(May 31, 2017 at 1:43 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for slaves and rebels among the Romans and the Jews seemed to prefer stoning.
Yes, that's true but then Jesus wasn't accused of anything. Wasn't he? Pilate apparently said. "Take him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him." So the highest court of a country pronounced a man innocent and then condemned him to death because, you know, bloodthirsty Jews were celebrating their bloody Passover. That's just part of the antisemitism from the NT.
Not to mention another elephant in the room and that is that Gospels obviously disagree with each other on what led to Jesus' death. Mark claims the Pharisees began plotting to kill Jesus at the beginning of his career, after he heals a man's withered hand in the synagogue. Then 11 chapters later Jesus is arrested and when that happens, the Pharisees don't have anything to do with it.
Luke says it's because he cast out the money-changers from the Temple in the final week of his life although John says Jesus' Temple-cleansing incident has nothing to do with his death because that happened at the beginning of Jesus' career. Instead, John's Jesus brings the wrath of the Jews on his head by raising Lazarus from the dead, even though Lazarus doesn't even appear in the other gospels.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
