Brooklyn Museum - Pilate Washes His Hands (Pilate se lave les mains) - James Tissot

The term "blood curse" refers to a

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

passage from the

Gospel of Matthew The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and for ...

, which describes events taking place in

Pilate's court In the canonical gospels, Pilate's court refers to the trial of Jesus in praetorium before Pontius Pilate, preceded by the Sanhedrin Trial. In the Gospel of Luke, Pilate finds that Jesus, being from Galilee, belonged to Herod Antipas' jurisdict ...

before the

crucifixion of Jesus The crucifixion and death of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judea, most likely in AD 30 or AD 33. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and consid ...

and specifically the apparent willingness of the Jewish crowd to accept liability for Jesus' death.''The Historical Jesus Through Catholic and Jewish Eyes''. Bryan F. Le Beau, Leonard J. Greenspoon and Dennis Hamm, eds. Trinity Press International, 2000. pp. 105-106.

Biblical narrative

reads:

Interpretation

This passage has no counterpart in the other

Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

and is probably related to the

destruction of Jerusalem The siege of Jerusalem of 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), in which the Roman army led by future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem, the center of Jewish rebel resistance in the Roman province of Jud ...

in the year 70 CE. German Protestant theologian Ulrich Luz (b. 1938) describes it as "redactional fiction" invented by the author of the Matthew Gospel. Some writers, viewing it as part of Matthew's anti-Jewish polemic, see in it the seeds of later

Christian antisemitism Antisemitism in Christianity, a form of religious antisemitism, is the feeling of hostility which some Christian Churches, Christian groups, and ordinary Christians have towards the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. Antisemitic Christian ...

. In the view of the late

Graham Stanton Graham Norman Stanton (1940–2009) was a New Zealand biblical scholar who taught at King's College, London, and as Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. A New Testament specialist, Stanton's special interests were ...

, a British New Testament scholar in the Reformed tradition, "Matthew's anti-Jewish polemic should be seen as part of the self-definition of the Christian minority which is acutely aware of the rejection and hostility of its 'mother' Judaism."

Howard Clark Kee Howard Clark Kee (Beverly, NJ, July 28, 1920 – Haverford, PA, April 2, 2017) was William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Biblical Studies Emeritus at Boston University School of Theology (1977-1988) and a visiting faculty member at the University ...

has written, "The bitter words he atthewattributes to the Jews have caused endless harm in arrousing anti-Jewish emotions." Donald A. Hagner, a Presbyterian New Testament scholar and theologian, has written, "It cannot be denied that this statement, unfortunately, has been used to promote anti-Semitism. The statement is formulaic, and the reference to 'our children' does not make them guilty of the death of Jesus, let alone children or Jews of later generations."

Anglican views

N. T. Wright Nicholas Thomas Wright (born 1 December 1948), known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is an English New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop. He was the bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010. He then became research profe ...

, an Anglican New Testament scholar and theologian, has stated, "The tragic and horrible later use of Matthew 27.25 ('his blood be on us, and on our children') as an excuse for ''soi-disant'' 'Christian' anti-semitism is a gross distortion of its original meaning, where the reference is surely to the fall of Jerusalem." Anglican theologian Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Wales, and who would soon become

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

, has written of Matthew's Gospel being made "the tool of the most corrupt and murderous misreading of the passion stories that has disfigured the Church's record".

Catholic views

In the

catechism A catechism (; from grc, κατηχέω, "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult c ...

which was produced by the

Council of Trent The Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento, Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italian Peninsula, Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation ...

in the mid-16th century, the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

taught the belief that the collectivity of sinful humanity was responsible for the death of Jesus, not only the Jews. In the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the , or , was the 21st Catholic ecumenical councils, ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. The council met in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for four periods (or sessions) ...

(1962–1965), the Catholic Church under

Pope Paul VI Pope Paul VI ( la, Paulus VI; it, Paolo VI; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, ; 26 September 18976 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City, Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his ...

issued the declaration ''

Nostra aetate (from Latin: "In our time") is the incipit of the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council. Passed by a vote of 2,221 to 88 of the assembled bishops, this declaration was promulgated o ...

'' that repudiated the idea of a collective, multigenerational Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus. It declared that the accusation could not be made "against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today".

Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign ...

in his 2011 book '' Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week'' wrote:

Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom John Chrysostom (; gr, Ἰωάννης ὁ Χρυσόστομος; 14 September 407) was an important Early Church Father who served as archbishop of Constantinople. He is known for his preaching and public speaking, his denunciation of ab ...

delivered a series of eight homilies to his Antioch congregation directed at members who continued to observe Jewish feasts and fasts. Critical of this, he cast Judaism and the

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

s in his city in a critical and negative light. His homilies were expressed in the conventional polemical form. As quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas in his ''Catena Aurea'' (1263), Chrysostom said: Historian Paul Johnson said that Chrysostom's homilies "became the pattern for anti-Jewish tirades, making the fullest possible use (and misuse) of key passages in the gospels of Saints Matthew and John." Johnson, Paul, ''A History of the Jews'', (HarperPerennial: 1988), p. 165.

References