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The release of Mel Gibson’s controversial The Passion of the Christ
has certainly taken the box offices by storm. In the opening weekend in
the US it took in $76.2 million alone. This Hollywood epic, a gruesome
and vivid account of Jesus Christ’s final hours of suffering and
execution, stays more or less true to the Gospels, which in
turn, lays the blame for Christ’s crucifixion at the feet of the Jews.
This was clearly Gibson’s intention, a man who prides himself on being
a staunch Catholic and Christian Fundamentalist. We say that he remains
more or less true to the Gospels, because in actual fact Gibson allows
himself quite a lot of “licence” in developing his version of the
Passion.
The
scenes in the film of excruciating violence against Christ perpetrated
by the Roman soldiers in particular are breathtaking. You wince with
every blood-drenched lash. You cringe with every flesh-ripping
flagellation. The violence reaches a crescendo in the horror of
crucifixion, its preparation and execution. The use of Aramaic and
Latin language throughout the film adds dramatically to the
authenticity of the vivid images. Although it must be said that it was
unlikely that all the Roman soldiers spoke Latin, especially in that
part of the world. Greek would more likely have been the language they
used. Furthermore it is highly unlikely that Jesus would have spoken
Latin to Pontius Pilate. His language would have been Aramaic.
As
we said, Gibson is a staunch Catholic. He has been undoubtedly
influenced by his father, who has defined the present Pope (one of the
most reactionary on record!) as a “Koran-hugging” conspirator. His
father has even denied the fact that 6 million Jews were slaughtered by
the Nazis during the Holocaust. Apparently all those millions of Jews
living mainly in Poland had simply “emigrated”! Thus blaming the Jews
is clearly part of his anti-semitic education. Therefore the version of
the Passion that Gibson presents to us can be of no surprise.
Many
devout Catholics have emerged from the cinemas “uplifted” at what this
single man “did for them”. Many will accept Gibson’s version of the
events that are supposed to have taken place nearly two thousand years
ago. We will deal later with the question of what Christianity really
was, [and Kautsky in his book The Foundations of Christianity, deals at
length with the question of whether Jesus actually ever existed] but
before going on to that it would be worth reminding people of what the
Gospels actually recount.
The
whole story of the Passion, from the garden of Gethsemane to actual
crucifixion is described in two pages. The scourging of Christ is
mentioned in passing in just a few words. A few lines are dedicated to
describing the moment Jesus is taken away to the actual moment of his
death. According to three of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) Jesus
never carried the cross. Instead Simon of Cyrene carries it for him. It
is only the Gospel of St. John that says that Jesus went out “bearing
his own cross.” None of the Gospels mentions Jesus falling, not once!
In the film Jesus falls about ten times, almost crawling along!
According to Gibson’s version Satan follows Jesus throughout the walk,
but in the Gospels the devil never appears. Also Mary only appears at
the end, at the actual crucifixion, according to the Gospels, but in
Gibson’s story she also follows Jesus throughout.
So
where does Gibson get his story from? He bases his whole story on the
visions of the German mystic, Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774-1824). In
her visions she sees the devil. But Gibson even goes beyond the visions
of this mystic. Emmerick had a vision in which the angles helped Jesus
to carry the cross. Gibson ignores this. So what Gibson has done is to
take the story of a woman who lived 1800 years after the Passion is
supposed to have taken place and embellishes it further. He makes the
suffering of Jesus a thousand times worse than it actually was in the
Gospels.
The
purpose of all this is quite clear. It plays on the Catholic myth about
the terrible suffering of this man, “Gods’ son” who had come down to
clean away all our sins, who died “for us”. It really does follow in
the long tradition of re-writing and falsification of what actually
happened. If Gibson had been alive in the first few centuries after
Jesus he could have been employed in one of the monasteries where the
falsifications and later additions to the story took place!
There
is one concession that Gibson makes to the protests of people from the
Jewish community. In Matthew 27, 25 the Jews who were baying for Jesus’
blood are supposed to have said, “His blood be on us and on our
children!” Why they should say that is anyone’s guess. In reality it
was inserted into the text by later copiers to emphasise how evil the
Jews were, and to show that even their descendants carry the blame for
killing Jesus. A useful tool in the hands of today’s anti-semites! In
the film these words are uttered in Aramaic, but are not translated in
the English subtitles. Nonetheless, the blame on the Jews remains in
the eyes of Gibson.
In
spite of this Gibsonian interpretation of the Gospels, there remains a
powerful imagery. The man portrayed in the film suffers terribly.
However, despite all this you will learn nothing about early
Christianity from this film. It is not just an exaggerated version of
the Gospels. It also ignores what actually was happening at the time in
Jewish society and in the Roman Empire as a whole. And it does not
really explain how and why Christianity developed into the powerful
force that it did become. The social forces that lie behind this
earth-shattering movement of millions are absent. The film is totally
devoid of the hows and whys, and reduces everything to the suffering of
one man. It is a simple carbon copy of the tale – largely false – as
told by the evangelists of the betrayal of Christ, his crucifixion and
resurrection.
Christianity
constituted one of the most powerful movements in human history.
Supposedly based upon the revolutionary teachings of one man, Jesus
Christ, it has managed to survive, adapting itself to different class
societies and interests, for more than 2,000 years.
Today,
despite the deepening of our knowledge of this epoch, we are no nearer
resolving the enigma of Christ as a person. While Christianity
certainly existed at the time of the Roman Empire under the emperor
Tiberius, there is precious little evidence of the existence of Jesus
of Nazareth. Although he is supposed to have accomplished astonishing
feats, incredibly none of his contemporaries mentions him. At the time
of Jesus’s death, according to Christian tradition, the earth was in
darkness for three hours. And yet this occurrence, which supposedly
took place at the time of the elder Pliny, who devoted a special
chapter on eclipses in his Natural History, gets no mention.
In
fact, the only contemporary non-Christian sources of Christ the man,
Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, and Tacitus and Pliny, both
Romans, are either recognised forgeries introduced by later Christian
scholars, or are deadly silent about Christ’s work or doctrine.
Josephus relates so many trivialities, that the sensation around Jesus
Christ would certainly have been reported.
Of
the Christian sources, there are many, but they cannot be trusted for
historical accuracy. Karl Kautsky, in a brilliant book entitled
‘Foundations of Christianity’, written nearly 100 years ago, dissects
the early Christian writings from a materialist perspective.
“It
is certain that almost none of the early Christian writings are by the
authors whose names they bear; that most of them were written in later
times than the dates given them; and that their original text was often
distorted in the crudest way by later revisions and additions”, writes
Kautsky. “Finally, it is certain that none of the Gospels or other
early Christian writings comes from a contemporary of Jesus.”
For
example, the Gospel according to Mark is regarded as the oldest
account, probably written 50 years after the death of Christ. “What we
see is thus the product of half a century of legend-making.”
Mark
is followed by Luke, then Matthew, and lastly by John, some 100 years
after Christ’s recorded death. The later we get, the more exaggerated
and fantastic the miracle stories become. The Gospels are full of
inaccuracies and contradictions, where ideas are twisted to fit a
particular version of the story. According to Luke for instance, Joseph
and Mary have to leave Nazareth to go to Bethlehem on account of a
Roman census. In fact there was no such census under Augustus. Also
Judea became a Roman province only after the date given for Christ’s
birth. A census was made in 7 AD, but was carried out in the place
where people lived.
A
Roman census was for taxation purposes. They wanted to know where you
lived, what property you had, etc. Only the head of the family was
required to present himself in his town or village of residence.
Instead we have Joseph travelling to Bethlehem with the pregnant Mary,
because Bethlehem was the town of his forefathers. It would be like
filling in census form today not where you live but in the town of your
great-great-grandfather! In other words, there was no reason to travel
to Bethlehem. But if Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah, then he had
to be born in Bethlehem. That is what the prophets in the Old Testament
had predicted. The story of travelling to Bethlehem was clearly written
in later to prove that Jesus was the Messiah.
Thus,
while there are certain elements of truth contained in the Gospels,
they have been written, re-written and edited at the hands of later
Christian scholars, to the edification of the faithful. Each revision
was made according to the social needs of the time, and the adaptation
of the Christian church to class society. The process has parallels
with the Stalinist School of Falsification of the twentieth century.
Christianity
was formed in the four centuries from the beginning of the Imperial age
of Augustus to the barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman
Empire. The conquest of the Mediterranean and the subjugation of Judea
created great social turmoil. The Empire plundered the regions under
its domination serving to sharpen all social and class antagonisms
between patricians and plebeians, rich and poor. There was a growing
hatred of foreign domination. The Aramaic-speaking Galileans, of whom
Jesus was one, were also often in dispute with Jewish authorities in
Jerusalem. Given the social conditions, there was no shortage of
Messiahs at this time, where leaders of revolutionary bands and
prophets were continually springing up to challenge the existing order
of things. This was part of a general rise in Messianic movements and
the search for miracles among the lower classes.
Christianity
was only one of such sects, based originally on the most downtrodden
and oppressed layers of society. Christ, the Greek word for “the
anointed”, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”. The
Christian sect in Jerusalem, like the rest of the Jews, expected the
coming of the Messiah. Christianity was a movement of the oppressed,
and for that very reason, hated the rich, rejected private property,
embraced primitive communism, and sought to establish such a “kingdom
of God” on earth.
The
communist structure of the early Christian communities is described at
some length in the Acts of the Apostles: "And they continued
steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship [communism, koinonia],
and in breaking of bread, and in prayers... And all that believed were
together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and
goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." (2, verses
42 f.). "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and
of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he
possessed was his own; but they had all things common.... Neither was
there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of
lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that
were sold, And laid them down at the apostles' feet, and distribution
was made unto every man according as he had need." (4, verse 32 f.).
A
later Christian scholar, Saint John, called Chrysostom (347 to 407 AD),
attached to the above description of primitive Christian communism a
discussion of its advantages. This is in his eleventh homily (sermon)
on the Acts of the Apostles:
"Grace
was among them, since nobody suffered want, that is, since they gave so
willingly that no one remained poor. For they did not give a part,
keeping another part for themselves; they gave everything in their
possession. They did away with inequality and lived in great abundance;
and this they did in the most praiseworthy fashion. They did not dare
to put their offering into the hands of the needy, nor give it with
lofty condescension, but they laid it at the feet of the apostles and
made them the masters and distributors of the gifts. What a man needed
was then taken from the treasure of the community, not from the private
property of individuals. Thereby the givers did not become arrogant.
"Should
we do as much today, we should all live much more happily, rich as well
as poor; and the poor would not be more the gainers than the rich ...
for those who gave did not thereby become poor, but made the poor also
rich.
"Let
us imagine things as happening in this way: All give all that they have
into a common fund. No one would have to concern himself about it,
neither the rich nor the poor. How much money do you think would be
collected? I infer - for it cannot be said with certainty - that if
every individual contributed all his money, his lands, his estates, his
houses (I will not speak of slaves, for the first Christians had none,
probably giving them their freedom), then a million pounds of gold
would be obtained, and most likely two or three times that amount. Then
tell me how many people our city [Constantinople] contains? How many
Christians? Will it not come to a hundred thousand? And how many pagans
and Jews! How many thousands of pounds of gold would be gathered in?
And how many of the poor do we have? I doubt that there are more than
fifty thousand. How much would be required to feed them daily? If they
all ate at a common table, the cost could not be very great. What could
we not undertake with our huge treasure! Do you believe it could ever
be exhausted? And will not the blessing of God pour down on us a
thousand-fold richer? Will we not make a heaven on earth? If this
turned out so brilliantly for three or five thousand [the first
Christians] and none of them was in want, how much more would this be
so with such a great quantity? Will not each newcomer add something
more?
"The
dispersion of property is the cause of greater expenditure and so of
poverty. Consider a household with man and wife and ten children. She
does weaving and he goes to the market to make a living; will they need
more if they live in a single house or when they live separately?
Clearly, when they live separately. If the ten sons each go his own
way, they need ten houses, ten tables, ten servants and everything else
in proportion. And how of the mass of slaves? Are these not fed at a
single table, in order to save money? Dispersion regularly leads to
waste, bringing together leads to economy. That is how people now live
in monasteries and how the faithful once lived. Who died of hunger
then? Who was not fully satisfied? And yet men are more afraid of this
way of life than of a leap into the endless sea. If only we made the
attempt and took bold hold of the situation! How great a blessing there
would be as a result! For if at that time, when there were so few
faithful, only three to five thousand, if at that time, when the whole
world was hostile to us and there was no comfort anywhere, our
predecessors were so resolute in this, how much more confidence should
we have today, when by God's grace the faithful are everywhere! Who
would still remain a heathen? Nobody, I believe. Every one would come
to us and be friendly.”
This
was written at a time when the early “Communism” of the Christian
communities had become a distant memory, and Christianity was becoming
the accepted religion of the state.
As
Kautsky point out, the problem with the early Christian was that they
had a “communism of consumption” and not of production. They consumed
all their wealth in common, but there was no communist economic system
whereby the material needs of society could be produced. Thus every
time a wealthy Roman was converted to Christianity he would be required
to bring his wealth with him. In this lay the basis for the corruption
of the early Christian communities. They were pushed into adapting
their religion to the needs of the wealthy. As we will see later, with
this went a re-writing of the story of Jesus. Instead of being an
anti-imperialist who was crucified by the Romans, the story had to be
changed. The Romans were no longer to blame for the killing of Jesus.
Now it became the hated Jews who killed Jesus, a much more acceptable
version to the wealthy Romans who were being won over. It was no doubt
in this period that Matthew’s phrase (27, 25) was inserted into the
story.
The
Temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem, rebuilt by Herod, was the appointed
place of worship for Jews. The Temple was not simply a church, but had
huge warehouses, where vast amounts of goods, gold and silver were
stored. It was here that the moneylenders went about their daily
business. The Temple became a centre of struggle between the corrupt
Temple hierarchy, the Sadducees, and the majority of the people led by
the Pharisees. The Sadducees represented the priestly nobility,
dominated the Temple and received all its taxes. As its wealth grew,
the priesthood set itself above the mass of the people. However, the
Pharisees were also divided on class lines, between rich and poor. The
wealthier Pharisees constituted the moderate, more timid wing. Those on
the extreme left were the Millenary sects, most notably the Zealots and
Essenes, a communistic order, which based themselves on the
propertyless of Jerusalem and Galilee.
Through
this period, a series of insurrections against Roman rule were savagely
suppressed. It is no accident that their leaders described themselves
as Kings of the Jews, that is, the Messiah. Jesus’s crucifixion, if
historical, was a by-product of the struggles between the revolutionary
mass, the church hierarchy, and the appointees of the Roman authority;
by 73 AD the Romans had destroyed the Temple - its Western Wall is its
only surviving section.
The
Jews had spread out around the Mediterranean and many had become
Hellenised. Greek was the language of the educated classes, and
Alexandria an important centre of Jewish intellectual life.
Nevertheless, Judea and Jerusalem remained the cornerstone of the
Jewish nation, the capital of Judaism. It became the eye of the storm
that gathered against Rome.
In
1947, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a cave in
Qumran, which cast light on the period of early Christianity.
Initially, the Catholic Church saw in them proof of Christ’s existence,
but they were sorely disappointed. Consequently, they remained under
lock and key and only made available by the Vatican in 1991. Until this
find, barely a scrap of papyrus existed from the two centuries
immediately preceding the birth of Christ. The scrolls are the
documents of the Essenes sect, who lived near Qumran about 250 BC,
based upon a revolutionary communist doctrine and an ascetic piety as
they waited for the end of days. The Essenes were one of the
forerunners or roots of early Christianity, some 250 years before the
birth of Christ! The evidence of the Scrolls confirmed the analysis of
Karl Kautsky, made some 50 years before their discovery.
“Their
documents were copies of the Bible, by 500 years the earliest known
Hebrew copies”, explains Justin Cartwright, an authority on the
Scrolls. “There are also pesharim, or Bible commentaries, rules of the
community, laws for admission, orders of service and hymns, a
(probably) allegorical guide to hidden treasures, and an account of the
war between the sons of light and darkness. There are 50,000 fragments
and many have phrases which resonate through the New Testament, which
led to rumours that these were early Christian documents and that the
sect leader, the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’, was Jesus.”
In
other words, the Scrolls contained similar thoughts and stories,
earlier versions if you like, that were contained in the New Testament,
written more than 300 years later. The basis of the Gospels, the
threads of which are present in the Scrolls, pre-dated the supposed
birth of Christ by 250 years.
The
sect of the Essenes had been chronicled by Pliny, Philo and Josephus.
Josephus, writing only a few years after the destruction of the Temple,
described their habits in detail. The rules of the community in the
Dead Sea Scrolls were identical to those described by Josephus. The
Essenes had come to life, and a whole branch of Judaism had been
disinterred. Pliny described the location of the Essene settlement (and
mentions the unpleasant smell of the Dead Sea), and Josephus appeared
to make Qumran prime candidate for the sect’s revolutionary centre.
Inkwells were found there and rooms which, were possibly a library and
a refectory, were excavated. Not far away, scrolls and leather
workshops were found in the surrounding caves.
The
fact is that the Essenes were not alone. There were a number of Jewish
sects, including the Essenes. Christianity was originally no more than
a Jewish sect, turning to the scriptures for justification, looking for
a Messiah, hopeful of a new order on earth. The revolutionary
standpoint of these early Christian sects appears as a thread running
through the New Testament, but distorted and concealed by later
revisions.
The
original class hatred of the early Christians pours out for instance in
Luke’s early version of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed be ye poor:
for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye
shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh… But
woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe
unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh
now! for ye shall mourn and weep.” But compare this to the later
version of the revisionist Matthew where Jesus is made to say: “Blessed
are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed
are they, which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they
shall be filled.”
In
Matthew it is the poor “in spirit” (covering all social classes) that
are blessed. The Church had become more respectable and accommodated
itself to slavery, and wanted now to renounce its earlier class-war
language. It wanted to break from its proletarian origins.
The
early message comes through clearly in the Gospel according to Luke,
especially in the story of Lazarus, the rich are damned for being rich.
Here Jesus says: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s
eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (18, verses
24 f.)
The
same goes for the epistle of James: “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and
howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are
corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is
cankered: and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and
shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together
for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped
down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the
cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord
of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye
have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned
and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore,
brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” (5, verse 1 f.).
Mel Gibson’s film of Christ’s Passion peddles the stories of the Gospels at face value. Yet they are full of contradictions.
The
original story that Jesus was crucified by the Romans as a Jewish
Messiah, as king of the Jews, that is a defender of Jewish independence
and a traitor to Roman rule, presented some difficulty to later
Christian scribes, eager to ingratiate themselves with the powers that
be. Firstly, by this time Christianity had come into conflict with
Judaism, and secondly, the Christian church wanted to be on good terms
with Roman power. The ‘difficulty’ was resolved by shifting the blame
for the crucifixion on to the Jews and hatred of Rome left out
altogether. The Passion was therefore rewritten to satisfy the new
orthodoxy.
Kautsky demolishes these falsifications in the chapter of his book entitled, ‘The Story of Christ’s Passion’:
“The
story of the Passion begins with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It
is the triumphal procession of a king. The populace comes to meet him,
some spread their garments in the road before him, others cut branches
from the trees to strew his way, and all exult to him:
“
‘Hosanna [help us]; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord:
Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of
the Lord’ (Mark II, verse 9 f.).
“This was how kings were received among the Jews (compare Jehu in II Kings 9, verse 13).
“All
the common people follow Jesus; only the aristocracy and bourgeoisie,
the ‘chief priests and scribes,’ are hostile to him. Jesus behaves like
a dictator. He is strong enough to drive the sellers and moneychangers
from the temple without meeting with any resistance. In this citadel of
Judaism he rules supreme.
“Of
course this is just tall talk on the part of the evangelists. If Jesus
had ever had such power, it would not have gone unnoticed. An author
like Josephus, who recounts the most insignificant details, would have
had to mention it. Moreover, the proletarian elements in Jerusalem,
like the Zealots, were never strong enough to rule the city
uncontested. They kept meeting with resistance. If Jesus intended to
enter Jerusalem in opposition to the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and
clean out the temple, he would first have to win in a street battle.
Street fighting among the various factions in Judaism were every day
occurrences in Jerusalem at that time.
“A
noteworthy aspect of the account of his entrance is that the story has
the populace greet Jesus as bringer of the ‘kingdom of our father
David,’ that is, as the restorer of the independence of the Jewish
kingdom. That shows Jesus not merely as an opponent of the ruling
classes in Judaism, but as opposing the Romans as well. In this
opposition there is obviously not Christian imagination, but Jewish
reality.
“The
gospels now relate those events we have already dealt with: the call to
the disciples to arm themselves, Judas' betrayal, the armed conflict on
the Mount of Olives. We have already seen that these are remnants of
the old tradition, that were not acceptable later and refurbished to
give an air of peaceable submission.
Jesus is taken, led to the palace of the high priest and tried there:
“
‘And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against
Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many bare false witness
against him, but their witness agreed not together. ... And the high
priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou
nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? But he held his
peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said
unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said,
I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent
his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have
heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be
guilty of death.’ (Mark 14, verses 55 f.).
“A
strange sort of trial procedure, indeed! The court convenes immediately
after the arrest of the prisoner, in the night time, and not in the
court building, which apparently was on the Temple hill, but in the
palace of the high priest! Imagine the trustworthiness of a report of a
trial for high treason in Germany that has the court sitting in the
royal palace in Berlin! Now false witnesses testify against Jesus, but
although nobody cross-examines them, and Jesus is silent at their
charges, they produce no evidence that incriminates him. Jesus is the
first to incriminate himself by acknowledging that he is the Messiah.
Now what is the purpose of all the apparatus of the false witnesses if
this admission is enough to condemn Jesus? Their only purpose is to
show the wickedness of the Jews. The death sentence is immediately
pronounced. This is a violation of the prescribed forms to which the
Jews of that time adhered most scrupulously. The court was allowed to
bring in only a verdict of acquittal at once; a verdict of guilty had
to wait until the day after the trial.
“Was
the Sanhedrin still allowed to pronounce death sentences at that time?
The Talmud says: ‘Forty years before the destruction of the Temple the
power of life and death was taken from Israel.’
“A
confirmation of this is to be found in the fact that the Sanhedrin does
not inflict the punishment of Jesus, but after finishing his trial
turns him over to Pilate for a new trial, this time on the charge of
high treason towards the Romans, the charge that he had tried to make
himself king of the Jews, that is, free Judea from the Roman rule. A
fine accusation on the part of a court of Jewish patriots!
“It
is possible that the Sanhedrin did have the right to pass sentence of
death, but that such sentences needed the sanction of the procurator.
“Now what happens before the Roman governor?
“
‘And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering
said unto him, Thou sayest it. And the chief priests accused him of
many things: but he answered nothing. And Pilate asked him again,
saying, Answerest thou nothing? behold how many things they witness
against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled.
Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they
desired. And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them
that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the
insurrection. And the multitude crying aloud began to desire him to do
as he had ever done unto them. But Pilate answered them, saying, Will
ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? For he knew. that the
chief priests had delivered him for envy. But the chief priests moved
the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And
Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I
shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out
again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he
done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him. And so
Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and
delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.’ (Mark 15,
2 f.).
“In
Matthew Pilate goes so far as to wash his hands before the multitude
and declare, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to
it.’ And all the people declare, ‘His blood be on us, and on our
children.’
“Luke says nothing to the effect that the Sanhedrin sentences Jesus; they appear merely as complainants before Pilate.
“
‘And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. And
they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the
nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he
himself is Christ a King. And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the
King of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it. Then
said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in
this man. And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the
people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this
place.’ (Luke 28, verse 1 f.).
“Luke
must come closest to the truth. Here Jesus is directly accused of high
treason before Pilate, and with proud courage does not deny his guilt.
Asked by Pilate whether he is the king of the Jews, that is, their
leader in their fight for independence, Jesus declares, ‘Thou sayest
it.’ The Gospel according to St. John feels how embarrassing this
remnant of Jewish patriotism is, and therefore makes Jesus answer, ‘My
kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then
would my servants fight.’ Now John is the latest gospel; and so it took
a fairly long time for the Christian writers to make up their minds to
commit this falsification of the original facts.
“The
matter before Pilate was obviously a very simple one. In having the
rebel Jesus executed he was merely doing his duty as representative of
Roman authority.
“The
masses of Jews, on the contrary, had not the slightest reason to be
angry at a man who wanted none of the Roman rule and called for
refusing to pay taxes to the Emperor. If Jesus really did that, he was
acting entirely in accord with the Zealots, the dominating trend among
the population of Jerusalem at that time.
“If
we take the accusation given in the Gospels as authentic, the natural
thing to expect would be that the Jews should be sympathetic to Jesus
and that Pilate should condemn him.
“What
do the Gospels tell us? Pilate does not find the slightest guilt in
Jesus, although Jesus admits it himself. The governor keeps repeating
that the accused is innocent, and asking what evil he has committed?
“This is strange enough. But still stranger, although Pilate does not admit the guilt of Jesus, he still does not set him free.
“Now
it happened now and then that a procurator found a political case too
complicated to decide by himself. But it is unheard of that an official
of the Roman Emperor should try to get out of his uncertainty by asking
the mass of the people what should be done with the accused. If he did
not himself want to condemn a traitor, he would have to send him to the
Emperor in Rome. For instance, this was done by the procurator Antonius
Felix (52 to 60). He enticed the head of the Zealots of Jerusalem, the
guerrilla chief Eleazar who had kept the land unsafe for twenty years,
by a promise of safe-conduct, took him prisoner and sent him to Rome.
He had many of his followers crucified, however.
“Pilate
too could have sent Jesus to Rome; but the role that Matthew has him
playing is simply ridiculous: a Roman judge, a representative of the
Emperor Tiberius, with power of life and death, begging an assembly of
the people to Jerusalem to allow him to set the accused man free and
answering their shouts of refusal by saying, ‘Well, put him to death, I
am innocent in the matter!’
“This
was not the way the historical Pilate acted. Agrippa I, in a letter to
Philo, calls Pilate ‘an inflexible and ruthless character,’ and
reproaches him for ‘bribe-taking, acts of violence, robberies,
misdeeds, offences, constant executions without trials, endless and
intolerable brutalities.’
“His
harshness and ruthlessness created such intolerable conditions that it
became too much even for the central government in Rome and he was
recalled (36 A.D.).
And
this was the man who is supposed to have shown the proletarian traitor
Jesus such extreme love of justice and mercy, exceeded only,
unfortunately for the defendant, by his idiotic weakness toward the
people.
“The
evangelists were too ignorant to be amazed at that, and yet they might
have had an inkling that they were assigning too strange a role to the
Roman governor. They looked for something to make it look more
credible; they report that the Jews were accustomed to having Pilate
release a prisoner to them at Easter, and when he now offered them the
release of Jesus, they answered, ‘No, we should rather have the
murderer Barabbas.’
“It
is strange that nothing is known of such a custom anywhere but in the
Gospels. It is contrary to Roman institutions, which did not give
governors any right to pardon. And it is contrary to any orderly law to
give the right to pardon not to some responsible body but to a crowd
that has happened to come together. Legal conditions of this kind can
be taken at face value only by theologians.
“But
even if we are willing to let that pass and accept the singular
pardoning power of the Jewish crowd as it chances to congregate around
the procurator's lodgings, the question still arises, what does this
power to pardon have to do with the case in question?
“For
Jesus has not yet been legally sentenced. Pontius Pilate is faced with
the question: Is Jesus guilty of high treason or no? He answers with
the question: Do you want to use your power to pardon in his favour, or
no?
“Pilate
has to give sentence, and instead of doing so appeals to the pardoning
power! Does he not have the power to set Jesus free if he considers him
innocent?
“Now
a new monstrosity appears. The Jews allegedly have the right to pardon;
and how do they exercise it? Are they content with asking the release
of Barabbas? No, they demand the crucifixion of Jesus! The evangelists
evidently imagine that the right to pardon one gives rise as well to
the right to condemn the other.
“This mad kind of administration of justice is matched by an equally mad sort of politics.
“The
evangelists show us a mob that hates Jesus to such a degree that it
pardons a murderer rather than him; precisely a murderer--this mob
found no worthier object to pardon--; and it is not quiet until Jesus
is led to be crucified.
“Now
consider that this is the same mob that a few days earlier had greeted
him with hosannas as a king, strewing his path with garments and
hailing him with one voice, without any contradiction. It was just this
devotion on the part of the multitude that according to the Gospels was
the reason why the aristocrats had designs on Jesus' life but dared not
arrest him by day, choosing the night time instead. And now this same
mob is inspired just as unanimously with the wildest, most fanatical
hatred against him--against the man who was accused of a crime that in
the eyes of every Jewish patriot made him worthy of the greatest
honour: an attempt to free the Jewish commonwealth from foreign rule.
“What
has happened to produce this astonishing change of attitude? The most
powerful kind of motives would be required to make it plausible. The
evangelists however stammer out a few ridiculous phrases, insofar as
they say anything at all on the subject. Luke and John do not furnish
any motivation. Mark says: ‘The chief priests moved the people" against
Jesus, and Matthew, that they "persuaded the multitude.’
“All
that these phrases prove is how badly the last shred of political
feeling and political knowledge had been lost to the Christian writers.
“Now
no matter how much a mass of people may be lacking in character, it
will not be led into fanatical hatred without some basis. The basis may
be foolish or vile, but there must be some basis. In the evangelists'
account the Jewish multitude outdoes the most infamous and idiotic
stage villain in idiotic infamy, for without the slightest foundation,
the least motive, it rages for the blood of the same man it was
worshipping only the day before. The matter becomes even more idiotic
when we take the political conditions of the time into consideration.
The Jewish commonwealth, unlike practically every other part of the
Roman Empire, had an uncommonly vigorous political life, with all its
social and political contrasts carried to their extreme. The political
parties were well organized, and disciplined. Zealotism had completely
won over the lower classes of Jerusalem, and they were constantly in
bitter opposition to the Sadducees and Pharisees, and full of the
fiercest hatred toward Rome. Their best allies were the rebellious
Galileans.
“Even
if the Sadducees and Pharisees had succeeded in ‘moving’ some elements
of the people against Jesus, they could never have managed to get a
unanimous demonstration, but at best a bitter street battle. There
could hardly be a more fantastic idea than that of Zealots throwing
themselves with wild screams, not on Romans and aristocrats, but on the
accused rebel, whose execution they extort with fanatical rage from the
Roman commander.
“A more childish monstrosity has never been dreamed up.
“After
the evangelists have succeeded in this brilliant way in presenting the
bloody Pilate as an innocent lamb, and the innate depravity of Judaism
as the real cause of the crucifixion of the harmless and peaceful
Messiah, they are exhausted. Their vein of invention gives out for the
moment and the old account comes into its own temporarily. Jesus is
mocked at and mistreated after his condemnation, but not by the Jews,
but by the soldiers of that very Pilate who had just declared him
guiltless. Now he has his soldiers not only crucify him but first
scourge him and mock him for his Jewish kingdom: a crown of thorns is
put on his head, a purple cloak set on him, and then they strike him in
the face and spit at him. Finally they fasten to his cross the
inscription: Jesus, King of the Jews.
“In
this the original character of the catastrophe appears clearly once
more. Here the Romans are the bitter enemies of Jesus, and the basis of
their hatred as of their mockery is his high treason, his aspiring to
the Jewish throne, his effort to shake off the alien domination of the
Romans.
“Unfortunately this glimmering of the simple truth does not last long.
“Jesus
dies, and the task is now to prove by a series of stage effects that a
god had died:
"'Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded
up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain
from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks
rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which
slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and
went into the holy city, and appeared unto many'" (Matthew 27, verses 50
f.).
“The
evangelists do not report what the resurrected ‘saints’ did during and
after their group excursion to Jerusalem, whether they remained alive
or decently lay down again in their graves. In any case it would be
expected that such an extraordinary event would have an overpowering
effect on all who witnessed it and convince everybody of the divinity
of Jesus. But the Jews remain obdurate even now. It is still only the
Romans who bow down before the deity.
“
‘Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus,
saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared
greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.’ (Matthew 27, verse 54).
“The
chief priests and Pharisees however, declare Jesus a deceiver, despite
everything (Matthew 27, verse 63), and when he rises from the dead,
that has no effect beyond the bribe we spoke of before, given to the
Roman eyewitnesses to make them brand the miracle as a deception.
“Thus
at the end of the Passion story we still have Jewish corruption turning
the honest Roman soldiers into tools of Jewish trickery and baseness,
which opposes devilish rage to the noblest divine forgiveness.
“All
through this story the trend to servility toward the Romans and hatred
toward the Jews is laid on so thick and described with such a mass of
nonsense that one should think it would not have the slightest
influence on thinking men. And yet we know that it was only too
successful in accomplishing its ends. This tale, illuminated by the
glorious light of divinity, ennobled by the martyrdom of the proud
confessor of a high mission, was for many centuries one of the most
effective means of arousing hatred and contempt for Jews even among
very kindly spirits in Christendom. This story served to brand Jews as
the scum of mankind, as a race naturally wicked and obdurate, which
must be kept away from all human association and kept down with an iron
hand.
“But
it would have been impossible for this conception of Judaism ever to
have gained currency if it had not arisen in a period of general hatred
and persecution of the Jews.
“Born of the outlawry of the Jews, it infinitely reinforced, prolonged and extended that outlawry.
“What
was presented as the story of the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ is
nothing more than evidence of the suffering of the Jewish people.”
Today,
the hierarchies of the Christian Churches have long ago made their
peace with capitalism. The Catholic Church in particular, has always
supported the most reactionary forces in society. It resisted the
bourgeois revolutions and sided with the landed aristocracy. Only once
capitalism had become an established fact did it decide that its
fortunes were best protected by siding with the new power.
Now
George Bush and Tony Blair, the modern-day Sadducees and Pharisees, use
their Christianity as moral justification for war and conquest, in much
the same way as the Christian Emperors of Rome and the Absolute
Monarchies of Feudal society.
The
communism of the early Christians, as expressed in the Acts of the
Apostles, has been all but buried. This was inevitable, given the
limited development of the means of production.
The
idea of an egalitarian society now falls not to religion, but to the
struggles of the modern proletariat. Capitalism has now created the
material basis upon which a genuine Communist society can rest. Only a
socialist revolution can bring about such a society, where the fruits
of our labour will be common property. The dreams of more than two
millennia will be realised in the world socialist society of the
twenty-first century, on the principle of from each according to his
ability to each according to his need. Through common effort, we shall
create such a Paradise on Earth for our children and grandchildren for
all eternity!
April 18, 2004
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