# Anti Semites and the "Jews killed Jesus" argument **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 21, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483 "2011-01-21T19:10:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/41 "2011-01-23T22:07:32Z")
> [@Valteron](#): > > I think you have to differentiate between the Jesus-killing as a reason versus an excuse. > > . . . > > So what if some of the main actors were Jews? The event happened in Judea. Did you expect them to be mainly Chinese? His mother, his disciples, his many supporters, ALL JEWS, opposed his death. Romans and the collaborator Jewish element in Judea called for his death. It’s that simple. No such thing as a nation being responsible. This. Even if you look at present Jewry as the philosophical descendants of those who rejected Yeshua, as Jews, & more importantly as conscious beings in their own right, they are still like those for whom he came & from whom he drew his disciples. Saying, “the Jews killed Jesus,” may be stupid, it may be ignorant, it may be disingenuous, it may be flatly mendacious, depending on the case. It’s no more good Christology than, “God is dead,” or, “sin all you want 'cos you’ll be forgiven anyway.” But it serves the ethnically driven purposes of those who push the idea. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/42 "2011-01-23T22:12:27Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > If you are accepting a false premise, you cannot argue about the validity of any outcome of that false premise. > > The trap is to accept the existence of the Christian god. Since you do, or you allow Christians to present that statement as valid, there’s no legitimate logical statement you can make about anything else Christians claim. Logic doesn’t work that way. One can work out a valid argument from premises not known to be true, & science does it all the time. One can work out a valid argument from premises known to be false, however uselessly. You misunderstand the actual denotative meanings of “valid,” & “legitimate logical statement.” ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/43 "2011-01-23T23:20:26Z")
I can’t wait until we have Sentient Robot Christians. “Humans killed Jesus.” ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/44 "2011-01-23T23:40:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I notice you clipped the second half of that sentence. Do you think it’s invalid to speculate about hypotheticals? > > In what way? It’s impossible to use reason and logic to disprove a claim that is based on a false premise. For example, if the Jews killed Jesus, then the god made the Jews kill Jesus and the god made the Jews be the undesirable inhuman beings the anti-semites want the Jews to be. There’s no end to this pointless line of reasoning because it’s based on a false premise. Any claim can be logically validated and be consistent with the Christian belief system. If you accept the existence of a supernatural being, something that is illogical by definition, then you can’t use logic to argue religious claims. The are all false, but logically valid. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/45 "2011-01-24T00:50:50Z")
Oh Dio, I cannot find a source for Maimonides actually said (even skimming through an on line edition of _The Guide_) but I do question you for a source that Christ would not have considered guilty of blasphemy and that under Mosaic Law of the time the penalty for that was death by stoning. My understanding is consistent with [Wikipedia’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanhedrin_trial_of_Jesus), that “Under the Jewish Mosaic Law, if a man committed blasphemy against God, he was to be put to death. … For Jesus to permit anyone to worship him as God would itself be interpreted by the Sanhedrin as blasphemy both by Jesus and those he allowed to worship him.” Since Jews do not believe that Christ was the Messiah, let alone the Son of God, part of a Trinity of God, or in any other way any more divine than any other human, if the Sanhedrin _had_ ruled, and followed the Law, he likely would have been found guilty and stoned to death. Of course I’ve also read that the death penalty was very very rarely actually carried out even in the times of the Sanhedrin (and Talmudic rulings after that made it something almost impossible to do, although technically still on the books). And of course the other details don’t fit with what the Sanhedrin would have done. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/46 "2011-01-24T00:59:46Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > It’s impossible to use reason and logic to disprove a claim that is based on a false premise. Wrong, since arguments can be illogical in themselves or have other false premises that aren’t being accepted in that particular hypothetical. If someone asks “what if Hitler was assassinated in 1942”, you can still call “the Martians would invade” a silly answer. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/47 "2011-01-24T01:27:46Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > It’s impossible to use reason and logic to disprove a claim that is based on a false premise. People do proof by contradiction all the time. To prove A, assume ~A, show it leads to a logical contradiction, thus ~A is false and A is true. You can do the same even with supernatural beings. Assume a clearly supernatural tri-omni God, show that this leads to a logical contradiction by several methods we’ve discussed before, and thus prove that no tri-omni god can exist. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/48 "2011-01-24T01:30:11Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Hey, give credit where credit is due. > > It was Lenny Bruce’s family that did in Jesus. > > _“Alright, I’ll clear the air once and for all, and confess,” said Bruce…"Yes, we did it. I did it, my family. I found a note in my basement. It said: ‘We killed him, signed, Morty.’ "_ We did it because he didn’t want to become a doctor. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/49 "2011-01-24T01:37:36Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Oh Dio, I cannot find a source for Maimonides actually said (even skimming through an on line edition of _The Guide_) but I do question you for a source that Christ would not have considered guilty of blasphemy and that under Mosaic Law of the time the penalty for that was death by stoning. My understanding is consistent with [Wikipedia’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanhedrin_trial_of_Jesus), that “Under the Jewish Mosaic Law, if a man committed blasphemy against God, he was to be put to death. … For Jesus to permit anyone to worship him as God would itself be interpreted by the Sanhedrin as blasphemy both by Jesus and those he allowed to worship him.” Since Jews do not believe that Christ was the Messiah, let alone the Son of God, part of a Trinity of God, or in any other way any more divine than any other human, if the Sanhedrin _had_ ruled, and followed the Law, he likely would have been found guilty and stoned to death. Of course I’ve also read that the death penalty was very very rarely actually carried out even in the times of the Sanhedrin (and Talmudic rulings after that made it something almost impossible to do, although technically still on the books). And of course the other details don’t fit with what the Sanhedrin would have done. Claiming to be the Messiah was not blasphemy under Jewish law. The Messiah is not an object of worship under Jewish law, is not God, is not “the son of God”, is not in any way divine. The Jewish Messiah is only a human king. It’s not a claim to godhood and does not meet the Jewish definition of blasphemy, which is narrowly defined in the Talmud as cursing or denying the name of God (and one explicitly has to verbalize the tetragrammaton..i.e they have to say “Jehova”). Nothing else is blasphmey and claiming to be the Messiah in no way curses, repudiates or denies the power or authority of God. Incidentally, Maimonides did not say that Jesus’ crime was claiming to be the Messiah _per se_, but accused him of heresy for saying that Jews no longer had to follow the covenent of Moses (something Jesus didn’t actually say, for record. Maimonides apparently did not have a clear understanding of what Jesus actually said). He said it in his Epistle to Yemen, incidentally. [this](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Epistle_to_Yemen/III) is what you’re looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483/50 "2011-01-24T01:52:19Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > …“what if Hitler was assassinated in 1942”, you can still call “the Martians would invade” a silly answer. In the following examples of: If A then B The “If Hitler was assasinated in 1942 then Martians would invade” is false because A is true and B is false. The “If Hitler was a god then Martians would invade” is true, because A is false, and A -\> anything you want. The difference is the truth value of the premise. The assassination scenario is not a statement of logical truth or falseness. Actually it assumes that the premise is true, meaning that Hitler could have been assassinated and that would not make the premise false, like “Hiter is god” is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-semites-and-the-jews-killed-jesus-argument/568483.md?page=2)