Robert Peters wrote:

>Well, I'm a native German, too, and I don't find "Ruhet wohl ihr heiligen
>Gebeine" offensive at all.  It would be most interesting to learn what
>you criticize about these lines.

Actually, in another post I mentioned that "Ruhet wohl" was one of my
favorite Bach passages.  To the extent, however, that the Passions purport
to retell the judicial lynching of a charismatic carpenter from Nazareth
and the use to which that tale has been put to justify hideous atrocities
over the following centuries, I find the texts offensive, in a way that
I don't find the Latin texts of the Mass and other Bach works.  How much
less inflammatory is "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato,
passus et sepultus est"!

Walter Meyer