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The Jews
and the Passion - The Historical Truth
March 20, 2004
When Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ” opened
on Ash Wednesday, the Dallas Morning News had this line in its lead
editorial, “Like good journalism, this movie gives you the
who, what, when, where and how of the Crucifixion.” Then referring
to Abraham Zapruder’s raw, graphic home movie of President
Kennedy’s assassination, the editorial continues, “this
movie is the Zapruder film of the crucifixion.”
Those are well written words, but I am sorry to say the analogy
is flawed. Unlike Zapruder who actually was there at the assassination
of President Kennedy, neither Mel Gibson who produced The Passion
of Christ nor Caleb Deschanel who filmed it were present at Golgatha
where Jesus was crucified. More importantly, neither were any of
the writers of the Gospels who wrote the story of the Passion in
the Christian Bible. Not only were they not there, their accounts
were written decades after the event which hardly makes them eye-witness
testimony.
I am telling you this information not to impugn the verities held
by many believing Christians. I tell you this because as Jews we
should know that the Gospels’ account of Jewish responsibility
for Jesus’s death was written by people who were not there,
many decades after the Passion, at a time when Christians had internal
reasons to blame the Jews rather than the Romans. This point is
hardly academic. Francine Klagsburn, in a recent column in the Jewish
Week, writes how her father had recounted that in Poland at Easter
time the local priests would incite their parishioners with fiery
sermons about the Jews killing Jesus. Jews would have to lock their
doors and board their windows to prevent their neighbors from attacking
them. Throughout the centuries, the accusation that the Jews killed
Christ has caused ill feeling toward the Jewish people and more
significantly has resulted in the deaths of countless numbers of
Jewish men, women and children. So the answer to who killed Jesus
is hardly without consequence.
The only sources that tell about Jesus’s death are the books
of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Christian Bible. Gibson said
that he based his movie on these Gospels. In them, the Jews, not
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, play the major role in Jesus’s
condemnation. But should we believe the Gospels? Let me hasten to
state that not just Jews question the historical accuracy of the
Gospel’s rendition of events. Many Christian scholars do also.
Remember what I said. The authors of the Gospels wrote their narratives
decades after Jesus’s death. Moreover, they were not historians
interested in authenticating the facts. They were missionaries trying
to attract converts to their faith. And they had decided that the
future of Christianity lay not in proselytizing among Jews but among
the gentiles of the Roman Empire. Consequently, portraying the Romans
negatively might have jeopardized the success of Christianity’s
main goal – to convert that population. In addition, as a
new struggling faith, Christians understandably wished to establish
favorable relationships with the reigning Roman authorities. Accusing
them of killing the son of God would hardly have won them friends
in high places.
What was Jesus’s crime? Why was he killed? In Gibson’s
film, based on the Gospels, it was blasphemy, a charge brought against
him by Jews. But the Gospels have the facts wrong. They report that
Jesus was taken to the residence of the High Priest where he was
tried on the night of Passover by the Sanhedrin, (the Jewish Court)
with the High Priest acting as the presiding officer. But the Sanhedrin
only met in the day time and never on the eve of a holiday. It is
unthinkable that the Sanhedrin would have met on the night of Passover.
Moreover, the presiding officer of the Sanhedrin was not the High
Priest but a scholar from the group called the Pharisees. Nor did
the Sanhedrin meet in the residence of the High Priest. It met in
a room in the Temple.
In Gibson’s film, one of the most dramatic moments occurs
at the supposed trial when the High Priest Caiaphas asks Jesus:
“Are you the Messiah?” Jesus answers: “I am .
. .” There is a gasp among those assembled. The High Priest
rends his garments and declares Jesus a blasphemer.
The problem with this scene is that it is not blasphemy to declared
yourself the Messiah. Before and after Jesus, the Jewish community
experienced individuals who claimed to be the Messiah; however,
there is no record of action ever being taken against them. The
definition of blasphemy is a source of fierce debate among the rabbis.
But it turned on taking God’s name in vain which Jesus certainly
did not do.
Moreover, historically speaking, Pontius Pilate would not have been
involved in a religious crime – only a civil one. The real
crime of which Jesus was guilty was sedition. The Romans were facing
a hostile Jewish population in Palestine that wanted to be rid of
Roman rule. Someone with a significant following, claiming to be
the king of the Jews, would certainly have come to the attention
of the Roman governor of Palestine and be seen as a political threat.
Evidence that sedition was Jesus’s crime is reinforced by
the following evidence. The two people who were crucified along
side him are identified as “thieves,” in some translations
of the Christian Bible. However the word for thieves in the original
Greek can also mean insurgents. Seeing all three condemned men as
insurgents makes the most senses in this context. For the Romans,
crucifixion was a political weapon. It was used to send a powerful
message to the people who witnessed it: “beware of revolution
and riot because if you don’t Rome will do this to you.”
The point is that crucifixion was used by Roman rulers against political
agitators and not by Jews against alleged religious blasphemers.
Jesus was killed because he was a political threat and not because
he was disliked by the Jewish high priest.
This is not to say that the conflict between the followers of Jesus
and elements of the Jewish community - especially the Temple elite
– did not exist. The Jewish community at that time was rife
with internal conflicts among various groups - the Sadducees and
the Pharisees, the zealots and the Essenes, those in favor of a
war of independence against Rome and those opposed, to name but
the major divisions. It could well be that the Temple establishment
disliked Jesus and his followers and may even have rejoiced in his
being eliminated. However, it was not they but the Romans who tortured
and ultimately executed him.
Mel Gibson’s film in portraying the Jews as the major force
behind Jesus’s death not only goes against the best historical
evidence we have, it also goes against the teachings of the Catholic
church which has played a large role in setting the record straight.
In 1965, the Second Vatican Council promulgated Nostra Aetate that
absolved Jews today and most Jews of Jesus’s time of responsibility
for his death. Many Protestant Churches have issued similar statements.
Today only the most ignorant and bigoted still believe that the
Jewish people can be blamed for the crucifixion.
Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Christ, by emphasizing
the Jew’s role in Jesus’s death takes a step backward
in the wholesome process that has been underway for the past four
decades. However, after a dialogue with members of St. Edward’s
Church in Syosset this past Wednesday, I feel upbeat. I came away
reassured that while many Christians found Mel Gibson’s portrayal
of Jesus’s final hours spiritually uplifting, they were unaffected
by his anti-Jewish aspersions. Good Christians are quite capable
of deriving a religious message about Jesus suffering without it
leading to blaming the Jews. That is good news indeed.
Shabbat Shalom
Shabbat Shalom
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