Of all the trials in human history, none has had greater consequences. In Jerusalem, in April of either the year 30 or 33, Jesus of Nazareth was arrested, hauled before a religious court, tried by a Roman governor, sentenced to death and crucified. And what did that come to mean? That, explained the Apostle Paul, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us . . . We are now justified by his blood.” And thus it began. The resulting visions of redemption would be tainted by the search for blame in the death of the Redeemer. According to Matthew, a Jewish mob cried, “His blood be on us and on our children” while demanding the death of Jesus. And centuries of Christians would oblige them with massacres and persecutions, pogroms and expulsions of “Christ killers” and the depredations of the Inquisition, laying groundwork for the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. Anti-Jewish passions came not only from misinterpreters of faith but from the spiritual authorities themselves, from John Chrysostom, from Thomas Aquinas — both saints of Christendom — indeed, from Martin Luther, who turned against the Jews after they spurned his reformed Christianity. In the past century, the politically correct way to attach blame was to pin it on a vanished empire — the Rome of the Caesars and its representative in Judea, Pontius Pilate. But a new, two-volume study by one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most prominent experts on the Gospels dismisses that approach. “You can’t just say there was no Jewish involvement in the death of Jesus,” says Father Raymond E. Brown, author of The Death of the Messiah , which re-examines this and dozens of other issues on the crucifixion. “Jesus was a Jew and he dealt with Jewish leaders. So the easy solution that it was an entirely Roman affair doesn’t work.” He argues, however, that careful examination of the Gospels can provide understanding, even enlightenment: “Christians have misused the crucifixion to blame Jews and to persecute Jews. Therefore, to many Jews the crucifixion is a horrible thing because they’ve been beaten over the head with it. If we are to live together in the world, I think it’s helpful for both sides to see the extent to which the intervening history has shaped the way the crucifixion is seen.” Brown begins by carefully defining the Jewish role in the death of Jesus. “In a context of hostile inter-Jewish feelings,” he says, “how can one dismiss as unthinkable a desire on the part of some fellow Jews for severe action against Jesus, a troubling religious figure?” He stresses that many ordinary Jews sympathized with Jesus, and that only the leaders were responsible for the death sentence. “I’m not talking about guilt,” he says, merely “responsibility.” Explains Brown: “Those who contribute to the execution of an accused are responsible for that death. They are guilty only if they know that the accused is undeserving.” And while the leaders condemned Jesus, Brown says, there were religious and political reasons behind this decision.
