Matthew 27:11 - 26
11 Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied.
12 When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. 13 Then Pilate asked him, “Don’t you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?” 14 But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor.
15 Now it was the governor’s custom at the festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. 16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus[b] Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” 18 For he knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.
19 While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”
20 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.
21 “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor.
“Barabbas,” they answered.
22 “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked.
They all answered, “Crucify him!”
23 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
25 All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”
26 Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
Question:
ReplyDeleteWhy did the people say that Jesus' blood were on them and their children? What did they mean?
https://www.levitt.com/essays/bloodlibel.html says:
ReplyDeleteMatthew 27:25 arguably stands out as one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted passages in all of Holy Scripture. Of the proposed interpretations for Matthew 27:25, the anti-Jewish interpretation is the oldest and most frequently cited in the history of the Church. This view says the Jewish people are permanently guilty and condemned in the eyes of God for their murder of Jesus Christ. As such, the cry of “His blood be upon us” means that the Jewish crowd in Jerusalem admitted full guilt for killing the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby invoked God’s curse upon themselves and their descendants until the end of time. This interpretation first surfaced in the writings of the early church fathers in the second century AD. It became universally accepted by the Middle Ages. The result, among other things, was the slanderous accusation that all Jews were “Christ killers” and “murderers of God.” Sadly, this is still a widespread belief in the Church today.
The anti-Jewish interpretation of Matthew 27:25 provided a convenient excuse for outright persecution and slaughter of the Chosen People and the unwarranted replacement of Israel in God’s plan with the Church by Replacement Theology.
When looking at the context of Matthew’s Gospel (specifically, chapters 26 and 27) it is quite obvious that the entire Jewish race was not totally responsible for having Jesus crucified. Matthew 26 and 27 informs the reader that one individual and three distinct groups were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. They are (1) Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus into the hands of the Jewish authorities (Matt. 26:14–16; 47–50); (2) the Jewish leaders. This group was made up of Caiphas the High Priest, the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes. They united to form the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem which tried Jesus on the charge of blasphemy (Matt. 26:47, 57–67; 27:1–2, 5, 18, 25); (3) the Romans, comprised of the Procurator Pontius Pilate who handed Jesus over to be crucified and the Roman soldiers who actually nailed Jesus to the cross (Matt. 27:11–37); (4) the Jewish mob of Jerusalem. Though their role in Matthew 27 seems passive and subordinated under the control and influence of the chief priests and elders, their guilt in the death of Christ cannot be overlooked. They had the opportunity afforded them by Pilate to have Jesus released, but they chose instead a criminal named Barabbas (Matt 27:17, 20–26).
https://www.levitt.com/essays/bloodlibel.html continued:
ReplyDeleteThe meaning of “children” in the cry of the crowd in Matthew 27:25 does not mean all the subsequent descendants of those Jews who rejected Christ in Matthew 26 and 27. The word in the Greek text of Matthew can also mean a child of parents. In the context of verse 25 it refers to the offspring of the unbelieving Jews of Jerusalem who shouted for Christ to be crucified. This at once limits the meaning to only one generation and corresponds with the judgment of Jerusalem in AD 70.
The same word and meaning for “children” used in Matthew 27:25 is also used in Luke 23:28 where Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem that would fall on them and their “children” for the city’s rejection and mistreatment of Him. In Matthew 23:37–39 Jesus rebuked the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem for not letting Him take them and their “children” under His protective wing. The scope of God’s judgment for the crucifixion of His Son applies and was limited to the city of Jerusalem and certain inhabitants among the religious leaders and common people who orchestrated the plot to have Jesus killed. It does not extend to their Jewish descendants or national posterity in Israel today.
Later, on the day of Pentecost, the remission of sins through Christ’s shed blood was offered to these same Jewish conspirators by Peter as recorded in the book of Acts. God had not already condemned them, or for that matter all Jews, for the death of Christ. The offer of God’s pardon through Christ was in fact extended to all of them and their “children” if they chose to repent (Acts 2:22–39; 3:13–26; 4:4–15).
If indeed Matthew 27:25 meant the Jews are in fact condemned as a race for killing Christ, should not the Italian descendants of the ancient Romans also be condemned for nailing Jesus to the cross? Those within the Church who have favored the anti-Jewish interpretation of Matthew 27:25 would do well to at least be consistent with their racist interpretation. The reason they are not is because they are exclusively biased against the Jewish people.
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2015/05/25/his-blood-be-upon-us-the-use-of-mt-2725-and-acts-410-in-patristic-writers/ says:
ReplyDeleteIf the question is being agitated, for whatever reason, then the first thing to do is to establish the facts. A Google search on “Christ killer” – which is a term supposedly used by Christians about Jews – reveals copious invective but a remarkable lack of actual patristic data.
The first impression is that the early Christians were not, in the main, concerned with attitudes to Jews. The translation of the Ante-Nicene Fathers fills 5,000 large double-column pages, without including the homilies of Origen; the post-Nicene fathers probably ten times as much. So these quotations are an infinitesimally tiny portion of their work. The Fathers were concerned with their own identity as Christians, and how to understand the Old Testament, and relate it to themselves. They were not concerned with demonising Jews, by race or religion, so much as with connecting themselves with OT prophecy. Since, prior to 313 AD, they held no political power, any such attitudes would have meant nothing anyway.
We must never forget that the history of Israel in the Old Testament is that of the people with whom God is dealing, and the church does not reject the OT, but accepts it. The sins and failings of Israel are a theme that any exegesis must deal with; and “Israel” in this context also means the church, rather than an alien racial/religious group.
But while this approach persists, and is still found copiously in the post-Nicene commentaries, a pronounced hostility to Jews as Jews does start to appear, after the legalisation of the church, particularly towards the end of the 4th century. It is clearest in Chrysostom’s Adversus Judaeos, where the tone is a bitter one. Any reader of ecclesiastical histories will know that the same tone also appears towards heretical groups, together with an eagerness to identify opponents as “heretics” in order to demonise, marginalise, and extirpate. Hate is becoming good politics; and expressing it has become a way to signal the speaker’s own virtue against those awful other people. This evil habit of the Byzantine period begins during this time.
Much the most interesting reference is one in ps.Cyprian, which reveals that, rather than Christians taunting Jews as Christ-killers, some Jewish polemicists were not above taunting the Christians with the fact that the Jews had put the god of the Christians to death! Tertullian in his Apologeticum also records a debauched Jew parading wearing the head of a donkey, as an anti-Christian act. No doubt while Christianity was illegal, and Judaism was not, such incidents did take place. Once Christianity was legal, and favoured by emperor after emperor, the boot was on the other foot.
http://www.gotquestions.org/His-blood-be-on-us.html says:
ReplyDeleteSome people believe that the Jews are cursed because they killed the Son of God. This belief is sometimes used to justify anti-Semitism and feelings of prejudice against the Jewish people. This is not a biblical idea. The Jews’ rejection of their Messiah did have its consequences, but the Bible does not speak of a continuing curse upon God’s chosen people.
Yes, the mob at Jesus’ trial was comprised of Jews gathered in Jerusalem for Passover, but they were incited by religious leaders who had rejected Jesus years earlier (Matthew 12:14). The mob’s ringleaders bear the most responsibility, as does Pilate, who presided over such a travesty of justice. Also, the mob’s self-indictment was spoken by some Jews, not all of them. Jesus was a Jew, as were all His disciples, and they certainly did not call a curse upon themselves.
The Jewish nation did indeed suffer for their rejection of their Messiah. On His way to the cross, Jesus hints at a coming judgment (Luke 23:31). Within one generation of the crucifixion of Christ, Jerusalem was totally destroyed by the Romans. The Jews were scattered, and for almost 1,900 years (until 1948), they had no homeland. There were spiritual ramifications, as well, as the gospel was brought to the more receptive Gentiles (see Acts 18:6). The apostle Paul likens the Gentiles’ inclusion in salvation to wild branches being grafted into a cultivated olive tree. The Jews (the natural branches) are not completely forsaken: “If they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (Romans 11:23).
In rejecting Christ, the Jews “stumbled over the stumbling stone” (Romans 9:32; cf. Isaiah 8:14). But they are not cursed by God. Paul asks the rhetorical question: “Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew” (Romans 11:1–2). In fact, there is coming a time when “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).
People reap what they sow (Galatians 6:7), and disobedience brings sorrow. When the people of Israel fell into gross, unrepentant idolatry, they lost their land for the 70 years of the Babylonian exile (Jeremiah 29:10). When they rejected their Messiah, they lost their land for even longer. Jesus “came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). But God’s promise still stands: “The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: ‘Say to Daughter Zion, “See, your Savior comes!”’ . . . They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted” (Isaiah 62:11–12).