Helen Bond

So a lot of Jewish writers start to say, well, you know, it must be something about the people.

We did something wrong.

And I think the Christians, and you get this early, first of all, in Mark's gospel, Christians start to think it was because of the death of Jesus.

Yeah.

that the temple fell.

And who's to blame for the death of Jesus?

Well, it's the priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem.

And so I think that's where it first came from.

That's why I think the gospels are so negative about the priestly aristocracy.

They put all the blame onto them.

And at the same time, by the late first century, they know that most of the new converts to the

are going to be from the pagan world.

And so they don't want to kind of say too much about, oh yeah, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, thought Jesus was a troublemaker, so they put him on the cross.

They want to kind of distance Pilate from all of that and suggest that actually, you know, the ones to blame are the Jewish leaders.

And you get this, I think, even magnified

in the gospels as they go along.

And particularly in the early second century, you get some of these church fathers, as they're known, sort of leaders, bishops and people who really, really kind of double down on this, you know, the Jews are to blame.

And of course, this has been a disastrous thing over the years.

And particularly that horrible saying in Matthew's gospel, Pilate washes his hands of the whole thing and the people say, his blood be on us and on our children.

So it made sense in its time when the Christian group were just a very, very small part of the Jewish faith.