Martrydom of Christ:
The Fool said:
My reading was always actually that it was not the Jews per se who were held responsible for the death of Jesus, as much as mob mentality itself.
However, remaining with the New Testament accounts, how tenable is such an idea?
To Baha'is Jesus was martyred as other previous Messengers of God have been martyred.... His teachings and practices threatened the religious establishment and together with the support of political authorities He was executed....
Jesus foretold His martyrdom in the following parable:
"There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:
And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.
And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.
Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.
And they caught him, and cast [him] out of the vineyard, and slew [him]."
- Matthew 21:33-40
In this parable the Lord of the Vinyard is God and the servants are the Messengers of God and lesser Prophets. Jesus is probably refering to Himself as the "son" in this parable.
A similar combination of ecclesiastical and political authorities as noted in Gospels combined to effect the imprisonment, mock trial and martyrdom of the young Bab in 1850 in Tabriz, Iran:
http://martyrdom-of-the-bab.123holiday.net/
- Art