"Who Killed Jesus? A Personal Reflection" with Dr. Michael Rydelnik Transcripts
"…Christ-Killer…"
The first time I have ever heard that there had been someone named Jesus who had been killed, and the first time I ever heard the Jewish people were considered responsible today for that death, was when I was a small boy, going to, walking to Hebrew school. And as I walked, it was a snowy day, there was snow on the street, and some of the neighbor kids who were not Jewish took rocks and put snowballs around them. And flung them at us Jewish kids and shouted, "Christ-killer,
Christ-killer." And one of the boys got hit and was hurt pretty badly. I came home and I was pretty distressed. And I said, "Someone named Christ was killed and they were blaming me." And my mom told me about the Christ killer accusation that the Jewish people are said to be responsible for killing Jesus. And then she told me even that as a small boy, my brother had rocks thrown at him. And that's how he lost his eye when he was going to school for the same accusation.
"…a bias against Jewish people…"
I think it is important that we understand why Jewish people are so sensitive to the charge that they have killed Christ or why they are sensitive to the issues of the Gospels being portrayed in the way that they feel presents the Jewish people in a negative light. And it really has to do with history. And it is because when the Gentile Christians entered the church and began to read the Gospels, they read them with a presumption, a bias against Jewish people that they had already. And they read them in a way that sort of brought to them a meaning that they didn't have. And so by the 2nd century you have Justin Martyr who was the first great apologist, identifying the Jewish people as being uniquely guilty for killing Christ. And then Melito of Sardis does the same. And by the time you come to the church father John Chrysostom, who was the greatest preacher in the East. He was the golden-mouth preacher. And the most important theologian in the East, he wrote that for killing God, there is no expiation, no forgiveness possible. God always hated the Jews and it is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews. Now this leads to a thousand years of anti-Semitism of persecution on the part of Christians against Jews.
"…the source of hatred…"
There was a great historian, James Parkes, who wrote in his book, On the Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue that if you were to ask a medieval Christian, what is the source of his hatred of the Jewish people, he would automatically say the murder of Jesus. And so Jewish people were persecuted, the Crusaders persecuted Jews as Christ-killers and murdered them, horribly. There were massacres.
Throughout the history of the church, Jewish people were subject to massacres on Good Friday. There were accusations of Jewish people stealing the host and piercing it until it bled to reenact the crucifixion of Christ. And so as a result, Jewish people were persecuted, oppressed. It was the most dangerous weekend of the year, or the most dangerous week actually would be Holy Week when Christians would observe and remember the events of the crucifixion and hold their Jewish neighbors responsible. And as a result Jewish people are very, very sensitive to these charges.
"…murderers of God…"
It is important to understand the meaning of the word deicide. There is a deicide charge that the Jewish people have been accused with. And it is fairly simple. It says that all Jewish people and only Jewish people are perpetually guilty for killing Jesus. And since Jesus is God in the flesh, therefore, Jews are responsible for killing God. And therefore we get the term deicide, the "murder of God." This is the charge that has been the basis for anti-Semitism for the last 2,000 years.
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