1: Pharisees who condemned Jesus to death said this as a way to accept responsibility of his death
2: A rebuke Apostle Paul says when abusive Jews in synagogue is being bad to Paul.
However…. isn’t this sort of a good thing? Since we are saved by the blood of Jesus? So isn’t it… a polite way to tell a person to get a grip. Or maybe i am wrong.
Just wondering what you think? I guess it sounds mean at first, but when i think of it. It doesn’t sound all that bad. It just means, act better interms of “Freedom in Christ”
Matthew 27:25 - it was just an idiomatic way of saying that they (the crowd who clamoured for Jesus’ crucifixion) accepted responsibility for what they were doing. I don’t believe it has any theological implications, or some learned doctor of the Church would already have uncovered it.
Unfortunately, though, this text has been used as an excuse for anti-Semitism and has also given rise to the spurious medieval belief that ‘the Jews’ had rites that needed to use Christian blood.
See the Wiki article - Blood curse - Wikipedia - which argues that St Matthew may have intended to differentiate the Christian community from the Jews and/or that it may have reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
The legend of ‘the blood curse’ - utterly false - in its turn let to pogroms and atrocities against the Jewish people.
After the Second World War, anti-Jewish racism died down a bit - I’m sorry to see that it’s reared its head again recently with the war in Gaza.
Catholics are the last people who should hold anti-Semitic views, since Jesus, Mary & Joseph were all Jewish, and God the Father ‘chose’ the Jews to seed the faith, as testified in the Old Testament.
The idea of all Jews being bad is pretty lazy to think for sure.
Sure i think “Neil Druckmann” is a guy i personally don’t care much for. But the director and writers behind Deus Ex 2000 game seems pretty rad!
But i wonder. How many interpretations is it of this? Since.. there has to be some other ways to interpret this, than just a “Blood curse”? . Or i assume its due to someones actions and not their lineage. Which is why Paul rebuked those bad jews in Acts 18 since they acted repulsive.. which isnt the same as neutral or good jews i think.
Since Jesus explicitly prayed that all those involved in his death should be forgiven because ‘they know not what they do’, I don’t see that anybody should interpret the verse as a curse on all or any of the Jews. St Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels, and not only Jesus, Mary & Joseph were Jews, but also St Paul, the twelve apostles, St John the Baptist, St Mary Magdalene et al.
Traditionally, Catholics should imagine that they are as guilty as anyone of putting Jesus to death - see St Alphonsus Liguori, The Stations of the Cross,
‘My ADORABLE JESUS, it was not Pilate; no, it was my sins that condemned You to die. I beseech You, by the merits of this sorrowful journey, to assist my soul on its journey to
eternity.’
That’s right, I believe. The crowd did claim responsibility for Christ’s death and wanted the blame placed on their children too (how unfair to the children!). Some people’s response was evidently to go ahead and blame them and their children, but Isabel is right that forgiveness is the response that Jesus taught us, not to mention that our own sins are responsible. I wouldn’t let Pilate off the hook, though.
As for the Jews in Jesus’s time, someone asked Father Richard Simon (who wrote as Reverend Know-It-All, a joking name) why the apostles were afraid of the Jews if they were Jews themselves. Father Simon’s opinion was that “the Jews” referred to rabbinical Judaism, which he said was established in the Babylonian exile, when the Jews didn’t have access to the temple. He said that the Hebrew word for “Jew” appeared very few times in the Old Testament. (I understand also that “Jew” and “Judaism” applied in particular to the tribe of Judah even though nowadays the words are used to refer to all people of Hebrew descent.) His opinion was that the synagogues and rabbis (not all of them bad) and especially the Pharisees were the new thing in Israel and Judah since the exile, and the Jews the apostles were afraid of were these people.
