Setting the historical record straight in FrontPage:
A new study released Sunday shows that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. The "German Situation" study, which is conducted by the University of Bielefeld Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, found that across Europe in the last year, "Islamophobia" has declined, while anti-Semitic incidents have increased. True to form for such studies, however, it ignored the persistence and strength of Islamic anti-Semitism.Anti-Semitism in the Islamic world has often been attributed to the baneful influence of Christianity. Many analysts assert that the Islamic designation of Jews (as well as Christians) as "People of the Book" indicates a higher level of respect for them than was manifested by Christians who derided Jews as bestial "Christ-killers." Journalist Lawrence Wright asserts in this vein in The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11:
Until the end of World War II ... Jews lived safely--although submissively--under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice [anti-Semitism]. After the war, Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.
This is a common view, but in reality there is a strong native strain of anti-Semitism in Islam, which is rooted in the Qur'an. The Muslim holy book contains a great deal of material that forms the foundation for a hatred of Jews that exists independently of the Christian variety. It is also, in many ways, more virulent and harder to eradicate. The Qur'an portrays the Jews as the craftiest, most persistent, and most implacable enemies of the Muslims--and there is no Muslim equivalent of the Second Vatican Council to mitigate against destructive interpretations. The Qur'anic material on the Jews remains the prism through which far too many Muslims see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and Jews in general--to this day.
A vivid illustration of this came in 2004 from Islam Online, a website founded by, among others, the internationally influential Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in 1997. Although al-Qaradawi has won praise from Islamic scholar John Esposito for engaging in a "reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism, and human rights," that "reformist" impulse doesn't seem to carry over to his view of Jews (he has justified suicide bombings against Israeli civilians), or the view of them he has allowed to be published on Islam Online. In 2004 the site posted an article titled "Jews as Depicted in the Qur'an," in which Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, the former head of the Fatwa Committee at the most respected institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, depicts Jews in a chillingly negative light, illustrated with abundant quotations from the Qur'an. Among other charges he levels at the Jews, Saqr says that they "used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah"; they "love to listen to lies"; they disobey Allah and ignore his commands; they wish "evil for people" and try to "mislead them"; and they "feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity." He adds that "it is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents," for "they are merciless and heartless." And each charge he follows with Qur'anic citations.
Read it all.
The +Jews as Christ-killer" stuff isn't really accurate anyway. The Romans tried and executed Jesus under Roman law, for seditious behaviour - inciting a riot in Jerusalem (he wasn't the only participant). What confused matters is the apparent blame-shifting in the Gospels, thanks to their being written in a hostile political environment.
If it had been a religious squabble only, the Romans wouldn't have been interested.
What queers the deal was uncharacteristic swapping of Jesus for Barrabas, whoever the heck he was. Either this incident is fabricated (the Romans, and certainly not such a known-brutal man as Pilate, didn't do this as a matter of course), or Barrabas was, somehow, more important than Jesus to the Jewish populace. (This is one of the arguments for Jesus having at least one son; if Barrabas (Bar Rabbi? Son of the Rabbi?) was the son of the king, the prince, as it were, it would make more sense to get him the hell out of there, and sacrifice the father.) But that's only speculation, of course, an attempt to make sense of that bizarre scene.
But the bottom line is, it was Romans whodunnit.
It is unfortunate that the charge of "Christ killer" has been used by Christians historically to persecute Jews. If there had been no crucifixion, the central event in Christianity, there would have been no Christianity.
If there had to be a crucifixion, then obviously someone had to carry it out. In this sense the Jews could be considered only to have been doing their assigned task in G*d's larger plan. It is not to Christianity's credit that the early Church failed to pick up on this, and instead focused on attacking the very group that, it could be argued, was actually the midwife of Christianity, responsible for bringing it into the world. I suspect that the original Jew-blaming by the Christians provided no small amount of moral support for Mohammad who would pick up the same mantra some 600 years later - and which they still carry on today.
Spirit Wolf: I agree with you that the Romans dunnit.
Standard Christian theology holds that Christ 'died for *our* sins'. If I take that seriously, I have to accept that, in a sense, *I* killed him. No use shuffling off the blame onto anybody else! (And whatever else antisemitism is, it seems to me to be the quintessential act of projection and scapegoating; so that the 'christian' antisemite who attacks a Jew [Jesus' closest human kinsman] while accusing the Jew of having rejected and killed Christ, is himself in that very act doing precisely what he's accused the Jew of doing. It is the antisemite who in attacking, insulting and even killing any Jew attacks, insults and kills...Jesus Christ the Jew!).
As for Barabbas - as I understand it, it's Aramaic and it doesn't mean 'son of the rabbi', it's bar abbas - lit. 'son [of] father', or more colloquially, 'daddy's boy'. Sounds like the sort of thing a bandit might call himself, as a kind of joke.
I'm afraid, though, that your belief that he must have been Jesus' own son strikes me as beyond nonsensical.
Spirit Wolf: who are you reading, to dredge up these wild and weird 'demythologisings' (which actually strike me much more as re-mythologisings) of the Christian scriptures? Barbara Thiering? The 'Jesus Seminar'? Or all the other sceptics, each trying to outdo the other, who cut off bits here and twist the plain meanings of words there, in order to neutralise the fiery energy of the Gospels and force the story to fit the procrustean bed of their own a prioris (rationalistic or gnostic or whatever; a new look! I-can-explain-it-all-away theory seems to be invented every other week), and thus avoid at all costs having to deal with the terrifying revolutionary implications - spiritual, philosophical and political - of the *traditional Christian* reading of the texts?
To get a sense of *why* us boring old benighted traditional Christians insist on taking the Gospel texts at face value - and to see that perfectly good arguments can be made for so doing - I commend to you Dorothy L Sayers' highly-readable and entertaining set of radio plays that she wrote for the BBC, "The Man Born To Be King"; or try Anne Rice's 'Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'. Anne has some very interesting things to say about the modern hypercritical ultrasceptical scholars.
Why do you think Rifqa Bary left Islam? Which 'christ' does she follow? The watered-down 'we can't really know who he was or what he taught' cipher of the 'Jesus seminar' and their ilk...or a 'nice person who lived long long ago and taught us to be nice to each other...or a failed candidate for a revolution against Rome...or just perhaps, that which David Bentley Hart calls 'the fire of the infinite', strong enough to effortlessly crack her free from the demonic brainwashing of thirteen years inside Islam?
Dumbledore - Yeah, I've read that stufdf, but I don't believe he _must_ have been Jesus' son - only maybe as a maybe. I simply fail to understand why, if that part of the story is taken at face value, the Jewish people should have given up their king for some "bandit" (or, more likely, someone else, an unknown, arrested for participating in the riot). It's probably more likely that this bit is fabricated to shift blame off the ruling Romans; if so, it was a rather bad move, as the "Christ-killer" junk goes to show. But then, when doing something expedient right now, one can't always see the full ramifications for the future.
No, I don't fault anyone for taking the story at face value; but the beauty of our society is that we can ask questions if something doesn't seem quite right.
What really did happen, in a real-world, non-miraculous sense (assuming that the world then worked very much the way it does now) probably no one will ever know, or can. All we do have to go on is the writings of the man's followers, who were under political duress, and in very real danger of their lives, and of their writings being destroyed forever.
However one views Jesus, though, the fact still remains that he had a stellar appreciation for what a true leader can be; and all the fictionsl or mythical great and noble and morally upstanding leaders to follow - from the great but flawed and unfortunate Pendragon to a humble cartoon white lion cub - are based at least in part on his vision; and if not based directly there, then at least recognizable at sharing his views on how society ought to be. The message and the vision are the real meat of the matter.
In contrast to this, what kind of leader was Mohammed? A cruel, selfish grasping man who sought money, power, and sex. One who sought to divide, rather than unite. One who sought to conquer rather than co-operate. One who sought to rule, rather than to lead. One who served his own baser instincts, rather than to inspire others to higher thought.
Even taking away all supernatural elements, the contrast is stark and striking. It's the difference between Dumbledore and Voldemort. The difference between Mufasa and Scar (or Kimba and Claw). The Doctor and the Master. The list could go on indefinitely.
The only real question is, on which side to stand, and which vision to embrace? Anyone with any sense of feeling, of empathy, of any connection whatsoever to others, knows where to stand.
Hello Spirit Wolf and dumbledoresarmy;
You are right that the Romans performed the physical acts that led to Jesus death. But I think we have to put at least some blame on the Sanhedrin, who were Sadducees and quite collaborative with the Roman authorities. The gospel account of the trial of Jesus, a Pharisee, before them has some rihg of truth. They were right to ask Jesus where his army was.
It's hard to prove where scriptures appear to be written over and that leads to a question that if one scripture is wrong isn't the whole book wrong.
Any way this is a very interesting discussion which I thank you for starting.
Oh, it doesn't mean the whole book is "wrong", really; just that some things had to be obfuscated, and after so much time, and with little other corroborating documents, it's difficult to tell what might have been fudged or not. The overall story is there, but some details were most likely certainly changed or left out, due to political concerns, or to "protect the innocent", things like that. Also, things that would be considered taken for granted, or common knowledge to people at the time, would be left out as a matter of course.
And yes, the pharisees and sadducces were quislings; apparently they had it pretty cushy under the Romans. A rightful Jewish king would likely have threatened their status quo. Jesus didn't seem to think much of these guys, so if he did manage to take charge, they likely would have all been out of jobs.
Human politics and such would have been just as tricky and touchy as they are now; basic human behaviour really hasn't changed all that much in 2K years.
It would be interesting to see how something written in these times would be interpreted by someone 2K years from now, in a society and setting much different from what we know now, especially if that work used heavily metaphorical language, and didn't bother to explain things that we wouldn't need to be reminded of.