Next week will be Passion Week, the week in which Christians commemorate the story of Christ's passion, crucifixion, death and resurrection, writesVincent Browne.
It is the centrepiece of the Christian calendar and marks what many regard as the central Christian message.
That message is that humanity was/is essentially sinful, but there is a compassionate all-powerful God who so loved humanity that he sent his son to join humanity and give his life to atone for the sins of humanity.
I want to comment on that Christian message and on the stories of the passion and resurrection in a manner, I hope, is respectful to the beliefs of Christians, but from a perspective that is sceptical and critical of the message and the narratives.
A fixation with the wickedness of humanity is, I believe, enfeebling, in contrast with the celebration of humanity's propensity for love, commitment, music, poetry, art, science, sport, which would be liberating. Yes, there is space in Christianity for this more liberating perspect-
ive, but the central message has to do with wickedness. Indeed, the holiest of Christian icons, the cross, is a persistent reminder of that wickedness and what God did to atone for it.
And that idea of atonement is also troubling: that God would subject an entirely innocent person, his beloved son, to the pain and humiliation of what is known as the passion and crucifixion for the atonement of the sins of humankind.
What kind of God would do that, especially to his son? What is the need for atonement in the first place? Atonement to whom? And why or how could the "sacrifice" of the son be atonement for the sins of others? Is it that God needed someone to suffer a lot to make up to him for the sins of humankind and it didn't really matter who suffered so long as there was a lot of suffering?
Is there something baleful about the emphasis on the passion in the Christian religion? This obsessiveness with suffering, the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, the excruciating journey to Calvary, the nailing to the cross, the piercing of the side and then the agonising death. What has this fierce focus over millennia done to the Christian psyche?
The gospels present a far less gory account of the death of Christ than is presented in the Christian heritage. Mark's account is sparse. There is a passing reference to Pilate having Jesus scourged and then handing him over to be crucified. A brief reference to a crown of thorns being placed on the head of Jesus, but nothing about the thorns being forced through his head. Yes, a few blows with a reed being struck on the head of Jesus, but nothing about blood dripping from the thorn-pierced scalp.
Ditto Matthew, Luke and John. No Mel Gibson-type scourging, no piercing of the head with a crown of thorns, no great trauma on the road to Calvary, no falling three times, no nailing to the cross.
But there is another dimension to the passion story that is even more troubling.
Mark says that following his arrest Jesus was brought before the high priest of the Jews (Matthew names him as Caiaphas). Mark says: "All the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together" (Chapter 14). There follows the story of how the council of the Jews (the Sanhedrin) taunted, questioned and ridiculed Jesus, how false evidence was adduced to testify to a charge of blasphemy.
Then Mark has the high priest rise in rage, tear his garments and invite the verdict of the council. "They all condemned him as deserving to die." Mark continues: "Some began to spit on him. They blindfolded him and struck him and said to him 'Prophesy'. And the guards greeted him with blows."
The Sanhedrin then handed Jesus over to Pilate, who was mystified by it all. The chief priests stirred up the crowd, according to Mark, and incited the crowd to shout "Crucify him".
Matthew reports Pilate saying "I am innocent of this man's blood. Look to it yourselves". He says the crowd responded: "His blood be upon us and upon our children." The only thing that is certain about the death of Jesus is that he was executed on the orders of the Roman governor.
The rest of the gospel stories are almost certainly fictional. For instance, it is entirely improbable that on the night of the sacred Jewish feast of the Passover the whole Sanhedrin would have assembled.
Almost certainly what occurred is that, at a time of growing tensions between the followers of Jesus and the Orthodox Jews, Mark in around AD 70 invented a story about the trial of Jesus that fitted in with biblical prophecy and also cast Orthodox Jews in the worst possible light. And Matthew went one step further in adding "His blood be upon us and upon our children".
That latter quote has been the spur of anti-Semitism for thousands of years and one of the poisons that infected the well of a civilisation that ordained the Holocaust.