Who Killed Jesus

One of the most debatable of hot topics is who killed Jesus. Mel Gibson has decided it was the Jews, even if Vatican II and a host of scholars say otherwise. Where does the truth lie? As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between the various biblical and historical accounts.

Vatican II released a statement known as the Nostra Aetate back in 1965 as a gesture of conciliation to the Jews: "True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."

Whodunit?

A careful reading of the Nostra Aetate gives credence to the idea that the Jews had a hand in things—even if the official Catholic line tells Catholics they must not hate the Jews. The Catholics thus have a conundrum: the Jews are to blame, but we must not blame the Jews. Perhaps this is why Catholics like Mel Gibson still insist that the Jews are the whodunit in the story of the Passion. After all, if the Jews were to be left off the hook, the Vatican might have issued a statement that the Romans did it.

Divine Plan

Mel Gibson may be Catholic in his hatred of the Jews, but even a non-Catholic like Adolf Hitler decided to go with the flow and rely on the Passion as his preferred version of the truth as he stated on July 5, 1942, "It is vital that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."

Yet, modern Christian scholar John Dominic Crossan believes that Christians have an obligation to look at the historical truth in order to come to understand God's divine plan, "It is surely easier to blame "the Jews" or even God or to emphasize suffering than to face the possibility that the Kingdom of God is on a collision course, not just with the Roman Empire on a bad day, but with the normalcy of civilization on a good day."