Is this anti-semitism?

One persistent problem has plagued relativism, though. How can the relativist's argument (that these values are arbitrary) be any better (on the relativist's own terms) than the non-relativist's argument? Relativism is internally coherent for this reason.

Yes, but I don't see that as a problem. I don't mind others disagreeing with me. Both myself and them can be right.

Yes. I think one of the problems is that both sides are convinced that they're right _and_ the other side are wrong.

For every spittle there's someone as sure as him, but sure he's (or she's) wrong.

-- mei (meirion.lewi...), January 29th, 2004.

Sorry, to clarify this, I'm not talking about any particular issue, rather, I don't have a problem thinking that this whole 'relativist' position (which I apparantly hold) is wrong.

What is a belief if it has no argument behind it or can't be argued for?

That's what a lot of people would call a belief. Some mentalists would argue that the more implausible and less evidenced a belief the better it is. Most of these mentalists would be religious.

I think, if pressed, you would certainly come up with good reasons to be a relativist. If that's true then even a relativist can understand that other people (non-relativists) will - and have a right to! - offer their good reasons too!

I'm not arguing against reasoning and I think some positions (in all matters) have more to commend them than others. But they're just reasons, suggestions, hints, supporting evidence...

It's not possible to _prove_ which side of an ethical argument is correct. In fact, this is partly why I say two opposing view points can be right at the same time - because neither can be proved right or proved wrong.

And if that's true, then we are not simply in the position of exchanging unfounded beliefs that can't be resolved because there is no difference between right and wrong; we are in the position of discussing the rights and wrongs of each other's arguments.
-- run it off (davebeec...), January 29th, 2004.

This depends on the belief in question.
There are unfounded beliefs that just happen to be correct.

Discussing the rights and wrongs might change peoples minds, but often it can' prove the validity of beliefs.

I do kind of think that there is no fundamental difference between right and wrong. Can you formulate a definition of what 'right' is?

"This is a tremendous, tremendous setback. I hope this will not be accepted by Christians in this country. It is this lie, the lie that Jews were responsible for the murder of Jesus, which planted the seeds of the Holocaust, Rabbi Avi Weiss, president of Amcha, said. (http://www.nbc17.com/entertainment/2874405/detail.html)

I mean yeah, you can say that 'Jews killed Jesus' is completely missing the point of the gospel, fine, but to say that it's a 'lie' that Jews were responsible for his death is just wrong, unless you're challenging the historicity of the gospels' accounts of the crucifixion, which I don't think he's doing. Why use that word 'lie', when it just plays into your opponents' hands?

On the radio, I heard someone from the Anti-Defamation League making the much more reasonable point, that all the bad Jews in the film looked stereotypically Jewish, whilst the good ones (ie. Jesus and his disciples) didn't. Assuming that's true, then that's completely fair criticism.

It's not completely, thoroughly false that Jews were involved in the execution of Jesus; it's completely misleading to say "Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus" if you're singling them out to do so.

(In other words for "Romans" we should substitute "state" and for "Jews" we should substitute, like, "public.")

I was trying to think of a comparison like that. I can't come up with one that works perfectly, mostly because there's a sort of ... range of possibility ... of the Sanhedrin's actual power.

(I'm not denying, by the way, that the Sanhedrin would have supported Jesus's execution, since J-dog going Jericho on the Temple is one of the bits we can be pretty sure actually happened. But likewise, this was a time when many, many Jews, both in and outside of Jerusalem, disagreed with the Sanhedrin. And you have to read the Gospels bearing in mind that they were written during and immediately after a time when Christians were being excluded from Jewish communities and services.)

some do maintain that very position ... but that's another topic.

if memory serves me right, most the really objectionable stuff (from a jewish perspective) re the crucifixion and the jews' alleged liability therefor is from the Book of Matthew. that's where the "his blood is on our heads" line comes from i think (tep?) but it was, of course, pilate who sentenced him and the romans who tortured than executed him. based on the reviews of the film that i've read, the romans don't get off the hook for the torture and actual crucifixion -- but pilate's role is whitewashed.

Yep. I can probably find it, just cause.

"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"

All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"

Matthew 27:23-25

but see THEY WANTED HIM TO DIE SO EVERYONE COULD BE SAVED...weren't the romans or the jews or the hitites or gozer the gozarian or WHOEVER doing them all a favor anyway?!

It's like Pharaoh in the Exodus story -- God hardens some hearts and gets the bad guys to ... well, to be bad guys ... but it doesn't stop them from being bad guys, or excuse them from the repercussions. I'm not crazy with any of the theological explanations for this, and I'm not a theologian anyway.

i've also read that the alleged ceremony where the jews selected who was to be execution and who was to be spared was a fiction created by matthew -- that there was no such ceremony among the jewish people then or ever. i have no idea whether or not this is true.

I think it's one of those things we can't be positive is crap, because there's not enough information, but there's no compelling reason to think it's true, and the choice they're given, if they want to spare Jesus, is Jesus Barabbas -- "Jesus, the son of the father." They're being asked, who do you want to kill, Jesus the Messiah, or Jesus the son of the father?

I knew someone would say this. If the Rabbi had said 'it's a lie that the Jews killed Jesus' then that would be at least be technically correct, but what he said was about responsibility, and the Bible does make it fairly clear that his cruxificion was the Jewish people's choice. Of course 'washing your hands' isn't a morally great position, but that doesn't make any difference to what the Pharisees and the mob's own responsibility. If Matthew made all that up then fine, attack that, not the film.

As I said, the film may well be anti-semitic in its emphases and subtexts, but I just thought this was a particularly dumb way of phrasing an attack.

Though irrelevant, of course, since the film doesn't make this claim.

But the movie isn't a strictly Gospels-and-nothing-but portrayal -- and even the parts that do rely on a Gospel still often must decide which (with Gibson favoring Matthew and John, from what I've seen).

I think it includes a lot of things that can elicit a smug nod from people who hate the Jews already, but that doesn't mean it's nodding along with them; I do think the "let the blood be on our hands" line was a stupid one to include, but it's been removed from the subtitles (although it's still there, for those few Aramaic speakers in the audience who can make out the poor pronunciation.) A number of the changes Gibson has made to the Gospel material seem at first to make the Jews come across worse than they need to, but I think they make the Romans come across worse than they need to, too, so if Gibson's message is that everyone's a fuckbastard except me and my Messiah, I'm not sure I'm willing to charge him with subsets of calling-people-fuckbastards.

well, all it really says is that the pro-Roman high priests were all for it, and that there was a mob shouting "give us Barabbas!" and "crucify Jesus". It's a bit of a leap from that to say that all Jewish people wanted Jesus crucified. It doesn't even follow that all or most Jewish people in Jerusalem wanted him killed.

This is totally reminding me of the scene where the multitude are gathered outside Brian's bedroom window in Life of Brian and all answering (at length) in unison Brian's mother's questions.

(I'm talking in general again here, not about the movie I haven't seen.)

I think the Rabbi is oversimplifying, but I do think there's a lot to credit in the idea that blaming Jews -- the Jews, some Jews, any Jews, if the statement of blame makes a point of their Jewishness -- for Jesus's death, while forgiving the Romans, is tied in with the anti-Semitism that was a necessary prerequisite for the Holocaust.

[*] For instance, if the "let his blood be on our hands" line had some greater pertinence, and removing it would remove some of the good along with the bad -- which I don't think is the case -- then there'd be the question of what to do with it, whether a rephrasing could retain the good while still removing the bad, etc.

But nevertheless, some idiot notions were popularized more than others.

It's something I can't condemn yet sight-unseen, because when I wrote my own Jesus novel, it was something I kept having trouble with -- I'd like to think I'm not the least bit anti-Semitic, but when your protagonist opposes the status quo, and the status quo is Jewish, and his followers are more ardent about the opposition than he is, you do find some sentences need to be rewritten to avoid things that could be taken very wrongly.

(I can't help but suspect Gibson was less concerned about that than I was, but I don't know if that's fair.)

i'm not criticizing you tep

it's one thing to say 'oh i think this part of the gospels is more humane and more useful' but that doesn't mean the other parts are any less *there*--i dunno, there's this awful residual part of me that says that the acceptance of the authority--moral or otherwise--of the gospels is the central problem, and the problems of interpretation and selective application are just auxilliary problems

but you're right that's another topic

(x-post)