Imaginary Jews
Christians should not persecute or harm Jews, but should leave them to wander the Earth as Cain had, protected by the special mark of their sinfulness, eternally stuck in an antiquity that they could not leave.
.. He carefully points out, again and again, that the way thinkers use Jews and Judaism in their work often tells us nothing about their personal relations with Jews.
.. Paul’s argument was balanced and tolerant, but his language had a power of its own. He associated Jews with letter rather than spirit, death rather than life, ritual rather than faith—and stasis rather than salvation.
.. the Jew is named and defined: he is the one who does not see, who always chooses the external, the letter that kills, over the internal, the spirit that gives life.
.. Again and again, Christian thinkers denounced their critics and enemies as “Jews”—that is, Christians who read too literally, or with no inspiration.