Monday, October 01, 2007

Yom Kippur and the crucifixion

Listening to the temple sacrifice which used to occur on Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar, reported as part of the Yom Kippur liturgy, I was overwhelmed by the equivalence to Christ's crucifixion. Overwhelmed because it seemed clear, He had taken this as a model. In reading Quest of the Historical Jesus, one might be skeptical about what His intentions were and what had later been added for a certain effect. In part however the attitude of fitting events and statements into a puzzle to clarify what really went on leads to something here. Beyond the equivalence of the sacrifice, the second issue imposed as a consequence of the viewpoint of equivalence is to wonder 'Why didn't the Crucifixion and Yom Kippur coincide rather than the crucfixion occur on Passover?' Passover is, in a sense, the beginning of Jewishness as an institutional religion. So the timing suggests that Jesus expected either for the Jewish people to rise up and go to His religion or that His sacrifice would lead to a carrying away of errors and a new religion.

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