The Trial and Death of Jesus: The Myth of “Christ Killers” and the “Criminal People”

Abstract

Christianity’s Understanding of its origins centers on the New Testament, particularly the poetic rendering in the gospels of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus, which is traditionally known as the Passion.⁵ In the gospels’ rendition and as interpreted for centuries, the Jews are perceived as “the Christ killers,” a people condemned forever to suffer exile and degradation. This archcrime of “deicide,” of murdering God, turned the Jews into the embodiment of evil, a “criminal people” cursed by God and doomed to wander and suffer tribulation to the end of time. No other religious tradition has condemned a people as the murderers of its god, a unique accusation that has resulted in a unique history of hatred, fear, and persecution. When it came to Jews, the central doctrine of Christianity, that Jesus was providentially sent into the world to atone by his death for mankind’s sins, was obscured.

Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine and to take vengeance upon the Muslims. But here are the, Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed him and crucified him groundlessly. Let us take vengeance first upon them. Let us wipe them out as a nation; Israel’s name will be mentioned no more.

—A chronicler of the first crusade, 1095–1099¹

It is true, as the laws declare, that in consequence of their sin [of rejecting and crucifying Jesus] the Jews were destined to perpetual servitude, so that sovereigns of states may treat Jewish goods as their own property.

—St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274²

As for the Jews, I am just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic Church had adopted for 1500 years.

—Chancellor Hitler to Bishop Berning, April 1933³

It is not just a matter of deportation. You will not die there of hunger and disease. They will slaughter all of you there, old and young alike, women and children, at once—it is the punishment that you deserve for the death of our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ—you have only one solution. Come over to our [Catholic] religion, and I will work to annul the decree.

—Bishop Kmetko’s reply to Rabbi Ungar, who asked him to intervene with the head of state, Monsignor Tiso, to prevent the deportation of Jews from Slovakia in 1943⁴