Posted on 03/02/2011 11:14:14 AM PST by T Minus Four
Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book. In Jesus of Nazareth-Part II excerpts released on Wednesday, Benedict explains biblically and theologically why there is no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death. Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews. While the Catholic Church has for five decades taught that Jews weren't collectively responsible, Jewish scholars said on Wednesday the argument laid out by the German-born pontiff, who has had his share of mishaps with Jews, was a landmark statement from a pope that would help fight anti-Semitism today. "Holocaust survivors know only too well how the centuries-long charge of 'Christ killer' against the Jews created a poisonous climate of hate that was the foundation of anti-Semitic persecution whose ultimate expression was realised in the Holocaust," said Elan Steinberg of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
(Excerpt) Read more at au.news.yahoo.com ...
I remember a religious education class where one topic of discussion was "What if the crowd in Jerusalem demanded that Jesus be released instead of Barabbas?"
The operative word here is “collectively”.
maybe so but did he run that controlling legal authority stuff by algore?
It’s interesting that people don’t realize that Jesus was prophesied to die for us. That He had to and He realized He had to, but time and time again we hear of Christians calling Jews Christ killer.
If you want to split hairs and go absurdly nutso, you can say that it was Eve's fault for listening to the serpent and therefore, we should go Muslim and treat women as lower life forms!
What I was trying to say, but obviously not pure enough for the likes of you, is that Jesus was sent to Earth to die for our sins, to gain forgiveness and eternal life for all who accept him.
The saga of the early Christian Church and their use of the Jewish people as the fall-guy and whipping boy "for killing Jesus Christ" is something that should never have happened and is overdue to end.
The Pope Exonorates Jews? What pompasity!
I hate to be a stickler here, but NOBODY killed Jesus. He is the Son of God, and nobody on earth has power over that.
He willingly chose to die for our sins. To say that anyone “killed” Him would infer that they had power over Him.
They did not, and no one of this earth ever will.
That Jews were Christ killers, and that the currently living Jews are responsible for that supposed sin of their ancestors.
We witness truly epochal changes in the position of the Church.
Act 2:22 ¶ Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:
Act 2:23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
Act 2:24 Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
Jesus was a Jew. So good greif, now what.
There was never any official teaching about collective guilt of Jews, although the odd Father of the Church may perhaps be cited as promoting it. Vatican II's "Nostra Aetate" was the relevant clarification, back in the 1960s, that not all Jews then, nor all Jews now, are responsible for the death of Christ. There is also plenty of teaching from throughout the centuries that the sins of mankind generally are what put Christ to death. Pope Benedict says nothing new here.
And this comes from the same religion that once said if you ate meat on Friday, you would burn in Hell.
Whoa!!!
Someone better get to heaven quickly and let Zechariah
know he wrote down a false prophecy about the grief and sorrow Jews will have as Christ is revealed in the end...
Guess this won’t be necessary any more...
“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” - Zech 12:10
Or maybe not. Maybe the whole Pope statement was human hubris. “Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” - Jesus
Some individual Jews at the time did conspire to condemn Jesus. As Nostra Aetate said, however, not all Jews then, nor all Jews now, are responsible for his death, so collective guilt of all Jews cannot be held to be Catholic belief.
Some fathers of the Church may have taught something like that, but it was not magisterial teaching.
Jesus died for us. But then there was the stoning of St. Stephen. I don’t know who was responsible for the death of all the apostles, except Judas and John.
Then the historians who wrote the Christian bible hundreds of years after Jesus' death would have never heard of him and instead been minor unmentioned scholars in the footnotes of Classical history.
Today the Western world might be going through it's post-Celtic polytheistic period, though religious fanatics on FR would be posting appeals for all of us to sacrifice a lamb and three white pigeons before the next coming Beltaine festival or our rye crop shall be withered in the field and we'll have invited the wrath of any number of Celtic deities.
absolutely! Jesus himself said it was the Jews who turned him over to Pilate that were most responsible for his death.
Well, say, what did Calvin or Zwingli or Luther say about the Jews being responsible for Christ’s death? Do you know?
And how old is the Nicene Creed? I think it comes from around 381 AD, and it doesn’t say ANYTHING about the Jews killing Christ Jesus.
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