The causation is far from clear or simple. Saying the Gospels assign specific blame is an interpretation. You might like to cite the Gospel texts that give you this impression, as I suspect you will find you are running together various ideas to construct a mental narrative that is not really supported in the text. Yes, you can point to Jewish responsibility for handing Jesus over to the Roman executioner. But compare this to a modern policing operation – we do not place sole guilt on an arresting officer for the punishment of an innocent prisoner, it is a complex institutional process involving police, judge, jury and jail.DWill wrote:Whenever we have a clear causation in history, we shouldn't obscure it as you are doing. This is a less complicated than you are making it. Each of the Gospels assigns specific blame for Jesus' death to the Jews.
That ignores the comple backdrop of economic and social relations between Christians and Jews. It is rather like saying the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland have hated each other because of specifically religious differences, when it is obvious these differences are primarily the surface markers of deeper questions of identity, especially political tribal conflict rooted in war and imperialism. The anti Jewish lines in the Bible were a handy excuse to latch on to to justify a predisposition grounded in the identity politics of a dominant group that found the Jews a convenient target. You are mistaking an outward sign (dogma) for a deep cause (politics). The Bible also tells us other things, such as to love our enemies and aim for unity, but these get ignored as inconvenient.There is no other authority needed to explain why Christians hated Jews and persecuted them for centuries. It's in the Bible, so it had to be true.
It is not the words alone, but the interpretation that rationalises hatred. The interpretation requires that people with motive whip up popular sentiment. This particular angle in the Bible had to be emphasised, given priority over other teachings that are equally present and that argue against racial hatred. Love, forgiveness and mercy are primary themes in the New Testament. You have to twist the text to get a primary message of hatred, let alone your alarming phrase implacable hatred. In the Nazi context that required a lot more than the Bible to generate it.why do the words of the Gospel inspire implacable hatred toward the Jews, if i am interpreting them my own way?.
Calling the Romans bystanders is a distortion of the historical context. Just before the Gospels were written, the Romans had utterly destroyed the Jewish temple in one of the most massive wars of the Empire. Here is the Arch of Titus that commemorates their victory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_TitusI think it's very likely that in any supposed historical scenario like that in the Gospels, the Romans would in fact have been the actuators of the death of Jesus. So to make them virtual bystanders in the story indicates a revisionist purpose on the part of the writers.
The scale of Roman intimidation was immense. It is hardly surprising that the Gospels parcel out the blame equally between Rome and Israel. To do otherwise would have invited immediate retribution, which came anyway with persecution of Christians for their anti-pagan attitudes such as refusal to worship the Roman Emperor. Pilate washing his hands of the affair is a cunning device that can in no way be taken at face value as some exoneration of Rome by the Gospel authors.
Christianity is high on the scale of superstitions. All miracles are rank superstition. Belief in the supernatural and heaven is superstition. Just because many Christians can bracket their absurd beliefs and function as rational modern people does not make those beliefs any less absurd. The bracketing makes the beliefs less dangerous, but why would you want to endorse claims you know to be false? That is unethical and hypocritical. Unbracketed Christianity of the rapture variety is a principal danger to world peace, security and sustainability.you don't need to look far outside of Christianity to find farcical superstitions aplenty. And Christianity is actually low on the scale of superstitions.
Each of us has our own ethical values. I see Jesus as the voice of Gaia and indigenous nature, speaking the word of cosmic reason and grace against the alienated evil of human constructed culture. His statement that the last will be first is to recognise that many hidden and vulnerable things in our world are among the most important, and that the values of the powerful do not serve the public interest. But this statement is also set within a context of respect for the powerful, for example in the parable of the talents, in a way that I believe provides the best available model for contemporary ethics, when combined with the expression of human solidarity and mercy in the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Judgment.Unlike you, I'm not extremely keen on the ethical value of these stories. They are examples of worthy religious thought in the world-wide mix, but I'd never think of putting them at the top by themselves.
With the scale of problems facing our planet, I simply do not believe the world can afford to have large numbers of people believing things that are not true, such as the actual existence of Jesus, and for political leaders to acquiesce in this folly. It becomes a lemming-like plunge towards the cliff.to base a religion's credibility on the claim that certain things merely happened is silly. What is the value of things that merely happened, even if they really did? I can't see that as a high aim of a religion at all. So I agree with you partly. I don't agree that claiming historical basis is such a cardinal sin in itself, vis-a-vis the drawbacks we can cite for all the other kinds of religion.
Christianity has seen two great scientific revolutions, those of Copernicus and Darwin. Recognition of the fraudulent history of the church is a third religious revolution on a par with these two big earlier ones. But critique of the Gospels should mean reforming religion, not calling for its abolition. Religion is a good and necessary basis for community and identity. It is possible to be serious about science while also respecting the ethical message and symbolism of Christian tradition.
