — that is, the persecution, deportation, or even genocide of Jews because of their ethnic traits (and not merely their religious views).^{[citation needed]}

Writing in Lutheran Quarterly in 1987, Dr. Johannes Wallmann stated:

The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation, and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion.^[7]

Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, has observed that "Luther wrote of the Jews as if they were a race that could not truly convert to Christianity. Indeed, like so many Christian writers before him, Luther, by making the Jews the devil's people, put them beyond conversion". Michael noted that in a sermon of September 25, 1539, "Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently, and in several passages of The Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert."^[13]

Franklin Sherman, editor of volume 47 of the American Edition of Luther's Works in which On the Jews and Their Lies appears,^[14] states in response to the claim that "Luther's antipathy towards the Jews was religious rather than racial in nature" that Luther's writings against the Jews are not

merely a set of cool, calm and collected theological judgments. His writings are full of rage, and indeed hatred, against an identifiable human group, not just against a religious point of view; it is against that group that his action proposals are directed.

Sherman continues:

Luther cannot be distanced completely from modern antisemites. Regarding Luther's treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, Karl Jaspers wrote, "Da steht das ganze Programm der Nazi Zeit schon" ("There you already have the whole Nazi program").^[15]

Other scholars assert that Luther's anti-Semitism as expressed in On the Jews and Their Lies is based on religion. Bainton asserts:

His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day.^[16]

Richard Marius, a Reformation historian who was a professor at Harvard University, gives his views of Bainton's position:

Roland Bainton in his effort to make the best of Luther declared that Luther's view of the Jews was "entirely religious and by no means racial".^[17]

Paul Halsall argues that Luther's views had a part in laying the groundwork for the racial European anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century:

although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition [sic] of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseud-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed even those ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed their conversions.^[18]

In his Lutheran Quarterly article, Wallmann argued that Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies, Against the Sabbabitarians, and Vom Schem Hamphoras were largely ignored by anti-Semites of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He contended that Johann Andreas Eisenmenger and his Judaism Unmasked, published posthumously in 1711, was "a major source of evidence for the anti-Semites of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" and "cast Luther's anti-Jewish writings into obscurity." In this 2000 page tome Eisenmenger makes no mention of Luther at all.^[7]

[edit] Impact on Nazi ideology

Four centuries after it was written, the Nazis cited Luther's treatise to justify the Final Solution. William Shirer has attributed the Final Solution directly to Luther. ^[19] Uwe Siemon-Netto disputes this conclusion.^[20]

The line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw," ^[21] according to American historian Lucy Dawidowicz. In her The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, she writes that both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews, with Hitler asserting that the later Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies, was the real Luther. ^[21]

Dawidowicz writes that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern anti-Semitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus, although modern German anti-Semitism also has its roots in German nationalism and Christian anti-Semitism, a foundation she says was laid by the Roman Catholic Church and "upon which Luther built." ^[21]

Julius Streicher, the Nazi publisher of the anti-Semitic Der Stürmer, cited On the Jews and Their Lies during the Nuremberg trials: "Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them ..." ^[5]

Martin Bertram, the 20th century Lutheran scholar who translated the treatise in Luther's Works into English notes that "[i]t is impossible to publish Luther's treatise today ... without noting how similar to his proposals were the actions of the National Socialist regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the so-called Kristallnacht, for example, 119 synagogues in all parts of Germany, together with many Jewish homes and shops, were burned to the ground." ^[9]

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, in his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, says the following concerning the Kristallnacht anti-Jewish violence in Germany in 1938:

"One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews'".^[22]

Many of the events of Kristallnacht echoed material in The Jews and Their Lies. Walter Buch, the head of the Nazi Party court, admitted Luther's influence on Nazi Germany, in Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich, "When Luther turned his attention to the Jews, after he completed his translation of the Bible, he left behind "on the Jews and their Lies" for posterity". Buch then said, "Many people confess their amazement that Hitler preaches ideas which they have always held.... From the Middle Ages we can look to the same example in Martin Luther. What stirred in the soul and spirit of the German people of that time, finally found expression in his person, in his words and deeds". ^[23]

[edit] Selected quotes

• "Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, 'He has a demon' (Matthew 11:18) Our Lord also calls them a 'brood of vipers'; furthermore, in John 8 [:39,44] he states: 'If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil.' It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today."^[24]

• "There, Jew, you have your boast, and we Gentiles have ours together with you, as well as you with us. Now go ahead and pray that God might respect your nobility, your race, your flesh and blood."^[25]

• "They boast of their race and of their descent from the fathers, but they neither see nor pay attention to the fact that he chose their race that they should keep his commandments."^[26]

• "Therefore it is not a clever and ingenious, but a clumsy, foolish, and stupid lie when the Jews boast of their circumcision before God, presuming that God should regard them graciously for that reason, though they should certainly know from Scripture that they are not the only race circumcised in compliance with God's decree, and that they cannot on that account be God's special people."^[27]

• "There is one thing about which they boast and pride them selves beyond measure, and that is their descent from the foremost people on earth, from Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and from the twelve patriarchs, and thus from the holy people of Israel. St. Paul himself admits this when he says in Romans 9:5 Quorum patres, that is, 'To them belong the patriarchs, and of their race is the Christ,' etc."^[28]

• "They are the boastful, arrogant rascals who to the present day can do no more than boast of their race and lineage, praise only themselves, and disdain and curse all the world in their synagogues, prayers, and doctrines. Despite this, they imagine that in God's eyes they rank as his dearest children."^[29]

• "They turned a deaf ear to us in the past and still do so, although many fine scholarly people, including some from their own race, have refuted them so thoroughly that even stone and wood, if endowed with a particle of reason, would have to yield.^[30]

• "Furthermore, as Gabriel says, he must have come from among their people, undoubtedly from the royal tribe of Judah. Now it is certain that since Herod's time they had had no king who was a member of their people or race."^[31]

• "This was accomplished despite the fact that the other faction, the blind, impenitent Jews — the fathers of the present-day Jews — raved, raged, and ranted against it without letup and without ceasing, and shed much blood of members of their own race both within their own country and abroad among the Gentiles, as was related earlier also of Kokhba."^[32]

[edit] Lutheran Church repudiation

The anti-Semitic content of this book and other writings has been repudiated by various Lutheran churches throughout the world.

In 1983, The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, noting that "Anti-Semitism and other forms of racism are a continuing problem in our world," made an official statement^[33] "denouncing" Luther's "hostile attitude" toward the Jews:

While The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod holds Martin Luther in high esteem for his bold proclamation and clear articulation of the teachings of Scripture, it deeply regrets and deplores statements made by Luther which express a negative and hostile attitude toward the Jews. In light of the many positive and caring statements concerning the Jews made by Luther throughout his lifetime, it would not be fair on the basis of these few regrettable (and uncharacteristic) negative statements, to characterize the reformer as "a rabid anti-Semite." The LCMS, however, does not seek to "excuse" these statements of Luther, but denounces them (without denouncing Luther's theology). In 1983, the Synod adopted an official resolution addressing these statements of Luther and making clear its own position on anti-Semitism.^[34]

In 1994, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly rejected^[35] Luther's anti-Semitic writings, saying:

We who bear his name and heritage must acknowledge with pain the anti-Judaic diatribes contained in Luther's later writings. We reject this violent invective as did many of his companions in the sixteenth century, and we are moved to deep and abiding sorrow at its tragic effects on later generations of Jews. In concert with other Lutherans represented in the Lutheran World Federation, we particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther's words by anti-Semites as part of their teaching of hatred toward the Jews and Judaism in our own day.

In 1995 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada^[36] made similar statements and the Austrian Evangelical Church in 1998.

The Austrian Church declared that

not only individual Christians but also our churches share in the guilt of the Holocaust (Shoah). …we as Protestant Christians are burdened by the late writings of Luther and their demand for expulsion and persecution of the Jews. We reject the contents of these writings.^[37]

In the same year, the Land Synod of the Lutheran Church of Bavaria issued a declaration^[38] saying: "It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences."

[edit] Luther's sources

According to Martin Bertram,^[39] who translated On the Jews and Their Lies for the American Edition of Luther's Works (vol. 47), Luther used the following sources: Paul of Burgos's Investigation of the Scriptures, Nicholas of Lyra's Most Excellent Inquiries Rejecting Judaic Falsities by the Catholic Faith, Salvagus Porchetus's Victory over the godless Hebrews, and The Entire Jewish Faith by Anthony Margaritha, who was a convert to Christianity from Judaism.^[39][40] Luther mentions these sources by naming the authors.

• Burgos, Paul of. Scrutinium Scripturarum ("Investigation of the Scriptures").
• Lyra, Nicholas of. Pulcherrimae quaestiones Iudaicam perfidam in catholicam fide improbantes ("Most Excellent Inquiries Rejecting Judaic Falsities by the Catholic Faith").
• Margaritha, Anthony. Der gantz Jüdisch glaub ("The Entire Jewish Faith").^[39]
• Porchetus, Salvagus. Victoria adversus impios Hebraeos ("Victory over the godless Hebrews")^[40]

[edit] English-language translations

• Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies (1543). Translated by Martin H. Bertram. Luther's Works Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.
• The Jews and Their Lies, Liberty Bell Publications, 2004. ISBN 1-59364-024-2

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• On the Jews and their Lies (excerpts) at Medieval Sourcebook