Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: intentional christicide, extend deicide or christicide into the present, and more viciously excoriate the Jews for their rejection and crucifixion of Christ.By its nature, deicide was deeply enmeshed with how Christ could be simultaneously human and divine, and the origins and effects of the passion, the central act of Christian salvation.Deicide and christicide thus became inextricably entwined with ideas about Christ, eschatology, election, knowledge, intention, guilt, and myriad combinations thereof.These topics, christology especially, were so foundational, so fundamental to Christianity itself that medieval discourses on deicide, along with their discussions about rejection and christicide, tend to retain a maddening degree of ambiguity.Thus, while I will sometimes be more precise in distinguishing between rejection, homicide, christicide, and deicide than my sources -not least because these authors were often arguing that the crucifixion constituted all four simultaneously -readers may find that I am less precise than they would wish.9 Further, accusations of intentionality and deicide did not so much evolve, as they were borrowed, disassembled, and adapted to suit their authors' concerns and needs.There was not, I will suggest, a single engine driving the emergence of intentional deicide and christicide, but multiple streams of thought feeding and being fed by these charges.10 "THESE BLIND MEN, THESE KILLERS OF CHRIST": DEICIDE BEFORE 1100 As Jeremy Cohen demonstrated in his seminal article, "The Jews as Killers of Christ," the ways in which the Christian New Testament defined and discussed the Jews' purported role in and responsibility for Jesus's death tend towards ambiguity, in no small part because they were so thoroughly rooted in the needs and preoccupations of the nascent Christian community.11 These passages include Luke 23.34, in which Jesus entreated forgiveness for his crucifiers on the grounds of their ignorance; Acts 3.17, in which Peter declared that the Jews of Jerusalem acted in ignorance; 1 Corinthians 2:7-8, in which Paul stated that had the princes of the world understood, they would 4 | Killers of Christ -Sherwood Working Paper never have crucified the Lord; Matthew 21:33-39, Mark 12:1-8, and Luke 20:9-15's parable of the wicked tenants; John 9:39-4, in which Jesus said that the Pharisees are guilty because they claim that they can see; and John 15.22-24, in which Jesus that "they" hated him and his father.In addition, later Christians not infrequently referenced Matthew 27:22-23, Mark 15:13-20, Luke 23:21, and John 19:6-15, wherein the crowd calls for Jesus's crucifixion during his trial.The contradictions between these texts created the hermeneutic space for medieval theologians, polemicists, and jurists to employ the crucifixion to myriad ends and reach diverse conclusions.Reading the New Testament's accounts of the crucifixion and fault through the lens of their own theological priorities and opponents, patristic authors generally maintained a relatively static stance: although the Jews were to blame for Jesus's death, they acted in ignorance.In Ambrose of Milan's (339-397) influential summation: "The Jews did not see him, for their hearts were blinded (cf.Mark 6:52)," nor did those "who shouted 'crucify, crucify him,' because 'if they had seen, never would they have crucified the Lord of majesty' (1 Cor.2:8)." 12 His famous protégé, Augustine of Hippo (354-430), offered at least three different explanations for the Jews' rejection and crucifixion of Christ, but each of these readings maintained that, although they were indirectly culpable for his death, the Jews acted in ignorance of Christ's identity as messiah and God. 13 Commenting on the gospel of John, for example, Augustine argued that the Jews had killed Jesus with their tongues by clamoring for his death, 14 but had acted in ignorance.In their ignorance, Augustine compared them favorably to the Arians, because unlike the Arians, "these blind men, these killers of Christ, yet understood the words of Christ.For they did not understand that he was Christ, nor did they understand that he was the son of God," but they understood that he claimed to be "the son of God, who is equal to God," which the Arians did not.15 Taking a slightly different tack, Pope Gregory I (c.540-604) reached a similar conclusion.He held that the hearts of Jesus's persecutors were clouded by wickedness.Thus, Paul said both that "a veil is over his heart" (cf. 2 Cor.3:15) and
Author: Sherwood, Jessie
Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6990788905
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