Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope

By Joel Marcus and Ellen T. Charry

Jesus was a Jew. Yet nineteen centuries after his death, hatred inspired in part by the long-standing tradition of Christian anti-Judaism played a significant role in the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

How are Christians and Jews to deal with this jarring historical incongruity?

In Jesus and the Holocaust Joel Marcus—a Jew by birth, a Christian by choice—offers stirring meditations on the relationship between the deaths of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and the death of one innocent Jew on the cross. Basing his work on sermons he originally preached on Good Friday 1995, a date that also corresponded with the fifty-year anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, Marcus weaves reflection on Bible passages together with poetry and narratives about the Holocaust. He shows how the hope that Christians have always found hidden in Christ's darkest hour can shed light on one of the most tragic events of our recent history—and vice versa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Mar 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781467446655

Joel Marcus

Joel Marcus is a professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Duke Divinity School. His publications include Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope and Mark: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. He taught previously at Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Glasgow, and Boston University School of Theology.

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Reviews for Jesus and the Holocaust

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

These homilies were first delivered at a Good Friday service in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust. The author is a New Testament scholar with a secular Jewish background, so the intersection of Christianity and the Holocaust is of special interest to him. Each homily is prefaced by an image (a painting or photograph) and a poem or prose excerpt with a theme related to the homily. A theme that runs throughout the collection is that of unjust suffering – of the millions of Jews who suffered and died because they were Jews, and of the innocent Christ who suffered and died on the cross. It would be a good collection for a Lenten reading list.