----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 7:38 PM Subject: Re: Reviews for Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"
> In a message dated 2/4/2004 1:10:55 PM Eastern Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > If you are implying that I am a denier then you are so very wrong. My > point was solely that just becouse a subgroup does something wrong it > is not then justified to blame the whole group, and the group's > decendents. > > I hope you are correct but if so your statement wa poorly phrase. I would > point out that there is a different scale of action here as well. If in fact some > Jews killed Jesus or conspired with the Romans to do it or did not try to > stop it that is different. I do not want to offend anyone but to the Jews of the > time Jesus was one man. If some jews did have culpability in his death they > did not think they were killing god. Indeed, Raymond Brown, the Catholic priest and scripture scholar that I've been quoting stated in "the Death of the Messiah" that it was perfectly reasonable for a devout Jew of the time to consider some of the actions of Jesus as blasphamous. There were a few other relavant things that he recalled. First, the criticisms should be viewed as an internal conflict. Jesus and his disciples were all devout Jews. It was after the fall of the Temple that the split became permanant...the Jerusalem church still strongly identified with their Jewish roots until then. Given that, one can view the criticism as consistant with that of other prophets. Scriptures are full of strong criticism of the people of Israel by the prophets. "Jerusalem, you killer of prophets" is in that context. Second, the polemics in scripture are really quite mild, considering the time. Much worse has been written in internal disputes. Take for example, the visciousness of the arguement between the Essenes and the Jewish leaders; or the deadly violence between various Jewish factions before Rome took over. The real nasty stuff wasn't a part of Christianity untill the mid-second century. (That means one can reject the anti-Semitism as inconsistent with the foundation documents instead of inherent in those documents.) Third, the phrase, let his blood be on us and our children is a ritualistic declaration of a death sentence from the time. There is absolutely no precident for it to apply to the nth generation....except perhaps for Adam and Eve, and that's on all of humanity. Fourth, (this isn't from him but from a prof. of mine) there is the double meaning of the word used for Jew in Greek; it is also the word used for Judean. It made little sense for Jesus to complain about the Jews to his followers, who were also Jews. But, it did make sense for him to contrast them with the Judeans, since they were Galaleans. Almost all Christian churches have publically proclaimed that the historical anti-Semitism was both wrong and against the spirit of the gospels. The gospel's complaints about the people of Jerusalem should be seen as part of a long tradition of God's people being called to task for their behavior. The murderous anti-Semitism of many Christians over the years should be seen as an example of Christians turning their back on God. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
