Yoshie wrote:
On 4/20/07, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Apr 20, 2007, at 12:38 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
And what better demagogic stroke
has anyone ever invented than that phrase "Crucify Mankind On A
Cross Of Gold?"
Yup - subtle way of invoking anti-Semitism in that phrase, because we
all know who crucified Jesus.
Michael Kazin, who should know a thing or two about populism and
William Jennings Bryan, says that Bryan, whatever his shortcomings,
was not prejudiced against Jews, let alone invoking anti-Semitism.
Who crucified whom in the story? Jesus was not a Christian, but a
Jew, a carpenter by trade, a commoner. Those who crucified him were
the Roman Empire and its collaborators who were the elite of the
oppressed Jewish society of which Jesus was a rising reformer. That
is the way the empire usually gets rid of a populist, a demagogue, a
reformer who may become a revolutionary.
A few comments:
1.) That Pilate pronounced the sentence, this is indisputable. But the
Christian scriptures all but absolve Pilate--he supposedly acted under
pressure from the Jews (that this is historically absurd matters not
to devotees of a doctrine whose basic premise is "credo quia absurdam").
For Christians the *guilt* attaches to the Jews ("Let His blood be
upon our heads...") And Bryan was absolutely the last person in the
world to deny the Authority of Scripture.
2.) "Jesus was a carpenter by trade, a commoner." "Carpenter" meant
"Builder," a highly skilled, high-status occupation, but that is neither
here nor there. A "commoner" he most certainly was not. Jesus was
of royal, Davidic, descent in *both* lines--through his mother Mary
and through his foster-father Joseph.
3.) "Jesus was a rising reformer..." Jesus was absolutely not a reformer.
He was a revolutionary to the core. He was the pretender (neither the
first nor the last) to the throne Of Israel, the Davidic Messiah, committed
to the overthrow of the Herods, the Temple priesthood, and of course
the Roman occupiers. That was the charge on which he was he was
crucified--"claiming to be Messiah, a King," INRI.
4.) "...That is the way the empire usually gets rid of a populist, a
demagogue, a reformer who may become a revolutionary." But that was
not the Roman way. The Roman way was outright murder or lynching, as
with
the Gracchi, Saturninus, Catalina, Clodius, ultimately even Caesar.
Jesus received a formal execution, as befits a foreign king
(Jugurtha, Vercingetorix), and even a judicial process.
See:
-"Revolution in Judaea" by Hyam Maccoby
-"The Jesus Dynasty" by James D. Tabor
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not
consent to be called
Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
