Vatican removes nativity display featuring baby Jesus lying on keffiyeh

[u/Educational_Board888]

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/vatican-removes-nativity-display-featuring-baby-jesus-lying-on-keffiyeh-fvrdcbbf

The wooden statue was criticised by Jewish groups for reinforcing the trope that Jesus was a Palestinian.

The backlash came almost immediately from religious entities and individuals worldwide.

On Monday, B’nai B’rith International described feeling “disturbed by the Vatican display of a Palestinian-made nativity scene featuring Jesus on a keffiyeh and the pope’s appearance with it.” The group said the display “isn’t just politicisation, but revisionism. It presents (only) Palestinians as innocent victims—and Jesus as a Palestinian, not a Jew.”

In response to the display’s removal, David Parsons, senior vice president and spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, noted that “we are relieved at reports that the Vatican has decided to remove the provocative nativity display with an infant Jesus resting on a black-and-white keffiyeh, which is an unmistakable symbol of Palestinian nationalism.”

He said “This crèche not only denigrated Jewish heritage, it also undermined core tenets of the Christian faith. Indeed, millions of Christians worldwide were instantly incensed by this exhibit ahead of the Christmas season. The Vatican did the right thing in taking it down.”

Parsons described the display as “theological malpractice for the Holy See to allow this display to remain. For if Jesus was a Palestinian Arab, then he would not have qualified to be Christ, the promised messiah and savior of the world.”

[u/blishbog]

Wasn’t Jesus a Palestinian Jew objectively?

They exist. Like that rare one who took years to officially convert by all the proper channels and then Israel killed him

[u/specialistsets → u/blishbog]

Jesus would have been born in Judea before the region was referred to as Palestine. People then identified with their town or region, hence "Jesus of Nazareth" or referring to Jesus as a "Galilean"

In Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine, "Palestinian Jews" was used to refer to all Jews of all kinds living anywhere in Palestine, though it wasn't a distinct identity on it's own.

[u/EmmThem → u/specialistsets]

Palestine as a name comes from Phillistine, which is the name for the people of that region via the Ancient Greeks, specifically Herodotus used the term, several hundred years before Christ. The name Palestine then became even more official during the Roman period. So… Jesus was before AND after the region was called Palestine.

[u/kylebisme → u/[deleted]]

Regarding etymology:

Per Martin Noth, while the term in Greek likely originated from an Aramaic loanword, its Greek form showed clear derivation from παλαιστής, palaistês, the Greek noun meaning "wrestler/rival/adversary". David Jacobson noted the significance of wrestlers in Greek culture, and further speculated that Palaistinê was meant as both a transliteration of the Greek word for "Philistia" and a direct translation of the Hebrew name "Israel" – as the traditional etymology of which also relates to wrestling, and in line with the Greek penchant for punning transliterations of foreign place names.

And furthermore:

By the time the Septuagint (LXX) was translated, the term Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), first popularized in written form by Herodotus, had already entered the Greek vocabulary. However, the term was not used in the LXX to describe Philistia. Instead, the term Land of the Phylistieim (Γη των Φυλιστιειμ) is used from the books of Genesis through Joshua.

Also, as explained further down the page, when Herodotus wrote around 450 BCE of circumcision being practiced by "the Syrians of Palestine" he was likely referring to Hebrews, and Ovid was surely referring to Jews when he wrote of "the seventh-day feast that the Syrian of Palestine observes" right around the same year Jesus was born. Also, when Aristotle's described exceptionally salty "lake in Palestine" around 350 BCE he almost surely wasn't referring to anything near the coast but rather to the Dead Sea, and Philo of Alexandra, a Jew himself, within a decade after Jesus's death made clear references to Jews of Judaea as living in Palestine when he wrote:

Moreover Palestine and Syria too are not barren of exemplary wisdom and virtue, which countries no slight portion of that most populous nation of the Jews inhabits. There is a portion of those people called Essenes.

So, describing Jesus as a Palestinian Jew is historically accurate.