First, I acknowledge that what we know of Roman law and Jewish law don't line up very well with the Gospels. Nothing can be done about that, it is what it is. The records are quite sketchy all around.
Second, I acknowledge that historically Jews have been persecuted en masse for the acts of a few Jews, whose motivations were their own. The Catholic Church apologized for that when I was quite small and you were (I believe) even smaller, but of course we can't change the past.
Third, and this is not an issue that you raise, but speaking as a Christian, if you buy the gospel version of the facts, nobody had any alternative, because it was all foretold long before the birth of Christ and His contemporaries. It's really quite unfair to Judas for him to be predestined to betray Christ, and as a Catholic I don't believe in predestination. Nevertheless, at the Last Supper, Christ said that someone would betray Him, and it appears that Judas had no choice but to fulfill that destiny.
Another thing I can't do anything about is figure out what really happened. In the year 2003, we can't agree about the actions of George W. Bush, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, or Saddam Hussein. So why expect more from the year 33?
There are books and they say something. True or false? Who knows? Could be that they are just books. But they say what they say. |
