Selections from A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (1953) on the Jews

General Editor: Dom Bernard Orchard, O.S.B. (ed.), A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, 1953. Nihil obstat: R. C. Fuller D.D., L.S.S., Censor Deputatus. Imprimatur: E. Morrogh Bernard, Vic. Gen., Westmonasterii, die 9 Aprilis 1951. First published February 1953. Presented to His Holiness Pope Pius XII on 26 August 1953; acknowledged by the Secretariat of State, 29 January 1954.

This volume is the standard mid-twentieth-century Catholic one-volume commentary on the entire Bible in English, produced over nine years by thirty-eight scholars drawn from the secular clergy and major religious orders of Great Britain, Ireland, Malta, the United States, Austria, Canada and Australia. Its contributors include professors at Heythrop College, Downside Abbey, St Edmund’s College Ware, Maynooth, the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and West Baden College Indiana. The work received the personal commendation of Pope Pius XII. It was reprinted several times and, in the words of apologist Jimmy Akin, gives “a baseline, traditional Catholic take on Scripture.” All passages below are reproduced verbatim from the scanned full text hosted at the Internet Archive (Digital Library of India scan, identifier: in.ernet.dli.2015.449110). No word has been altered. Section numbers follow the commentary’s own system.

The passages reproduced here bear on the following themes: Deicide and the Jew ish acceptance of blood-guilt; the malice of Israel in the Passion narrative; the Woes against the Scribes and Pharisees and their condemnation to hell; the chosen race bearing responsibility for all innocent blood; the kingdom of God taken from the Jew ish people as a race; the Jew s as children of the devil (John 8); St Paul’s condemnation of the Jew s as adversaries to all men and as a people upon whom the wrath of God has already fallen; the supersessionism of Romans 9–11 and the present exclusion of Israel from the salvation of the Messias; the casuistry and formalism of the Talmudic tradition; and the fall of Jerusalem as the terrible fulfilment of the prophecy of the rejected Messias. They are reproduced here for scholarly and historical purposes. The framework throughout is entirely pre-Nostra Aetate (1965).

I. Deicide: The Jew s Accept Blood-Guilt Before God

Commentary on St Matthew, Chapter XXVII, §§ 721g–h

Rev. A. Jones, S.T.L., L.S.S., Professor of Sacred Scripture and Hebrew, Upholland College, Wigan

“By an action familiar to Jew s , Deut 21:6, and Gentiles, Herod 1:33, Pilate disclaims responsibility, saying: ‘I am innocent of this blood’ (WV). It is an act rather of private superstition than of public administration. This latter Pilate is as impotent to decline as the Jew s are powerless to assume. It is before God and not before Tiberius that the Jew s take responsibility upon themselves and their descendants.”

(§ 721h, on Matthew 27:24–25)

II. The Malice of Israel in the Passion

Commentary on St Matthew, Chapter XXVII, § 721g

Rev. A. Jones, S.T.L., L.S.S.

“For the evangelist the incident of Pilate’s wife (Claudia Procula by name according to the apocryphal gospels) underlines the malice of Israel — a pagan woman pleads the cause of Jesus against his own people.”

(§ 721g, on Matthew 27:19)

III. The Seven Woes: The Pharisees Condemned to Hell

Commentary on St Matthew, Chapter XXIII, §§ 714d–i

Rev. A. Jones, S.T.L., L.S.S.

“13–31 The Seven Woes — 13. First Woe: opposition and obstacle to the Kingdom. A general denunciation. Our Lord’s anger is explained by the harm he sees done to simple folk. The formalism of scribes and Pharisees has blocked the entrance even to our Lord’s own kingdom. It has darkened the public mind and made it incapable of appreciating the need for inward religion or even of recognizing its presence.”

(§ 714d)

“15. Second Woe: proselytism to bad purpose (Lk 11:52). Not content with obstructing entrance to the Kingdom, the Pharisees seek, with immense zeal, to draw ignorant pagans down to their own level and to make them too consciously sin against the proffered light of Christ. On the intense and successful Jew ish proselytism of this period, cf. Schürer 2, 2, 303–27. Often twice as fanatical as the born-Jew the newcomer is twice as surely established in the infernal dominion (‘son of’ in this Semitic sense = ‘belonging to’).”

(§ 714d, on Matthew 23:15)

“29–33. Seventh Woe: murder of God’s envoy (Lk 11:47–48). As in 23 it is not the act of honouring their great ancestors, 29, that is condemned but present murderous intention which lays bare the hypocrisy of their protestations. They admit, 30, that it was their fathers who murdered the prophets but seek to disclaim responsibility. Nevertheless, they and our Lord know their murderous intent in his regard; cf 21:38, 45. The situation of their ‘fathers’ has reappeared and their conduct shows, 31, that they are worthy sons and that their protest, 30, is empty. Bitterly ironical, our Lord urges them to their deadly work: their fathers have killed the servants, 21:35, 36, it is theirs to complete the work and kill the Son. In these words, recalling those of the Baptist (33; cf 3:7) but unexpected and terrible on the lips of our Lord, the crafty Pharisees are warned of the judgement that condemns to hell.”

(§ 714i, on Matthew 23:29–33)

IV. The Chosen Race Bears Responsibility for All Innocent Blood

Commentary on St Matthew, Chapter XXIII, § 714i

Rev. A. Jones, S.T.L., L.S.S.

“35. Thus the chosen race will fitly bear the responsibility for all the innocent blood shed on the ground in the whole course of sacred history. The names of Abel and Zacharias are chosen because Abel’s murder is the first mentioned in the Scriptures, Gen 4:8, and that of the priest Zacharias, 2 Par 24:20–22, the last in the Hebrew order of books.”

(§ 714i, on Matthew 23:35)

“36. For all these crimes the nation shall shortly answer. The fall of Jerusalem came forty years later.”

(§ 714i, on Matthew 23:36)

V. The Kingdom Taken from the Jew ish People as a Race

Commentary on St Matthew, Chapter XXI, §§ 711h–712a

Rev. A. Jones, S.T.L., L.S.S.

“42. Our Lord’s quotation is taken, like the ‘Hosanna’ cry of 9, from Ps 117(118) 22b. In the psalm the saying, probably a proverb, seems originally to refer to Israel rejected like a useless stone by the nations as they founded their pagan polities. But in God’s surprising plan and in God’s building, Israel is the conspicuous angle-stone crowning and uniting the two high walls. 43, our Lord has no hesitation in pronouncing his startling prophecy. The kingdom is to pass from the Jew ish leaders and apparently from the Jew ish people as a race. It will go to others who, as God’s new planting, will produce the fruit for which their leaders will faithfully render timely account.”

(§ 711h, on Matthew 21:42–43)

This supersessionism is identified as the characteristic theme of the First Gospel in the formal introduction to St Matthew’s commentary:

“There is true continuity here as Mt insists in one sentence which he alone quotes: ‘The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof’, 21:43.”

(§ 678d, Introduction to St Matthew)

VI. Lament for Jerusalem — “Assassin of His Envoys”

Commentary on St Matthew, Chapter XXIII, § 714j

Rev. A. Jones, S.T.L., L.S.S.

“37. The sorrow underlying the anger of the denunciations rises to the surface. The city of God, 5:35, assassin of his envoys (cf. 30, 34; 2 Par 24:20 f.; Jer 26:20 ff.; 4 Kg 21:16, etc.) and finally rejecting the reconciliation through the Son! By repeated appeal to Jerusalem (unmentioned in the Synoptics but told in Jn) our Lord has used the most anxious care to protect his own. 38. The city with its temple (‘your house’) will be left forsaken as the prophet had threatened, Jer 22:5 — a repetition of the sorrows of the Babylonian exile.”

(§ 714j, on Matthew 23:37–38)

“The words are perhaps merely a farewell exhortation though many (as Prat, Lagrange) see in them a promise of the future conversion of Israel to Christ — a conversion which is in fact prophesied by Paul, Rom 11:25. For barren resentment of Jew ry we should substitute prayer.”

(§ 714j, on Matthew 23:39)

VII. The Jew s as Children of the Devil

Commentary on St John, Chapter VIII, §§ 797k

Rev. W. Leonard, D.D., Ph.D., D.S.S., sometime Professor of Sacred Scripture, St Patrick’s Seminary, Sydney, N.S.W.

“44. Then comes the fearful sentence: ‘You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer and an enemy of truth from the beginning’. His original pride was untruth, so that the truth is not in him; by lying deceit, Gen 3, he brought death into the world, Wis 2:24.”

(§ 797k, on John 8:44)

“45. Hence the Jew s , in resisting the truth spoken by Jesus, have ranged themselves in the family of the devil. In the words of Apoc 2:9 ‘they are the Synagogue of Satan’.”

(§ 797k, on John 8:45)

“It is to be remarked that Jesus, at a moment when he is convicting the Jew s and their father, the devil, of sin, openly challenges them to convict himself of any sin whatever.”

(§ 797k, on John 8:46)

“They do not hear him because by moral disposition they are of the devil; their lives are not dominated by the spirit of obedience to God.”

(§ 797k, on John 8:47)

VIII. St Paul’s Condemnation of the Jew s : Adversaries to All Men

Commentary on 1 Thessalonians, Chapter II, §§ 915c–d

Dom Bernard Orchard, M.A. (Cantab.), General Editor and New Testament Editor

“13–16 Praise of their Behaviour: Condemnation of the Jew s — 13. ‘which worketh’, viz. the Word of God. 14. ‘imitators’ of the Christian Churches in Judaea; by suffering persecution from their fellow-citizens and countrymen in Thessalonica; it was indeed an honour for them to suffer in such good company. The Judaean persecutions in question are probably those referred to in Ac 8:1 f.; 9:1–2; 12:1. 15–16. This outburst of St Paul’s against the Jew s is not paralleled elsewhere and seems to have been evoked by their opposition to his work at Corinth as formerly at Thessalonica and Beroea. — ‘the prophets’: cf. Mt 5:12; 23:34. — ‘adversaries to all men’: precisely because they do all in their power to prevent St Paul preaching to the pagan world. Nothing was so repugnant to them as the proclamation that they no longer had a monopoly of the Messianic Kingdom.”

(§ 915c–d, on 1 Thessalonians 2:13–16)

“‘to fill up’: cf. Mt 23:32. When the pre-ordained measure of their sins has been filled to capacity (the process has been long drawn out) then retribution will fall suddenly. Whilst the time God allows to all men is a time for acquiring their measure of grace to those who repent, for the stiff-necked it is by their own fault a time for filling up the measure of their sins. — ‘the wrath of God’ is either the Day of Judgement, or the destruction of Jerusalem and the public rejection of the Jew ish race, as foretold by Christ (Mt 24). The latter is more likely.”

(§ 915d, on 1 Thessalonians 2:16a)

“— ‘is come upon them to the end’: the verb is proleptic, i.e. St Paul is so sure of the terrible penalty awaiting the Jew s that he speaks as if it has already come upon them ‘to the uttermost’.”

(§ 915d, on 1 Thessalonians 2:16b)

IX. The Stiffnecked People: Acts 7 and the Continuous Rejection of God’s Messengers

Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter VII, §§ 829a–e

Rev. C. Stephen Dessain, M.A.

“He is not on the defensive, but trying to convince others, a witness, a ‘martyr’. St Paul heard the speech, and many of its ideas can be paralleled in his epistles.”

(§ 829a, on Acts 7:1–53)

“17–43 The Age of Moses — It was the Jew s who rejected Moses as they had Joseph. In his conclusion St Stephen returns to this continual rejection by the Jew s of their prophets, 51–53.”

(§ 829c, on Acts 7:17–43)

“42. God turned from his faithless people, and gave them up, i.e. in Heb. parlance, withheld graces, and permitted them to indulge in idolatrous worship of the stars.”

(§ 829c, on Acts 7:42)

“51. ‘Uncircumcised’, no better than pagans, hearts hardened and ears closed to the spiritual meaning of their religion. 52. Cf. Mt 5:12; Lk 13:34. The speech has led up to our Lord, only now mentioned.”

(§ 829e, on Acts 7:51–52)

The introductory summary of the same speech is stated thus:

“The speech of Stephen on this occasion is drawn from the very writings which he was charged with discrediting and is unique among the discourses in the early chapters of Acts. It throws conciliation to the winds and impeaches Israel without reserve: ‘You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do you also’ (7:51).”

(§ 826a [Life of St Paul section], summarising Acts 7)

X. Supersessionism: The Present Exclusion of Israel from the Salvation of the Messias

Commentary on Romans, Chapters IX–XI, §§ 857a–859j

Rev. A. Theissen, D.D., sometime Professor of Sacred Scripture, Ushaw College, Durham; Professor of Sacred Scripture, Priesterseminar, Cologne

On the opening of Romans 9:

“Instead of connecting the new topic with what precedes the Apostle begins by expressing his deep sorrow over the fact that Israel as a whole has not accepted Christ and his Gospel of salvation.”

(§ 857c, on Romans 9:1–5)

On the spiritual blindness of the majority of Israel (Romans 11:7–10):

“7–12 The Present Exclusion of the Majority of Israel from the salvation of the Messias must not be represented as a rejection that is arbitrary or meaningless — From the chosen remnant, 1–6, Paul turns to the majority of Israelites now outside the Church. Their exclusion from the salvation of the Messias is admittedly a fact and a problem. But there are also answers which simplify at least parts of the problem. One such answer, 8–10, recalls that the spiritual blindness or hard-heartedness to which their present unbelief in the Messias is due is a divine punishment foretold in the Scriptures.”

(§ 859c, on Romans 11:7–12)

“The true explanation is not lack of understanding, but that principle of rebellion which underlies all the history of Israel. As in the days of Moses and Isaias, so now; it is disobedience and contradiction in spite of all that God has done for Israel.”

(§ 858f, on Romans 10:14–21)

On Romans 11:13–24 and the warning to Gentile Christians against contempt of Israel:

“13–24 The Present Rejection of the Greater Part of Israel must not be made an occasion for contempt of Israel or for spiritual pride on the part of the converted Gentiles — From the unbelieving Israelites, 7–12, the Apostle turns his attention to the Gentiles who have taken their place in the Church.”

(§ 859e, on Romans 11:13–24)

“Gentile Christians should remember that before their conversion they belonged but to a wild olive tree compared with Israel.”

(§ 859f, on Romans 11:17–18)

On the future conversion of Israel (Romans 11:25–32):

“25–32 The Present Exclusion of Israel from the Salvation of the Messias must not be regarded as Final — From the present, 1–24, St Paul turns his attention to the future. The time will come when the present problem of Israel‘s exclusion from the salvation of the Messias will cease to exist because of her conversion, which will follow upon the conversion of the Gentiles.”

(§ 859i, on Romans 11:25–32)

“‘God has abandoned all to their rebellion (= disobedience, WV = unbelief, DV) only to include them all in his pardon’, 31, KNT, cf. 10:12.”

(§ 859i, on Romans 11:32)

XI. The Talmudic Tradition: Casuistry and External Observance

“The Jew ish World in New Testament Times”, §§ 584a–596f

Rev. John L. McKenzie, S.J., M.A., S.T.D., Professor of Old Testament Exegesis and Hebrew, West Baden College, Indiana, U.S.A.

On the characteristic exclusivism of Palestinian Judaism:

“The effort of the Jew s to retain their distinct identity and to preserve themselves against foreign influence resulted in a characteristic exclusivism. Palestinian Judaism refused any contact with Gentiles beyond that of bare necessity — a theory which was never abandoned, although it was impossible to reduce it to practice. The Jew was required by law to do business with his own, to marry his own, to enjoy social relations with his own. Any contact with a Gentile caused ritual impurity. Gentiles defiled land, houses and food. The obligations of justice and charity were not as strict towards Gentiles as they were between Jew s . Just those features of Jew ish law and ritual which emphasized the separation of the Jew from the Gentile were most insisted upon. Gentiles usually, and not always without reason, thought the Jew s were haughty.”

(§ 584e)

On the casuistry of the Scribes:

“Much of the casuistry of the Scribes is judged unfavourably by moderns. There are many allusions in the Gospels to the over-emphasis they placed on external observances (tithing mint, anise and cummin, and neglecting mercy, justice and faith), the devices by which they evaded obligations of the Law (e.g. the evasion of the obligation of supporting one’s parents by consecrating one’s goods to the sanctuary), and the hypocrisy which masked their refusal to live by their own precepts (binding intolerable burdens on men, while refusing to lift a finger). They treated those who were ignorant of the Law, or who did not observe it, with a lofty contempt.”

(§ 586g)

On the Talmud and the position of women:

“The misogyny of the Talmud is so profound as to be amusing; but it is an indirect testimony to the freedom of women.”

(§ 596b)

On Jew ish standards of honesty towards Gentiles:

“In such circumstances, it is easy to understand that Judaism was somewhat loose in its standards of honesty, especially where Gentiles were concerned, and why it tolerated almost any way to turn a penny which was less than actual theft. One will scarcely find in extra-biblical Jew ish literature a forthright condemnation of avarice.”

(§ 596e)

On the religion of external observance:

“Judaism is a religion of external observance; but it also fostered a genuine interior piety unique in its time.”

(§ 596f)

XII. The Pharisees: Foreign Rule as Divine Punishment for the Nation’s Sins

“The Jew ish World in New Testament Times”, § 587o

Rev. John L. McKenzie, S.J.

“The kingdom of God, they believed, would be established by divine intervention, not by human efforts. Government by foreign powers was divine punishment for the sins of the nation, and as such should be accepted submissively.”

(§ 587o)

“It was Pharisaism which imposed its permanent stamp upon Judaism. The great catastrophe of a.d. 70, in which the city and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans, wiped out all other parties in Palestinian Judaism.”

(§ 587p)

XIII. The Fall of Jerusalem: “The Prophecy of the Rejected Messias Was Terribly Fulfilled”

“The History of Israel, 130 B.C.–A.D. 70″, § 74g

Rev. T. Corbishley, S.J., M.A., Master of Campion Hall, Oxford

“The Temple was taken in August and (apparently deliberately) given to the flames. By the end of September all resistance was at an end and the city reduced to a heap of rubble. The prophecy of the rejected Messias was terribly fulfilled. Judaea itself remained as a unit of the Roman Empire; but the Jew ish national state came to an end with the destruction of Zion.”

(§ 74g)

“It seems likely that (as Eusebius tells us) the Christian community established at Jerusalem had withdrawn from the capital to Pella in Peraea before the siege operations began so that it was not involved in the common disaster. The final severance of Christianity from Judaism was achieved.”

(§ 74g)

XIV. Children of God and Children of the Devil: 1 John 3:10

Commentary on 1 St John, Chapter III, §§ 957c–d

Rev. H. Willmering, S.J., M.A., L.S.S., New Testament Professor, St Mary’s College, St Mary’s, Kansas, U.S.A.

“Hence, only they who avoid sin deserve to be called ‘the children of God’; they who do not, are ‘the children of the devil’.”

(§ 957c, on 1 John 3:10)

“Children of God manifest an active and disinterested love for the neighbour; the children of the devil are characterized by sullen and envious hatred.”

(§ 957d, on 1 John 3:11–24)

Sources

All passages above are transcribed verbatim from the following primary editions. No word has been altered. The texts were verified against the scanned full text available at the Internet Archive.

Primary Edition — Full Text:

  • A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Dom Bernard Orchard, O.S.B., Rev. Edmund F. Sutcliffe S.J., Rev. Reginald C. Fuller D.D., Dom Ralph Russell D.D., Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, London, 1953. xiv + 1312 pp. Nihil obstat R. C. Fuller D.D., L.S.S.; Imprimatur E. Morrogh Bernard, Vic. Gen., Westmonasterii, die 9 Aprilis 1951. First published February 1953.

Digital Copies on the Internet Archive:

Full Text (plain text, Digital Library of India scan):

Open Library Record:

Commentary available section by section at StudyLight.org:

All passages in this document are reproduced for scholarly and historical research purposes.