Suffered Under Pontius Pilate

Thursday I attended a program at the Cathedral College with Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She discussed ways that we could preach the Christian gospel without condemning Judaism. It was very eye-opening; she did not, for example, object to the term "Old Testament" or ask us not to evangelize; in fact, she said that evangelism is an important part of our tradition and she thought we should do it.

So instead of speaking about things I had expected, she pointed out things such as this: when some of us (I know I have been guilty of this!) want to portray Jesus as a feminist, we can't very well invent new feminist Biblical stories, so we say that he was a feminist in comparison, i.e. we drop the bar for Judaism...we might say of course he was a feminist, because Judaism was such a sexist religion. Or, we talk about Jesus ministering to the marginalized, including women, and she pointed out many parts of the Bible that show that "marginalized" is not the right way to describe Jewish women at that time. For example, Mary was able to travel to see her cousin Elizabeth...how can a marginalized person travel freely?

And of course, some Christians still talk about "the Jews killing Jesus." Which is why this line, "suffered under Pontius Pilate," leapt out at me today; to remind me that Jesus was killed under the Roman government, not by "the Jews." After all, he and his followers were Jewish; speaking of him as being handed over to "the Jews" makes it sound like a sinister, "other" group.