The Talmud and Deicide. Traditional Rabbis admit the Messias-Deniers, The Jews, are the ones responsible for the worst crime in history than which no other worse crime can even be imagined.
No commentary necessary other than to note the source - The American Jewish Committee
Jesus
in the Talmud
September
24, 2003 Steven Bayme, National Director, Contemporary Jewish
Life Department
The
recent controversy over the forthcoming release of Mel Gibson's The
Passion has reignited the longstanding debate over responsibility for
the crucifixion of Jesus. This 2,000-year-old debate clearly has been
a costly one for Jews. Statements attributed by the Gospels to Jewish
leaders of the first century urging that Jesus be crucified and that
responsibility for the act be laid at the hands of the Jewish people
for all time form the basis for the charge of deicide against the
Jews. More tellingly, historians have argued correctly that this
"teaching of contempt," casting the Jews as a permanently
accursed people, often served to legitimate violence against Jews as
the living embodiment of those who killed Jesus.
In
the mid-1960s, the Vatican II Council was meant to relegate this
teaching of contempt to the history books. The Church released a
statement claiming that "what happened in His passion can not be
blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon
the Jews of today". Precisely with the leadership of groups such
as the American Jewish Committee, remarkable progress in
Catholic/Jewish relations has since been attained, especially
concerning the portrayal of Jews and Judaism within Catholic
textbooks. Gibson's movie, intended to tell the story of the Gospels,
has alienated many Jewish leaders, who correctly worry whether the
movie's graphic description of the crucifixion and its alleged
overtones of a Jewish conspiracy to kill Jesus may ignite
long-dormant Christian hostilities to Jews.
For
this reason, the account of the Gospels, and its associations with
anti-Semitism, needs to be honestly confronted, including the
question of the relationship of church teachings to acts of violence
against Jews. Yet
it is also important that Jews confront their own tradition and ask
how Jewish sources treated the Jesus narrative.
Pointedly,
Jews did not argue that crucifixion was a Roman punishment and
therefore no Jewish court could have advocated it.
Consider, by contrast, the following text from the Talmud:
On
the eve of Passover Jesus was hanged. For forty days before the
execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is
going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed
Israel to apostasy. Anyone who can say anything in his favor let him
come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was
brought forward in his favor, he was hanged on the eve of Passover.
Ulla retorted: Do you suppose he was one for whom a defense could be
made? Was he not a mesith (enticer), concerning whom Scripture says,
"Neither shall thou spare nor shall thou conceal him?" With
Jesus, however, it was different, for he was connected with the
government. (Sanhedrin
43a)
This
text, long censored in editions of the Talmud, is concerned primarily
with due process in capital crimes. Standard process requires that
punishment be delayed for forty days in order to allow extenuating
evidence to be presented. However, in extreme cases, such as seducing
Israel into apostasy, this requirement is waived. The case of Jesus,
according to the Talmud, constituted an exception to this rule.
Although one who enticed Israel into apostasy is considered an
extreme case, the
Jews at the time waited forty days because of the close ties of Jesus
to the Roman authorities. However, once the forty days elapsed
without the presentation of favorable or extenuating comment about
him, they proceeded to kill him on the eve of Passover.
Three
themes emanate from this passage. First, the charges against Jesus
relate to seduction of Israel into apostasy and the practice of
sorcery. According to the Gospels, the charges against Jesus
concerned his self-proclamation as a messiah. The Talmud seems to
prefer the more specific charges of practicing sorcery and leading
Israel into false beliefs. One twentieth-century historian, Morton
Smith of Columbia University, argued on the basis of recently
discovered "hidden Gospels" that the historical Jesus
indeed was a first-century sorcerer (Jesus the Magician,
HarperCollins, 1978). In the eyes of the Talmudic rabbis, the
practice of sorcery and false prophecy constituted capital crimes
specifically proscribed in Deuteronomy 18: 10-12 and 13: 2-6.
Second,
the Talmud is here offering a subtle commentary upon Jesus' political
connections. The Gospels portray the Roman governor Pontius Pilate as
going to great lengths to spare Jesus (Mark 15: 6-15). Although this
passage may well have been written to appease the Roman authorities
and blame the Jews, the Talmudic passage points in the same
direction: The Jews waited forty days, in a departure from the usual
practice, only because Jesus was close to the ruling authorities.
Lastly,
the
passage suggests rabbinic willingness to take responsibility for the
execution of Jesus. No effort is made to pin his death upon the
Romans. In all likelihood, the passage in question emanates from
fourth-century Babylon, then the center of Talmudic scholarship, and
beyond the reach of both Rome and Christianity. Although several
hundred years had elapsed since the lifetime of Jesus, and therefore
this is not at all a contemporary source, the Talmudic passage
indicates rabbinic willingness to acknowledge, at least in principle,
that in a Jewish court and in a Jewish land, a real-life Jesus would
indeed have been executed.
To
be sure, historians can not accept such a text uncritically. For one
thing, the Talmudic text, as noted, was written some 300 years after
the event it reports. Secondly, it makes no acknowledgement of
intra-Jewish tensions in first century Palestine in which Jewish
sects proliferated, and Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots
competed for Jewish allegiances. Jesus's antipathy towards the
Pharisees, of course, is well known from the Gospels, and the
Talmudic rabbis, who presumably read these accounts, defined
themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Pharisaic teachers. By
contrast, the High Priest was, in all likelihood, a member of the
Sadducee faction, which generally consisted of more aristocratic
elements. What
the Talmudic narrative does demonstrate is fourth century rabbinic
willingness to take responsibility for the execution of Jesus.
What,
then, are the implications of this reading of Jesus through the eyes
of rabbinic sources? First, we do require honesty on both sides in
confronting history. Jewish apologetics that "we could not have
done it" because of Roman sovereignty ring hollow when one
examines the Talmudic account. However, the significance of Vatican
II, conversely, should by no means be minimized. The Church went on
record as abandoning the teaching of contempt in favor of
historicizing the accounts of the Gospels and removing their
applicability to Jews of later generations. A mature Jewish-Christian
relationship presupposes the ability of both sides to face up to
history, acknowledge errors that have been committed, and build a
social contract in which each side can both critique as well as
assign value to its religious counterpart.
Bibliography
for further reading:
Steven
Bayme, Understanding Jewish History (KTAV), 1997
Joseph
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth (Beacon Books), 1964
R.
Travers-Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (KTAV),
1975
Questions
for further discussion:
Given
the climate in first-century Palestine, what threat did Jesus pose to
Jews and to Rome?
How
should Jews understand Jesus today?
What
should be the terms of a social contract between believing Jews and
Christians?
How should adherents of each faith view the other?