Acts 3:12-18
12. When Peter saw this, he said to them: "Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?
13. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go.
14. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.
15. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.
16. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see.
17. "Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.
18. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer.
Acts 5:27-33
27. Having brought the apostles, they made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest.
28. "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name," he said. "Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood."
29. Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men!
30. The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead--whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.
31. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.
32. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him."
33. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. (*)
Acts 7:51-60
51. "You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!
52. Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him--
53. you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it."
54. When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him.
55. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
56. "Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."
57. At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him,
58. dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
60. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep. (*)
Acts 9:22-24
22. Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.
23. After many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him,
24. but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. (*)
Acts 9:29
He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they tried to kill him. (*)
Acts 10:34-40
34. Then Peter began to speak: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism
35. but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.
36. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.
37. You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached--
38. how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
39. "We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree,
40. but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.
Acts 23:6-14
6. Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, "My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead."
7. When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.
8. (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.)
9. There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. "We find nothing wrong with this man," they said. "What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?"
10. The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.
11. The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, "Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome."
12. The next morning the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.
13. More than forty men were involved in this plot.
14. They went to the chief priests and elders and said, "We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul.
15. Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here."
16. But when the son of Paul's sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.
17. Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, "Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him."
18. So he took him to the commander. The centurion said, "Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you."
19. The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, "What is it you want to tell me?"
20. He said: "The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him.
21. Don't give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request." (*)
Acts 25:1-3
1. Three days after arriving in the province, Festus went up from Caesarea to Jerusalem,
2. where the chief priests and Jewish leaders appeared before him and presented the charges against Paul.
3. They urgently requested Festus, as a favor to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way. (*)
Acts 25:10-11
10. Paul answered: "I am now standing before Caesar's court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well.
11. If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!" (*)
Acts 26:21
That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. (*)
1 Thessalonians 2:14-16
14. For you, brothers, became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews,
15. who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men
16. in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.
(*always wanting to KILL someone...)
The crowd in Jerusalem that demanded Christ’s crucifixion did not in any way represent the Jews of the city of Jerusalem and its environs. They were a relatively small crowd of people who had been purposefully rounded up by the Sanhedrin in order to silence, and eventually put to death, the one Man who was undermining their strangle-hold power in Jerusalem and beyond.
Why on earth do you think Caiaphas and his cadre so desperately feared this man? They feared His influence for four main reasons:
(1) Jesus was an itinerant preacher who was engendering ever more receptiveness to His teachings from the Jewish population. He was not a priest, a scribe, or a Pharisee, and yet so many people [Jews] were listening to, and beginning to follow, His teachings. Many of them were beginning to believe that He was indeed the Messiah.
(2) He performed miracles, such as curing the blind and raising people from the dead.
(3) He spoke against the hypocrisy of the very same high priests, scribes and Pharisees who were now calling for His crucifixion.
(4) He sometimes did things that were forbidden by Pharisee law, such as healing on the Sabbath.
To extrapolate the politically-motivated hatred exhibited by these high priests and hypocrites and lay blame for the death of Christ on an entire people (when the allegiance to Him of so many of those very people was the reason for the Sanhedrin’s fear) is ludicrous.
Large numbers of Jews openly wept along the road to Calvary as Christ passed by them. Veronica offered Him water. Simon of Cyrene helped Him to carry the cross and defended Him against the Roman lashes.
We also cannot blame the Jews for His death for the simple reason that His death was foretold many centuries before through the prophet Isaiah. You yourself excerpted a few such scripture verses. So, in that sense, it was an inevitability. And, if one would want to take that even a step further, since He died for your and my sins, in a roundabout way, we are just as responsible – in a passive way – for His death as those relative few who so brutally called for His crucifixion.
Although I am a Protestant, the Catholic catechism contains an excerpt that I believe to be a beautiful description of who is really responsible for Jesus’ death. It reads, in part:
We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for He is in them) and hold Him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews.
As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, ‘None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.’ We, however, profess to know Him. And when we deny Him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on Him.
So, by blaming the Jews alone for Christ’s death, we would in effect be saying, ‘Jesus did not die to cleanse me from my sins. He died because of those vile, vicious people over there ... back then.’ A Christian, by definition, acknowledges that Christ’s purpose in taking on human form was to die as He did … for us. How then can a Christian turn around and lay blame for that death on another group of people? Such behavior smacks of both scapegoating and religious hypocrisy. For Christians, the truth is that all sinners were the authors of Christ’s Passion.
As for your continued references to the later persecutions of Paul by other Jews, once again you are confusing a few [with political motives] with a people. And you are also refusing to recognize those few who were used as simple tools to fulfill yet more prophesy. Christ Himself, both in the movie and countless times in scripture, warns His followers that they will continue to suffer persecution. Who among His later apostles was more faithful than Paul, the author of most of the books of the New Testament?
To take, as you have, scriptural accounts of the crucifixion of Christ, and the persecution of Paul, by a handful of Jewish leaders who were generally driven by political motives and assert that the Jewish people in general are to be held responsible for the (prophesied) results – or, worse yet, to label their actions as ‘always wanting to kill someone’ is the kind of behavior that plants the kinds of anti-Semitic seeds that breed unfounded hatred. Even your own excerpt from Acts 23 reads that ‘more than forty men were involved in this plot [to kill Paul]’ You neglected to print that portion in bold. Nor did you comment that forty men [no doubt under orders from the high priests] does not a people make. Once again, it was the Sanhedrin that feared Paul’s teachings and the inroads they were making as regards their power among the Jewish people in general.
This movie has been unfairly accused of doing what you are at least intimating in your own post. Where the movie is concerned, the accusation is unfounded.
~ joanie