Reverend Martin wrote an interesting piece in the Huffington Post titled “Who Killed Jesus? An Examination of the Evidence“. There are some issues with this article: it doesn’t matter how many scholars write about the Gospels, or what the Catholic Church believes they mean, ultimately those are works of religious teaching and thus are not bound by the rigors of historical scholarship. The writers of the Gospels had a clear agenda, and that was to distance the early Christians from mainstream Jews. Rev. Martin says, “The Gospel accounts are not necessarily eyewitness accounts”. They certainly were not, as people who did not know Jesus personally and were not present during the events wrote these books 35 to 80 years after the events they describe.
Even the title of the piece is problematic, because of his use of the word “evidence”. There is no evidence of the existence of Jesus, let alone of who killed him. Moreover, from a Christian theological perspective one can make the argument that his death was preordained and meant to save everyone, which means that who his killers were is immaterial. I would even venture to say Christians should be grateful to whoever did it.
Rev. Martin makes an interesting point about Bogosian’s supposed Jewish appearance. Indeed, Christianity, from the Gospels onward, taught that Jews were minions of the Devil. Gibson’s film actually portrays a demon, or the Devil himself, moving among the Jews, thus suggesting they were his people.
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