"Catholic Scripture Scholar
Sees Jews as Still Being Faulted”
The instruction for the Holy Week reading of the Passion of Our Lord in the new St. Joseph Sunday missal reminds us that: "The crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed, as if this view followed from Scripture. The Church ever keeps in mind that Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles were Jewish."
However, the congregational recitation of John's Passion on Good Friday with multiple "The Jews", and "Crucify him" shout a jarring disconnect from the message which the printed instruction above merely whispers.
Fr. Gerard Sloyan, a Catholic Scripture scholar, who taught at Catholic University, Temple, and Georgetown, has written that the Gospel trial accounts are not exact verbatim reports .Also, In "Why Jesus Died" [Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2004] he writes: "The chief actual sufferers from Jesus' death by crucifixion have been – paradoxically — not Christians but Jesus' fellow Jews. From an early period - the mid-second century can be documented - the apparent complicity in this death of the priestly leadership of the Jerusalem temple with the Roman prefect of Palestine was extrapolated and extended by Christians to the whole city, the whole land, and before long the whole people. Jews have suffered untold indignities at the hand of Christians, even to their liquidation, as a result of the way Jesus died. So much is this the case that the image of the cross bearing Jesus' body - a crucifix - is taken by Jews as being, far from the sign of redemption of the human race that it is for Christians, a reproach on them for killing God's Son. For this deed Christians devised the term 'deicide', the murder of deity. Efforts of the latter half of the twentieth century to convince Jews that no such symbolism is intended by the crucifix have been largely unavailing."
Fr. Sloyan's chapter, "How Jesus' Death Was Blamed on Jews" concludes: "What can be said to summarize the attribution of responsibility for Jesus' death to the Jews by the church fathers of the years 100-600. First, they thought it clearly taught in the New Testament. For this they relied on the Acts of the Apostles as much as on the Gospels. That Pilate sentenced Jesus — whatever the measure of temple priestly encouragement - was thought to be a nonfact except in the creedal statement that served to date Jesus' crucifixion.
"It came to be assumed very early in the patristic age that every member of subsequent generations of Jews concurred in this wicked deed. There was, of course, no evidence for this assumption, but it was thought that their failure to become Christians proved it. The latter argument was based on empirical observation, coupled with some harassment at the hands of Jews, even though the conclusion was false. The main argument was a deduction from biblical data. The prophets had foretold Jesus' sufferings at the hands of his own people, it was supposed because of all the texts that spoke of the abuse heaped on an innocent one by fellow Jews. It had all come to pass in the case of the singularly just Jesus. His rejection at the hands of others was freely willed by them in the fulfillment of prophecy. The failure of later generations of Jews to believe in the cross and resurrection as saving events confirmed the hardness of hearts of their first-century forebears.
"The whole construct was a totally false elaboration of a partially valid myth. But this fact gave the Jewish people of the patristic era, particularly from Constantine's day onward, no consolation whatever. They began a centuries-long history of being stigmatized as the killers of Christ on the cross, when in fact they would have repudiated to a person the small number of Jews in power who had had a part in the deed."
Frank and wife Fran are long-time members of CPF
Why Jesus Died" [Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2004] Among Fr. Sloyan's other books are:
"Jesus On Trial",
and "The Crucifixion, History, Myth, Faith",
both printed by Fortress Press, Minneapolis, and
"Jesus, Word Made Flesh", Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minn.
