Did the Jews Kill Jesus?

At worst, the idea that"the Jews" killed Jesus is outrageous, the product of hate-filled minds eager to spread incredible lies about the targets of their hate.  At best, the notion is completely illogical, the equivalent of proposing that"the Republicans," or"the Texans," destroyed the Enron Corporation.  No one would even consider thinking along such lines; the fact that Enron was brought down by a handful of Republicans from Texas would never lead to such a broad, untenable charge.  Why, then, is it still necessary to write essays like this one?  Why is it still necessary to offer sober responses to a repulsive accusation?

The long-term answer is that the Christian Scriptures themselves go out of their way to make the question necessary.  According to one of the four Gospels (only one of the four makes this claim), it was a Jewish mob who insisted that Jesus die and who defiantly took responsibility for his death, not only upon themselves but upon their descendants as well.  The short-term answer is that a new film, Mel Gibson's depiction of Jesus' last hours, has been reported to take this self-condemnation of an entire nation as historical fact; this puts the ancient allegation back on the agenda, and thus demands that people ask themselves whether the idea makes any sense at all.

As is well known, opportunities to see this film have largely been restricted to those who could be expected to praise it.  In the absence of any reliable information, rumors concerning the actual content of the film and the reaction to that content by diverse religious leaders have been in wide circulation.  The present writer has not seen the film (has had no opportunity to see it) and knows nothing of the Pope's real opinion about it, and will therefore say nothing more about either of those topics.  Instead, let us return our attention to the basic questions.  What can it mean to blame an entire modern nation for an event that took place two thousand years ago?  What can it mean to assert that a mob has inflicted a curse on unborn generations?  Can any serious historical meaning be attached to either of those ideas?

Perhaps it will be useful to distinguish among several possible understandings of the original question:

• Was it Jews who with their own hands nailed Jesus to the cross and thus caused his death?  No one claims this, not even the Gospel narrators.  Executions were carried out by detachments of the Roman army.  The conquerors were not about to grant power of life and death to the oppressed native population of an occupied territory.
  
• Was there a vast conspiracy by the whole Jewish nation to induce the Romans to do away with him?  This is closer to the Gospel narrative, though it is hard to reconcile with earlier depictions of Jesus being ecstatically welcomed by Jewish crowds in town after town.  What would have brought about such a wild reversal in Jewish popular opinion?  In any event more Jews lived outside Judaea than within its borders; most Jews in the world never heard of Jesus until years later, when apostles bearing a new religious message started traveling around the world.
  
• Did a few Jewish leaders, worried in general about the excitement that Jesus could arouse, and worried more concretely about Roman uneasiness when confronted with commotion in the streets of Jerusalem, quietly inform the Roman authorities that they would have no objection if this cause of disorder and turbulence were removed?  This is entirely plausible, both as history and as interpretation of the Gospel narratives, though a far cry from mobs cursing their own grandchildren.  This is more like those Texas Republicans indifferently bankrupting their own company without regard to the loss thereby inflicted on thousands of other people.  Some such quiet collusion is very possibly close to the truth.

Then why do the Gospels convey a different, more disturbing picture?  These books were written at a time when the Christian religion was making its first tentative efforts to attract followers among the peoples of the Roman Empire.  Initial attempts to convince the Jews themselves that their long-awaited redeemer had come were not going well.  As already noted many Jews had never heard of Jesus at all, and it appears that many others were unconvinced that this man, ignominiously put to death by an oppressive empire, could be the one they sought. If he were, why were idolaters still ruling the Holy Land?  Why were wolves still eating lambs?  

If Jesus' own people were not interested in the new gospel, perhaps the time had come to carry the message to others.  However, you could not very easily offer the Gospel to the people of Rome and at the same time blame them for the scandalous death which that Gospel proclaimed: people are not attracted by a story in which they are the chief villains.  The result was a natural tendency to tell the story in such a way that blame fell mostly on those who had already demonstrated their resistance to the Christian message, namely the Jews themselves.  We need not think of fabrication here, or of malice (though both may have been involved), simply the sincere efforts of religious missionaries to tell their story in such a way that the intended audience would be most attracted to it; we all tell stories all the time, and we all shape our stories for similar reasons.

And why has the accusation survived so tenaciously?  One reason, of course, is simply that the Christian Scriptures are its source; those who read the four Gospel narratives as simple truth, those who do not stop to compare them in detail or read them in historical context, will find the fateful passage right there on the sacred page.  Another reason, however, can be found in the equally tenacious survival of Judaism, that is, of the Jews themselves.  From the perspective of believing Christians, anyone who rejected Jesus was thereby rejecting God: rejection by those who should have been most accepting was the most bitter rejection of all.  Why, as more and more Gentiles came to Jesus, were his own people still holding back?  Was there not something eerie about the stubborn persistence of"Old Testament" Judaism when its own fulfillment and replacement was now available?  Perhaps it was true: perhaps those who had brought about the death of Jesus were now too blind, too proud, too guilt-ridden to hear the message of his continued life.  Perhaps an ancient, self-inflicted curse had blinded Israel to its own redemption.

To put the matter less poetically, if the story of the eternal self-damnation of Israel has any historical meaning at all it is this: such a story explains why the Jewish people remained outside the Church when all the rest of humanity (that is, the Roman Empire) had come within.  After the first generation it was no longer a matter of accepting Jesus as a teacher or a leader, the question now was whether to enter the religious community that spoke in his name.  Some Gentiles had joined willingly, some under compulsion, only"the Jews" had not joined at all (many individuals, of course, did become Christian in every generation, but the Jewish people and their religious heritage had not disappeared).  This was mysterious, and it was also galling; in Christians it induced a fascination with and a resentment of"the old Israel" that never went away.  Resentment is troublesome enough, but hatred can be its near cousin and is always ready to reawaken; that is why the appearance of a new movie can cause such deep anxiety.  That is why a question which should never be asked must nevertheless receive an answer.

Other Links

• Jon Meacham, Who Killed Jesus (MSNBC)