inbetween our tender first and cruel last things ~

DB129 THE SUFFERING CHRIST AS A MIDRASH ON DANIEL

The Suffering Christ On His Cross
may be in some ways THE central,
defining image of Christianity, & even Christendom for most of us.
Christians wear his cross, & they 'cross themselves'? For about twenty centuries,
artists have depicted the scene of the suffering Messiah myriad times; in modernity even Jewish artists
such as Chagall have re-presented this iconic Christian emblem. Over and over again,
we find the commonplace
(& common(non)sense)
statement that what divides Christians & Jews
MOST
sharply is the idea that a divine messiah could suffer & would die,
indeed, many hold that it was this belief
(produced (supposedly) after the fact)
that was the most tangible marker
of an absolute break between Jews & their new rivals,
the Christians?

In his now near-classic statement of the absolute difference of Jewish from Christian ideas of the Messiah,
THE MESSIANIC IDEA IN ISRAEL,
Joseph Klausner,
the important Jewish historian of the Second Temple,
makes the following argument, or rather, offers the absolutely dominant and prevailing view of this matter:
that initially the only difference between "Christians" & "Jews" was that the former believed that the messiah had already come
while the latter believed that he was
yet to come:

BUT BECAUSE OF THE FACT
THAT THE MESSIAH WHO HAD ALREADY COME WAS CRUCIFIED AS AN ORDINARY REBEL
AFTER BEING SCOURGED AND HUMILIATED, AND THUS WAS NOT SUCCESSFUL IN THE POLITICAL SENSE, HAVING FAILED
TO REDEEM HIS PEOPLE ISRAEL; BECAUSE OF THE LOWLY POLITICAL STATUS OF THE JEWS
AT THE END OF THE PERIOD OF THE SECOND TEMPLE AND AFTER ITS DESTRUCTION;
AND BECAUSE OF THE FEAR THAT THE ROMANS WOULD PERSECUTE BELIEVERS IN A POLITICAL MESSIAH,
FOR THESE REASONS THERE PERFORCE CAME ABOUT
A DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS, WHICH AFTER
CENTURIES OF CONTROVERSY
BECAME CRYSTALLIZED
IN CHRISTIANITY.
knipoog
04 feb 2013 - bewerkt op 05 feb 2013 - meld ongepast verhaal
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