Surely, all that has been more than offset by their martyring of a local chippy on an ego trip.

It's not forgiveness - it's a repudiation of the traditional notion of Jewish collective guilt that breeds anti-semitism. If that notion is fully dismantled, there's nothing to forgive. The Pope's point is that the guilt ascribable to Jews lies only with a very narrow band of Jewish high leadership and not the nation of Israel as a whole.

• Who spent 3 years trying to find ways to prosecute Jesus?
  The Jewish temple leaders
  
  
• Under which laws was Jesus eventually tried?
  Jewish
  
  
• Who was in charge of the trial?
  The Jewish temple leaders - particularly the High priest, Caiaphas
  
  
• Who strong-armed the regional governor into executing Jesus?
  The Jewish temple leaders
  
  
• Who first persecuted the early church?
  The Jewish temple leaders and the Pharisees.

In addition, you seem to equate "Roman" with "Italian" which is a common but erroneous surmise. The vast majority of so-called Romans in any part of the empire were in fact local collaborators. Roman was not a nationality but rather a way of life. Consequently most of those stated as Roman would have been Judean.

Furthermore, you seem to link the Roman Catholic church with the Imperial Roman government. It's an interesting idea but is, I'm afraid, complete tosh. At the time of Jesus' trial, there was no extant Christian faith, never mind a church. Thusly the idea that the church, either universal or individual, should bear some guilt is curious at best.

Or perhaps your contention is that the link is geographical i.e. that the Vatican church is in Rome and so inherits the guilt of decision taken in that city. If that truly is your contention, let's go further; in fact let's go all the way and blame the Poles for Auschwitz. No? Thought not.

That seems right enough.



What census? No historical record exists. It seems to be just a made up story the details of which make very little sense.



There seems to be no evidence for this either. Nor any "non bible" evidence for Jesus having lived at all. So lets not jump to conclusions.



lol

nd the numerical system.

Oh no, that was the arabs.

When asked about the effect on Jewish/Christian relations in the western world, a Vatican spokesman replied 'That would be an ecumenical matter'.

Jon

I still say it was the Romans and so by inference the Vatican than killed Jesus.

They are naturally not very happy being reminded of this
so
They decided to blame someone else - and back then the jews were the No1 boggy men

Great Idea - lets blame the Jews - Phew we are off the hook now

churchcat there is non biblical evidence
have you ever read the 'Koran' ...

Couldn't give a crap who 'killed' a carpenter's 'son' unless I was having a table made.

Curiously no I have not.

I will have to look into that. History seems a bit lacking on the subject. There were a lot of "prophets" at the time. I would be interested to know what the Korans version of event was.

*scurries off to have a look*

CC

That bit about being a carpenter's son was added in Victorian times, so you shouldn't trust it. People don't realise that NOTHING of the bible is history, otherwise it would be in the non-fiction aisle.

Hmm,

This is not as straightforward as I hoped.

There is talk of the prophet Isa whom they are equating with Jesus. However the stories though similar in some respects contradict each other rather a lot.

Most significantly perhaps there was no crucifixion for Isa.

I am struggling to find this as useful as a corroborating source.

It seems that the earlier Muslim story was later re-written to fit in with Jewish prophecy. Though as I am no scholar I can't be certain of this.

I will look into it further.

you will find it an interesting journey

this may help to cross reference names, regard them as the angels to look up and research (hint) ...
http://angelgabriel.blogspot.com/2005/0 ... islam.html

I don't trust the relability of anything written in any religious scripture. It was all written and re-written by biased individuals who had their own self interests and opinions.

It's like trusting anything written by the tabloids.

Nothing? So sure?

The bible used to be a collection of tales about sky monsters, and the stories of historical events such as a massive flood are found in almost all religious scripture, so to some extent some natural events were at one time maybe inspiration for some of the stories. But I think too many atheists say they don't believe in Christianity but still picture the Romans persecuting Jesus as a "thing that happened". It's very easy, even likely that none of it actually happened.