Rabbi Robert Solomon, in this week's Jewish Press Letters Section:
Most egregious, in my opinion, is the head-in-the- sand position of Jewish leadership in any discussion of the role played by Jews in the arrest and subsequent trial and execution of Jesus. We cannot simply continue to pretend that the Jewish leaders of that time had no knowledge of, no opinion about, no interaction with, and no complaints about this man.First of all, we are. Steven Bayme of the AJC and That Shas MK in particular reminded everyone that our version of the incident has Jews actually presiding over Jesus' execution. Beyond that, why should anything that happened back then need a response from us today? Ultimately, we probably will never reconstruct exactly what happened historically. The Passion is a Christian story concerning those events. As a non-Christian, it really doesn't bother me much at all. I don't feel the need to apologize, respond, or even to react. I'm certainly not going to tell Christians how to tell their own religio-historical (new word alert!) narrative, much as I'm sure most Christians don't feel the need to respond to the Talmudic account. Posted by Avraham at March 4, 2004 11:52 PMWe need to look at whatever role was played by the Jewish leaders of that time, even if it may not have been the central role in the actual execution of the man, and deal with it forthrightly. We must point out the historical untruths, but accept truths that may in some measure be painful or even embarrassing.
I thought the Talmudic account was shown to be most probably referring to someone else, or at least someone about a hundred years prior to the accepted time of Jesus?
Posted by: Greg Gershman at March 5, 2004 10:28 AMThe "accepted time" is only authoritative if you read the Gospel accounts. It could be that the two accounts are about two competely different instances, or it could be that the two groups, each writing after the event (granted, the Christian texts are probably a bit earlier, but there's no real way to tell), developed different traditions as to when the event occured, as well as to what actually took place. Both options are real possibilities.
Posted by: Avraham Bronstein at March 5, 2004 02:56 PM