The mistake you run into is that you assume because Jews do not have faith in Jesus they must not have faith.
I have faith. I have faith in a lot of things. Jesus' divinity isn't one of them. If it is for you, then I hope that faith serves you well.
Anti-Semitism
- Thread starter Teufel
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I have faith. I have faith in a lot of things. Jesus' divinity isn't one of them. If it is for you, then I hope that faith serves you well.
Why did the Jews of the time conspire to kill Jesus? If Jesus was a fraud, and He was not the Messiah, what threat did He really pose?
The Roman Pontius Pilate tried to spare Jesus' life but the Jews there would not have it and said to crucify him.
The Roman Pontius Pilate tried to spare Jesus' life but the Jews there would not have it and said to crucify him.
They didn't. You have already been told in this thread that the concept of "Jews killing Christ" is an antisemitic lie used to justify oppressing and genociding Jews for centuries.
I second the earlier request: How old are you? It is starting to look like it is not worthwhile to respond to you.
I second the earlier request: How old are you? It is starting to look like it is not worthwhile to respond to you.
There's a lot that's only mysterious if you need Jesus to be the messiah. If the then-publicly known details of his life didn't line up with him being the messiah despite his followers really wanting him to be, a lot of the Gospel narrative starts to make sense as a bunch of "Here's how he can STILL be the messiah" dot connecting and outright retcons. A made-up conspiracy by the Jews would have been an easy explanation for why his mission appeared to fail, before the "Uh, he meant to do that. He died for our sins." narrative took shape.
That might explain why we have this weird contradiction between "It was God's plan. It was supposed to happen that way." and "The Jews must be punished for doing what God planned to have them do." It was two different explanations at different points in history, but they just piled up instead of one supplanting another.
That might explain why we have this weird contradiction between "It was God's plan. It was supposed to happen that way." and "The Jews must be punished for doing what God planned to have them do." It was two different explanations at different points in history, but they just piled up instead of one supplanting another.
I'm not ant-Semitic. Like I said before, Jesus was Jewish. The Jews are God's chosen people.
I'll go so far as to say the Jews are the superior race.
With that out of the way, I'm just trying to understand the history of why Jesus was crucified without having to walk on eggshells about having to word everything just right so as not to offend anyone.
I'll go so far as to say the Jews are the superior race.
With that out of the way, I'm just trying to understand the history of why Jesus was crucified without having to walk on eggshells about having to word everything just right so as not to offend anyone.
That's just... incorrect. Judea was a puppet state of the Roman Empire meaning it nominally maintained its own government in the form of the monarchy (King Herod) and the High Priesthood. And strictly Jewish affairs were the realm of these authorities. And Jews had their own means of capital punishment. Stoning was big back then. If the Jewish authorities wanted to kill Jesus they wouldn't have needed Rome. Jesus was Jewish and thus fell nicely into the jurisdiction of the Judean government and Jewish religious authority.
Basically if the Jewish authorities wanted Jesus dead they would have had him stoned to death and the Romans wouldn't have given a rat's ass.
But Jesus didn't die from stoning. He was crucified. Which is a distinctly Roman method of execution.
The Romans killed Jesus because Jesus was preaching a more egalitarian form of Judaism that wasn't dependent on the monarchy or High Priesthood for authority (there are stories of Jesus arguing with priests during his bar mitzvah) and seeing as these elements were part of Rome's puppet regime they considered Jesus' preaching to be subversive so they had him executed.
The "the Jews killed Jesus" narrative was created by early Christians in Paul's circle who were trying to break Christianity off from Judaism and so blamed Jews for Jesus' death. The stuff about Pilate washing his hands and trying to spare Jesus was made up to justify this new narrative, even if it makes zero sense.
Because Rome was the ultimate, colonizing authority. Pilate could easily pull rank on Herod or the High Priests, he was the ultimate Roman authority. What colonial authority in the history of anything did things it didn't want to do that the locals demanded? That doesn't happen! That's not how Empire works! And the Romans were very good at empire building.
So the short version is Romans killed Jesus, Christians looking to attack the Jewish community blamed the Jews, and this narrative served the Romans well three centuries later when they adopted Christianity.
Don't say that. We're not a "superior race."
When we say we're the "chosen people" that doesn't mean we're superior. It means that we believe G-d chose us to follow and keep His faith.
It's a responsibility more than anything. As Judaism holds "the righteous of all nations will know G-d's grace" we don't even believe someone who isn't Jewish has to convert to get on Big Y Guy in the Sky's good side. They just have to be a good person. Only people born Jewish are required to uphold His faith.
So being "the chosen people" essentially means extra homework
A lot of Jesus' story makes sense when you look at it for what it is- a political movement in a very polarized region of the world.
Let's refocus.
Judea, 1st century CE. Rome occupies, but retains local Judean authorities in a puppet state kind of deal.
King Herod is nominally King of Judea ("King of the Jews") and the High Priesthood in the Temple in Jerusalem have Jewish religious authority. But both Herod and the Priesthood's authority is dependent on towing the party line for the Romans.
Though the Judean monarchy and High Priesthood predates Rome by thousands of years they have essentially become collaborators in Roman occupation.
Enter Yosef ben Yoshua, aka Jesus. A carpenter-turned-rabbi who is also supposedly descended from the royal house of David on his mother's side.
Jesus doesn't outright attack his distant cousin Herod or the Priesthood but his egalitarian form of Judaism, where one can have a personal connection to G-d without having to go through the monarchy or Priesthood, is very popular among Judeans who are upset at their own government for collaborating with Roman occupiers.
A movement springs up where Jesus' more zealous followers start calling him "King," a reference to his connections to the royal family and a not so secret implication that maybe Herod's collaborating ass should be tossed out and Jesus made King of Judea.
To the Romans this is a problem. Their occupation has split Judea along multiple lines, with some people willing to work with them and others openly revolting. Jesus represents someone who is not only attacking the authority of their collaborationist regime, but some of his followers have begun talking about open rebellion in his name. Judea is on a knife's edge and Rome decides Jesus needs to die.
Pilate, the Roman governor, tries to pass responsibility off on Herod, as Jesus is a Jew and thus falls under Herod's jurisdiction. Herod asks his cousin if he can perform some of the miracles his followers claim he's performed, Jesus refuses. Herod, very annoyed, decides he's got enough crap to deal with and sends Jesus back to Pilate.
Pilate now has an order from Rome to kill Jesus but Herod won't do it for him, so he just decides to say "hug it" and sentences Jesus to death in the name of Caesar. Roman soldiers mock Jesus and his followers with a crown of thorns and the mocking title "King of the Jews" to belittle the rebellious agitation happening around Jesus.
Then later Christians decide it's all the Jews' fault actually as part of a wider Christian movement to detach itself from Judaism and appeal to some of the very people responsible for Jesus' execution.
The gospels say he was put on trial for blasphemy, and historically most people killed for that were not a threat to anyone. If he'd been stoned at their command, he'd just be another innocent example of why religion should never have enough authority to have people killed.
But he wasn't executed for blasphemy, so even if that trial happened it's not why he was killed.
Again, according the gospels, the crime that was actually emphasized at the crucifixion itself was him calling himself "king of the Jews"...the Romans could very well have thought he meant that more literally than he probably did.
He was definitely subverting Roman authority anyway; and the highly public exeuction method of crucifixion was as much deterrent as punishment, so it almost doesn't matter how large a threat Jesus himself was; the Romans feared that someone like him would start a revolution.
That's not any better; even if said in a way that wasn't aligned with conspiracies, it would just be racism in the opposite direction.
But because it is so closely tied to conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism is actually the type of racism least inclined to say that its targets are "inferior" anyway.
It still happens, of course, but not nearly all anti-Semites say Jews are "inferior" and some even believe, specifically, that Jews are smarter than everyone else. Because they'd have to be geniuses to pull off half the stuff anti-Semites accuse them of.
Incorrect. Jesus is a lich.Because we all know he’s really a zombie!
I mean, he's a necromancer, came back to life by his own magic and not someone else's, and actually became more powerful after death.
I was in a "discussion" where an anti-Semite accused Jews of creating both communism and capitalism to control the world
Conspiracy theorists don't need to make sense. They just need to be really loud for stupid people.
I was in a "discussion" where an anti-Semite accused Jews of creating both communism and capitalism to control the world
Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy Worried It Came Down Too Hard On Jeff Yesterday
JEWISH CABAL HEADQUARTERS, JERUSALEM—Saying that they never intended to behave quite so mercilessly, several prominent architects of the global Jewish conspiracy aired their concerns Thursday that they perhaps came down a little too hard on local man Jeff Crawford yesterday.
www.theonion.com
I'm not sure what this argument is about, but according to the Bible, some Jews and Romans were "responsible" for Christ's death, but that's due to the geographical area/political situation at the time. There were also many Jews very much for Jesus (as the term "Christian" wasn't really a thing at the time). Politically, the main Jewish authorities that were in cahoots with the Romans (or who were just corrupted by power) may have been the "bad guys", but this can't be used to justify the lie that "the Jews" were a unified, anti-Christian/Jesus force and later on, just as inaccurate for the Romans (who officially/politically converted to/allowed Christianity).
Also, we were never taught at church or during RE lessons at school that Jewish people were somehow evil or "marked" by God as worse than anyone else in the world. The whole "God's plan vs free will" situation can equally apply to any human (take Adam and Eve for example).
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Once we start getting into the question of whether the writers of the Gospels were outright lying about who was responsible for Jesus' execution, we might as well start asking whether they also intentionally lied about his claims of Messiahhood or, heck, whether such a person as Jesus as Nazareth existed at all.
Which, I suppose, is a bit off-topic?
Jesus of Nazareth existed. The academic opinion behind people who study this period of history outside of the Bible are fairly unified on this. You have a few outside opinions from a few lone voices but the majority of people who study this stuff seem to believe Jesus was real based on the available historical and archeological evidence. His existence and execution by the Romans via crucifixion is attested to in Greek, Roman, and Jewish historical works. Jesus was as real as George Washington.
Of course the question is "was he the son of G-d?"
That's a matter of faith. And plenty of people don't believe he was. And that's ok.
But denying the historical fact of the man himself is where some people lose the plot.
So the reason why alot of Jews became Christians was because they wanted to get out of being circumsized? That's understandable.
I don't know why more Jews don't become Christians just to avoid being circumsized. I can see how Jews at the time of Jesus would see Christianity as an out.
Could some of anti-Semitism be rooted in the fact that Christians are afraid of being circumsized?
I don't know why more Jews don't become Christians just to avoid being circumsized. I can see how Jews at the time of Jesus would see Christianity as an out.
Could some of anti-Semitism be rooted in the fact that Christians are afraid of being circumsized?
You've massively misunderstood me.
Early Christians were already circumcised because they were Jews already. What happened was as early Christians started to spread their faith outside of the Jewish population they originally thought these non-Jewish converts would have to convert to Judaism before becoming Christian. Which meant that a lot of potential Roman and Greek converts turned it down, not wanting to get circumcised.
So early Christians, as part of their break with Judaism, declared that converts to Christianity no longer had to get circumcised.
Jewish males are circumcised at eight days old. The deed's already been done by the time anyone's old enough to start understanding the world around them.
Um... no. Jews aren't the only people who get circumcised. Muslims are as well, and plenty of Christians are circumcised across the world.
I'm assuming you're acting in good faith with these questions diamondgirl, but I'm starting to suspect you're not.
Good faith or not, I'm enjoying the history lesson some of these questions have prompted. I only ever got one semester of what was supposed to be Church History, and most of that was spent slogging through Acts of the Apostles. Actual history content was minimal.