Jesus Christ was Jewish; “The Jews did not kill Jesus”

… Jesus was killed by the Romans

One of the challenges for American Christians is acknowledging some basic truths. First, Jesus Christ was the son of two Jewish parents, and he was born in Nazareth. 

The other has to do with his skin. Those from Nazareth, in Israel, have brown skin, not white. 

So, why does the book of John refer to the Jews trying to kill Jesus?

Father James Martin raised this issued last week. He is working on a book right now about the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and this part about the Jews trying to kill Jesus is in John’s gospel. 

The background

Why are “the Jews” written about by John in such derogatory terms, particularly when Jesus has been called "King of the Jews"?

Though “the Jews” are described as friends of Lazarus’s sisters Martha and Mary and grieve over Lazarus’s death, in John’s Gospel they are often portrayed in the most negative of terms (as they are in today’s readings), with “the Jews” trying to kill Jesus.

 

We may be so used to this term in John’s Gospel that we overlook how odd it is to read. After all, John understood that Jesus and his disciples (not to mention Jesus’s mother and extended family) were Jews themselves. And elsewhere in his Gospel, John has Jesus say to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Salvation comes from the Jews.”

 

One of the most helpful books in understanding Jesus’s Jewish background is Amy-Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. In this scholarly but accessible book, Professor Levine, who teaches New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University, examines not only the effect of passages like today’s Gospel in which “the Jews” are cast as villains, but also the variety of Jewish beliefs and practices in Jesus’ time, as well as, crucially, the lazy stereotypes that theologians and preachers have passed on in the laziest of ways. 

James Martin, S.J., “No, ‘the Jews’ did not kill Jesus,” America, April 1, 2022

Who was responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion?

Father Martin makes clear that the people who killed Jesus Christ are the Romans, not the Jews,

The straightforward answer is the Romans, since only they had the authority to put a person to death, in this case Jesus.  Yet centuries of Bible commentaries about the role of “the Jews,” especially in John’s Gospel, gave rise to centuries of deadly sentiments of anti-Judaism (against the Jewish religion) and anti-Semitism (against the Jewish people themselves).

 

It’s essential as we read today’s Gospel and, later on, the Passion narratives to remember the words of the Second Vatican Council’s beautiful document “Nostra Aetate”: “In her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

James Martin, S.J., America, April 1, 2022

In short, the crucifixion of Jesus is an act of capital punishment, done by the state, the Roman state, which is why capital punishment is one of those violations of the commandment that says, “Thou shalt not kill.”

Yes, killing is wrong, but failing to remember that Jesus was a Jew is also wrong. 

And that is very clear.