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Concept
Jewish deicide
Summary
Jewish deicide is the notion that the Jews as a people were collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus. A Biblical justification for the charge of Jewish deicide is derived from Matthew 27:24–25. Some rabbinical authorities, such as Maimonides and, more recently, Zvi Yehuda Kook have asserted that Jesus was indeed stoned and hanged after being sentenced to death in a rabbinical court.
The notion arose in early Christianity, the charge was made by Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis as early as the 2nd century. The accusation that the Jews were Christ-killers fed Christian antisemitism and spurred on acts of violence against Jews such as pogroms, massacres of Jews during the Crusades, expulsions of the Jews from England, France, Spain, Portugal and other places, and torture during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.
In the catechism which was produced by the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century, the Catholic Church 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 (1962–1965), the Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI issued the declaration Nostra aetate 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".
Most other churches do not have any binding position on the matter, but some Christian denominations have issued declarations against the accusation.
Antisemitism and the New Testament
A justification for the charge of Jewish deicide has been sought in Matthew 27:24–25:
So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." And all the people answered, "His blood be on us and on our children!"
The verse which reads: "And all the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children! is also referred to as the blood curse.
Official source
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