The Jesus blame battle - Altercation:

[dArKeR]

JESUS AND THE JEWS
       
Thanks to Mel Gibson, (with an assist from Laura Ingraham), today’s Altercation is devoted to that perennial hot-button issue “Did ‘the Jews’ kill Jesus and are we still guilty?” And hey, don’t we get better letters than the Times? For background, here’s a summary of TNR’s cover story, though the complete story is behind a subscription wall.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/752664.asp?0cv=CB20

[carpetbagger]

1. Jesus was crucified, not stoned.

The Christian church, however, was conquered by the Roman Empire (not the other way around). I can't think of many states that could deal well with the historical fact that they killed off the founder of their state religion.

[cherryperry]

2. Well, for one thing,

Alterman was wrong when he wrote that he didn't think anything would go on beyond the time of his posting.

On today's Buchanan & Press, Press explained that he came from the Catholic tradition where every day he recalls having to say that "we" wish to be rid of the perfidious Jews. :puke:

[Liberator_Rev]

3. A whole web page on the question of WHO killed Christ & WHY

I've written a whole web page on the question of WHO killed Christ & WHY which shows, if you
believe the Gospels, that it's neither "the Jews" nor "the Romans" as such who killed Jesus :
http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/about/whokilledchrist.html.

[IndianaGreen]

4. "The Jews didn't kill Christ... they just worried him to death."

The movie was shown to rightwing extremist Jews like David Horowitz and Michael Medvek, and to the Christian evangelical cult "Jews for Jesus." Why are mainstream Jews being kept from previewing this film?

Months Before Debut, Movie on Death of Jesus Causes Stir
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

With his movie about the death of Jesus under attack as anti-Semitic, Mel Gibson is trying to build an audience and a defense for his project by screening it for evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, right-wing pundits, Republicans, a few Jewish commentators and Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

<snip>

The controversy has been cast by many of his supporters as the Jews versus Mel Gibson. But it began when several Roman Catholic scholars voiced concern about the project because of Mr. Gibson's affiliation with a splinter Catholic group that rejects the modern papacy and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which in 1965 repudiated the charge of deicide against the Jews.

Mr. Gibson has been screening "The Passion" for a few weeks for friendly audiences, but has refused to show it to his critics, including members of Jewish groups and biblical scholars. In Washington, it was shown to the Web gossip Matt Drudge, the columnists Cal Thomas and Peggy Noonan and the staffs of the Senate Republican Conference and the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and others. In Colorado Springs, the capital of evangelical America, the film drew raves. A convention of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative Roman Catholic order of priests, saw a preview, as did Rush Limbaugh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/national/02GIBS.html

FRANK RICH
Mel Gibson's Martyrdom Complex

The Jews didn't kill Christ," my stepfather was fond of saying. "They just worried him to death." Nonetheless, there was palpable relief in my Jewish household when the Vatican officially absolved us of the crime in 1965. At the very least, that meant we could go back to fighting among ourselves.

These days American Jews don't have to fret too much about the charge of deicide — or didn't, until Mel Gibson started directing a privately financed movie called "The Passion," about Jesus' final 12 hours. Why worry now? The star himself has invited us to. Asked by Bill O'Reilly in January if his movie might upset "any Jewish people," Mr. Gibson responded: "It may. It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth. . . . Anybody who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."

Fears about what this "truth" will be have been fanned by the knowledge that Mr. Gibson bankrolls a traditionalist Catholic church unaffiliated with the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese. Traditionalist Catholicism is the name given to a small splinter movement that rejects the Second Vatican Council — which, among other reforms, cleared the Jews of deicide. The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages, which have lavished praise on Mr. Gibson and his project, reported in March in an adulatory interview with the star that the film's sources included the writings of two nuns: Mary of Agreda, a 17th-century Spaniard, and Anne Catherine Emmerich, an early-19th-century German. Only after Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, among others, spoke up about the nuns' history of anti-Semitic writings did a Gibson flack disown this provenance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/arts/03RICH.html

[camero]

5. The Jews did not kill Jesus

The leadership did because he challenged thier authority. Because they corrupted God's Law.

This is like saying that ordinary Germans killed the Jews when they were brainwashed just like the ordinary Jews in Jesus' time.

And like ordinary Americans today.

[Wonder]

6. we just did a little riff on this in i/p

what the hell

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=2126&mesg_id=4777&page=

[DrBB]

7. Most interesting assertion in Frank Rich's article on this

Rich says that Gibson started defending himself against the charge of anti-semitism--statements, private screenings 'n' all that--before any such accusations had been levelled.

Pretty damn revealing if true, though of what I'm not exactly sure. Some of it would be just the usual buzz-creation crap, I suppose, but I think it goes beyond that.