> Blasphemy > against the Jewish God, which they believed Jesus guilty of, while a > capital offense in the Law of Moses, was not any sort of offense at all > under Roman law. So those Jews (note that I am not saying all Jews were > responsible, just as not all Arabs were responsible for 9/11) had to > convince the Romans to find Jesus guilty of something which merited the > death penalty under Roman law in order to have him executed. >
Except no death penalty for this had ever been carried out. It was said that a Sanhedrin that ordered one execution in 70 years was a bloodthirsty court. What _could_ be done under Jewish law and what _was_ done were often quite different. In any case, this is irrelevant, since what is at stake in the whole issue of Gibson's movie is not what the truth was (hard to determine), but what too many people have taken the truth to be over the millennia: that ALL Jews are guilty of killing Jesus and that therefore ANY Jew can be attacked and even murdered in retribution. And, over the millennia, too many Jews to count HAVE been attacked and murdered. And Jews feel that we are STILL at risk of being attacked and murdered. This is not to say that Gibson should not have made his movie. But for him not to be aware of Jewish sensitivities in this matter, which I do not find at all an overreaction, is remarkably insensitive of him. Given his association with his father's extremely right-wing Catholic sect, I think the onus is on him to prove that he's not anti-Semitic. Tom Beck www.mercerjewishsingles.org "I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last." - Dr Jerry Pournelle _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
