re: #35 Killgore Trout

Can it truly be said that the Jewish race is guilty of the sin of deicide, and that it is consequently cursed by God, as depicted in Gibson’s movie on the Passion?

Yikes.

This passage is from that article:

The teaching of Sacred Scripture on this question is quite explicit. St. John explains that if Pilate sentenced Jesus Christ to death, it was only on account of the insistence of the Jews:

When the chief priests, therefore, and the servants, had seen him, they cried out, saying: Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith to them: Take him you, and crucify him: for I find no cause in him. The Jews answered him: We have a law; and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. (Jn. 19:6, 7)

The Synoptic Evangelists state the same thing, e.g., Lk. 23:22-24:

Why, what evil hath this man done? I find no cause of death in him. I will chastise him therefore, and let him go. But they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified; and their voices prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.

The Jews were consequently directly responsible for the crucifixion. Deicide is the name given to the crime of killing the person who is God, namely the Son of God in His human nature. It is those persons who brought about the crucifixion who are guilty of deicide, namely the Jews.

St. Matthew’s Gospel states very clearly, not only that Pilate considered Jesus innocent of the accusations made against him, but also that the whole people of the Jews took the responsibility of his murder upon their own heads. Indeed, to Pilate’s statement: “I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it,” the response is immediate: “And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and upon our children.” (Mt. 27:24, 25) The Gospel teaches us, therefore, that the Jewish race brought upon themselves the curse that followed the crime of deicide.

As many, many scholars have pointed out for centuries before me, there are various passages in the Gospels that seem fishy, as if they were added slightly after the fact to reflect some political upheaval in the late-first or early-second century AD. The passage cited above for the justification of anti-Semitism are the very same crucial passages that have been identified as possibly being later interpolations. Particularly the line, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” Seriously: What lynch mob would say such a thing?

Sherrif (standing in front of the jailhouse, speaking to lynch mob): “OK, I can’t stop you from over-running the jail, bustin’ him out, and hangin’ him, but I just want y’all to know that I ain’t responsible — this is all your doing.”

Lynch mob (in unison): “Yes, we are all guilty of the crime of lynching, as determijned by State Statue 132.9a, and are going straight to hell en masse. … Now let us at him!”

Somehow, I just don’t think it happened like that.