"Ni är inte som andra judar": En diskursiv analys om kyrkofadern Justinus Martyrens syn på judar

Sammanfattning

The goal of this thesis is to explore the church father Justin Martyr’s view of the Jewish people and how he interprets their role in salvation history and their relationship with Christians. By applying a discourse analysis on Justin’s work Dialogue with Trypho these themes can be explored. By using a historical-critical lens the thesis aims to explore what Justin’s work originally meant not how we can apply his ideas to the modern world. From a birds eye view, Justin paints a grim picture of the Jewish people. They are seen as a cruel, violent, ungrateful, and idolatrous people who hate God and everyone, especially Christians. On a deeper level Justin’s view gets more complex. He accuses the rabbis of twisting and censoring scripture to suit their own needs and not the will of God. Likewise, Justin argues that, as bad as ordinary Jews are, they are much better than Jewish converts, who are twice as bad as them. This is significant because the ethnic aspect gets replaced by a cultural one. On the other hand, there are two kinds of Jewish Christians. The best sort in Justin’s opinion are Jews who abandon their Jewish faith completely to fully convert to the Christian faith. He argues that these Jews not only bless themselves but also the Jews who haven’t converted. Justin also explores a compromise with Trypho regarding Jews who embrace the Christian faith while retaining Jewish customs. Justin concludes that these Jews can be saved as long as they don’t convince other Christians that the customs are necessary for salvation. Only the Christian faith is needed. Justin’s views on Trypho and his friends are also explored. The conclusion is that Trypho has good characteristics. Still, during the dialogue he progressively gets more respect for Justin as a debater and also gets humbler, even though he doesn’t convert to Christianity in the end. Trypho’s friends, who it’s argued are pagans eager to convert to Judaism, go from being depicted as extremely rude to blessing Justin. An hypothesis is that Justin might want to suggest that it’s worth having a dialogue with stubborn Jews because they might change their minds. Justin also criticizes the legitimacy behind the Jewish customs like circumcision which he concludes is just a sign for the Jews and not essential for salvation. He uses biblical/historical arguments, theological arguments and biological arguments to prove his point, the latter seemingly forcing the Jews to choose between defending circumcision or women’s equal worth in the eyes of God. He also uses key figures in the bible as proof that the church is the new Israel that is meant for everyone, not the Jews exclusively. The only difference between the Jews and everyone else is that they are too slow to realize this fact.