2004 - Eric J. Greenberg - Who Killed Jesus Christ

8/13/2019 2004 - Eric J. Greenberg - Who Killed Jesus Christ

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FL SHPOINT U SA

Some Jewish scholars and inter-faith officials were upset by th e articlequestioning either Bayme s scholarship or his timing - saying this was aparticularly delicate tim e to call attention to Jews role in Jesus s death - orboth. But Bayme was unswayed.

Citing the continuing controversy over Gibson s flim The assion whichhas reignited concern over Christianity s ancient charge against Jews s Christ-killers he wrote that it s also i mp or ta nt t ha t Jews confront theirown tradition an d ask how Jewish sources treated th e Jesus narrative .

Bayme cites a passage from the Talmud Sanhedrin 43a which relates thefate of a man called Jesus who s hanged on th e eve of Passover for practisingsorcery and leading the people o f Israel astray. When no one comes forwardto defend th e accused sorcerer during a 40-day reprieve Jewish authoritiesput him to death despite Jesus s connections with the government .

The Talmud cites this incident during a discussion o f due process andcapital punishment in Jewish law. Bayme acknowledges that th e passage waswritten by Talmudic scholars in Babylon who lived about 40 0 years afterJesus. To be sure historians cannot accept such a text uncritically Baymewrote.

But he s ys the passage s significant because t he T al mud ic t ex t indicatesrabbinic willingness to acknowledge at least in principle that in a Jewishcourt and in a Jewish land a real-life Jesus would indeed have beenexecuted. N o effort s made to pin his death upon the Romans Baymesaid. Pointedly Jews di d not argue that crucifixion was a Roman punishment and therefore no Jewish court could have advocated it. Bayme said hewrote the piece for two reasons: to educate Jews and to promote honestdialogue with Christians.

He cited the Catholic Church s 1965 statement that Jesus s death cannotbe blamed upon all Jews then living without distinction n or u po n the Jewsof today . Bayme said Gibson s movie h as alienated many Jewish leaderswho correctly worry whether the movie s graphic description o f th e Crucifixi on and its alleged overtones o f a Jewish conspiracy to kill Jesus mayignite long-dormant Christian hostilities to Jews .

That s why t he Go sp el and its association with anti-Semitism need to beconfronted s well s Jewish sources he said. But Bayme stressed that he snot suggesting a m or al e qu iv al en cy between problematic anti-SemiticGospel passages which have caused the d eath of Jews and t he T al mu di cJesus references.

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He noted that in the Middle Ages most Jews assumed th at J ew sexecuted Jesus of Nazareth based on these Talmudic passages though someasserted that the Jesus o f Talmud s not the same s the Jesus of Christianity .Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz whose Talmud edition has been translated intoEnglish Russian and Spanish said he believed the Talmudic Jesus s prob-ably not the Christian Jesus.

It could very well be somebody else who lived 100 or 200 yearsearlier because the stories do not match th e Gospel account he said. RabbiSteinsaltz noted that the Hebrew name Yeshu was popular then and thatstories about the resurrection o f dead leaders are a dime a dozen beforeJesus and after him. This s not a historical issue.

any case Rabbi Steinsaltz said Christians would do best to a voi d thesetexts because there s nothing politically or theologically significant to themin Jewish tradition. Ellis Rivkin professor emeritus o f Jewish historyat Hebrew Union College an d author o f the seminal book What rucifiedJesus said dragging in th e Talmud text s dangerous utterly meaningless an dirrelevant .

But D r David Kraemer professor of Talmud an d rabbinics at the JewishTheological Seminary supported Bayme s call f or honesty about Jewishtexts and Jesus. I think it s very relevant to bring up evidence o f th e diffi-culty o f our relationship with Christianity he said contending that it sindeed Jesus of Nazareth in the text.

Kraemer believes the text was written at a time o f fierce competitionbetween the early rabbis and Christian leaders in th e early centuries o f th eCommon Era. The attitudes expressed [in the Talmud] can be prettyhateful attitudes he said. It s not about comparing them [with th e a nt i-Semitic Gospel passages]. Just because you can t equate them doesn t meanyou can t raise the issues.

ric reen erg is a staffwriter at The Jewish Week newspaper in New orkwhere a version this article first appeared

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2004 - Eric J. Greenberg - Who Killed Jesus Christ