xhonzi said:
TheBoost said:
BUT, the Passion Play, and specifically the lines from Matthew have been used repeatedly for two thousand years to whip people into a frenzy to murder Jews with impunity. Vatican II and all the lengthy explanations about who really killed Christ (or why Christ died or this and that) don't change the actual history of bloodshed.
So when Gibson's movie comes out in our wonderful modern post-racial era and repeats what for twenty centuries has been real bad news for the Jews, and makes 600 million dollars, I can understand the Jews not being happy with the state of affairs.
Can you offer any examples of Jews being murdered linked to Passion Plays or Mel Gibson's movie? I still have a hard time believing this one. Does the number of murders of the Jewish people go up at the Easters?
I never said there was a murder linked to Gibson's film, only that given the materials history I can sympathise with the Jews not liking the film.
I don't have a page number, but Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion contains a pretty good article on the violence linked to the Passion Play throughout European history. A quick google search gives me this from the ADL website:
Throughout nearly 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred and violence against Jews of Europe and America, and various forms of anti-Semitic expression. Historically, Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) was a period when Jews were most vulnerable and when Christians perpetrated some of the worst violence against their Jewish neighbors.
and here's a bit from ChristianityToday.com
Unfortunately, deicide has not been the lone charge directed collectively against Jews. As recently as the early twentieth century, pogroms sometimes erupted during Holy Week in Eastern European nations when rumors spread about Jewish crimes. Inflamed by outlandish accusations, such as the claim that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matzo bread for Passover, unruly gangs searched out Jews to kill and maim.
This style of pogrom dates back to the First Crusade. Until this point European Jews largely eluded organized violence, but marauding crusaders on their way to the Middle East in 1096 stopped to slaughter Jews in the Rhineland. One crusader's account recalls, "Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine and to take vengeance upon the Muslims. But here are the Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed him and crucified him groundlessly. Let us take vengeance first upon them. Let us wipe them out as a nation."
Outbreaks of Christian anti-Semitism related to the Passion narrative have been so numerous and destructive that theologian and Holocaust survivor Eliezer Berkovits concluded, "the New Testament is the most dangerous anti-Semitic tract in human history."
It's because of that history of violence that things like Vatican II or the American Council of Bishops are so defensive about the meaning of the Passion Play and so specific about how it is performed.