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Who Killed Jesus?

Continued Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Page 4 of 4

Newsweek

Are the gospels themselves anti-Semitic? Not in the sense
the term has come to mean in the early 21st century, but they are polemics,
written by followers of a certain sect who disdained other factions in the way
the Old Testament was dismissive of, say, Israelite religious practices not
sanctioned by Jerusalem. Without understanding the milieu in which the texts
were composed, we can easily misinterpret them. The tragic history of the
persecution of the Jewish people since the Passion clearly shows what can go
wrong when the Gospels are not read with care.

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Most of the early
Christians were Jewish and saw themselves as such. Only later,
beginning roughly at the end of the first century, did some Christians start to
view and present themselves as a people entirely separate from other Jewish
groups. And for centuries still—even after Constantine's conversion in the
fourth century—some Jewish people considered themselves Christians. It was as
the church's theology took shape, culminating in the Council of Nicaea in 325,
that Jesus became the doctrinal Christ, the Son of God "who for us men and our
salvation," the council's original creed declared, "descended, was incarnate,
and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven
and cometh to judge the living and the dead."

As the keeper of the apostolic faith, the Roman Catholic
Church has long struggled with the issue of Jewish complicity in Jesus' death.
Always in the atmosphere, anti-Semitism took center stage with the coming of the
First Crusade in the 11th century, when Christian soldiers on their way to expel
Muslims from the Holy Land massacred European Jews. By the early Middle Ages,
Christian anti-Semitism lent a religious veneer to political decisions by the
secular authorities of the day, decisions that often penalized or curtailed the
rights of the Jewish people. The justification for anti-Semitism was articulated
by Pope Innocent III, who reigned in the early years of the 13th century: "the
blasphemers of the Christian name," he said, should be "forced into the
servitude of which they made themselves deserving when they raised their
sacrilegious hands against Him who had come to confer true liberty upon them,
thus calling down His blood upon themselves and their children."

After the horror of Hitler's Final Solution, the Roman
Church began to reassess its relationship with the Jewish people. The result
from Vatican II was a thoughtful and compelling statement on deicide. "True, the
Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of
Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the
Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today... in her
rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the
patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved... by the Gospel's spiritual love,
decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews
at any time and by anyone."

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The
council went on to make another crucial point undercutting the use of Passion to
fuel anti-Semitism, either in fact or in drama. "Besides, as the Church has
always held and holds now," Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) says, "Christ underwent
his passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite
love, in order that all may reach salvation." And his mercy is not limited to
those who confess the Christian faith. "The Church reproves, as foreign to the
mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of
their race, color, condition of life, or religion."

If pointing to a 40-year-old church teaching is not
enough, we can also look back more than 400 years to find the seeds of
reconciliation and grace. At the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Roman
Church stated as a theological principle that all men share the responsibility
for the Passion—and that Christians bear a particular burden. "In this guilt
[for the death of Jesus] are involved all those who fall frequently into sin..."
read the catechism of the council. "This guilt seems more enormous in us than in
the Jews since, if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord
of glory; while we, on the contrary, professing to know him, yet denying him by
our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him."

In the battle over his project, Gibson has veered between
defiance and conciliation. "This film collectively blames humanity [for] the
death of Jesus," he said in his Global Catholic Network interview. "Now there
are no exemptions there. All right? I'm the first on the line for culpability. I
did it. Christ died for all men for all times." Of critics who think his film
could perpetuate dangerous stereotypes, he said: "They've kind of, you know,
come out with this mantra again and again and again. You know, 'He's an
anti-Semite.' 'He's an anti-Semite.' 'He's an anti-Semite.' 'He's an
anti-Semite.' I'm not." In a letter to Anti-Defamation League national director
Abraham Foxman last week, Gibson wrote: "It is my deepest belief, as I am sure
it is yours, that all who ever breathe life on this Earth are children of God
and my most binding obligation to them, as a brother in this waking world, is to
love them." The news of the letter broke on Tuesday; late last week David
Elcott, the U.S. director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish
Committee, reported that he had been present at a screening when someone asked
Gibson, "Who opposes Jesus?" Gibson's Manichaean reply: "They are either satanic
or the dupes of Satan."

Was there any way for him to have made a movie about the
Passion and avoided this firestorm? There was. There are a number of existing
Catholic pastoral instructions detailing the ways in which the faithful should
dramatize or discuss the Passion. "To attempt to utilize the four passion
narratives literally by picking one passage from one gospel and the next from
another gospel, and so forth," reads one such instruction, "is to risk violating
the integrity of the texts themselves... it is not sufficient for the producers
of passion dramatizations to respond to responsible criticism simply by
appealing to the notion that 'it's in the Bible'." The church also urges "the
greatest caution" when "it is a question of passages that seem to show the
Jewish people as such in an unfavorable light." The teachings suggest dropping
scenes of large, chanting Jewish crowds and avoiding the device of a Sanhedrin
trial. They also note that there is evidence Pilate was not a "vacillating
administrator" who "himself found 'no fault' with Jesus and sought, though in a
weak way, to free him." A reference in Luke, instructions point out, and
historical sources indicate that he was, rather, a "ruthless tyrant," and "there
is, then, room for more than one dramatic style of portraying the character of
Pilate and still being faithful to the biblical record." The United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops, NEWSWEEK has learned, is publishing these
teachings in book form to coincide with the release of Gibson's movie.

Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the
Christ'

•
Who Killed
Jesus?

•
Interview: 'You
Want Me To Play
Jesus?'

In
the best of all possible worlds, "The Passion of the Christ" will prompt
constructive conversations about the origins of the religion that claims 2
billion followers around the globe, conversations that ought to lead believers
to see that Christian anti-Semitism should be seen as an impossibility—a
contradiction in terms. To hate Jews because they are Jews—to hate anyone, in
fact—is a sin in the Christian cosmos, for Jesus commands his followers to love
their neighbor as themselves. On another level, anti-Semitism is a form of
illogical and self-defeating self-loathing. Bluntly put, Jesus had to die for
the Christian story to unfold, and the proper Christian posture toward the
Jewish people should be one of respect, for the man Christians choose to see as
their savior came from the ancient tribe of Judah, the very name from which
"Jew" is derived. As children of Abraham, Christians and Jews are branches of
the same tree, linked together in the mystery of God.

Let us end where we, and Gibson's movie, began—in the
garden, in darkness. The guards have come to arrest Jesus. He watches as his
disciples come to blows with the troops. Punches are thrown, and one of Jesus'
men lashes out with a weapon, slashing off the ear of a servant of the high
priest. Watching, removed from the fray, Jesus intervenes, commanding: "Put up
thy sword," making real the New Testament commandment to love one another as he
loved us, even unto death—a commandment whose roots stretch back to the 19th
chapter of Leviticus: "... you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the
Lord." Amid the clash over Gibson's film and the debates about the nature of
God, wheth-er you believe Jesus to be the savior of mankind or to have been an
interesting first-century figure who left behind an inspiring moral philosophy,
perhaps we can at least agree on this image of Jesus of Nazareth: confronted by
violence, he chose peace; by hate, love; by sin, forgiveness—a powerful example
for us all, whoever our gods may be.

© 2004 Newsweek,
Inc.

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