bill@astro.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys) (12/21/89)
In article <athos.Dec.15.01.53.12.1989.17534>, bcstec!tahoma!kgf2173@uunet.uu.net (Kerry G. Forschler) writes: #> Mark and Matthew claim that the #> Sanhedrin accused Jesus of blasphemy, however the punishment for #> blasphemy was stoning. Why was Jesus not stoned then? #> # #The Bible doesn't say why Jesus was crucified and not stoned. I think it #was because the Jews wanted to show that Jesus was cursed of God. #In both the Old and New Testiments the Bible says that anyone who is hanged #on a tree is cursed of God. I believe they wanted Him to die the worst #kind of death and to totally discredit Him. # #[John 18:31 suggests that in this time period only the Romans could #carry out death sentences. --clh] There seem to be conflicting opinions on this. The NJB notes in connection with Jn. 18:31 that "the Romans had withdrawn from the Sanhedrin the power of life and death. Jesus COULD HAVE BEEN STONED by the Jews, cf. [Jn.] 8:59; 10:31, but not crucified (`lifted up') by them" [my emphasis--whj]. The words `lifted up' in the footnote of course refer back to Jesus' words as recorded in Jn. 3:14. However, I note with interest Herman Rubin's and Charles Hedrick's comments that seem to contradict this interpretation. It may be that there is a theological issue in the NJB's translation that I am not aware of. In any case, crucifixion was no ordinary punishment--it was the penalty for sedition. The `thieves' (Gr. _lestai_) between whom Jesus is supposed to have been crucified may well have been members of the Jewish resistance (the Romans, like oppressive governments today, called resisters to their rule, like the Zealots, `bandits'.) Oddly, the evangelists portray Pilate as a wimp who is easily intimidated by the Jewish priests and their angry mob, and who merely washes his hands of the whole affair and declares Jesus innocent, while letting the mob do its will. In reality Pilate was a cruel and hated governor. Lk. 13:1-2 alludes to his cruelty. Josephus records the ruthlessness with which he went about building an aqueduct a few years before the crucifixion, apparently using funds appropriated from the Jewish temple. The Helleno-Jewish historian Philo also records his cruelty. Eventually Pilate was recalled to Rome because of his excesses. The picture of Pilate painted by the evangelists simply does not ring true. And again, if Pilate as the Roman governor considered Jesus innocent of offenses against Roman law, as the Gospels declare, why did he allow Jesus to be crucified? I suspect that the evangelists may not be telling us the whole story. Are they trying to shift the blame for the crucifixion away from the Romans and onto the Jews? Considering that Mark wrote about AD 70, when the Jews in Palestine were rising up in an attempt to overthrow their oppressors, and bearing in mind the ancient tradition that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome, whose gentile Christian community might at that time have prudently been distancing itself from its Jewish roots, I would not be at all surprised if he took this tack. The other synoptic gospels would have followed Mark's lead. Christians should always be mindful that the poisonous weed of antisemitism flourishes in the soil of the New Testament accounts of the trial of Jesus. Matthew and John are the worst offendors, but all the evangelists are at fault. Matt. 27:25 is particularly offensive, where the evangelist writes, "And the people, every one of them, shouted back, `Let his blood be on us AND ON OUR CHILDREN.'" [My emphasis. I cringe when I recall singing this as a choirboy.] The ugly fact is that these accounts have been used down the ages to justify antisemitism. The tragedy of the Holocaust has its roots in them. In view of the great evils that Christians have done to their Jewish brethren over the centuries, we ought to be very careful about accepting the Gospel accounts of the trial and death of Jesus uncritically, as if they were an unbiased record of all we need to know about the historical facts of the crucifixion. And we should also guard against making seemingly innocent comments that are offensive when viewed from a Jewish perspective. Bill Jefferys [I'm not sure what theological issue you are proposing. If you're talking about the work "lifted up", this is based on a Hebrew pun. (In this description I'm following Schoeps' exegesis of Gal 3:13.) John 3:14 and Gal 3:13 both refer to the passage in Deut 21:23, which says that a man who is hanged is a curse. The Heb. word for "hanged" can also mean "elevated". John particularly sees Christ's death as also his exaltation. Schoeps' comment on Gal 3:13, which I think applies to John as well, is "The crucifixion of the Messiah was in truth His elevation, as was promised for Yahweh's servant in Is 52:13, and it took place in order to do away the curse of the law by the realization of that curse: "for He became a curse for us". The solution of the curse is its transformation into a blessing, as is also shown by the continuation in "in order that" [the first word in 3:14], which resuming an earlier train of thought, interprets and identifies the supposed "curse" of the cross as the "blessing of Abraham." But the crucifixion is also a proof of Jesus' Messianic status; for "hanged/elevated" connotes that the Crucified is also the Exalted, and this dual sense of "hanged/exalted" echoes also in the "highly exalted" of Phil. 2:9 when Paul in this famous text names Jesus as the exalted One, or as we can now complete the thought, the One who was exalted through his crucifixion." ["Paul", pp 179-180, except that I have translated Greek and Hebrew phrases into English. To avoid misunderstanding, I should note that Schoeps is Jewish. These do not represent his personal views, but his interpretation of what Paul means.] This explanation of "lifted up" probably tells you more than you ever wanted to know. I'm don't think the evangelists are exactly hiding anything, but certainly scholars see shadings intended to make the Gospel acceptable to Romans. --clh]