Very cool!

Puhleeze! Johnny and June were Christians. Not Jews! They would have visited Anywhere Jesus was from, even if it was in Egypt! The Jews killed Jesus. End of story.

Dee - with respect - Jews did not crucify people, Romans crucified people and Jews in Judea and Samaria were among their prime targets.

Indeed, Pontius Pilate was not as he is portrayed in the New Testament. He was actually so brutal the Romans recalled him. Some texts even say he was executed, others that he was exiled and committed suicide.

However, due to the subsequent adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire as its state religion, religious belief reinforcing state power has clouded the historical record.

As they say, history is written by the winners.

And once Christianity became state power the term "Gospel truth" really became indistinguishable from historical fact.

That's a problem for unbiased historians, a worse problem for Jews.

Let's lay this out:

At the time Jesus is said to have lived, the Roman Empire occupied the land of Israel - and crucified countless Jews, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands if surviving contemporary histories are accurate.

Now let's calmly add 2 + 2: if Jesus lived he was a Jewish rabbi and his philosophy reflects an evolution of Jewish philosophy. But, for various reasons, although Christianity was originally a Jewish sect and later spread to others in the Empire, Jesus was not regarded as the messiah, nor a divinity at the time by most Jews nor subsequently either by Jews or by Muslims.

It's a big step from there to blaming other Jews for his death for the simple reason that the people of Israel were under the Roman boot at the time, and it was the Romans who were murdering people wholesale, not the Jews.

Whether or not he was the "messiah" or "the son of G*d" or the "King of the Jews", the fact remains that the Roman Empire was beating the **** out of the Jews of Judea and subsequently crushed them in a war, destroyed the Second Temple and scattered the people.

Importantly, the texts known as the "New Testament" were not contemporary but were finalized long after this period.

Centuries - CENTURIES - later - during a Roman civil war, Constantine adopted Christian symbols for his army which prevailed over the Western forces.

Christianity then became the state religion of the Roman Empire.

Obviously, the Romans then couldn't be held accountable for killing their own prophet, symbol of their Empire, could they.

That honor has fallen to the Jews.

This is known as a "blood libel" and we have been suffering for it for well over 1500 years - of course the brutalization by Rome, the destruction of the Second Temple and the diaspora happened long before Christianity was adopted by Rome and even before that, once Christians became powerful they began attacking other religions. For example temples in Greece were destroyed - and worse.

Christians declared they had replaced the Jews in G*d's favor, that Jews are damned, the Church I believe sees itself as "Israel" and other Christian sects also believe in "replacement covenant".

Until recently, Catholics claimed that Jews living today are responsible for the death of Jesus.

Is that even logical?

And given the fact that the Empire's power and the power of the Church had become intimately connected how reliable do you think the texts blaming the Jews really are?

Nevertheless we have been victimized and continue to be blamed.

Can you see how appalling this is?

I sure hope so and I also hope you can see the nexus between state and religious power that has victimized the Jews, simply for wanting to remain independent and worship in their own way free of state coercion.

Thus there really is no longer any excuse for this blame game.

It has nothing to do with faith or belief in Jesus' ideals, which are beautiful and compassionate.