"Not a Curse, But Rather Redemption"

Acasă > Ştiri > Arhiva Ştiri

Timp stanga: 0.03s...

Ştiri şi Evenimente

"Not a Curse, But Rather Redemption"

[2011-03-03]

[Engleză]

Three long excerpts from the Pope's new book on Jesus, due out March 10, have just appeared on the internet: one on Judas, one on the date of the Last Supper, and one on Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate. The debate over who was responsible for Jesus' death...

By Robert Moynihan

====================

"These words are not a curse, but rather redemption." —Pope Benedict XVI, in his new book "Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week," due out March 10, referring to the words of the crowd at the time of Christ's trial, "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27:25)

=================================

Excerpts from the Pope's New Book

Three long extracts from the Pope's new book on Jesus have now been published on the web (you may find them at the Catholic Lane website (for the texts, see the three links below; I have also included the texts below in this email).

These are the only three sections of Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusaelm to the Resurrection, the title of the Pope's new book, that have been authorized for pre-release. The official worldwide release of the book will be on March 10 at the Vatican.

Chapter 3, Section 4: “The Mystery of the Betrayer”

Chapter 5, Section 1: “The Dating of the Last Supper”

Chapter 7, Section 3: “Jesus Before Pilate”

==================================

A Key Passage

There is one key passage in these excerpts which has already aroused some controversy and has been the subject of some media spin.

It concerns the trial of Jesus and the role in that trial of the Jewish High Priests, the Jewish crowds, and the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. Here is the key passage from the Pope's new book, from the third of the three extracts above:

When in Matthew’s account the “whole people” say: “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God … God put [ Jesus] forward as an expiation by his blood” (Rom 3:23, 25). Just as Caiaphas’ words about the need for Jesus’ death have to be read in an entirely new light from the perspective of faith, the same applies to Matthew’s reference to blood: read in the light of faith, it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood. These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation. Only when understood in terms of the theology of the Last Supper and the Cross, drawn from the whole of the New Testament, does this verse from Matthew’s Gospel take on its correct meaning.

The Associated Press earlier today focused on this passage, announcing "Pope exonerates Jews for Jesus' death in new book." Here is the article, which can be found at this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/pope-jews-jesus-death_n_830140.html

Pope exonerates Jews for Jesus' death in new book

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book.
In "Jesus of Nazareth-Part II" excerpts released Wednesday, Benedict uses biblical and theological analyses to explain why there was no basis in Scripture that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death.
Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews.
While the Vatican has for five decades taught that Jews weren't collectively responsible, Jewish scholars said Wednesday the argument laid out by the German-born pontiff, who has had his share of mishaps with Jews, was significant and would help fight anti-Semitism today.
"There's a natural human tendency to take things for granted, and very often this tends to lead to a lapse in awareness and consciousness" about the risk of anti-Semitism, said Rabbi David Rosen, head of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee and a longtime leader in Vatican-Jewish dialogue...
In the book, Benedict re-enacts Jesus' final hours, then analyzes each Gospel account to explain why Jews as a whole cannot be blamed for having turned him over. Rather, Benedict concludes, it was the Jewish leadership, the "Temple aristocracy" and a few supporters of the figure Barabbas who were responsible, but not Jews as a whole.
"How could the whole people have been present at this moment to clamor for Jesus' death?" Benedict asks.
He deconstructs one particular account which has the crowd saying, "His blood be on us and on our children" — a phrase frequently cited as evidence of the collective guilt Jews bore and the curse that they carried as a result.
The phrase has been so incendiary that director Mel Gibson was reportedly forced to drop it from the subtitles of his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ," although it remained in the spoken Aramaic.
But Benedict said Jesus' death wasn't about punishment, but rather salvation. Jesus' blood, he said, "does not cry out for vengeance and punishment, it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone, it is poured out for many, for all"...

If one goes to Google now and types in "Pope on Jews" you will find that this article is now cited numerous times among the first items, suggesting that this "exoneration" by Benedict of "the Jews" for blame in the execution of Jesus is the central point of Benedict's teaching on Jews and Judaism.

But this is not an accurate presentation of what Benedict is saying.

Rather, what Benedict is saying, clearly, is that the blood of Christ will bring about the redemption of the Jews from their sins.

Here again is what the Pope writes: When in Matthew’s account the “whole people” say: “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation... These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation.

The Pope certainly does not hold to a theory that all the Jewish people without exception were complicit in and guilty of the decision to execute Jesus (the theory of "deicide"). This is clear.

But, in fact, the teaching that the Jewish people, as a whole (corporately) committed "deicide" has always been a distortion of true Christian teaching, has never been the established doctrine of the Church, and this is why the teaching of Nostra Aetate (drafted and promulgated in 1965 at the close of the Second Vatican Council) — which makes clear this point unambiguouly — is not an innovation, as is sometimes alleged, not a "new" teaching of the Church, but a clarification of the Church's perennial teaching.

So Benedict does not "exonerate" the "Jews" for "Jesus' death"; nor is it in his thought to do so.

There is, in fact, a passage in these excerpts from the book where the Pope does address head on the question: "Who exactly were Jesus' accusers?"

The answer he gives is: not all the Jewish people, but the Temple aristocracy, the leaders of the Jewish people and faith at that time.

He writes:

Now we must ask: Who exactly were Jesus’ accusers? Who insisted that he be condemned to death? We must take note of the different answers that the Gospels give to this question. According to John it was simply “the Jews”. But John’s use of this expression does not in any way indicate — as the modern reader might suppose — the people of Israel in general, even less is it “racist” in character. After all, John himself was ethnically a Jew, as were Jesus and all his followers. The entire early Christian community was made up of Jews. In John’s Gospel this word has a precise and clearly defined meaning: he is referring to the Temple aristocracy. So the circle of accusers who instigate Jesus’ death is precisely indicated in the Fourth Gospel and clearly limited: it is the Temple aristocracy — and not without certain exceptions, as the reference to Nicodemus (7:50-52) shows.

But again, even here, as Benedict notes, "it is the Temple aristocracy — and not without certain exceptions, as the reference to Nicodemus shows," who were Jesus' acccusers and sought his death.

So in these lines Benedict reaffirms the traditional Church teaching that much of the Jewish leadership of the time of Jesus, in fact, a preponderant part, did not see Jesus as Israel's messiah and king, but rejected him and sought his death for the crime of blasphemy.

But this is not remarkable.

What is remarkable about the Pope's interpretation of the cry "his blood be on our heads" is that Benedict makes explicit an argument, a truth, that I don't think any other Christian teacher has ever proposed so strongly in this way: not that this cry ("let his blood be upon us") was not uttered; not that the Jewish crowds did not say this; but that they did not have any comprehension, not the slightest inkling, of what they were actually crying out for: that they would have upon them or over them a protection of innocent, sacrificial blood, the blood of this sinless, rejected king, who, though rejected, would not, in the end, be a curse to them, but a blessing, not their condemnation, but their salvation.

This is a profound religious and mystical insight on the Pope's part, and, as far as I know, completely original.

What the Pope has discovered in his long meditation on Christ, and on the Jews, and on Christ's crucifixion, is not that the people of Israel were scattered, and the Temple was destroyed, because of any wrath against them on Christ's part, or God's part, but that all their loss and shame and sorrow were never in the will of God, who desires reconciliation in holiness, and true peace.

For this insight alone, Benedict should be honored and applauded by Jew and Gentile alike, for his words are prophetic... and much needed in our time.

====================

Historical Criticism and the Mysticism of Holiness

There are two other "themes" in these excerpts which I find compelling.

The first is the theme of the freedom of the Christian to seek to interpret the Scriptures with every tool available to the intellect. I am impressed with the way the Pope feels free to use modern methods of historical criticism to confront certain passages in Scripture which seem at first glance to be contradictory. In a word, he studies the Scriptures without fear.

To put it even more clearly: the Pope reads the Scriptures with great faith, but not as a fundamentalist.

He reads the Scriptures with great confidence that in the Scriptures he is dealing with the living and true word of God, but at the same time with great scientific rigor, with great intellectual honesty, with great openness.

He is not afraid to note that one passage seems to contradict another. He is confident that the tools at the disposal of the student of Scripture will help him proceed toward an ever deeper understanding of that living Word.

So I find in these passages about Jesus, which rely primarily on the Scriptures as their sources, a type of "Declaration of Independence" from fundamentalism, a "Declaration of Confidence" in the human intellect's ability to move toward truth by means of study, reasoning, comparison, and analysis.

It is if the Pope is saying to us: "This is what I have come up with after a lifetime of reflection on these words; now I share this with you, and urge you to continue on the path I myself set out upon, toward truth."

There is much hope in this for all Christian scholars.

But there is also a second strand, which I call "mystical." A strand which surpasses the intellect, which surpasses scholarship, and research, and all human endeavor.

It is the strand which appears in the third passage below, about Pilate, where Pilate asks Jesus "What is truth?"

In this passage, Benedict soars to mystical heights, and reminds us that truth is that which transcends us, though we are oriented to it, and sense it, and can seek it, because truth is of God, who is of his very nature "above" this fallen reality — though not entirely inaccessible.

Benedict writes: Again and again in the world, truth and error, truth and untruth, are almost inseparably mixed together. The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear. The world is “true” to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth. And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God’s likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility.

So I find in these passages these two strands: a reliance on the human intellect, as an admirable piece of equipment to seek out meanings and truths fearlessly, even boldly; and a conviction that the intellect must transcend itself if it is to approach the end of all its seeking, Holy be His name.

=============================================

Here below are the three extracts from the Pope's new book.

=============================================

#1: On Judas — "Et erat nox" ("And it was night")

Mystery of the Betrayer: Excerpt from Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2

by Joseph Ratzinger — Pope Benedict XVI

The mystery of the betrayer

The account of the washing of the feet presents us with two different human responses to this gift, exemplified by Judas and Peter. Immediately after the exhortation to follow his example, Jesus begins to speak of Judas. John tells us in this regard that Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified: “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me” (13:21).

John speaks three times of Jesus’ being “troubled”: beside the grave of Lazarus (11:33, 38), on “Palm Sunday” after the saying about the dying grain of wheat in a scene reminiscent of Gethsemane (12:24-27), and finally here. These are moments when Jesus encounters the majesty of death and rubs against the might of darkness, which it is his task to wrestle with and overcome. We shall return to this “troubling” of Jesus’ spirit when we consider the night spent on the Mount of Olives.

Let us return to our text. Understandably, the prophecy of the betrayal produces agitation and curiosity among the disciples. “One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast of Jesus: so Simon Peter beckoned to him and said, ‘Tell us who it is of whom he speaks.’ So lying thus, close to the breast of Jesus, he said to him: ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered: ‘It is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I have dipped it’” (13:23-26).

In order to understand this text, it should be noted first of all that reclining at table was prescribed for the Passover meal. Charles K. Barrett explains the verse just quoted as follows: “Persons taking part in a meal reclined on the left side; the left arm was used to support the body, the right was free for use. The disciple to the right of Jesus would thus find his head immediately in front of Jesus and might accordingly be said to lie in his bosom. Evidently he would be in a position to speak intimately with Jesus, but his was not the place of greatest honor; this was to the left of the host. The place occupied by the beloved disciple was nevertheless the place of a trusted friend”; Barrett then makes reference to a passage from Pliny (The Gospel according to Saint John, p. 446).

Jesus’ answer, as given here, is quite unambiguous. Yet the evangelist says that the disciples still did not understand whom he meant. So we must assume that John retrospectively attributed a clarity to the Lord’s answer that it lacked at the time for those present. John 13:18 brings us onto the right track. Here Jesus says, “The Scripture must be fulfilled: ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me’” (cf. Ps 41:9; Ps 55:13). This is Jesus’ classic way of speaking: he alludes to his destiny using words from Scripture, thereby locating it directly within God’s logic, within the logic of salvation history.

At a later stage, these words become fully transparent; it is seen that Scripture really does describe the path he is to tread — but for now the enigma remains. All that can be deduced at this point is that one of those at table will betray Jesus; it is clear that the Lord will have to endure to the end and to the last detail the suffering of the just, for which the Psalms in particular provide many different expressions.

Jesus must experience the incomprehension and the infidelity even of those within his innermost circle of friends and, in this way, “fulfill the Scripture”. He is revealed as the true subject of the Psalms, the “David” from whom they come and through whom they acquire meaning.

John gives a new depth to the psalm verse with which Jesus spoke prophetically of what lay ahead, since instead of the expression given in the Greek Bible for “eating”, he chooses the verb tr?gein, the word used by Jesus in the great “bread of life” discourse for “eating” his flesh and blood, that is, receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist (Jn 6:54-58). So the psalm verse casts a prophetic shadow over the Church of the evangelist’s own day, in which the Eucharist was celebrated, and indeed over the Church of all times: Judas’ betrayal was not the last breach of fidelity that Jesus would suffer. “Even my bosom friend, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me” (Ps 41:9). The breach of friendship extends into the sacramental community of the Church, where people continue to take “his bread” and to betray him.

Jesus’ agony, his struggle against death, continues until the end of the world, as Blaise Pascal said on the basis of similar considerations (cf. Pensées VII, 553). We could also put it the other way around: at this hour, Jesus took upon himself the betrayal of all ages, the pain caused by betrayal in every era, and he endured the anguish of history to the bitter end.

John does not offer any psychological interpretation of Judas’ conduct. The only clue he gives is a hint that Judas had helped himself to the contents of the disciples’ money box, of which he had charge (12:6). In the context of chapter 13, the evangelist merely says laconically: “Then after the morsel, Satan entered into him” (13:27).

For John, what happened to Judas is beyond psychological explanation. He has come under the dominion of another. Anyone who breaks off friendship with Jesus, casting off his “easy yoke”, does not attain liberty, does not become free, but succumbs to other powers. To put it another way, he betrays this friendship because he is in the grip of another power to which he has opened himself.

True, the light shed by Jesus into Judas’ soul was not completely extinguished. He does take a step toward conversion: “I have sinned”, he says to those who commissioned him. He tries to save Jesus, and he gives the money back (Mt 27:3-5). Everything pure and great that he had received from Jesus remained inscribed on his soul-he could not forget it.

His second tragedy — after the betrayal — is that he can no longer believe in forgiveness. His remorse turns into despair. Now he sees only himself and his darkness; he no longer sees the light of Jesus, which can illumine and overcome the darkness. He shows us the wrong type of remorse: the type that is unable to hope, that sees only its own darkness, the type that is destructive and in no way authentic. Genuine remorse is marked by the certainty of hope born of faith in the superior power of the light that was made flesh in Jesus.

John concludes the passage about Judas with these dramatic words: “After receiving the morsel, he immediately went out; and it was night” (13:30). Judas goes out — in a deeper sense. He goes into the night; he moves out of light into darkness: the “power of darkness” has taken hold of him (cf. Jn 3:19; Lk 22:53).

English translation provided by the Vatican Secretariat of State
Published by Ignatius Press San Francisco
Used by permission. Official worldwide release event for the entire book: March 10 at the Vatican

(End Extract #1)

=================================

#2. Was the Last Supper on Thursday — or Tuesday?

Dating the Last Supper: Excerpt from Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2

by Joseph Ratzinger — Pope Benedict XVI

The Dating of the Last Supper

The problem of dating Jesus’ Last Supper arises from the contradiction on this point between the Synoptic Gospels, on the one hand, and Saint John’s Gospel, on the other. Mark, whom Matthew and Luke follow in essentials, gives us a precise dating: “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, ‘Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?’ … And when it was evening he came with the Twelve” (14:12, 17). The evening of the first day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Paschal lambs are slaughtered in the Temple, is the vigil of the Passover feast. According to the chronology of the Synoptics, this was a Thursday.

After sunset, the Passover began, and then the Passover meal was taken-by Jesus and his disciples, as indeed by all the pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem. On the night leading into Friday, then — still according to the Synoptic chronology — Jesus was arrested and brought before the court; on Friday morning he was condemned to death by Pilate, and subsequently, “around the third hour” (ca.9:00 a.m.), he was led to the Cross. Jesus died at the ninth hour (ca. 3:00 p.m.). “And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea … took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus” (Mk 15:42-43). The burial had to take place before sunset, because then the Sabbath would begin. The Sabbath is the day when Jesus rested in the tomb. The Resurrection took place on the morning of the “first day of the week”, on Sunday.

This chronology suffers from the problem that Jesus’ trial and crucifixion would have taken place on the day of the Passover feast, which that year fell on a Friday. True, many scholars have tried to show that the trial and crucifixion were compatible with the prescriptions of the Passover. But despite all academic arguments, it seems questionable whether the trial before Pilate and the crucifixion would have been permissible and possible on such an important Jewish feast day. Moreover, there is a comment reported by Mark that militates against this hypothesis. He tells us that two days before the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the chief priests and scribes were looking for an opportunity to bring Jesus under their control by stealth and kill him, but in this regard, they declared: “not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people” (14:1-2). According to the Synoptic chronology, the execution of Jesus would indeed have taken place on the very day of the feast.

Let us now turn to John’s chronology. John goes to great lengths to indicate that the Last Supper was not a Passover meal. On the contrary: the Jewish authorities who led Jesus before Pilate’s court avoided entering the praetorium, “so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover” (18:28). The Passover, therefore, began only in the evening, and at the time of the trial the Passover meal had not yet taken place; the trial and crucifixion took place on the day before the Passover, on the “day of preparation”, not on the feast day itself. The Passover feast in the year in question accordingly ran from Friday evening until Saturday evening, not from Thursday evening until Friday evening.

Otherwise the sequence of events remains the same: Thursday evening-Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples, but not a Passover meal; Friday, the vigil of the feast, not the feast itself-trial and execution; Saturday-rest in the tomb; Sunday-Resurrection. According to this chronology, Jesus dies at the moment when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple. Jesus dies as the real lamb, merely prefigured by those slain in the Temple.

This theologically significant connection, that Jesus’ death coincides with the slaughter of the Passover lambs, has led many scholars to dismiss John’s presentation as a theological chronology. John, they claim, altered the chronology in order to create this theological connection, which admittedly is not made explicit in the Gospel. Today, though, it is becoming increasingly clear that John’s chronology is more probable historically than the Synoptic chronology. For as mentioned earlier: trial and execution on the feast seem scarcely conceivable. On the other hand, Jesus’ Last Supper seems so closely tied to the Passover tradition that to deny its Passover character is problematic.

Frequent attempts have been made, therefore, to reconcile the two chronologies with one another. A most important and indeed fascinating attempt to harmonize the two traditions was made by the French scholar Annie Jaubert, who developed her theory in a series of publications starting in 1953. We need not go into the details of this proposal here; let us confine ourselves to the essentials.

Jaubert bases herself primarily on two early texts, which seem to suggest a solution to the problem. First she refers to an ancient priestly calendar handed down in the Book of Jubilees, which was a Hebrew text produced in the second half of the second century before Christ. This calendar leaves the cycles of the moon out of consideration and bases itself upon a year of 364 days, divided into four seasons, each consisting of three months, two of them thirty days long and one thirty-one days long. Each quarter year, then, has ninety-one days, which is exactly thirteen weeks, and each year has exactly fifty-two weeks. Accordingly, the liturgical feasts fall on the same weekday every year. For the Passover, this means that the fifteenth day of Nisan is always a Wednesday and the Passover meal is held after sunset on Tuesday evening. According to Jaubert, Jesus celebrated the Passover following this calendar, that is, on Tuesday evening, and was arrested during the night leading into Wednesday.

Jaubert sees here the solution to two problems: first, Jesus celebrated a real Passover meal, as the Synoptic tradition maintains; yet John is also right, in that the Jewish authorities, following their own calendar, did not celebrate the Passover until after Jesus’ trial, and Jesus was therefore executed on the vigil of the real Passover, not on the feast itself. Both the Synoptic and the Johannine traditions thus appear to be correct on the basis of the discrepancy between two different calendars.

The second advantage emphasized by Annie Jaubert shows at the same time the weakness of this attempted solution. She points out that the traditional chronologies (Synoptic and Johannine) have to compress a whole series of events into a few hours: the hearing before the Sanhedrin, Jesus being sent over to Pilate, Pilate’s wife’s dream, Jesus being handed over to Herod, his return to Pilate, the scourging, the condemnation to death, the way of the Cross, and the crucifixion. To accomplish all this in the space of a few hours seems scarcely possible, according to Jaubert. Her solution, though, provides a time frame from the night leading into Wednesday to the morning of Good Friday.

She also argues that Mark gives a precise sequence of events for “Palm Sunday”, Monday, and Tuesday, but then leaps directly to the Passover meal. According to the traditional dating, then, two days remain of which nothing is recounted. Finally, Jaubert reminds us that, if her theory is correct, the Jewish authorities could have succeeded in their plan to kill Jesus in good time before the feast. Pilate then delayed the crucifixion until Friday, so the theory goes, through his hesitations.

One argument against this redating of the Last Supper to Tuesday, of course, is the long tradition assigning it to Thursday, which we find clearly established as early as the second century. Jaubert responds by pointing to the second text on which her theory is based: the so-called Didascalia Apostolorum, a text from the early third century that places the Last Supper on Tuesday. She tries to show that this book preserved an old tradition, traces of which are also found in other texts.

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

Contor Accesări: 1320, Ultimul acces: 2026-09-25 23:32:19

Timp total: 0.04s...

[]:1