Who Did Jesus Curse – Praise?

• Jesus publicly and frequently criticized Jewish religious authority:

• Those who copied the holy manuscripts – the scribes.[1]

• Those who studied and maintained the only written form of the Jewish faith and the Mosaic Law.[2]

• Those who guided the faith of the Jewish masses – the chief priests.[3]

• The Pharisees[4]

• The Sadducees[5]

• And when an unknown number of people (a few, all?) from Jewish communities expressed skepticism over Jesus’ works, Matthew 11:21-24 quotes Jesus as saying:

Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Beht-sai-da!  And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?  You shall be brought down to Hades.

• All of the above, including Jewish elders, are documented numerous times (too many to list here) as being highly critical of Jesus – even seeking his death.  The Gospel of John extends this dislike to Jews in general.

• Jesus’ criticism of the Jewish religious order would have been consistent with Roman goals of breaking down competition to their authority.

• In one of only two written accounts where Jesus makes reference to Roman authority, Jesus states, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s".[6]

• In the second account (Matthew 8:10-13, Luke 7:9), Jesus publicly announces that a Roman centurion has the greatest faith in all of Israel.

• In turn, Roman centurions refer to Jesus as “Lord”[7] and in another case as “[a or the] Son of God.”[8]

• Jesus is never documented criticizing Roman authority and Roman authority is never documented (in the New Testament) being critical of Jesus