Sure We Killed Jesus. No Biggie.

By Crispin Sartwell

Okay okay. We did it. Our Klezmer bands, our Borscht Belt comics, our gefilte fish producers, our moms. We admit it. We killed Jesus.

It's not easy carrying around the blood guilt of deicide for a hundred generations, but we're trying to bring it off with dignity and good humor.

We had some pretty good reasons

(1) He was a heretic. You Christians ought to be able to relate to our response. We're pikers compared to y'all, the slap-happy folks who gave us the Inquisition and an endless string of holy wars and forced conversions. You, like us, ought manfully to assume full responsibility for the actions of your forebears: there's more than enough blood guilt to go around. As soon as you had the power, you started the torture and executions. Even now you show a certain tendency toward the purge.

(2) It was God's will. Jesus predicted his own betrayal and death, and we didn't want to embarrass him by making it look like he didn't know what he was talking about. The only way God could arrange salvation for the entire human race, all the way down to John Ashcroft and Mel Gibson's dad, was to call home this carpenter of uncertain parentage. Stubborn as we are, even we can't say no to omnipotence.

(3) You can't say Jesus wasn't asking for it. This is what he told the Jewish authorities: "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?" (Matthew 23: 29). There was a lot more in that vein, aimed pretty much at anyone who didn't instantly accept his Godhead. That grated on our nerves.

(4) Anyway, Jesus himself was a Jew, so the whole thing's at least as much his fault as Shecky Green's.

(5) You must admit that the opportunity to commit deicide does not come around that often. Insider trading violates human law. Jumping over the moon violates the laws of nature. But killing the eternal omnipotent being violates the laws of logic. It is in the most rigorous sense impossible. So it's an incomparable accomplishment.

(6) We did it for you. Can't rise again if you ain't dead. He died for you? Then we killed for you. Your stigmata, your cross, your crown of thorns: without us, all that's left is the Easter bunny. You'd all be prostrating yourself before Odin.

(7) We acted on the best intelligence we had at the time.

Far from being grounds for pogroms and concentration camps, the fact that we Jews gave you your messiah with one fairly clean crucifixion should be the grounds for cordial interfaith dialogue.

Next time we kill Jesus, just say "thanks."