When Pope Benedict XVI writes that the Jews were not responsible for
the death of Jesus, what's important is less the passage itself than the
man who set it down on paper.
By tackling the subject in a book to be published March 10, Benedict,
who has struggled in his relations with the Jewish community, doesn't so
much state something new — the affirmation that the Jewish people as a
whole were not responsible for the crucifixion is an old one,
uncontroversial in the modern Catholic Church — as lend the idea the
ecclesiastical equivalent of a celebrity endorsement.
"The significance
is in the author," says Joseph Sievers, professor of Jewish history at
the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.
"He brings together an
awareness of the issues in the texts themselves with the history of how
these texts have been interpreted through the last 2,000 years."
Indeed, the Catholic Church has considered the Jewish people free from
blame since at least 1965, when the Second Vatican Council wrote that
while "the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed
for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be
charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor
against the Jews of today."
The difference this time is that rather than being buried deep in a
document of dense text, where it can easily be overlooked or ignored,
the argument is being laid out by a man whose every word is pored over
as an indication of church doctrine.
"Most Catholics don't read the
church's documents," says Rabbi David Rosen, director of interreligious
affairs at the New York–based American Jewish Committee.
"The book will
certainly be far more widely read."
Benedict's most recent book, Jesus of Nazareth, was a best seller when it was published in 2007.
The passage about the crucifixion will appear in its sequel, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection.
In excerpts provided to the press this week, the Pope walks the reader
through the gospels to explore who Jesus' accusers really were. Noting
that the Gospel of John describes them as "the Jews," Benedict explains
that there's no way the writer meant the entire population of Israel.
After all, he notes, John himself was a Jew, as were Jesus and the rest
of his followers.
"This expression has a precise and rigorously limited
meaning," Benedict concludes: "the temple aristocracy."
The Gospel of
Mark expands the circle of accusers to "the masses," who Benedict
explains were supporters of Barabbas, the brigand chosen by the crowd to
be released instead of Jesus.
"In [the Second Vatican Council's text],
this was all said in one sentence, but here it's spelled out and worked
out in great detail," says Sievers.
The Pope pays special attention to a passage in the Gospel of Matthew
that is often used to stir up anti-Semitism.
In that passage, Pontius
Pilate, the Roman prefect overseeing the crucifixion, washes his hands
and declares himself to be innocent of the death of Jesus: "Then the
people as a whole answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!' "
Benedict argues that the phrase "the people as a whole" is ahistorical.
"How would it have been possible for the entire population to have been
present at that moment to ask for the death of Jesus?" he writes.
The
blood of Jesus, he adds, should not be seen as a call for revenge, but
spilled in the name of reconciliation: "Not a curse, but redemption,
salvation."
The Pope's statements have been broadly welcomed by Jewish
organizations.
"It deepens and gives historians context crucial in
having the doctrine expressed in [the documents from the Second Vatican
Council] translated down to the pews," said Abraham H. Foxman, U.S.
director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement.
"Pope Benedict
has rejected the previous teachings and perversions that have helped to
foster and reinforce anti-Semitism through the centuries."
On Thursday,
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, called on the
Pope to take a step further, reinforcing what he's written in an
official letter, or encyclical.
"Many in the Catholic world have
continued to espouse ideas of Jewish guilt," Lauder said in a statement.
"Refuting their fallacious arguments in a personal book, whilst right,
is probably insufficient. This must become official church doctrine,
from top to bottom."