Many early Christian writers use the term ‘‘chosen’’ rather than ‘‘holy’’ to describe Israel. Yet, the notions are in essence the same. Someone who is holy, dedicated to God, is chosen from among others to belong to God. The status of being chosen brings with it easy, direct, and guaranteed access to God. So, when early Christian writers asserted that holiness was essential to salvation in the next life, they necessarily implied chosenness in some sense. Paul, in his letters, challenged the view of the Hebrew Bible on the exclusive holiness or chosenness of Israel: he never completely removed the Jews (as descendants of biblical Israel) from his salvific framework; but he certainly displaced them from its center. Thus, he allowed Gentiles into his new community of believers. Only those who accepted his message were ‘‘in’’ and hence ‘‘holy,’’ whether originally Jew or Gentile. Paul’s purpose, therefore, was to show that God had also thereby chosen the faithful Gentiles to replace the faithless among the Jews.
Those faithless Jews, nonetheless, remained at issue in Christian discourse, because, as witnesses to the Christ event and as relatives of and community members with Jesus, they should have seen the truth of his mission. History shows, from a Christian viewpoint, that most Jews did not. As a result of this failure, many Christian writers, furthering Paul’s claims, argued that God replaced all of historical Israel with the Gentile believers who recognized Jesus’ divinity, and who could be said in that sense to have been chosen.
Melito of Sardis
In his Peri Pascha, a paschal homily dated to the middle of the second century and most likely read at Quartodeciman midnight vigils, Melito claims that historical Israel (those descended from biblical Israel) did not live up to their name ‘‘Israel’’ - that is, they failed to recognize God when he appeared before them on earth in the form of Jesus. Melito plays here on the Hellenistic understanding of the Hebrew behind the name Israel, and translates it (as Philo does) as ‘‘seeing God.’’ And, because that historical Israel (the Jews of Jesus’ generation) failed to recognize God, God ‘‘unchose’’ them. Hence, Melito’s Jewish contemporaries have no claim on God or on the title ‘‘Israel.’’ He writes, ‘‘You forsook the Lord | you were not found by him | you did not accept the Lord | you were not pitied by him | you dashed down the Lord | you were dashed to the ground and you lie dead’’ (Melito, Peri Pascha, Hall, 99-100). Because first-century Israel refused to see God in Jesus (and Jesus in the God that they did worship), God left them for dead. In particular, Melito claims, their failure to recognize Jesus’ divinity caused them to murder him - which provoked God to disinherit them. While Melito never makes any specific claim about a new divine choosing, he implies as much when he pronounces Jesus divine. All who believe Jesus is the God of Israel can claim to be true Israelites. Furthermore, the Gentiles recognized what Israel failed to see. When Israel ‘‘cast the opposite vote against [its] Lord,’’ this same Lord ‘‘the Gentiles worshipped | and the uncircumcised men admired | and foreigners glorified’’ (Hall, 92). So, the Gentile believers replace historical Israel as God’s chosen nation and become the True and Holy Israel.
Justin Martyr
In his Dialogue with Trypho, written in the middle years of the second half of the second century, Justin has no problem elaborating in detail just how clearly things have changed since historical Israel rejoiced in God’s favor. He devotes much of the work to marshaling text after biblical text in defense of his belief that Gentile Christians have finally and irreversibly replaced Israel. He writes, for instance, ‘‘But we Christians are not only a people, but a holy people... ‘And they shall call it a holy people, redeemed by the Lord’ [Isa. 62: 12]. Wherefore, we are not a contemptible people, nor a tribe of barbarians, nor just any nation as the Carians or the Phrygians, but the chosen people of God who appeared to those who did not seek Him. ‘Behold,’ He said, ‘I am God to a nation that has not called upon My name’ [Isa. 65: 1]’’ (Justin, Dial. 119, PG 6. 752, Falls, 331-2). With support from Isaiah, Justin argues that the Israelites never had exclusive rights to holiness, for God called to other nations as well. He concludes, ‘‘For, just as he [Abraham] believed the voice of God, and was justified thereby, so have we believed the voice of God (which was spoken again to us by the Prophets and the Apostles of Christ)
... Thus, God promised Abraham a religious and righteous nation of like faith, and a delight to the Father; but it is not you, ‘in whom there is no faith’ [Deut. 32: 20]’’ (Falls, 332). With greater exegetical force than Melito, Justin argues that God disinherited faithless Israel. Concurrently, God accepted and elevated the faithful Gentiles, declaring them to be the new divine holy people, and placing them in the direct lineage of Abraham, because like Abraham they listened to God. For those who complied with God’s wishes and abandoned idolatry (among other sorts of bad behavior) thereby gained God’s approval. As Justin remarks, ‘‘We have been led to God through this crucified Christ, and we are the true spiritual Israel, and the descendants of Juda, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham’’ (Dial. 11, PG 6. 500, Falls, 165) The Christians obeyed, the Jews disobeyed. In one fell swoop, Justin dislodges the Jews from their historical moorings and replaces them completely with the Christians.
While Melito accused Jesus’ contemporary Jews of not recognizing God in Jesus and thus being led to murder him, Justin admonished the biblical Israelites (from whom Jews claim descent) for failing to live up to the covenant God granted them. In particular, he attributed their complete and final downfall to their failure to worship only the one God. Justin framed his polemical treatise (probably fictitious) in philosophical garb. He and Trypho, Justin’s Jewish partner in the dialogue, met in the marketplace and agreed to discuss the true meaning of the biblical texts. And while Justin wrote in a triumphant manner and Trypho listened politely (and even agreed at some points), to the outside listener they were simply conducting a philosophical discussion in which they agreed to disagree at the end. Most significant, it is clear that they both held the biblical text as sacred and felt compelled to interpret it correctly. Thus, Justin argued that Trypho had been misled by his teachers (sages of one sort or another, according to Justin) into believing, incorrectly, that the Jews retained God’s favor and could proceed in following biblical law as if Jesus never existed. Trypho’s teachers misinterpreted the true intent of the prophetic texts. This practice, Justin argued, leads nowhere, certainly not to salvation. Only those who truly understand the text can truly obey God (that is, accept Jesus as God’s Messiah) and be holy; only they belong to God, only they live with God in the afterlife.
Aphrahat, the Persian Sage
Two centuries later and across cultural and geographic boundaries, the fourth-century Syriac Christian writer Aphrahat, ‘‘the Persian Sage,’’ argued along similar theological and methodological lines. The Israelites, drawn to idolatry against their better judgment and certainly contrary to God’s explicit instructions, eventually lost their special status as God’s holy people. Aphrahat maintained that, while Judah and Israel, the two biblical nations of Israel, behaved like promiscuous, prostituting, and adulterous wives in the face of God’s fidelity as a ‘‘husband,’’ the ‘‘people who are from among the peoples,’ that is the Christians, ‘‘[are] the holy and faithful people [because they have] gone down and cling to the Lord’’ (Aphrahat, Demonstrationes 16. 3, Pat. Syr. i: 769. 18-20 (based on the Syriac of Hos. 11: 12); this and other such translations are my own). The Christians, because they listened to and followed God’s instructions to abandon idolatry and other gods, earned the title ‘‘holy’’ in place of disobedient and idolatrous Judah and Israel. Aphrahat interpreted Hosea 11: 12 to mean that the Gentiles have ‘‘gone down’’ from their pride - their ignorance of God. In their humility, they acknowledged God, abandoned idolatry, and gained the title ‘‘holy.’’
Both Justin and Aphrahat, perhaps inspired by Paul, cite Deuteronomy 32: 21, ‘‘I shall provoke you with a people which is no people, and with a foolish people I shall anger you’’ (Aphrahat’s version), in the cause of their supersessionist argument. Justin deploys the verse to support his contention that the faithful peoples replaced biblical Israel in God's favor; Aphrahat agrees, but argues further that the Christians, or the ‘‘people from among the peoples,'' because they abandoned their idolatry, and even provoked Israel, even in Aphrahat's day, to turn away from worshiping other gods. Nonetheless, both authors, together with Melito, construct their religious group identity as the chosen or holy people of God in contrast to Israel, the nation who previously claimed, but can claim no longer, to be the one and only holy people of God. The one holy community cannot define itself without redefining and demoting the other. Like siblings competing for their parent's favor, the Christian writers claim that although historical Israel may once have been God’s favorite, the ‘‘people who are from among the peoples'' superseded Israel to gain that privileged and holy status through their better conduct and greater obedience.
World History
