ARTICLES

Christians and Jews view Cross differently

By Steve Neill
Of The Catholic Virginian

It has often been said that the Cross as a religious symbol on which Christ died has been a stumbling block to Jews and yet has been the cornerstone of faith to Christians.

Dr. Mary C. Boys, an active scholar in Jewish-Christian relations, was the guest speaker at the annual Weinstein-Rosenthal Lectureship at the University of Richmond Nov. 10. Her topic was “Questions that Touch on the Heart of Our Faith: The Cross in Light of Jewish-Christian Dialogue.”

Dr. Boys, professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York who is now on sabbatical, mentioned in her opening remarks a dialogue between Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, and the late French author Francois Mauriac.

Memories of the harsh cruelty he suffered in concentration camps and the extermination of millions of his fellow Jews had affected Wiesel so much that he refused to talk about his experiences until about 10 years after the war. It was then that he met Mauriac in Paris in 1954. The author spoke of his great admiration of the Jews. Yet he also spoke about his love of Christ.

Wiesel replied that Jews did not speak of Christ because of the suffering they had endured from those who claimed Jews were “Christ-killers.”

“You must speak out,” Mauriac told him, moved to tears by Wiesel and his testimony of what happened to him and other Jews during the Holocaust.

The conversation between the two men continued until Mauriac’s death in 1970 when he was 84.

“In the 54 years since Mauriac and Wiesel first met, many Jews and Christians have spoken at length about issues that have divided our traditions,” Dr. Boys said, specifically calling attention to the cross and the crucifixion of Jesus. She and others hope that it will no longer be “a stumbling block.”

“If that is to happen, however, we Christians need to take responsibility for ways in which our proclamation of the cross has been a stumbling block, a scandal,” she asserted.

Prejudice against Jews exists because “we have a sacred story which has been told sacrilegiously,” she said.

Many Christians read the Gospels as if they were narrative accounts of the crucifixion, but the important thing is we need to see the Gospels in their historical and literary concepts, Dr. Boys said.

The professor, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and is a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, cited what she called a “trembling telling” of the crucifixion in which stories of the death of Jesus are lodged at the very core of Christianity.

These stories of betrayal and endurance of terrible sufferings are alluded to in the popular African American Gospel song “Were You There?” in which the words say “It causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble...”

Then there is what Dr. Boys termed the “troubling telling” which has resulted in much violence against Jews.

“The Gospels differ in the way they tell the story, but primarily they all say the Jews are responsible for Jesus’ death,” Dr. Boys said.

Best known by Christians is the Gospel account of John in which the Jews demand of Pontius Pilate “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

St. Augustine argued that the Jews were ignorant of Jesus’ identity because they misread their own scriptures, she said.

The “tragic telling,” Dr. Boys says, were “ways in which accusations of Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus became theological hate speech legitimizing, even at times inspiring, violence against Jews.”

Judaism was considered by some to be heretical and no longer deserved protection of the church.

“This was a tragic time in Christianity” and helped give root to Nazism when “Nazis drew on the Christ-killer myth in German schools.”

Christians need to keep the Roman Empire in the foreground in the “transformed telling” of the death of Jesus.

During the Roman Empire, Dr. Boys said that “When one talks about ‘the greatness of Rome’ we realize it also had a sinister shadow side.”

Although Pilate saw Jesus as “the king of the Jews,” Jesus was not a king like the role held by the emperor.

“He was a threat to Rome,” Dr. Boys said. “He talked about the reign of God in which there was no violence and spoke to the little people,” she said. “His message was contrary to the values of the Roman Empire.”

“The more we understand the values by which the Roman Empire operated — violent conquest, rule by terror, the deification of the emperor — the more we can grasp the stark contrast of the teachings of Jesus,” Dr. Boys asserted.

Christians have a responsibility, she claims, “for the troubling and tragic ways we have handed on the story of Jesus’ death.

“Indeed, this history must give us pause,” she continued, for “the sacrilegious uses to which we have put the story of the death of Jesus cause us to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

In a question about the accuracy of Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ,” Dr. Boys said she did not feel it was an accurate portrayal of what occurred.

Gibson, a Catholic who was producer and director of the movie, is reported to have said, “I am telling this story in the most accurate way it has ever been portrayed.”

“And people believed him,” Dr. Boys said.

In another question from the audience about how Catholic schools might seek to eliminate anti-Jewish bigotry, Dr. Boys said that “the Holocaust should be part of the curriculum of every Catholic school.”

In another question about the Internet as a source for information, she said the Internet makes all opinions accessible.

“We still have to learn that just because it was written, it isn’t necessarily true,” she said.

“We know the Gospel in snitches and snatches,” Dr. Boys said. “It is important that we read each Gospel as a story in its own right.

“There is nothing Jesus said about homosexuality in the Scriptures, but there is a great deal he said about treatment of poor people,” she said.

Dr. Boys has been both a Lilly Research Fellow and a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology.

She was awarded honorary doctorates by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2004 and by the Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, in 2006. Prior to her present appointment she was on the faculty of Boston College.

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