Is the Jesus myth antisemitic?

[PowerToThePeople]

Re-posted from GD (off-topic lock)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025979142

With us one week away from December 25th, a thought passed through my head (I know, unbelievable.)

Is the whole Jesus myth, "king of the Jews", "son of God", persecuted and murdered by the Jews antisemitic? I would venture to guess that if this story was started in more recent times, that it would very much be regarded thus.

What say you?

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	Yes
	1 (17%)
	No
	3 (50%)
	See response below
	2 (33%)
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[bravenak]

1. I've seen it used as a cudgel many times.nt

[LostOne4Ever]

2. Depends on the version

[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]Certain passion plays can be anti-semantic as they come.[/font]

[hrmjustin]

3. No. the Gospels are what they are and they are a product of the time they were written in.

[okasha]

4. Define "Jesus myth."

[PowerToThePeople]

5. The life and death of Jesus of Nazarene as told in the New Testament. n/t

[okasha]

7. So you think a Jewish nationalist

making a bid for independence from foreign rule might be antisemitic?

What does that make David Ben Gurion?

I'll vote no, but nominate the thread for the Silly Prize.

[Warren Stupidity]

27. what? in which gospel is Jesus portrayed as a Jewish nationalist make a bid for

independence from Rome?

[okasha]

34. All of them.

[Warren Stupidity]

35. try none of them but go ahead please provide an appropriate reference

from any of the gospels where Jesus is claiming to be a "nationalist making a bid for independence from Rome".

[edhopper]

44. I guess all that

render unto Caesar stuff was bullshit.

[Warren Stupidity]

46. Some people here seem to think an

assertion of fact is sufficient, and that a request for evidence to back that assertion up is rude and should be ignored.

A few decades later there was an actual revolt against roman rule of course, and it had nothing to do with the pacifistic slave religion.

[edhopper]

47. And the mention of Jesus by Josephus

whatever we make of it, does not talk about rebellion.

So this looks like a later Christian invention.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. Dunno. Jesus was a jew. So... um.

I don't think it is, but I defer to actual people of jewish descent or faith on this one.

[unblock]

8. what, the story of a jew dying at the hands of romans, used as a basis to hate all jews?

early christianity was a break-off of judaism, they needed some things to distinguish themselves from jews, and they needed to convert jews, so they needed some ways to say "we're great" and "they suck".

jesus dying for your sins is one of the major foundational stories of christianity, sine qua non. pilate's actions were part of that story and one might naively think christians would accept that the story had to play out that way for jesus to have a suffering death by punishment.

but the need to gain converts and the need to speak negatively of jews as part of that recruitment effort eventually led to an anti-semitic spin on the story, with pilate's actions standing for the actions of all jews, even though all the major players were jewish (the last supper was a passover sedar, ffs) and it was non-jews who killed jesus.


in short, i wouldn't say the story/myth is anti-semitic in and of itself, but a certain amount of anti-semitism grew out of the early growth of christianity, and some aspects of the jesus story have been used to justify that anti-semitism.

[Behind the Aegis]

10. Pontius Pilate was Roman and likely a pagan.

I think you mean Caiaphas, the High Priest.

[unblock]

11. oops, thank you. actually i was thinking of judas.

[Behind the Aegis]

12. LOL! Actually, Judas just "betrayed" him. It was the ruling priests that had him condemned.

So many names and faces.

[unblock]

14. i thought it was supposed to have been judas's idea to begin with.

and i've never been clear on how the "ruling priests" had him condemned -- the romans were in charge.
so what did the priests do, simply haul him into a roman court?

[Behind the Aegis]

16. As a Jew, this may be better for a Christian to explain, but...

...as I understand it, Judas "leaked" information to the ruling Roman court that it was Jesus was starting an uprising against the Romans. The Roman magistrate approached the ruling priests and told them if he was not condemned, then 100's of Jews would be executed. Others claim, Caiaphas bargained for other things. That's about the extent of my knowledge.

[NoDoubt]

21. The Roman court wanted to release him

And they offered Barabbas instead for crucifixion, but they insisted it must be Jesus, and Barabbas was freed.

[okasha]

36. It seems that his teachings didn't suit the particular priests

who were collaborators with the Roman occupation government. Some of the Temple council were apparently followers of Jesus, though, because two of them (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea) are mentioned as the persons who provided him/his family with a burial site.

The specific sentiment attributed to Caiaphas was that it was better for one man to die than a whole people. To be fair to him, other uprisings against Rome had resulted in mass slaughter by the Romans, so it's hard, at least for me, to see him as completely callous or opportunist here.

Jesus was turned over to the Romans on the charge that he had claimed to be "King of the Jews." That made him a rebel against Rome, and Pilate condemned him as a political, not religious, enemy of the Roman state. Sources are mixed about why Judas betrayed his rabbi, but all the canonical gospels cite him as the traitor and instigator of Jesus' arrest.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. As someone who has ACTUALLY been accused of being a Christ-killer, I have something to say.

The "myth" itself is not anti-Semitic. A story is a story. Though, it is true sometimes stories are created specially with bigotry in mind, in this case, I don't feel that is the case. However, it has been, and continues to be, used as to fuel anti-Semitism. It may also be the root of the "Jews are greedy" (some "scholars" suggested the priest was paid off to "convict" Jesus), "The Jews are not loyal" (which flies in the face of the other stereotype that we only look out for other Jews), "The Jews are devious and underhanded", and "The Jews actually control the government" (it is suggested that the death of Jesus was the idea of the Jews and not the Romans, but they (the Romans) were forced to do it in order to keep the Jews appeased (this stereotype has morphed and one can see it splashed across the pages of this very site)).

Anti-Semitism is often called "the oldest bigotry," though I think the 'oldest' one is likely misogyny, it is still quite pervasive and much more used than many think. It adopts many guises and has many proponents and appeasers.

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. Not being Jewish, that is tough question for me to answer.

But at least three of the four Gospels lay the blame for Jesus' death squarely at the feet of the Jews. These charges of deicide have been used as justification to subjugate, expel, and/or kill Jews for centuries.

That's difficult to for me to overlook.

[unblock]

15. what i don't get is that jesus's death is of paramount importance

the suffering and dying for man's sins is a central concept in christian mythology. i've had christians tell me that's the whole reason god came down to live among us for a while, specifically so that he could die for man's sins.

jesus needed it to happen. so why be angry at anyone who played a role in enabling this all-important event?

moreover -- deicide? don't christians believe that jesus lives on, after having risen? all that was killed was his mortal coil, as it were.

anyway, yes, anti-semites certainly have long found something in that story to make them feel their hate is justified. even if they have to twist the story around to do so.

[Behind the Aegis]

17. OK, now that is interesting.

I also had that thought too when I was in 5th grade (when I was threatened to be shot with a shotgun because I was a Christ-killer). I didn't understand my Alan (my classmate) said such a thing, I had never heard it. When I told my parents (after they calmed down), they explained the story and then I asked, "But if Jesus hadn't died, would they still be Christians?!"

[Act_of_Reparation]

19. The next time that happens, take a page from Lenny Bruce...

...and tell them there's a statute of limitations on that crap.

[Behind the Aegis]

20. Hopefully, it won't ever happen again.

The worst was the 5th grade, I have only had two more experiences with that version of anti-Semitism, personally, once was in HS and once in college. Never since then. NOW, other versions of anti-Semitism...well, that is a different story.

[Act_of_Reparation]

32. I certainly hope for the same.

No one should have to listen to shit like that.

No one.

[unblock]

28. yikes! the worst i got was being asked "so how does it feel knowing you're going to hell?"

you know, for not accepting christ and all.

along with "where are your horns" and having a few pennies thrown at me.

[Act_of_Reparation]

18. It isn't just a misunderstanding on their part. That contradiction is IN the Gospels.

Jesus needed to die to fulfill the half-baked "prophesy" the Evangelists concocted to explain how their Messiah managed to get himself killed, but, they also needed to explain why the Jews overwhelmingly rejected Christ as their Lord and Savior. So, they pulled a page from the Old Testament prophets, and lambasted the "wickedness" and "unworthiness" of the Jews.

Some have noted the Evangelists couldn't very well have criticized Rome because they would have risked reprisal. Seeing as that they got reprisal anyway, I think tensions between the early Christians and their Jewish neighbors are more likely explanation for the anti-Semitism in the Gospels.

[okasha]

37. Early Christianity was not distinct from mainline Judaism.

As long as the mother church remained in Jerusalem--until its destruction in CE 70--"Christians" were just another Jewish sect and appear to have gotten along quite well with both the Jewish priesthood and the Jewish population.

It was after the center of the church moved away from Palestine that the canonical gospels were written and the blame shifted away from the Romans. After that, both Christians and diaspora Jews became equal targets of Roman politicians in need of a scapegoat. Christianity, Judaism, the worship of Isis and other eastern Mediterranean deities, were all regarded as "oriental cults" and their members were periodically rounded up for lion food or deported.

[edhopper]

45. Yes this rebellion stuff seems to be

a later addition, written at a time of open warfare in Jerusalem.

Jesus, whomever he was, is not linked to the any rebellion.


(more or less in general terms)

[Warren Stupidity]

49. Here is the thing about myths: they evolve over time.

So arguing about what exactly happened (none of it in my opinion) at the time of the alleged Jesus is more or less irrelevant to the myth itself. The Jesus Myth includes a rather large amount of invective against the Jews, in the gospels, including describing them as cursed for all time because they committed deicide.

[edhopper]

51. That's all true

I was just expressing that the rebellion stuff is a bit of a stretch.

[NoDoubt]

22. If that's what happened, then that's what happened

History isn't capable of being anti-semitic, assuming the biblical account is accurate. We must also remember that the authors of the Gospels were Jews, originally.

[Behind the Aegis]

23. But it sure is used to fuel anti-Semitism and has for years.

As a matter of fact, it is still used today to cement hate against Jews.

[NoDoubt]

24. Well, maybe

That doesn't make the story of Jesus anti-semitic though, just the people using it.

[Behind the Aegis]

25. No it doesn't. But is often used as an excuse.

It is quite the familiar trope.

[Warren Stupidity]

33. There is no maybe about it, it is an historical fact.

What makes a story anti-Semitic? If it is used to justify anti-Semitic behavior that is one way a story is anti-Semitic.

[PowerToThePeople]

40. i agree completely with this statement. n/t

[Act_of_Reparation]

31. There's no reason to suspect that's what actually happened.

From Diarmid McCullough's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Pages 92-93):

These Passion narratives are probably the earliest continuous material in the Gospels, a set of stories first formulated for public recital in the various communities which compiled their own accounts of his life, sufferings and resurrection. Unlike the two infancy narratives, their details have much circumstantial overlap, and feel like real events, but in their present shape they are also designed to make sense of something which came to be a real problem for the later Church. The Romans killed Jesus, however much of the Temple establishment, in fury and fear at the nature his preaching, had prompted them to do so. Jesus had said nothing more outrageous about the religion of the Jews than other wild representatives of Judaism had proclaimed either before him or in his own time. His was not a theological but a political threat to the fragile stability of the region. Non-Jews killed a potential Jewish leader, as they had killed the Maccabean heroes long before. This was emphasized by the title inextricably associated with the stories of Jesus' last hours and said to have been affixed to his cross: "King of the Jews". Like "Son of Man", this was not a title for which the later Christian Church found any use and so its survival in the tradition is all the more instructive. That "King of the Jews" phrase is an inescapable repeated refrain throughout the Passion narratives, even despite the embarrassment which it was to cause Christians in the fraught political situation which emerged a few decades after that death on the Cross.

Most Christians did not want to be enemies of the Roman Empire and they soon sought to play down the role of the Romans in the story. So the Passion narratives shifted the blame on to the Jewish authorities, and the local representative of Roman authority--a coarse-grained soldier called Pontius Pilate--was portrayed as inquisitive and bewildered, cross-questioning the seditious prisoner before him as if Jesus were an equal and making every effort to get him off the hook. The evangelist John pictured the Jews as being forced by legal circumstance to hand over a man condemned for blasphemy to the Roman authorities if they were to secure the death sentence for him which they ardently sought. That is implausible, considering that three decades later the Jerusalem High Priest was directly responsible for the execution of Jesus's brother James, then the leader of the Christians in Jerusalem. Additionally, the evangelist Matthew shifted blame for Jesus's death (with satisfying drama, though without any legal force) to the Jewish crowds, who in his narrative roared out, "His blood be on us, and on our children!" The Christian Church has drawn much out of Mattew's literary decision. I would have been better for the moral health of Christianity if the blame had stayed with Pilate.

The Gospels aren't history, but calculated attempts to sell Christianity to potential converts and to reinforce the faith of the converted. When reconciled against independent sources, we find quite a lot of spurious nonsense in these books. As noted, it is highly unlikely that had the Sanhedrin found Jesus guilty of blasphemy they would have been compelled to have the Romans carry out their dirty work. It is even more unlikely that Pontius Pilate--a man Josephus describes as being brutal and repressive--would have found himself in such a moral quandary over the execution of a Jewish criminal.

What is most likely is, as McCullough notes, that the Romans feared Jesus was growing too influential. Knowing that the evangelists whitewashed the Gospels of anything that could have been considered anti-Roman, we can never know for certain what Jesus thought of his Pagan overlords, but we can assume that the Romans would not have welcomed Jesus' criticisms of the Jewish elite--the Sadduccees. The Romans, practiced imperialists that they were, largely relied on local authorities to administer their hinterland provinces. They spent decades alternatively wooing and putting the screws to the Jewish elite to effectively mold them into a puppet organization. The relationship was mutually beneficial; the Sadduccees received Roman protection, while the Romans need not spend exorbitant funds maintaining a comprehensive administrative body in such a far-off region. Regardless of how Jesus may have felt about the Roman Empire, if he had threatened the position of the Sadduccees, then he indirectly threatened the authority of Rome.

That would have been a big mistake. If Jesus had stuck to criticizing the Pharisees, he likely would have lived well beyond age 33.

Now, anti-Semitism can be a tricky thing to nail down, especially in the context of history. I tend to side with sociologists who view racism as being distinct from bigotry, in the sense that racism necessarily requires institutional support. At the time the Gospels were written, the Christians had little institutional influence anywhere of import. These stories about deicidal Jews had little impact upon the Jews. If anything, it hampered Christianity in the Near East by putting the early Christians into direct conflict with Jewish authorities. But all of this changed the moment Christianity become the religion of the powerful. Then, these stories went from being the libelous whining of an unpopular sect to the go-to excuse for pogroms, expulsions, and genocide.

If allegations of a "Jewish conspiracy" to control media outlets and financial institutions is to be considered anti-Semitism, I really do not see how anyone can excuse the Gospels of this tripe.

[okasha]

38. An excellent summation,

until your very last line. Did you mean "excuse" or "accuse?" ( Autocomplete does some weird things.)

[Warren Stupidity]

26. It certainly has been historically.

The choices are problematic. The Jesus Myth has been used as part of anti-sematic propaganda for centuries, we are in a period of time where we have had a few decades, those since WWII, where it is socially unacceptable to "hold the Jews accountable" because of the holocaust, but aside from the current anomaly it is simply an historical fact.

[goldent]

29. Is the Lincoln myth anti-black?

Many questions, few answers.

[okasha]

39. Is the Joan of Arc myth anti-feminist?

Is the Braveheart myth anti-Scottish?

More questions, still few answers.

[edhopper]

41. So you think the Jesus myth

is pro-Jewish?

Than why so much anti-sematism among Christians over the Millennia?

I think it depends on what part of the story is emphasized and how it is used.

Clearly it has been used to promote a Jews killed Jesus idea over the years.

[trotsky]

30. It certainly has been used to justify antisemitism.

Never understood that, either. The whole deal was that Jesus had to die to forgive sins. Why would you be upset with Jews that they "killed" him? You should be happy they did, since that was the whole point of your religion!

Ah, that's why it doesn't make sense. Religion.

[Prophet 451]

42. I honestly don't know

Let's take it as read that the belief has been used to persecute Jes by some Christians over the centuries. Let's acknowledge that and move on.

That said, is the belief in itself anti-semitic? I don't know. Given that Jesus's early church (assuming we take the Gospel as being roughly accurate which is a whole 'nother debate) was mainly composed of Jews and his ministry and death were mainly recorded by Jews, can they still be anti-semitic? Or are they anti- a certain kind of Jewish person, the Pharisees?

[Warren Stupidity]

43. John is full of invective against the Jews. Matthew provides the Blood Curse.

For example 8:37-39

John 8:37-39English Standard Version (ESV)

37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

You Are of Your Father the Devil

39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did,

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+8%3A37-39&version=ESV

And 8:44-47

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+8%3A44-47&version=ESV

The myth of Jesus casts the Jews in the role of "Christ Killer", of deicide. In the myth the Jews were the chosen people of the old covenant but by rejecting and killing Jesus they loose that status and the Christians are the people of the new covenant.

In Matthew the "blood curse" is expressed:

Matthew 24:25English Standard Version (ESV)
So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood [or, 'this righteous blood']; see to it yourselves.” Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+27%3A24-25&version=ESV

[PowerToThePeople]

48. The results of posting here vs GD are telling imo

I think there is a bias within this group. Duh! I have never posted or visited this group before posting this. All groups are probably biased in favour of the subject matter. Another duh!

[cbayer]

50. I would not draw any conclusions either about the site or the group based

on this. Internet polls are relatively meaningless and the sample size here and in your gd thread is so low that I doubt there is any statistical significance whatsoever.

This particular group is very diverse and many are not biased in favor of religion. Far from it.

But I don't recall this ever been asked here before.

[PumpkinAle]

52. I once spoke with a Catholic Priest who

actually blamed all Jews for the death of Jesus. And no amount of facts and reason would dissuade him.

Admittedly he was an old fart and very set in his ways, but it troubled me that he was the Priest to a local elementary school.