BEYOND their essential role as religious texts, the Christian Gospels pack a great, driving narrative, as they move toward their climax.
Jesus, betrayed by a kiss, is arrested at night by soldiers, brought before Jerusalem's high priest and then the Roman governor. In short order, he is condemned, stripped, beaten and led through the streets to an agonizing death.
Theologically, the concern is, what does his crucifixion mean and where does it lead? Yet Christian history has shown it is easy for some to get caught up in a more mundane and potentially dangerous question: Who's to blame?
Twice recently, individuals from widely different points on the Christian spectrum offered a blunt answer, identifying the perpetrators as "the Jews."
"They had his blood on their hands," said Charlie Ward, a point guard for the New York Knicks basketball team who is a born-again Christian, in an interview in The New York Times magazine last Sunday. His words appeared just a few days after Paul Weyrich, a prominent political conservative and Melkite Greek Catholic, posted an Easter essay on his organization's Web site, in which he said Christ "was crucified by the Jews.'`
Mr. Ward apologized and has begun meeting with a rabbi. Mr. Weyrich's defenders declared he is no anti-Semite; he explained he was "merely quoting Scripture," not referring to contemporary Jews.
Still, most scholars do not take a literal reading of the verses as unvarnished history. Nor is such an approach, shorn of nuance and context, what most young clergy are taught in seminary. But some have wondered just how much of this has filtered down to the pews.
Historically, Christianity — particularly Protestantism — has been dominant in the United States, enough so that some evangelical Protestants still refer to the country as a "Christian nation." But America is ever more religiously pluralistic, home to growing numbers of Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist adherents who have built mosques and temples in city and suburb alike. A study published Thursday by four American Muslim organizations reported that the number of mosques in the nation grew by 25 percent in the last six years.
The occasional eruption of statements blaming Jews for Jesus's crucifixion may reflect some below- the-radar uneasiness as the idealized vision of a Christian nation bumps up against the reality of religious pluralism — even though recent surveys show a widespread sense of tolerance among Americans.
Part of the answer may lie in the difference between tolerating those with different beliefs and truly accepting another religion as legitimate. Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, said the tolerance Americans express does not require theological understanding. "It's really just a sort of warm feeling toward people," he said. "It's just, `I don't know much about Jews, but we shouldn't be nasty to them, no one should be nasty to anybody.' "
Still, the Gospel accounts of Jesus's final days vary, but the central story contains elements that have colored Christian attitudes toward Jews for centuries. In them, Jesus, when arrested, is brought before Jewish religious authorities, then sent to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, for judgment. But Pilate allows a local crowd to decide Jesus's fate, the Gospels say. Prompted by the religious authorities, they demand crucifixion.
Even leaving aside the fact that the Romans had final authority in such matters (as the Gospel of John says) and actually carried out the crucifixion, many New Testament scholars have urged readers to view the accounts in historical context, that the story told by Jesus's followers about his life was not understood at that time as anti-Jewish because nearly all involved were Jews — except, of course, the Romans.
But, "the account of Jesus's passion was eventually `heard' in an anti-Jewish way," writes the Rev. Raymond E. Brown, in his "Introduction to the New Testament" (Doubleday, 1997). "A major factor was the conversion of gentiles to the following of Jesus."
Similarly, scholars dealing with John's Gospel say its negative references to "the Jews" owe much to conflicts between Jewish religious authorities and an emerging Christian community still tied to Judaism near the close of the First Century.
YET there remains a gap between the nuances of scholarship and the understanding of ordinary believers. Christopher Leighton, executive director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, said, "There is a dire need for a greater sensitivity to the work that's coming out from scholars that all too often doesn't trickle down to those people who are leading Bible study groups and proclaiming the Gospel."
These days, he said, while it is rare to hear the Bible cited as a basis for negative statements about "the Jews," a broader problem exists in that many Christians possess "a much more subtle and intractable disregard" for Judaism as a vital faith in its own right.
But that attitude is still a long way from what prevailed half a century ago. In the Roman Catholic world, a common anti-Judaism was ended by a landmark document on non-Christian religions adopted by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. It deplored anti- Semitism and declared Jesus's death "cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today."
The effect has been profound, said Eugene J. Fisher, director of the Catholic-Jewish relations department of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. "From what is in Catholic religious education materials today, you couldn't build up the teaching of contempt," he said. "Vatican II worked in its basic attempt to say you can't present all the Jews now as responsible for the death of Jesus."
Leaders of Protestant churches have taken similar strides. In addition, conservative evangelicals have forged ties to Jewish groups through strong support of Israel, though the theological visions held by these allies are vastly different.
But four decades of such work and collaboration must still confront the deep roots in Western culture of the idea that Jews in general bear responsibility for the crucifixion. "The disconnect is that those ideas are not incorporated yet in the teaching of local churches and seminaries," said Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interreligious affairs at the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
Yet a spirit of toleration does exist in America, even if it is not grounded in any deep appreciation of the "other," whomever that other may be.
A recent nationwide survey, for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, reported that 70 percent declared themselves untroubled by increasing religious pluralism. Large majorities said they regarded Jews, Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants favorably, a proportion that decreased when people were asked about Muslims, Buddhists and (especially) atheists.
Against this background, statements like those by Mr. Ward and Mr. Weyrich "stand out as exceptions," Professor Wolfe said. "In the best of all possible worlds, we would like our tolerance to be deep and respectful," he said. "But it's better to have a shallow tolerance than a real sectarian controversy."
The Rev. Robert W. Edgar, a United Methodist minister who served as a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania and later as a seminary president, said that though he believes anti-Semitism and racism remain serious problems in America, the work done by church leaders for reconciliation has reached the pews.
His eldest son, he said, converted to Judaism when he married his high school sweetheart. "My grandson didn't kill Jesus," Dr. Edgar said.