Robert Peters wrote: >Walter Meyer wrote: > >>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"! > >Well, the Passions don't defend the "judicial lynching" of Jesus, >they are desperate about this, so that's not a reason to find them >offensive. I think you misunderstood me. Of course the Passions don't defend the judicial lynching. Neither for that matter do I. I find its retelling offensive, however, because it continues the tradition of branding the Jews, all of them and their descendants, as "Christ killers" down to the time J.S. Bach lived, a tradition that continue in some parts of the Christian world to this day. >And the text is innocent of the atrocities of the following >centuries - with one famous exception: "May his blood come over us >and our children!" This is the only passage I find offensive. It goes back to Matthew 27:25, and became a watchword for too many Christians in the centuries that followed. Bach did not create the pronouncement but, doubtless in the interest of Biblical accuracy, he helped perpetuate it. Walter Meyer