How the infamous Oberammergau Passion Play is evolving

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

The Oberammergau Passion Play, performed decennially in Germany’s Bavaria since 1634, was, until relatively recently, believed to be irredeemably anti-Semitic. Jews were portrayed in words, costumes and mannerisms as greedy, bloodthirsty, devilish and legalistic. Jesus was “Christian” and “the Jews” killed the Messiah, the Son of God....

The Holocaust and subsequent Christian institutional self-reflection should have been enough to change the negative tide in Oberammergau. In 1965, Nostra Aetate, a declaration of the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council, rejected collective Jewish guilt in the death of Jesus. It taught that “Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”...

Progress began in 1987, two generations after the Holocaust and one generation after Nostra Aetate, when Christian Stückl, a native of Oberammergau and founder of a local theater company, was elected to direct Oberammergau’s main event. Still in his mid-20s, he began transforming the play and using its path toward rehabilitation as a vehicle for addressing Germany’s ant-Semitic past....


The portrayal of Jesus as unequivocally Jewish does make a difference. Christian embrace of Jesus’ Jewishness has contributed mightily to the diminution of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. As Pope Francis has said many times in different ways, anti-Semitism is a sin and irrationally un-Christian, given Christianity’s Jewish roots and Jesus’ Jewishness.

To read more:

https://religionnews.com/2019/11/21/how-the-infamous-oberammergau-passion-play-is-evolving/

On a personal note, my wife and I saw the play in 1984, the 350th anniversary. My German was not good enough to follow everything, but even the translation showed how deeply these anti-Semitic memes penetrated the play.

[MineralMan]

1. Well, isn't it nice that after 2000 years, this Christian tradition

is no longer as obscene in its hatred of the Jewish people as it so recently was? Yes, indeed, it's a fine thing, the Passion Play. Something to be proud of, with its long tradition finally making it into the modern world. How proud the Germans must be to have put aside the ideas that led to the Holocaust.

I'm so glad you were able to see it in its original obscene, hateful form. Yes, indeed.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. 1965

It took the Catholic Church until 1965 to dispose of the notion that Jews, collectively, were responsible for killing Christ.

1965.

Two decades after the holocaust ended.

If we can't rely on this institution to reach even the most obvious moral conclusions, then what the fuck do need them for?

[guillaumeb]

3. Yes, 1,900 years after the Gospels were written.

And this anti-Semitism is based on a deliberate misreading of the actual facts regarding the situation of the Jews under the Romans.

A situation that the writers of the Gospels were familiar with.

[Act_of_Reparation]

5. This anti-Semitism is based on the Gospels.

So when Pilate saw that he prevailed nothing, but rather that a tumult was arising, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man; see ye [to it]. And all the people answered and said, His blood [be] on us, and on our children

- Matthew 27:25-24

There's two things to consider here. The first is the historical context of the passage. Matthew's anti-semitic polemic was composed after the First Jewish-Roman War. The early Christians were simultaneously pissed at the Jews for not accepting them and scared shitless of the Romans, so they cravenly cozied up to the Roman Empire by throwing their Jewish relations under the bus.

The second thing is the absurdity of blaming anyone but God for the death of Jesus Christ. The fundamental tenet of Christianity is the salvation of mankind through blood atonement. Jesus had to die. It was God's divine plan. It was inevitable. Given the alternative was an eternity in Sheol, it was desirable. Instead assigning blame for the death of Christ, you'd think they'd be fucking grateful for it.

[guillaumeb]

6. I did say that.

So we agree on that much, and your concise summary of the situation from 50CE through 100CE.

And many of these early Christians were Greek speaking Diaspora Jews who converted to Christianity.

As to the second premise, anyone who rebelled against the Romans was crucified. Around 30CE, Pontius Pilate had a reputation for being quite fond of crucifixion.

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. Yes and no.

You said collective guilt was a consequence of a deliberate misreading of historical fact. That's not really the case, though. It's the consequence of deliberate propaganda written by people contemporaneous to the collapse of Jewish-Christian relations in the first century.

[guillaumeb]

8. For the authors, absolutely. And an excellent point that I missed in your response.

But even in 1965, or 1865, enough was known about Roman/Jewish history that this foundational lie about collective Jewish guilt was left uncorrected because many countries built on that lie.

[Voltaire2]

4. Well in all fairness they were still ruled by the fascist loving pope pius xii until '58.