While the rabbis, indeed, debated the question of gentile salvation in the Tannaitic period (first and second centuries), the exclusivist position—which regarded the gentiles as destined for Gehinnom— reached near-unanimous consensus in the later rabbinic periods (third to tenth centuries). Rabbinic texts often state that the gentiles are destined for Gehinnom but do not indicate for how long. When I note in this essay that the rabbis “damn” the gentiles I mean only that the rabbis believed that gentiles would go to hell. I am not weighing in on the question of duration. In fact, it is in the realm of possibility that the Tannaim reserved an eternity in hell only for Jewish apostates, but not gentiles, as evidenced in the Tosefta (see t. Sanh. 13:2).
In this case, several rabbis from the third to the eighth century damned the gentiles and offered salvation to the Jews. By doing so, Amoraic and post-Amoraic rabbis discursively engage in a double act of theological discrimination: (1) unlike sinning gentiles, sinning Jews go to heaven; and (2) unlike righteous Jews, righteous gentiles go to hell. With this emerging soteriology, the rabbis went further than the regnant Augustinian view, which damned all non-Christians to suffer eternally in hell (for Adam’s sin).
Rabbinic Exclusivism
R. Yehoshua’s inclusivist position offering salvation to gentiles virtually disappears from rabbinic culture after the Tannaitic period. Strikingly, no trace of this position can be detected in any of the writings of Amoraic literature, which includes the Jerusalem Talmud, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Lamentations Rabbah, Songs of Songs Rabbah and Pesiqta de Rab Kahana. By contrast, R. Eliezer’s exclusivist position emerges as the dominant one and appears often in Amoraic and post-Amoraic literature. Besides R. Eleazar, subsequent rabbinic texts attribute the anti-gentile position to the following Palestinian sages: R. Eleazar ha-Moda’i (second century), R. Yoḥ anan (third century), R. Levi (third century), R. Yehoshua b. Levi (third century), R. Tanḥ um b. Ilai (third century), and R. Yehudah b. Simon (fourth century). Other anti-gentile soteriological teachings— especially in post-Amoraic literature—go unattributed.
The rabbinic penchant and proclivity to regard the gentiles as destined for hell can be exposed by measuring the gap between a rabbinic Gehinnom teaching and its biblical prooftext. Consider, for example, an anonymous teaching in Sifre Deut. 311 (ca. third century CE) that imposes its anti-gentile soteriology onto Ezek 32:17–32. In these biblical passages, God declares—through the prophet Ezekiel—that Pharaoh and his people will shamefully descend to Sheol (= rabbinic Gehinnom) where they will lie in an inferior section reserved for the uncircumcised and those murdered by the sword. According to a contextual reading of this chapter, Sheol contained a specific and undignified section for the uncircumcised where select non-Israelite nations (and even some circumcised ones such as the Egyptians and Edomites) shamefully abided (See Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 22A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 659–70). Sifre Deuteronomy and other rabbinic texts, however, read Ezek 32 as positing that Gehinnom is the abode for all gentiles, as they are deemed “the uncircumcised ones.”
At other times, the rabbis take a biblical passage welcoming non-Israelites and transform it into a passage that damns non-Israelites. In these cases, as the gulf between biblical text and rabbinic teaching is immense, the teaching more acutely exposes the rabbis’ anti-gentile agenda. Take, for example, the second prooftext adduced by the above text (Sifre Deut. 311). Textually the verse is problematic (See Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy דברים: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 514–15).
According to one counterintuitive reading, the passage does not refer to a gentile inheritance in this world but rather to the gentiles’ “inheritance” of Gehinnom in the next world. The Sifre’s reinterpretation of the Masoretic verse underscores the celestial damnation of non-Israelites. A second example of this type of interpretive inversion—from universal biblical passage to anti-universal rabbinic teaching—can be found in Song Rab. 2:1:3. Here, R. Eleazar ha-Moda’i (second-century Palestine) has God announce that only the gentile nations would remain in Gehinnom, together with their gods. The midrash no longer has the nations walking triumphantly with their gods to the Temple Mount but has the nations marching with their gods to hell. Put differently, the midrash transforms one of the most famous biblical expressions of universal salvation into a strident declaration of universal damnation.
A similar rabbinic hermeneutical inversion (from universal to anti-universal) occurs with regard to another famous biblical section: Isa 56. Here, Deutero-Isaiah has God declare that foreigners attracted to the beliefs of the Judeans could offer prayers and sacrifices at the Temple Mount because God’s “house” is a “house of prayer for all the nations” (Isa 56:7). An anonymous Tanḥ uma-Yelammedenu (TY) tradition, preserved in Exod. Rab. 19:4, however, defangs the universal force of Isa 56. Exodus Rabbah argues that the “foreigners” [הנכר בני [who should be embraced in Isa 56:6 refer only to newly converted circumcised Jews. Gentiles, by contrast, would be sent to hell because their men are uncircumcised.
The above Exodus Rabbah text further substantiates its anti-gentile sentiments by rereading another section of Isaiah. Here we see a different rabbinic interpretive move to produce its anti-gentile teaching: the rabbis impose an anti-gentile soteriology onto biblical texts that have nothing to do with gentiles. The biblical passage only deals with Israelites. In other words, beyond inverting universal texts into anti-universal ones, here the rabbis also transform a common biblical binary of righteous Israelites versus sinning Israelites into a new binary: Israelites versus non-Israelites. **A second example of this hermeneutical shift—from wicked versus righteous Israelites to gentiles versus Jews—can be found in the TY midrash of Exod. Rab. 25:7, where an anonymous sage declares that the gentile nations of the world will sit depressed in Gehinnom as they watch the Israelites at peace eating joyfully in the Garden of Eden. **
The chart below summarizes some of the exegetical moves the rabbis make to produce their anti-gentile soteriology:
Theological
# Theological
The rabbis offer four different rationales to explain their anti-gentile view. The first is a theological one. Leviticus Rabbah (ca. fifth century) posits that the gentiles will be damned because they rejected God and His Torah at Sinai. The midrash relies on Hab 3:3–15, where the prophet describes a mythological theophany that has no clear historical referent. When God revealed Himself from “Teman” and “Mount Paran” (3:3), He brought with Him “plague” and “pestilence” (3:5) so that when “He glanced,” He “made the nations tremble” [גוים ויתר ראה) [3:6).
Attributing its teaching to R. Yoḥ anan (Palestine, third century), Leviticus Rabbah inverts the force of the Mekhilta by having God throw the gentile nations to Gehinnom for rejecting the Torah and mitsvot. Arthur Marmorstein notes that early Christian “synods and pulpits” told their “incumbents and representatives to threaten with the fire of hell … all those who adhered to the law of Moses” (Studies in Jewish Theology, 209). This expresses a more aggressive anti-gentile sensibility. Following Leviticus Rabbah, the Bavli (‘Abod. Zar. 2a–3a) imagines God denying the gentiles a share in the world to come because they rejected the Torah. The Bavli’s teaching, attributed to R. Hanina b. Papa, nuances R. Yoḥ anan’s claim. For in the Bavli, it is not the gentiles’ failure to accept the mitsvot of the Torah that causes their damnation but rather their neglect of Torah study. On the centrality of Torah study for the Bavli, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 31–35.
God, too, denies this rejoinder because the gentiles did not engage in their construction for that altruistic purpose. Later in the talmudic narrative, God points to yet a third reason why the gentiles are denied salvation: not because they refused to accept Torah (as per Leviticus Rabbah’s R. Yoḥ anan), nor their lack of Torah study (as per the Bavli’s Ḥ anina b. Papa), but because they failed to fulfill the seven Noahide laws. Already at the end of the first century CE, 4 Ezra 7:36–37 has God declare that the nations of the world are fated for hell because they did not serve God nor fulfill the mitsvot. See also the (early medieval) Midrash Otiyot de-Rabbi Akiva, which damns the gentiles because they “did not accept the Torah and failed to fulfill the mitsvot.” This text can be found in Shlomo Wertheimer, ed., Batei Midrashot (Jerusalem: Ktav Wasepher, 1968), 2:418. Also see Tanḥ . (Buber), Nitzavim 3 which gives a novel theological explanation: the gentiles are fated for destruction [כלייה [because, unlike the Jews, they are critical of God when experiencing suffering. I have noted elsewhere that Tanḥ uma-Yelammedenu (TY) literature is uniquely interested in the question of theological protest. Strikingly, instead of embracing theological protest, as other TY texts do, this TY teaching describes it as a gentile practice worthy of destruction. See Dov Weiss, Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 79–84.
Political
In the eschatological narrative above, Bavli ‘Avodah Zarah raises, but quickly dismisses, a completely different reason why gentiles might not be capable of achieving salvation: they oppress Israel. This second (potential) reason explains, for the Bavli, why the other nations thought they had a chance of achieving salvation even after the Romans and Persians had been rebuffed. Perhaps, they thought, God rejected these two nations because only “they subjugated the Jewish people [בהו אישתעבדו הנך בישראל ;“[but the other nations of the world did not. But, alas, God denies their entry too because the driving explanation for the gentiles’ damnation is not political, as the other nations had hoped, but theological. Here, God damns the gentiles not because they rejected Torah and mitsvot but because they oppressed the Jewish people. Consider this teaching from Gen. Rab. 20:1, attributed to R. Levi (third century). At the moment of redemption, God will damn the gentiles because they oppressed Israel. No distinction is made between righteous and wicked gentiles. In an ensuing encounter, the nations of the world tell God that they subjugated the Jews because of Jewry’s penchant for slanderous speech. In reaction, God throws both of them—the Jewish slanderers and the gentile oppressors—to hell. According to R. Levi, this narrative explains the verse from Ps 140:12 that has the “evil violent man” [חמס איש) [now understood to refer to gentiles) overthrowing the “slanderer” (now understood to be the Jews).
Two early medieval midrashim echo the political explanation. The first, Midr. Ps. 49, relies on Ps 49:15 to make this claim. “In this reading, “sheep” does not modify the Israelites who will be thrown into Sheol, but the way the Israelites were treated by the gentiles, who are destined for hell. In short, according to Midrash Psalms, the gentiles are worthy of Gehinnom because they “slaughter Jews like sheep.”
Like the above two midrashim (Leviticus Rabbah and Midrash Psalms), S. Eli. Rab. 1:5 justifies its anti-gentile soteriology by highlighting the historical oppression of the Jews.
Sacrifical
Like the former two explanations (the theological and the political), Exod. Rab. 11:2 links gentile damnation to a historical transgression. But, in this early medieval midrash, we are dealing with the transgressions of the Jews, not the gentiles. Exodus Rabbah reads Isa 43:3 as if God declares that the gentile nations will go to Gehinnom to expiate the sins of the Jews. To accomplish this reading, Exodus Rabbah makes two interpretive moves. First, this exchange—or ransom—no longer refers to a past bondage to Persia, but rather a future bondage to the flames of Gehinnom. The exegetical hook for Exodus Rabbah is that the prior verse (43:2) mentions the Judean immunity to fire, which, naturally, is now understood to refer to the fires of hell. And, second, while Isa 43:3 mentions only three nations that would be used to free the Judeans, the author of Exodus Rabbah extends the ransom to all of the nations. According to Exod. Rab. 1:2, gentile nations go to hell not because of anything they or their ancestors did, but rather, disturbingly, because gentile anguish in Gehinnom would atone for, or expiate, the sins of the Jews.
Ontological
Either the gentiles are destined to hell because they rejected God and Torah (theological), because they subjugated Israel (political), or because their sufferings in Gehinnom atone for the sins of the Jews (sacrificial). In late rabbinic literature, by contrast, a new explanation emerges, one that I would call ontological. Here, the gentiles are damned not because of some historical sin (gentile or Jewish), but rather because the link between gentiles and Gehinnom is built into the very structure of the universe. Consider Pesiq. Rab. 20 (96a), where God explains to the Prince of Darkness the names He granted to the planets, and why He created them in the manner that He did. According to Pesiqta Rabbati God tells the Prince of Darkness that He created Jupiter and named it [in Hebrew] “Justice” [צדק [because He will, without mercy, apply strict justice against the nations of the world. After Jupiter, God created Mars and named it [in Hebrew] the “Red Star” [מאדים [because that symbolizes that the nations of the world are destined to descend into a fiery red hell. Whereas Pesiqta Rabbati sees gentile damnation in the cosmos, the Bavli sees it in the very structure of the Hebrew language. B. Šabb. 104a crafts a dialogue between God and Gehinnom wherein Gehinnom demands that God send her both Jews and gentiles.
Metaphors for Doomed Gentiles
These derogatory descriptions convey that the rabbis did not have a stoic-like and value-neutral attitude toward the gentiles fated for hell: it was steeped in antipathy. In Lev. Rab. 13:2, R. Tanḥ um b. Ḥ anilai compares the fact that gentiles will be denied the world to come to a terminally sick person who has no hope for recovery [לחיים כדי בו שאין לחולה].Tanḥ (Buber), Shemini 10 has a stronger formulation that the gentiles “are [destined] for Gehinnom” (not merely denied the world to come as in Leviticus Rabbah). Midr. Prov. 17 goes even further by having R. Yehoshua tell R. Eliezer that, unlike Jews, gentiles cannot escape hell’s torments because the Torah’s method of salvation only speaks of living people (= Jews) but not dead people (= gentiles). Unlike Leviticus Rabbah and Midrash Proverbs, a TanḥumaYelammedenu teaching found in Pesiq. Rab. 10 (36b) and attributed to R. Levi, deems the nations of the world as living and healthy but incapable of salvation because they do not “belong to God.” Citing Isa 32:12 as its prooftext, the Pesiqta has God telling Moses that the gentiles “are not Mine [שלי אינם [but belong to Destruction [טימיון [and Gehinnom.” Levi’s prooftext is Isa 33:12: “Nations will be turned into heaps of burnt-out ash, like thorns cut down and set on fire.” While a contextual reading of this Isaiah passage would include sinning Israelites (see 33:14), the midrash deems only the gentiles as “set on fire”. Also see Midrash Otiyot de-Rabbi Akiva (ed. Wertheimer, 418), where God damns the gentiles because, citing Isa 40:17, “they are like nothing in front of Him [נגדו כאין].
Other midrashim compare gentiles to various animals when announcing gentile damnation. R. Yehoshua b. Levi provides the following etymology for the name “Moriah.” It connotes the area of Temple Mount where God sends the gentiles to hell. According to this view, Moriah comes from the word moreh, meaning “deciding” the gentile’s fate, or possibly “shooting” the gentiles down to Gehinnom. Ps 49.15 talks about sheep and the shepherd. In Tanḥ uma, however, these sheep are the gentile nations, whose shepherd is Death. Whereas Tanḥ uma (Buber) likens gentiles to sheep, Midr. Ps. 104:18 compares them to lions when describing how the Messiah will one day hurl the nations of the world to Gehinnom. Generally, the rabbis have God damning the gentiles and their gods (as in Tanḥ uma [Buber], Shoftim 10). Here, and in Pes. Rab. 36, p. 161, however, the Messiah serves this function. And see b. ‘Erub. 101a where the Israelites fill this role.
Midrash Psalms exegetically anchors its teaching onto Ps 104:21–22, which highlights God’s wondrous creation as even the wild lions behave in a timely and orderly fashion when returning to their nightly abode: “the lions roar for prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they gather and couch in their dens.” However, rather than reading the verses as punctuating God’s marvelous universe—as God even provides for the lions—Midrash Psalms reads them as predicting how the Messiah will one day damn the nations of the world. To produce his teaching, the midrashist reinterprets the “rising of the sun” as the coming of the Messiah; “the dens” as a reference to “Gehinnom”; and, important for our purposes, the “lions” as the nations the world. In this teaching, Midrash Psalms regards the connection between gentiles and Gehinnom as a highly natural one, just as a lion by nature returns to his den. One last animal metaphor used to describe the doomed gentiles can be found in Gen. Rab. 21. This text, as we noted above, has the “violent” gentiles slated for Gehinnom because they oppressed the Israelites. To accentuate its teaching, the midrashic author compares gentiles to the snake in the Garden of Eden who caused the downfall of Adam (who represents the Jews).
The rabbis also deploy a type of metaphor used by Jesus in the New Testament (see, e.g., Matt 13:24–30). The early medieval Midr. Ps. 2:14 compares the gentiles to the unused parts of an ear of wheat: straw, chaff, and weeds. These items, now personified, initially boast that the field was grown for them. When harvest came, however, these parts were destroyed and only the wheat itself was “brought in for safekeeping.” According to the midrash, the nations of the world similarly declare that the world was created for them, but, ultimately, they too will be exiled to Gehinnom [לגיהנם נטרדין[. Israel, by contrast, “will remain” in the future world, as God, according to a rabbinic reading of Song 7:3, compares Israel to a “heap of wheat”. Similarly, Pirqe R. El. 28 has R. Azaryah posit that God created the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Arabs only to serve as “wood” for the fires of Gehinnom.
- The Babylonian Talmud
Most Bavli texts unequivocally have gentiles destined for Gehinnom, or more moderately, denied a place in the world to come (B. Šabb. 104a, B. ‘Erub. 101a, B. B. Bat. 10b, and B. Meg. 15b and b. Sotah 35b).
(Disclaimer: this is not accurate of modern day Judaism. These are ancient opinions).