The commandment of love for enemies handed down in Matt 5.44 and Luke 6.27–28, 35 is undoubtedly one of the most striking forms that the commandment of love for neighbor took in ancient Judaism. There is a magnus consensus that we are dealing with authentic Jesus material here. More than that, the commandment of love for enemies is generally regarded as the peak statement of the ethics of Jesus. Its history of interpretation is characterized to a not insignificant degree by Christian claims to superiority vis-à-vis Judaism. Here, the ethical claim is said to soar to something outrageously new, which is foreign to both Judaism and the rest of Greco-Roman antiquity. However in the wake of Christian theology’s reconsideration of its relationship to Judaism, the opposite phenomenon can also be observed in the literature – namely, the effort to deny any specific emphasis to Jesus’ commandment of love for enemies. Here, it is not regarded as sufficient to place the commandment of love for enemies in its Old Testament-early Jewish context and carefully sketch out its contours against this background; rather, it is flattened out into this context. … Download PDF to read more.