- "...an article by Steven Bayme, the American Jewish
Committee's national director of Contemporary Jewish Life... declares that
Jews must face up to the fact that the Talmudic narrative 'does clearly
demonstrate... fourth century rabbinic willingness to take responsibility
for the execution of Jesus.'"
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- The controversy over Mel Gibson's upcoming film about
the death of Jesus has spurred painful exchanges between Jews and Christians
and progressive and traditional Catholics in recent days. To date, the
debates have centered on the "proper" interpretation of the role
of Jews in Jesus' Crucifixion, as presented in the four New Testament Gospels.
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- But this week, Gibson's $25 million biblical epic, which
the director insists is about love and forgiveness, has triggered a new
squabble - among Jewish scholars.
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- The texts in question are not New Testament but rather
passages long censored (by Christian authorities) about Jesus from the
Talmud, the encyclopedia of Jewish law and tradition considered sacred
by traditional Jews.
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- Raising the issue is an article by Steven Bayme, the
American Jewish Committee's national director of Contemporary Jewish Life,
which declares that Jews must face up to the fact that the Talmudic narrative
"does clearly demonstrate ... fourth century rabbinic willingness
to take responsibility for the execution of Jesus."
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- "Jewish apologetics that 'we could not have done
it' because of Roman sovereignty ring hollow when one examines the Talmudic
account," Bayme said.
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- He contends that Jewish interfaith representatives are
not being honest in dialogue if they ignore the explicit Talmudic references
to Jesus.
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- His article was posted on the AJCommittee's Web site
last week, then removed after a Jewish Week reporter's inquiry.
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- Ken Bandler, a spokesman for the AJCommittee, said the
article was taken down to "avoid confusion" over whether it represented
the organization's official position. AJCommittee officials now refer to
the article as "an internal document."
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- Some Jewish scholars and interfaith officials were upset
with the article, either questioning Bayme's scholarship or his timing
- saying this was a particularly delicate time to call attention to Jews'
role in Jesus' death - or both.
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- But Bayme was unswayed. Citing the continuing controversy
over Gibson's "The Passion," which has reignited concern over
Christianity's ancient charge against Jews as "Christ killers,"
he wrote that it is also important "that Jews confront their own tradition
and ask how Jewish sources treated the Jesus narrative."
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- Bayme cites a passage from the Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a,
which relates the fate of a man called Jesus who is hanged on the eve of
Passover for practicing sorcery and leading the people of Israel astray.
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- When no one comes forward to defend the accused sorcerer
during a 40-day reprieve, Jewish authorities put him to death, despite
Jesus' "connections with the government." The Talmud cites this
incident during a discussion of due process and capital punishment in Jewish
law. (See box.)
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- Bayme acknowledges that that the passage was written
by Talmudic scholars in Babylon, who lived about 400 years after Jesus.
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- "To be sure, historians cannot accept such a text
uncritically," Bayme wrote.
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- But he says the passage is significant because the Talmudic
text "indicates rabbinic willingness to acknowledge, at least in principle,
that in a Jewish court and in a Jewish land, a real-life Jesus would indeed
have been executed.
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- "No effort is made to pin his death upon the Romans,"
Bayme said. "Pointedly, Jews did not argue that crucifixion was a
Roman punishment and therefore, no Jewish court could have advocated it."
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- Bayme told The Jewish Week he wrote the piece for two
reasons: to educate Jews and promote honest dialogue with Christians.
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- He cited the Catholic Church's 1965 statement that Jesus'
death "cannot be blamed upon all Jews then living, without distinction,
nor upon the Jews of today."
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- Bayme said Gibson's movie "has alienated many Jewish
leaders who correctly worry whether the movie's graphic description of
the Crucifixion and its alleged overtones of a Jewish conspiracy to kill
Jesus may ignite long-dormant Christian hostilities to Jews."
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- That's why the Gospel and its association with anti-Semitism
need to be confronted as well as Jewish sources, he said. But Bayme stressed
that he is not suggesting a moral equivalency between problematic anti-Semitic
Gospel passages "which have caused the death of Jews" and the
Talmudic Jesus references.
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- Indeed, the Catholic Church, which burned copies of the
Talmud in the Middle Ages, officially censored the Talmud's Jesus references
in the 13th century. Even today the standard Vilna edition of the Talmud
omits any discussion about "Yeshu," Jesus in Hebrew.
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- The Jesus omissions began to be restored in the last
century, Bayme said. And the passages "are now included in most of
the new printings of the Talmud," said Yisrael Shaw of Daf Yomi Discussions,
an on-line Talmud service.
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- "If you do an Internet search for Sanhedrin 43a,
you will find that it is one of the favorite sources of the Christians
to use as proof of the Jewish murder and hatred of their god," Shaw
said.
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- But Bayme is concerned that Jews know nothing about the
censored texts.
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- "Whenever I talked about the origins of Christianity
with fellow Jews, I discovered massive ignorance of Jewish narratives concerning
the death of Jesus. It's something I thought Jews ought to confront fairly,"
he told The Jewish Week.
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- Bayme contends the Talmudic text resonates with the Gospel
accounts for several reasons. He said the Talmudic charge of practicing
sorcery and seducing Israel into apostasy, a biblical capital crime, matches
recently discovered "hidden Gospels" that "a historical
Jesus was indeed a first century sorcerer."
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- "A mature relationship between two faiths should
allow for each faith to ... uncover these texts and view them critically,"
Bayme said.
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- But some disagreed with Bayme's analysis and policy suggestion.
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- His own organization pulled the piece only a couple of
days after it was posted.
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- Rabbi David Rosen, the group's director of interreligious
affairs, said Bayme's views were not the "official AJC position"
concerning the trial of Jesus.
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- He called the Talmudic text historically "dubious"
and questioned Bayme's connecting the text with the Gospel stories, noting
the actual charge against Jesus and the nature of the court "is in
conflict."
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- Some outside specialists also refuted Bayme's article.
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- Brooklyn College History Professor Rabbi David Berger,
a specialist in Christian-Jewish issues, said it would be a mistake and
diversion to bring the Talmudic texts into the interfaith dialogue.
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- "The Second Vatican council properly rejected collective
Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion, even though it affirmed that some Jews
were involved," he said. "Consequently, raising the question
of the historical involvement of Jews, with or without reference to Talmudic
texts, diverts us from the key issue, which is the denial of contemporary
Jewish culpability for these events."
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- He noted that in the Middle Ages, "most Jews assumed
that Jews executed Jesus of Nazareth based on these Talmudic passages,
though some asserted that the Jesus of Talmud is not the same as the Jesus
of Christianity."
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- Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, whose Talmud edition has been
translated into English, Russian and Spanish, said he believed the Talmudic
Jesus is probably not the Christian Jesus.
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- "It could very well be somebody else" who lived
100 or 200 years earlier because the stories don't match the Gospel account,
he said.
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- Rabbi Steinsaltz noted that the Hebrew name Yeshu was
popular back then and that "stories about the resurrection of dead
leaders are a dime a dozen, before Jesus and after him. This is not a historical
issue."
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- In any case, Rabbi Steinsaltz said Christians would do
best to avoid these texts because there is nothing politically or theologically
significant to them in Jewish tradition.
-
- Ellis Rivkin, professor emeritus of Jewish history at
Hebrew Union College and author of the seminal book "What Crucified
Jesus," said dragging in the Talmud text is "dangerous, utterly
meaningless and irrelevant."
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- But Dr. David Kraemer, professor of Talmud and rabbinics
at the Jewish Theological Seminary, supported Bayme's call for honesty
about Jewish texts and Jesus.
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- "I think it's very relevant to bring up evidence
of the difficulty of our relationship with Christianity," he said,
contending that it is indeed Jesus of Nazareth in the text. Kraemer believes
the text was written at a time of fierce competition between the early
rabbis and Christian leaders in the early centuries of the Common Era.
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- "The attitudes expressed [in the Talmud] can be
pretty hateful attitudes," he said. "It's not about comparing
them [with the anti-Semitic Gospel passages]. Just because you can't equate
them doesnít mean you canít raise the issues."
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