Jack the Sailor says that no one is disputing that Carter was referring to a faction of the Jews. Phil Edwards says he has proved that Carter was not referring to the Jews. Perhaps the two of you could settle this amongst yourselves and report back to us, so I can know just what the status of the discussion is.

In any event. Jack, I agree that Carter & the gospels were both referring to Jewish contemporaries of Jesus, and not to Jews of today or of the intervening years. While I am grateful for small favors, I am mindful of the historical consequences of the accusation that Jewish factions brought about the death of Jesus; and while I am aware, and extremely grateful, that no one on Mudcat would dream of visiting the (alleged) sins of some Jews of yesteryear on the Jews of today, I am also mindful of the fact that not everyone is as sensible as the members and guests of Mudcat. Antisemitism did not disappear in 1945, it just took a lower profile. When I see the old accusations raising their head, I respond.

Phil, I have never accused, and do not now accuse, you or anyone else who has contributed to this thread, or Sydney Carter himself, of hating Jews. By the way, did you know that when Arlo Guthrie was studying for his Bar-Mitzvah, he took lessons from Rabbi Kahane? This was, of course, before Kahane became notorious.

Howard, I do not accuse you or anyone here (or Sydney Carter) of antisemitism. I maintain that the belief that the Jews of the day brought about the death of Jesus is an antisemitic belief, but I make a distinction between holding an antisemitic belief and being an antisemite, in the same way that I make a distinction between lusting after your neighbor's wife and being an adulterer. To be an adulterer, it's not enough to think adulterous thoughts; you have to actually act on them. It's the same way with antisemitism.

Graham, I think I've already made my opinion of the scientific accuracy of Genesis quite clear in previous messages in this thread. But as you and Howard write, what it all comes down to is the question of the accuracy of the description of the last days of Jesus in the gospels. If it's really true that Jewish factions wanted Jesus dead & did whatever they had to to achieve that end, then the gospels are simply telling the truth, and can't be called antisemitic, and belief in them can't be called antisemitic belief. If the death of Jesus was desired, planned, and enforced by the Roman authorities with no Jewish input, then the passages in the gospels that say otherwise are an antisemitic lie, and the belief in those passages, an antisemitic belief (which, as I've said above, does not make the believer an antisemite).

So, what does the evidence say? Before I get to that, I want to repeat something else I wrote earlier in this discussion, namely, that (so far as I can see) rejecting these passages in the gospels does not mean rejecting the gospels in their entirety, does not mean rejecting the divinity of Jesus, the redemption of mankind through the suffering of Jesus ... in short, does not mean the rejection of Christianity. I am convinced that Christianity, which has thrived despite the modifications it needed to make to accomodate Galileo and Darwin and such, will not be in any way weakened by a change in its attitudes towards these passages in the gospels.

Now to the evidence. First of all, to the best of my knowledge, there is no independent evidence whatsoever of the events related in the passages of the gospels that implicate Jewish groups of the day in the death of Jesus. The case in favor of the gospels begins and ends with the gospels.

The case against the historical accuracy of the passages that implicate Jews is a long and complicated story. I'll give just a taste of it now, since it's nearly midnight here. The gospels say that the trial before the Sanhedrin took place on Passover. The case against says that this is an absurdity; it was against all Jewish law and custom for the Sanhedrin to convene on a holiday, and Passover was the most important holiday in the calendar. But then the Christian apologists (and that term does not carry any negative connotations) reply that that just proves how eager the Jewish leaders were to see Jesus dead, that they would break their own most sacred laws just to see Jesus on the cross. So it tends to be a matter of, if you believe the gospel accounts, then you can turn any evidence against into evidence for, much as you can argue that hundred million year old dinosaur fossils are really only a few thousand years old but God made them look much older.

I have to leave it there for now.