People have for centuries argued about who was to blame for the terrible crime of executing Jesus. Sadly, some have even used the issue to justify anti-Semitism, blaming the entire Jewish race for the death of Jesus Christ.
A number of different people have been blamed; Romans/Jewish leaders, High Priest, Scribes, Elders/Romans, Chief Priest, Scribes, Elders, Crowd/Pilate, Jews in general, “Stiff-necked People”, “Christ-killers”.
As if blame alone is not enough, Kenyan Catholic lawyer Dola Indidis recently filed a petition with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, suggesting that the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ was unlawful.
The former spokesman of the Kenyan Judiciary said the State of Israel and the Republic of Italy should be held responsible and was reportedly attempting to sue Emperor Tiberius (42 BCE-37 CE), Pontius Pilate, a selection of Jewish elders, and King Herod.
Although those he suggests should have been convicted during the original trial have not been alive for more than 2,000 years, Indidis insists that the government for whom they acted can and should still be held responsible.
While attempts to talk about Jesus’s execution is tantamount to opening a can of worms, an affable professor from Jerusalem, who specialises in finding unconventional explanations for fateful issues and has no compunctions about angering people along the way, has found the formula to end a centuries-old controversy. If he’s right, history books will require rewriting and sermons in churches around the world will have to be rethought.
Bible scholar Israel Knohl, 67, an academic at the Shalom Hartman Institute, in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighbourhood told Haaretz.com correspondent Ofer Aderet that his new discovery “will have far-reaching implications for relations between Jews and Christians,”.
After billions of Christians were taught over many centuries that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death, Knohl sets out to re-examine this convention.
In contrast to some of his colleagues – certainly in such departments as Bible studies – Prof. Knohl has the ability to present his arguments clearly and concisely, in a way that every person can understand immediately, without unnecessary hairsplitting. That’s true of his new book, too.
In “The Messiah Controversy: Who Are the Jews Waiting For?”, he sheds new light on the trial of Jesus, who was sentenced to death by a Jewish court and executed by the Romans in 30 C.E.
“The notion that Jesus was put to death by ‘the Jewish people’ is fundamentally wrong. The great majority of the Jewish people did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, but espoused a messianic outlook that was basically similar to his,” he says, adding that today, “after centuries of enmity between Christendom and the Jewish people, which was wrongfully accused of bearing the guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion, surely the time has come to reexamine the events in their historical, religious and social context.”
To understand Knohl’s thesis one needs to go back in time and reacquaint his or herself with the dramatic, multifaceted and fascinating disputes in the Hebrew Bible concerning the issue of the Messiah. A perusal of the Bible’s various books reveals two main trends. On the one hand, the Torah presents an anti-messianic stance, according to which the gulf between the divine and the human cannot be bridged.
This approach rules out the possibility that a flesh-and-blood king will achieve a “quasi-divine” status and supports a clear separation between the two realms. Accordingly, God cannot possibly have begotten a son, and eternal life cannot be attributed to a king or a messiah.
On the other hand, some of the Prophetic books and some of the individual Psalms do express a messianic approach, and attribute divine qualities to the king (whoever he may be) and portray him as the “Son of God” – as sitting next to God in heaven and as possessing “divine” names.
“The messianic idea, the belief in the existence of a king who is a lofty and exalted being with quasi-divine traits, occupies a very respectable place already in the Bible,” writes Knohl.
Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, he maintains, constitute a “dramatic and decisive moment” in the history of the Jewish people and of Western culture as a whole. It is the moment at which the two approaches – the anti-messianic and the messianic – meet in an unavoidable collision, whose impact is still felt to this day.
Jesus was apparently born and raised in Nazareth. His name (Yeshua or Yeshu) signified the anticipation of Yeshua, salvation or redemption. As a young man, he was baptised in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, who similarly immersed thousands of people who flocked to him in order to confess their sins, repent and be purified.
The New Testament relates that during his baptism, Jesus heard a voice saying, “Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove.
Subsequently, in a Nazareth synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus recites verses from the Book of Isaiah that begin, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me,” and tells the worshippers, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21).
According to Professor Knohl, in his deeds, Jesus “continued the messianic biblical tradition” and supported his words with references from the Hebrew Bible about the image of the Messiah.
Afterwards, in Jerusalem on Passover, Jesus enters the Temple courtyard, chases away the buyers and sellers and the peddlers of doves (which were used for sacrifices), and overturns the tables of the money changers. This is an affront to ritual, which causes a tumult in the Temple and infuriates the priests.
Why was he not arrested immediately after this act?
Knohl is contented that many Jewish people hoped that “he would prove himself to be the Messiah, who would redeem the people and restore its freedom.
“He enjoyed great public sympathy. The people were fond of him, cheered him on, supported and protected him,” he said.
Thus, Jesus was able to return to the Temple courtyard on a later occasion and to speak publicly. His principal argument was extreme: The Messiah, whose advent the people awaited, is not a descendant of David, as everyone believed until then.
As such, Jesus solved the problem of his own lineage, as one who was not descended from the House of David and was a pretender to the messianic crown. He presented a new model of the Messiah: Whereas the disciples who followed him clung to the prevailing belief in a triumphant warrior Messiah and expected him to deliver the people from Roman rule, Jesus saw himself as a suffering, nonviolent, poor and weak Messiah.
This position would seem to be at odds with the general approach found in the Hebrew Bible, according to which God is above suffering, which is solely a human attribute. According to that description, it follows that if the Messiah is a quasi-divine figure, it wasn’t possible for him to suffer, as Jesus claimed.
But Knohl looked for and found evidence of divine suffering in other sources, and explains that;
“The portrait of the divinity suffering with his people appeared in Jewish tradition before the birth of Christianity.”
In support of this thesis, the scholar cites Isaiah 63:9: “In all their afflictions he was afflicted.”
The Hebrew text emends the word lo [spelt lamed aleph, meaning “not”] to lo [lamed vav, meaning “to him”], which is very significant in this context. According to the emended version – whose date is unknown – God is regretful, and shares in Israel’s suffering. For the first time, the image of a suffering God enters the Bible, a concept previously foreign to the biblical way of thought.
“Once the idea that God himself suffers and shares in the sorrow of his people was accepted, it became possible to attribute suffering to a messiah possessing divine status too,” Knohl observes.
Continue reading here.
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