On the Jews and Their Lies (Von den Juden und ihren Lügen, 1543)

At the beginning of his career it is often said that Luther was apparently sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church. He wrote, early in his career: The Jews are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew. However, sometime before 1517, in his Letters to Spalatin, we can already see that Luther's hatred of Jews, best seen in tis 1543 letter, was not some affectation of old age, but was present very early on. Luther expected Jews to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against them. It is impossible for modern people to read the horrible passages below and not to think of the burning of synagogues in November 1938 on Krystalnacht. Nor would one wish to excuse Luther for this text. A number of points must, however, be made. The most important concerns the language used. Luther used violent and vulgar language throughout his career: he was not a man to say "manure" when he meant "shit". We do not expect religious figures to use this sort of language in the modern world, but it was not uncommon in the early 16th century. Second, although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition 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 pseudscientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them. None of this justifies what follows, but it may help to comprehend what is being written here.…