Ben Shapiro and Jesus Christ Superstar

An curious re-editing of a well-known story

I’ve never been a big fan of Ben Shapiro. He reminds me of a yappy little dog, the kind that will bark and bark at you, but the moment you give them the side-eye, they piddle themselves and run behind couch. Not all little dogs are like that. Some you give them the side-eye, and they consider that an invitation to take a chunk out of you, or at least your ankle. But not a Ben Shapiro dog.

However, it’s just fine to be a Ben Shapiro, sanctimoniously yapping your way through life. I might even agree with him that facts don’t care about your feelings, or more to the point, the great waft and weave of actions, consequences, global dynamics, societal dynamics, and interrelationships of belief systems and motivations don’t care about your feelings. Only other people really care about your feelings, and if you’ve spent your career with your nose in the air setting “snowflakes” right on how little their emotional investment in any situation counts in your eyes, when it comes your turn, when you desperately need other people to care about your feelings on a matter?

Well, I probably wouldn’t do this.¹

I saw this video a while ago, making the rounds on Twitter, but I wasn’t going to write about it. I have no real dog in the religion fight anymore, and Ben Shapiro is pretty much an NPC. He’s not interesting or particularly thoughtful, and his views (including this one) are painfully predictable, like missing every light when you’re already late for an appointment. But then I saw Jesus Christ Superstar with my sister, other half, and niece.² Since this was the fourth time I’ve seen it, I was familiar enough with the production, I had time to, well, think, and it occurred to me, during some of the “slower moments” how interesting that this would be his answer, this callous dismissal of Christ as just a common “troublemaker” who somehow spawned a religion.

The remarkable thing about Christ, at least as depicted in the Bible, is that he was not a political revolutionary. He was a religious revolutionary. Jesus’s revolt was not against Rome but against the Jewish religious hierarchy, one that would condemn a person for working on Sunday or stone a woman for making a living the one way she knew how or condemn a poor widow for not giving enough but had no problem with conducting business in the Temple. (If you don’t see the symbolism, it’s very much a difference between focusing on dogma and focusing on spirit or intent. The issue is common not just in religion but society and law—the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law.)

Jesus was, in fact, no threat to the Romans. According to Christian theology, he was something of a disappointment to fellow Jews because his message was not one of liberation from Roman rule. His message was one of “liberation” from strict religious dogma and earthly desires in order to aim for a more heavenly goal. He was decidedly anti-violence and anti-revolution.³ In Andrew Lloyd Weber’s telling this comes across in a few songs. The first is “What’s the Buzz?”

Why are you obsessed with fighting
Times and fates you can't defy?
If you knew the path we're riding
You'd understand it less than I

Simon’s lyrics in “Simon Zealotes”:

Christ, what more do you need to convince you
That you've made it and you're easily as strong
As the filth from Rome who rape our country
And who've terrorized our people for so long? . . .
There must be over fifty thousand
Screaming love and more for you
And every one of fifty thousand
Would do whatever you ask him to
Keep them yelling their devotion
But add a touch of hate at Rome
You will rise to a greater power
We will win ourselves a home!
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever

Right after that song comes “Poor Jerusalem,” Jesus’s reply to Simon.

His goal was not to free a people politically but to free individuals spiritually. To state the obvious, his message, had it spread, would have resulted in a population less likely to revolt, which would have made the Romans’ lives easier. In short, Pontius Pilate has no desire to execute him.

He tries everything, including (although this is not part of the musical) giving the people the choice between Christ and Barabbas, a murderer condemned by the Romans to death for leading an insurrection against Rome.

Interestingly, I was just reading on Wikipedia the following:

The story of Barabbas has played a role in historical antisemitism because it has historically been used to lay the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus on the Jews, and thereby to justify antisemitism – an interpretation known as Jewish deicide.^[31][32]

For that reason I suspect, it seems much scholarship has been done to discredit the Barabbas story and to lay the blame for Jesus’s death squarely on Rome, just as Ben Shapiro tries to do.

But there’s one problem with this. If the Bible is consistent on one thing (and the musical as well), the Jewish religious leadership at the time were the ones that were afraid of Jesus, not the Romans.

From the song “Then We Are Decided” . . .

And finally “This Jesus Must Die” . . .

They were the ones who set in motion the events that led to Jesus’s crucifixion, no matter who nailed him to the cross.

Why?

The musical hints at the answer they gave and the real answer. The answer they gave was that the Romans would come after all the Jews because Jesus was creating an uprising. But as we’ve seen, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor at the time, saw no danger in Jesus, except in keeping the peace with the Jews themselves, and his message was not one of revolution against the Romans. So that answer is just a cover for the real explanation.

And what is the “real” explanation that the Bible hints at? That the Jewish leadership felt threatened by a loss of power. If the way to “heaven” was not through supporting their hierarchy and following all their rules but simply living a good life and taking care of each other, or if enough Jews no longer identified as a unit unto themselves but saw themselves as followers of a different religious philosophy, one they now had in common with gentiles, where did that leave the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the rest of the Jewish religious elites?

They would become irrelevant.

That was a problem, for them.

Ben Shapiro could have said many things in answer to Joe Rogan’s question.

He could have said, “Jesus Christ doesn’t figure into Judaism at all, so in general Jewish people have no opinion.”

He could have told a somewhat historically accurate truth: “Judaism, like every religion, has sects, and Jesus was the leader of a Jewish sect that worshiped him as the Messiah, fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. As for his death, the Bible puts the responsibility on the leadership of the Jewish religion, but there’s little to back up even the existence of Jesus Christ much less the reasons for his martyrdom” (something that’s actually quite true outside the Bible).⁴

But he didn’t, at least not in the video clips I saw.

I can understand why a Jewish person would steer away from wanting the martyrdom of Christ to be laid at the feet of Jews. That I get.

But why directly contradict Jesus’s message?

The one Jewish woman I knew who I grew close enough to to ask about how she saw Christianity had this theory about Jesus (she wasn’t particularly observant religiously though she thought a lot about spiritual issues): there are souls that are reborn over and over and walk among us trying to bring peace and enlightenment to the masses. Jesus Christ was one of those. The religion that rose up around him was not his intent but came about because of his apostles’ desire to build an organization. Showing people how to be free in their minds even if they were not physically or politically free and showing people how not to be afraid of dying, those were his goals. He also demonstrated that responsibility to each other (meaning compassion and a duty to look out for one another) is to be prioritized above loyalty to a group or rules or even a religion.

In other words, in what is a far more Eastern religious concept, a good life is not about material success or even physical freedom, but about how you live your life, treat other people, and maintain your integrity, particularly in times of adversity, and that those goals lead to freedom of mind and spirit and true lasting peace, as an individual internally but perhaps even as a society.⁵

In short, love thy neighbor as thyself.

Can you think of any reason a man such as Ben Shapiro might want to gloss over a message like that?

Yeah, so can I. Christ’s true message of compassion and integrity, even in the face of persecution, is antithetical to much of what Ben Shapiro himself stands for.

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After we left the musical, my sister remarked at how much the story reminded her of what is going on now. Not that Trump is a Christ figure, but the level of insane persecution and twisting of words and ideas. But Christ’s story is an old one, a pattern repeated throughout history. The elites are always desperate to crush anyone who threatens their power. Some people will aid them; some will stand against them; sometimes the people win; sometimes the elites win. And the cycle begins again.

And that’s where Christ’s message of internal peace through integrity and compassion is important, even for the “lapsed” like I. The world moves around us. All we can really control is ourselves, and sometimes that has to be enough.

1. As much as I dislike Ben Shapiro, no, he did not call Christ a “common criminal,” at least in this clip.

2. We got lucky with my niece. She’s an eleven-year-old who loves musicals, or at least the professional productions. Lorna swears she didn’t blink the whole time.

3. At least as portrayed in Jesus Christ Superstar and generally understood in Christian theology. I have read articles picking out passages suggesting that this wasn’t entirely true, but we have to remember that the New Testament wasn’t written down contemporaneously to Christ’s life and was edited by people with their own motivations, such as (ironically) building a religious structure much like the one espoused by Judaism even though that is almost clearly not Christ’s own goal.

4. If you’re looking for a list, try the “Top Ten Historical References to Jesus outside the Bible.”

5. If you want a fun book, find Christopher Moore’s Lamb. It plays on the idea that Jesus went east, accompanied by his BFF Biff, and spent the “missing years” learning to meditate

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