A Cross-Examination of the Crucifixion

As a clinical psychiatrist must probe into the childhood of a patient to discover the etiology of his hostility toward society, so a clinical historian must probe into the childhood of Christianity to discover the etiology of its hostility towards Judaism. As we remove accumulated layers of myth, fraud, and rationalization, we will discover that the nexus of this Christian neurosis was a Jew named Jesus.

As a knowledge of Jesus and the origins of Christianity are essential for an understanding of the metahistoric ramifications that will transpire in a Christian world, let us avail ourselves of a brief intermission to walk on the low road of everyday life, from Bethlehem to Golgotha, to reconstruct the life of the historical Jesus from birth to death.

But in the spring of 1947, on the eve of the birth of the state of Israel, the prophetic discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls shattered the myth of the uniqueness of Christianity and conformed the idea of its evolution from Judaism. To the horror of devout Christians and the dismay of orthodox Jews, the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed a prototype for Jesus a century before his birth. They unveiled the fact that most of the rites derided by Jews as "pagan claptrap" and lauded by the Church as uniquely Christian had been conceived and practiced by Jews two centuries before Christianity existed.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered accidentally by an illiterate Bedouin teen-age shepherd named Muhammed the Wolf, when one of the goats he was driving through the dreadful, desolate Judean Wilderness along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea strayed into a long-forgotten cave. It was one of the caves where, 2,000 years before, the members of a Jewish sect known as Essenes had carved out one of their communities. Here Muhammed found parchment scrolls dating back to the second century B.C. that contained scriptural writings of the Essenes, the first "Christians" in history.*

*Many theologians, both Jewish and Christian, pained by the thought
of the Jewish paternity of Christianity, have tried to prove that the
Dead Sea Scrolls were written several centuries after and not before
Jesus. We need not refute them for, in espousing their respective
alternate sects and dates, they have brilliantly refuted each other.

Subsequent expeditions to the Qumran area, pockmarked with weird rocks and serrated by naked cliffs, led to the discovery of other caves, yielding more scrolls and over 600 fragments of diverse Essene writings. Six of these scrolls, now known by the names of Manual of Discipline, Habakkuk Commentary, Book of Jubilees, The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, Zadokite Fragments, and a collection of Hymns, contain the heart of the Essene creed and present us with a sketch of the future Christianity.

In their remote cave retreats, the Essenes developed a new, curiously Judaic creed that diverged from both Sadducee and Pharisee Judaism, yet resembled both. Though rejecting the Sadducee cult of sacrifice, they accepted its idea of a priesthood; though rejecting the Pharisee Oral Law, the Mishna, they supplemented the Written Law, the Torah, with their own interpretations, the Scrolls. The celibate Essene priesthood refrained from marriage. New members, including the children, were generally initiated into the sect through the rite of baptism. At the head of each community was an overseer, or bishop. One of their rituals, administered by the priests, is almost an outline of the Christian communion, and prescribes a protocol for seating foreshadowing the Last Supper. The Essenes referred to themselves as the "Elect of God" and to their religion as "the New Covenant".

A remarkable figure known only as the Teacher of Righteousness is the central figure in Essenism. His disciples viewed him as the suffering servant of God, "called from the womb" to restore the "True Covenant". All who believed in him as the messiah would be healed, for as stated in Isaiah, "By his bruises we are healed." The Teacher of Righteousness was also a "man of sorrow", foredoomed to death, destined to be slain at the hand of a "Wicked Priest". But the Teacher of Righteousness was chosen by God as the instrument of salvation for mankind. He was the "Nazarene" - the nezer, the "shoot" of the House of David, the rock on which the future "Church" would be built.

The name of this Teacher of Righteousness is not known, for his followers never pronounced it nor write it down. His ministry began about 104 B.C. and lasted to about 65-53 B.C., when he was slain by the Wicked Priest, whose name is also unknown. Convinced that their slain Teacher of Righteousness would reappear amongst them, resurrected from the dead, his disciples settled in the area around Qumran. Here they awaited the return of their messiah while preparing themselves for Judgment Day.

The resemblance between the Teacher of Righteousness and Jesus Christ a century later is incredible. In many respects Jesus appears to be an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness. Like him, Jesus preached chastity, penitence, humility, poverty, and was viewed as the messiah of God, the redeemer of the world. Like him, Jesus was hated by the priests, and also put to death. Like him, Jesus was though of as the "Nazarene" - the "shoot" of the House of David. And, as in the case of the Teacher of Righteousness, a church was also founded in the name of Jesus, whose adherents also fervently awaited a miraculous return.

The Essenes disappear from history in the first century A.D., although we hear of their creed again in the Gospels, but not by that name. We find it espoused by John the Baptist, preaching in the Judean Wilderness near the main Essene monastery. In Essene fashion, John calls for the people to repent, to confess their sins, to be saved through baptism. His real mission, however, according to the Gospels, is to wait for the messiah and to baptize him into the faith, in fulfillment of prophecy. The man who appears is not the resurrected Essene Teacher of Righteousness but Jesus, destined to concentrate upon himself through his subsequent crucifixion the adoration of men denied the Teacher of Righteousness.

Though the crucifixion of Jesus took place nearly 2,000 years ago, the drama is not yet over. Though his accusers are dead, the witnesses vanished, and the judges dust, the trial of Jesus nevertheless goes on. Though crucified, dead, and buried, he continues to rise in the hears of his followers. To them, his resurrection is a living reality. The death of Christ, not the life of Jesus, is so central to Christianity that without the crucifixion theme there would be no Christianity.

From a historic viewpoint it makes no difference whether a physical or spiritual resurrection took place, for as we have persistently pointed out, it is ideas, not blind facts, that shape history. we must, therefore, examine the crucifixion as an event founded in fact, and view the resurrection as a drama shaped to fit an idea.

Who was this Jew Jesus who failed to make an impression on history until a century after his death, but whose one-year ministry on earth shaped the foundations of Western civilization? There is not enough historical material about him "to write a decent obituary". There are but three facts known about his birth and early life. He was born the eldest son of a Jewish mother who kept a kosher house, he was circumcised on the eighth day, and he had two or more sisters and four brothers named James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.* All else concerning his birth - the visitation of the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Birth, the flight to Egypt and back - is pious theological license designed to prove that in Jesus the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled.

*Catholic dogma today denies that Jesus had any brothers or sisters. It was
not always thus. After the Church had made Mary, the mother of Jesus, offici-
ally immaculate in 1854, it was also deemed advisable to deny that the newly
"divine" Mary should have had carnal intercourse with her husband Joseph,
even after the birth of Jesus. This is denied by Protestants, who point to the
plain text in Matthew 14:55-56, which explicitly names the brothers of Jesus.

The stories of the Holy Ghost visiting Mary and the three wise men visiting the child Jesus have their prototypes in an Egyptian legend dating back to 1400 B.C. in connection with the birth of King Amenhotep III. A divine spirit (a holy ghost) appears before the virgin queen, advising her she will conceive a boy fathered by a heavenly fire. The newborn child is nursed by divine cows in a manger. Three kings from far away come to adore and pay homage to the newborn child, which has been proclaimed god by he ghost that impregnated the virgin mother.

Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecy of the Prophet Micah that the messiah would come from Bethlehem, the home of King David, and Matthew and Luke link Jesus to him through two differing genealogies. What puzzles three billion non-Christians is why the ancestry of Jesus should be traced back to King David since, according to these two saints, the Holy Ghost and not Joseph was the father of Jesus.

There is no physical description of Jesus in the entire New Testament. Each age, therefore, has had to interpret his looks according to its own image. In Byzantine art he was a swarthy Semite, badly in need of a haircut and shave. In Renaissance paintings he was a dark-complected Latin, with a neatly trimmed beard. In Protestant paintings he became a blond, clean-shaven Nordic. And in modern times, as exemplified in the paintings of Rouault, he has again become a swarthy, cadaverous Semite, badly in need of a haircut and shave.

The New Testament is as maddeningly silent about the childhood and adolescence of Jesus as the Old Testament is about Moses. Was Jesus a Sadducee who went to Temple to sacrifice to God under the supervision of priests? Was he a Pharisee who went to synagogue to offer prayers to God under the leadership of rabbis? Or was he an Essene who had rejected Temple and synagogue for the monastic life of that sect? The forcible conversion of the pagan Galileans to Judaism in 135 B.C. by the Hasmonean King John Hyracanus raises yet another interesting question. Were Joseph and Mary, the Galilean parents of Jesus, the descendants of generations of Jews, or were they the offspring of a recently converted pagan family?

The messianic history of Jesus begins when at the age of thirty he has his fateful meeting with John the Baptist, whose theological function is to "baptize" (symbolically to "anoint"*) Jesus according to prophecy. At this point, Jesus becomes "the Christ", "the anointed", for the word "Christ" is the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew word mashiah, meaning "one who is anointed". "Jesus Christ" is simply the Greek translation for the Hebrew "Joshua the anointed".

*The Jews in ancient times did not crown their kings but anointed them with oil.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, hatred of the Romans was at its peak. A new rebellion in Galilee had but recently been quelled with blood and crucifixions. People were talking about a new rebel leader whose followers had proclaimed him "the messiah, the son of David". To the Romans, who had executed dozens of such warrior messiahs, such talk spelled trouble. It would take little to ignite this explosive mixture of hatred, zealotry, and messianic fervor into another costly revolt. The new procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, decided to play it safe. At the head of a legion, he left his administrative capital at Caesarea and went to Jerusalem to take personal command.

The events that followed the decisions of Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ to go to Jerusalem are shrouded in obscurity, wrapped in acrimony, and smothered with tons of conflicting scholarship. Yet if we look beneath the learned verbosity of most theologians, we find that they all have but one basic source for their opinions, namely the four Gospels (and to a lesser extent the Apocrypha). It is therefore imperative that we keep in mind a few facts about the Gospels and their authors.

The word "gospel", derived from the Anglo-Saxon "good spell", means "good news", and the story of the messiahship of Jesus was the good news the Gospel writers gave Christian converts. Of the four Gospel writers - Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John - only Mark and Matthew were Jews. Mark's Gospel, written sometime between he years 70 and 85 A.D., though the second in the New Testament, is the first chronologically. Matthew, an unidentified teacher, wrote his Gospel between 85 and 95, primarily to attract new pagan converts. Luke was a pagan physician who, like Matthew, used the manuscript of Mark as a basis for his Gospel and finished his work after the year 75. John, an enigmatic figure whose pagan antecedents are still unknown, completed his Gospel sometime between 95 and 105. As John did not base his text on the manuscript of Mark, his Gospel differs from those of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, which are known as the "synoptic Gospels" because the espouse one viewpoint. All four Gospel writers were later canonized by a grateful Church for writing the "good news" about Jesus, but this does not make their words divine. They did not pretend to write history; they wrote theology.

Historians have never accepted the Gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus, because, though the theology may be impeccable, the facts are questionable. In essence, the Gospel writers state that those Jews who did not believe that Jesus was the messiah, conspired to arrest him at night, hauled him to a kangaroo court presided over by the High Priest, went out in the night in search of false witnesses, convicted him on false evidence, and dragged him the following morning to Pontius Pilate. There they begged and threatened the procurator to crucify Jesus for them. The Gospels further state that Pilate, after pleading with the Jews not to force him to crucify Jesus because he could find "no fault" with the man, finally acceded to their wishes out of fear, and reluctantly sentenced Jesus to the cross.

The Gospel accounts of the trial and its aftermath abound with contradictions, improbabilities, and impossibilities. In fact, in these four Gospel writers we have the unseemly sight of four saints fighting for the gospel truth. What Mark says is contradicted by Matthew and Luke. What Luke says is contradicted by Mark and Matthew. What Matthew says is contradicted by Luke and Mark. The fourth Gospel, that of John, presents and even greater problem to biblical scholars, for John contradicts Mark, Matthew, and Luke even where these three agree.

If we scrape off the theological frosting, if we eliminate all contradictions, if we concentrate upon the few points of the Gospels agree on, then we have the following schema: the three synoptic Gospels agree that Jesus was brought before Jewish authorities for questioning, but they do not spell out exactly what crime Jesus might have committed to merit a death sentence. On the other hand, all four Gospels agree that Jesus was tried by the Romans for a political crime, and that they crucified him for aspiring to the throne of Judea.

Viewed this way, a new Gospel drama in two scenes emerges. In the first, Jesus is arrested and convicted by the Jews on an unspecified charge of blasphemy, but is not executed for that crime. In the second, Jesus is tried by the Romans for the explicitly stated crime of treason, and is executed for that crime.

Why this sudden switch for the crime of blasphemy against the Jews to the crime of treason against the Romans? If Jesus had committed a religious crime, then he was innocent in the eyes of the Romans but guilty in the eyes of the Jews, who would not have hesitated to stone him to death, the Jewish punishment for blasphemy. On the other hand, if Jesus had committed a political crime, then he was innocent in the eyes of the Jews but guilty in the eyes of the Romans, who would not hesitate to crucify him, the Roman punishment for sedition.

For eighteen centuries, scholars shied away from cross-examining the Gospel witnesses simply because it was dangerous. One was burned alive by a vigilant Church for looking too closely into these matters. Not until the eighteenth-century Age of Rationalism did scholars dare contradict the dogmatic pronouncements of the Church. Though there are today hundreds of explanations for the crucifixion enigma, essentially they fall into four main theories the preordained destiny, the deicide drama, the political conspiracy, and the "Passover plot".

The preordained destiny theory, twenty centuries old and still in vogue with sophisticated theologians, casts the crucifixion drama as a prophetic fulfillment. Even before creating heaven and earth, this theory goes, God had planned for the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus to occur in the year 30 A.D. as a means of redeeming man through the blood of the slain Christ. There are no heroes or villains in this view. Everybody - Mary, the Holy Ghost, Jesus, the High Priest, Judas, Pilate - all do the bidding of God, and play out their divinely assigned roles. The Holy Ghost is as much the instrument of the Lord's will as Judas is. And the Jews, if they did kill Jesus, did so only on the bidding of God, the theory goes, in order to bring forth Christianity.

The preordained destiny dogma placed the Church in an agonizing dilemma. If the Jews did God's bidding, they were God's chosen instrument in giving life to the very religion the Jews rejected as false. Therefore the Church came up with an alternate theory, the deicide drama, in which the Jews were portrayed as slayers of Jesus instead of the midwives of Christianity. The Church trusted that the masses would never catch on to its causuistry, a correct appraisal of the human mind which can entertain two opposite views without too much intellectual strain. Everybody is evil in this Church-inspired explanation of the crucifixion - Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, scribes, Jews - except Jesus, Pilate, and those who blindly follow Jesus. Jews who do not believe in the messiahship of Jesus are depicted as despicable quislings and satanic conspirators - in short, Christ-killers. This is still the most popular view among the Christian masses, as it has the merit of instant understanding.

The proponents of the political conspiracy view, born of modern biblical exegesis, see Jesus as a warrior messiah leading an unsuccessful rebellion against Rome, suffering the fate of a rebel. Jesus, these scholars claim, was not only though of as the savior by his disciples but was looked upon as their leader in a revolt against Rome.

In further support of this political conspiracy theory, its advocates point out that the Temple with its palaces and courts was a huge place, 600 feet wide and 1,500 feet long, with thick fortified walls, attended by a staff of 20,000 functionaries, and protected by a Roman cohort of 500 men. Jesus could hardly have dropped in at the Temple, driven out the money-changers, and then walked off without being arrested by Roman soldiers, any more than it would be possible today for a modern reformer to drop in at Vatican Square in Rome, beat up the numerous vendors of postcards, crucifixes, commemorative stamps, candles, Bibles, and beads, and walk off without being arrested by Vatican gendarmes. Perhaps Jesus did not merely drive the money-changers out of the Temple, the theory goes, but actually seized it, as so many passages in the Gospel seem to indicate. Then, after a Roman counterattack, he was forced to flee into hiding.

If Jesus was one of the many warrior messiahs who took up arms against the Romans in that fateful first century A.D., then subsequent events can be reconstructed historically within the framework of the Gospel narratives. In the year 33 (or 30) A.D., on the fifteenth day of Nisan, rumors abounded about a plot to take over the city. There had been a disturbance, or revolt, at the Temple, and the Romans were looking for a man whose followers had openly declared him King of the Jews.

Could it be, speculate the political conspiracy theorists, that Jesus, who had entered Jerusalem as a self-proclaimed messiah, was arrested by the Jews to be held in protective custody until the trouble blew over and Pilate departed with his legionnaires? But the Romans, on a tip by Judas perhaps, found out about the suspect being held by the Jews and demanded that he be handed over to them for trial, which was their prerogative as conquerors. This would explain why Jesus would be taken to Pilate to be tried, sentenced, and crucified as a rebel by the Romans. The tag hung of Jesus, according to Roman law, unmistakably spells out his crime - "King of the Jews".

But if this was the actual sequence of events, why did the Gospel writers blame the Jews? We must recall that by 75 A.D., when the first Gospel was written, the Romans already despised the Christians for their idolatrous religion, and abhorred them as subversives. The Gospel writers realized it would be dangerous to make the Romans the villains in their drama. On the other hand, the Jews at the time were at the height of their unpopularity with the Romans, having so recently engaged the empire in a devastating four-year war. The expedient thing was to portray the Jews as villains, by simply showing that the trial held by Pilate was forced on him by the Jews. Having rapacious Pilate defend Jesus was a stroke of sheer genius. It would show the Romans that their own procurator thought well of the Christians because their leader Jesus had cooperated with the Romans by "rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar's".

The proponents of the fourth theory, the Passover plot, pose the startling hypothesis that perhaps it was not Jesus who was the victim of the Romans and Jews, but vice versa. The big problem facing any messiah, they point out, is how to convince people that he is truly the messiah. Could it be true, then, as the Passover plot theorists contend, that if it was not Jesus who was the victim of Jews and Romans, but Jews and Romans who were the "victims" of Jesus? Could it be that Jesus manipulated both Jews and Romans into doing what he wanted them to do as part of a plan to win the messianic crown via an engineered death and resurrection?

If Jesus was convinced that he was the messiah, how could he convince other Jews? This is not an idle question. What would happen, for instance, if a bearded gentleman were to arrive tomorrow in a Fiat at Piazza San Pietro in Rome and start beating the vendors of crucifixes and rosaries on the steps of St. Peter's, saying he was Jesus come to cleanse the churches dedicated to him? Would he be arrested as a disturber of the peace? Would he be given a psychiatric examination and thrown into a psychiatric ward? How would a returning Jesus convince the world he was a savior come back according to prophecy? What credentials would he have to show? What wonders would he have to perform before Catholics and Protestants would believe him?

Fortunately, Jesus did not have as difficult a task in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago as he would have in Rome today. Fortunately for Jesus, the Prophets had dropped many hints about he circumstances under which the messiah would arrive, what conditions would have to be met, and what fate would befall him. The Jews were familiar with these prescriptions for messiahship. If someone arrived who fulfilled them, he would automatically be proclaimed messiah.

What were some of these conditions? In addition to being a descendent of King David and anointed by a Prophet, an aspiring messiah would have to enter Jerusalem on the colt of an ass, be denounced by the High Priest, stand silent before his accusers, be betrayed by one of his disciples, be mocked with gall and vinegar, die between two outcasts, and be resurrected within three days. The Gospel writers claim that these and all other conditions outlined in the Old Testament were met and fulfilled in Jesus and therefore prove his messiahship.

How did it happen that all events in the life of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels correspond so accurately to every hint dropped by Prophets 500 to 700 years before his birth? Was it all due to fortuitous accident? Did God manipulate events on earth in such a manner as to fulfill each prophecy? Or did Jesus, in a sincere belief that he was the messiah, help arrange events in such a way that these prophecies would be fulfilled in him? And did the Gospel writers later fill in those prophecies Jesus could not have arranged for? The Gospel writers constantly remind us that Jesus was fully aware he had to fulfill these prophecies to attain his messiahship. Not only was he aware of the events to come, he even briefed his disciples as to who he was and outlined for them the forthcoming proof, as in this passage in Mark (8:27-33):

And Jesus went out with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" and they told him, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah, and others one of the Prophets." And he asked the, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." And he charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. and he said this plainly.

But assuming that Jesus did arrange these events so as to fulfill prophecy, how could he mastermind his own resurrection? Passover plot theorists contend it all hinged on the simple fact that it took at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours to die on the cross. The plan therefore called for Jesus to commit a crime that would insure his death by crucifixion and then be betrayed by one of his disciples to fulfill prophecy. Once sentenced to the cross, one of his disciples could drug him so he would appear dead, seek permission to take down his body, then hide him in a secret cave to recover from his ordeal. After the prophetic prescription of a three-day wait, Jesus would reappear to his followers - "resurrected". Thus, say the Passover plot theorists, Jesus could have masterminded his conviction, punishment, and escape from the cross in such a manner that all prophecies surrounding the coming of a messiah would be fulfilled.

At his last Passover meal, Jesus "predicts" that one of his disciples present will betray him, whereupon he dips a morsel and gives it to Judas, saying, "What you are going to do, do quickly" (John 13-21:30). As if on a prearranged signal, Judas leaves to betray him. Jesus is arrested and brought before Pilate who asks him if he claimed he was King of the Jews. Jesus answers, "You have said it", in effect a pleading that is known in legal terminology today as nolo contendere, a "no contest" admission of guilt. This reply permits Jesus to stand silent before his accusers as prescribed by prophecy and at the same time insure himself a death sentence by crucifixion for the crime of sedition.

This is also the course outlined in the Gospel narratives. After six hours on the cross, Jesus states he is thirsty. In fulfillment of prophecy, he is handed a vinegar-soaked rag on a stave. But instead of being revived by this stimulant he sinks into a coma and seemingly expires. A friend rushes to Pilate to ask permission to take down the body. Pilate, suspicious that Jesus should have died so soon, sends a centurion to investigate.

To prevent anyone from dying too soon on the cross, the Romans usually placed a supportive pendulum under the feet of the condemned, but they now and then broke the legs of the crucified person to allow him a quicker, "merciful" death.* As the two rebels crucified with Jesus were still alive on their crosses, the centurion breaks their legs so he will not have to make a second trip to Golgotha, but the legs of Jesus he does not break, says Mark, in fulfillment of prophecy, or perhaps, seeing Jesus lifeless, he does not deem it necessary. Suspicious, nevertheless, the centurion sticks Jesus with a spear. According to John, blood and water spurt from the wound, which would indicate Jesus was alive, for blood does not spurt out of a corpse, as there is no heartbeat to pump it. Nevertheless, as Jesus gives no sign of life, permission is granted to take down his body, and the disciples remove Jesus to their secret cave. But the unanticipated wound inflicted by the Roman soldier proves fatal. Though the body is moved from the cave to a burial place, several people have, however, seen Jesus before his death.

*By breaking the legs, the crucified victim was deprived of the support of the
pendulum, and the weight of the body, now dangling from the arms, choked
off the blood supply from the head, causing a quick death by suffocation.

Which of these four theories of the life and death of Jesus is correct? We may never know. We do, however, concur with Ernest Renan, who stated: "for those who believe in the Messiah, he [Jesus] is the Messiah. For those who think most of the Son of Man, he is the Son of Man. For those who prefer the Logos, the Son of God, he is the Logos, the Son of God, the Spirit." We would add only that, whichever view the reader prefers, one must not forget that Jesus was never a Christian. According to the New Testament (Acts 11:26), the word "Christian" was used for the first time in Antioch in 50 A.D., some twenty years after the death of Jesus. Jesus was born a Jew, was looked upon as a Jew by his fellow Jews and contemporary Romans, and died a Jew with a Jewish prayer on his lips.* The Gospel writers subsequently combined in this Jewish Jesus two currents of Jewish messianism - the spiritual and suffering messiah (the servant of the Lord) as outlined in Isaiah, and the material and political messiah (son of man) as outlined in the Book of Daniel.

*Just as the Christian view of the Jews runs the ambiguous gamut
from the spawn of the devil to God's Chosen People, so the Jewish
view of Jesus runs that same ambiguous gamut from the belief that
he was the illegitimate son of a Jewish slut and a Roman soldier
named Pander to the present view of him as a Pharisee reformer.