This is a comment from my husband, N:
Jesus was a Jew. He represented an eschatological fundamentalist tendency within Judaism that stood for sets of actions that contradicted certain beliefs (with respect to table-sharing and sabbath-observance) supported by other tendencies within Judaism, Pharisees in particular.
Jesus's actions in pursuit of his eschatological program resulted in public disturbances which were anathema to the priestly elite connected to the Roman rulers. They did what elites do, worked with the bosses to get rid of the troublemaker--although the exact balance of responsibility between the Romans, who had their own reasons for wishing troublemakers to be put out of business, and the priestly elite, is difficult to assess.
Only Romans could crucify wrongdoers, however.
But this one subset of Jews, the priestly elite, DOES NOT REPRESENT the body of Jews in Israel of that period. So to say that "the Jews" were being blasphemed by Christ is itself a blasphemy.
This blasphemy may be found in the Synoptic Gospels, which are polemical documents written in the period when Christians were separating as a movement from synagogues throughout the region.
This exchange, which E has shown me, illustrates perfectly the potential for venomous anti-Semitism to arise from audiences all over the world, many of them primed to embody the anti-Semitism latent and not-so-latent in the Gospels.
For a comprehensive discussion of what the Gospels truly represent, historically, I'd recommend, if you're interested, Burton L. Mack's Who wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth. Mack is John Wesley Professor of Theology of the New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont, and he is a Christian.
N. |
