In recent months, some Internet commentators and Christian leaders have got in the habit of referring to Jesus as a “Palestinian Jew.” To George Weigel, an eminent Catholic theologian and writer, this “makes as much sense as referring to Jesus as a Latvian Jew or a Luxembourgish Jew, since ‘Palestine’ as conceived today did not exist at the time of Jesus, any more than did Latvia or Luxembourg.”
“Anti-Semitism comes in many forms these days,” Weigel continues, and argues that this form of it has ancient roots. It goes
back to the ancient heresy of the Marcionites: a 2nd-century sect that rejected the Old Testament in its entirety. Marcion and his followers claimed that the Creator God of Genesis and the God of the Jewish people’s Exodus was not the “Father” God to whom Jesus prayed; in fact, the Marcionites claimed that Jesus’s mission, as he understood it, was to overthrow and displace this “God of the Law” with the “God of Love.”
Elsewhere in his essay, Weigel makes clear just how Jewish Jesus was, writing that “Lent is a good time to reflect on the indisputable fact that Jesus of Nazareth . . . was a son of the Jewish people.”
Read more on First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/03/following-the-jewish-jesus