My understanding from some other (GD) threads about this movie is that that’s wrong- if the priests had wanted to kill him for blasphemy, they could have gone ahead and done so. The Romans wouldn’t have cared about that, they would however have been concerned if he was stirring up the rabble too much.
Anybody?
I think it’s probably a bit of both. History isn’t my strong suit, though, so please bear with me. From what I’ve seen of human nature, people have a strong tendency to hate that which is different, and even try to eliminate it. Jews had different customs from Christians, ate different foods, and worshipped on a different day of the week. Judaism also, I believe, forbids charging interest to Jews, and Christians didn’t charge interest to Christians, but Jews were allowed charge interest on money loaned to Christians, making them very roughly equivalent to today’s credit card industry (see The Merchant of Venice). They were different; they didn’t want to become like us; worse yet, they made money off of us! Throw in the way Matthew is written and Passion Plays depicting the death of Christ and you get, I’m afraid, the Holocaust. That still saddens and shames me.
When I learned about World War II in high school and college, one of the things which stuck in my mind is up until the 1940s, on Good Friday, the day Christians commemorate Christ’s crucifiction, people would come out of church and beat gay people up. I gather many, many people believed that some traditional passover foods required the blood of Christians. Passover is one of the most sacred of holidays for Jews and it roughly coincides with Christianity’s Easter because Easter came out of Christ’s celebrating Passover. After a service which wallows in guilt, outrage, and anger, here you have a nice, secretive, set apart group of people who can be blamed for the events which have left you guilty, outraged, and angry. I know firsthand what people in small towns can do to people who are different. It’s not pretty. I also know what it’s like to sit in a church in a small town on Good Friday while a carpenter pounds nails into a wooden cross reminding us of Christ’s suffering. Even knowing it would come, I flinched. We all know people who believe they can do know wrong. I would think it would be easy for such a person to turn that guilt on to another target, especially one he thinks his priest has told him it’s ok to hate.
I like the part about keeping witnessing out of IMHO, and I’m trying to provide contrast, not witness, but what I’m about to write could be taken as such, so I’ll put it in a spoiler box. One of the things I like about my Episcopal Church is wha we do on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, when we commemorate and re-enact Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, trial, and crucifixion. During the trial, when Pilate is asking the crowd what they want to do with Jesus of Nazareth, the reply is “Crucify him!” Instead of having someone representing “the Jews” do this, the congregation as a whole shouts this, more than once if I recall. At the beginning of the service, we sang loudly, lustily, and proudly, “All glory, laud, and honor/To Thee, Redeemer, King!/ To whom the lips of children/made sweet hosannas ring!” Now, we, not some third party who we can blame the troubles of the world on, but we, good Christians standing in church on a spring Sunday morning, call for the death of the very person we claim to worship.
I’m told Lent, the season of repentence which precedes Easter, isn’t much acknowledged in some forms of Christianity, but even for those who haven’t spent the past 6 weeks reminding themselves of their sinfulness, the events of Holy Week, the week before Easter are powerful, and the emotions they produce are unpleasant. How does one admit to complicity in the destruction of all that one calls “holy”? For some people, unfortunately, the answer seems to be, “You don’t. You find someone else to blame.” Good Friday, I think, is supposed to be thought-provoking and troubling. I am a Christian. Therefore, I have no claim to righteousness.
One other thing I’ll point out lest it get lost in the shuffle. Painful though the crucifxion was, it is a necessary and essential part of the Christian faith. If Christ had not died, he would have been just another wandering rabbi. Had he not risen, he would be, at best, what the Muslims call him, a Prophet, and at worst what some atheists call him – a dead nutcase. My possibly irrational belief says something else. It also says the despair he knew and what he suffered at our hands, at my hands, was necessary, not so much for him, but for us.
CJ
Yes, you’re quite correct.
True Christians are given a bad rap by a discriminating faction, beit anit-semite or what-have-you.
I’m not preaching here, just stating a Christian stance (or, a Jesus teaching), that, “Love your enemies”.
Truly.
It’s funny because, that’s what last week’s gospel was about.
“Love your enemies”. “Love and compansion is what seperates us from the beast”. “An eye for an eye leaves us all blind”.
As Christians, that’s what we’re supposed to believe and that’s how we should live. So, a true Christian can’t possibly be an anti-semite or discrimate in ANY way.
It’s a beautiful way to live. I agree. But, we’re human beings too. We feel. And sometimes we react to pain that we feel.
I try. I really do. However, someone abducts one of my little sons, rapes and dismembers him and scatters his body parts all over some woods somewhere, I’ll admit to being hard pressed not go nuts on his ass!!! Love thy neighbor can only go sooooo far at times.
What’s my point again? Oh yea, true Christians CAN’T be anti-semites. 
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That goes with the territory?
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I’ve never quite understood that… your enemy is someone you hate, right?
If you love him he is no longer your enemy, right?
So… It’s basically “Love Everyone” …right?
And “Love Everyone” is what Christianity has been all about these last couple of millennia…
I’m all for loving my neighbour, not coveting his ass and all that but by definition my enemy is someone I hate and therefore I can’t love him too.
Seeing as I don’t even remember what the OP was about let me conclude this with…
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This is getting awfully close to a GD thread, but I will wade into the fray some more…
Git, “Love your enemies” doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to feed them vino and brie, nor snog them on the street corner. The point is to forgive the evils that others do to you.
Say someone mugs you, and in the process beats the living crap out of you. When the bones and bruises heal, you’re not supposed to be bearing a grudge or be looking for vengeance.
This doesn’t mean you can’t defend yourself when the mugging occurs.
Neither does this mean that you can’t press charges.
This does mean that when the mugger gets out of jail, and wants to offer you a real apology, you gladly accept it. (The validity of courtroom apologies is a different topic altogether).
My watered down view, slightly sarcastic view of the teachings of Christianity go something like this:
#1: The Old Testament teaches you to treat others the way you want to be treated yourself. All else is commentary.
#2: The New Testament teaches that when someone forgets rule #1, forgive them anyway.
And that’s fundamentally how I try to live my life.
That’s what I’ve never understood. Why do bigots say the Jews killed Jesus. They turned him in, but the Romans did the actual killing. You don’t hear too many people foaming at the mouth about how " The Romans Killed Jesus!" On the other hand, I’m sure many Lawyers are accused of killing the people they get death row convictions on too, so maybe it’s not just this case that’s irrational…Still, they’d have a better case with " Jews got Jesus killed," I think.
Wrong.
Dead wrong.
The ultimate authority of the State is derived from the authority to impose death on either revolutionaries, or upon criminals, in order to preserve the peace.
Roman authorities never delegated the authority to kill. Never
Unthinkable.
Well… on the first page of the thread “Anti-Semitism and Mel Gibson’s New Movie” thread,
Loopydude says
And then Diogenes the Cynic says
Point #4 is later corroborated by zev steinhardt, who says “Calling yourself a “son of God” is not a capital crime in Judaism. It will get you branded as a heretic, but not killed. Setting yourself up to be worshipped, OTOH, will do it.”
Hmmm… so Jesus was a sick joke that God played on the world? He sent him to the world to get killed so that he could forgive the world?
It’s all very confusing.
Tell that to Job’s first wife.
::runs for cover::
That would be Rabbi Hillel. The story goes that a gentile went to him and said that he’d convert to Judaism if Hillel could teach him the entire Torah while he (the gentile) stood on one foot. Hillel said “That which is hateful to yourself, don’t do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.”
So if you consider your view to be ‘watered down’ and ‘slightly sarcastic,’ don’t worry. You’re in pretty good company.
Essentially, you will be watching a movie from the producer’s perspective of the events as told in the Gospels, which for reasons already stated quite well, is probably not reflective of historical accuracy.
As to the rather pointless question of who is responsible for the death of Jesus, the most likely answer, as I inferred from the mailbag link, was Jesus himself. The Jewish high preist had the responsibility of safeguarding Jewish religious practices from Roman infiltration, and the way to do this was to make sure that no one would do anything that would attract the Roman government’s attention. Since the rebellious nature of Jesus’ actions had the potential to incite riots, the high priest rightfully had to decide to recommend Jesus for execution in order to calm potentially dangerous waters. The high priest, as well as the Romans, were just doing their jobs. I suspect Jesus probably knew the consequences of his actions, so the real blame IMO goes to no one but himself.
As to the origins of anti-Semitism, I would surmise that this actually started to brew around 50 AD, when Paul wrote to the Galatians. This letter angrily condemns Peter for refusal to allow Gentiles to join the new Jewish-Christian faith without following the Jewish customs of circumcision and diet. This letter also reveals a stark contrast from the unanimous agreement described between Peter and Paul in Acts, and it is because of this major inconsistency, coupled with the fact that the author of Acts and Luke is the same, that one cannot objectively determine the factual truth from the Gospels alone.
Cy
This is exactly what has happened in the catholic churches I’ve been in for this specific service.
Of course, anti-Semitism is a moot point, anyway, since Jesus himself forgave those who were responsible, whether Roman or Jew:
“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
While he is haning on the cross, no less…
…I thought he was screaming “Oh God! Why hast thou forsaken me!?”
Really, I don’t think it’s that surprising that Jesus was executed. I mean, if he’d been a guy in Medieval Italy running around saying that he was the son of god, and criticizing church practices—and gathering a following at that—what’dya suppose would have happened to him then?
And as an aside…which Romans, exactly, would have performed the execution? I mean, would all the Roman troops in Jerusalem all been from Italy itself, or might there have been recruits from Gaul or Spain or elsewhere among them?
I knew that a rabbi had said that, and I liked it so much that I took it to heart. I had no clue who to give the credit to…
I claim part 2 to be original, however.
No smiley?
He did both, actually. But He did the forgiving first–it was more important.
By that time, a Roman soldier could have been from many parts of the Empire. Service was a way to get a parcel of land at the end of the term (if one survived).
Wasn’t everyone that was killed back then killed by Jews or Romans? Who else was around to kill anyone?