Mel Gibson’s Passion Play

“His blood be on us and our children.” This single, chilling line from the Gospel of Matthew (27:25) has caused more bloodshed than any other verse in the Bible. Matthew’s invidious portrayal of “the Jews” clamoring for Jesus’ blood provided the impetus for centuries of anti-Semitism, pogroms, and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

As Stephen J. Patterson shows in the preceding article, the Gospels’ portrayal of “the Jews” as bloodthirsty has more to do with making Pilate and the Romans look good than it does with historical accuracy. It was the Romans, not “the Jews,” who had both the power and the desire to see Jesus publicly executed, as an example to other potential rebels. It was the Romans who employed crucifixion as a means of execution, and it was thus the Romans, not the Jews, who killed Jesus.

For the Jews, it was an internal dispute, within Jewish society. Jesus was Jewish. His supporters were Jewish. So were his detractors. He lived in a Jewish society.

Tragically, the inference drawn from the gospel writers’ account of the Jews’ collective responsibility for Jesus’ death has had lasting consequences for relations between Christians and Jews, particularly as those historical errors have been kept alive by depictions of the gospel story on stage and screen.