THE ROOT CAUSE

Is Evangelization the road to a moral society?  A warning is necessary.

The New Testament contains anti-Jewish statements that could lead to hate crimes, as we know in the Holocaust.  

At Dachau Concentration camp in Germany

The New Testament is advertised as the ‘Word of God.’  Communications experts hired by oil companies couldn’t have done a better job of selling a lie.  As seminal experts in political propaganda, Gospel writers accused their rivals in the 1^st century Jewish community of killing Jesus of Nazareth, a crime committed by Roman occupiers and their government collaborators. 

The Jesus story turns to Deicide after he is officially declared Divine centuries later.  Ironically, in the synoptic Gospels Jesus makes it clear that Caesar is not God.  “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  (Mark 12:17)  Could this be a reason the Romans took Jesus out?

A quote from the Gospel of Matthew is a sample of anti-Jewish propaganda.  After Pilate the Roman Governor declared himself innocent of Jesus’ crucifixion, “the whole people said in reply, ‘His blood be on us and our children.’ ”  (Mt. 27:24) The Gospel of John says the ‘Jews’ (‘the whole people’) demanded crucifixion. (Jn. 19)

Sister Edith Stein

What were the consequences?  Carmelite nun Edith Stein wrote to Pius Xll to protest the murder of Jews in the concentration camps.  He did nothing.  Sister Edith Stein was executed at Auschwitz April 9, 1942.

Liberal Christians find it easy to blow off all of this.  Their attitude is not to take the Gospels seriously.  The Holocaust happened a long time ago. Evangelicals depend on their own interpretations of the Gospels to support their political agenda.

But we still experience anti-Jewish crimes.  It is always time to look at the root cause.  October 4^th and 5^th is Yom Kippur, the days of atonement, an opportunity for Christians to discuss root causes over Grandma Ida’s chicken soup, make atonement and spread the truth.

 

SOURCES

Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, Harper One, 2014.  John Dominic Crossan,  Who Killed Jesus,  Harper, San Francisco, 1995