Since we’re talking about the portrayal of “the Jews” in Jesus films, let’s first focus on its immediate ancestor - passion plays.
Many medieval passion plays often showcased extreme caricatures of Jews (which are often now anti-Semitic
on top of being anti-Jewish). In fact, such stereotypes, and their perpetuation of accusations of deicide, actually encouraged mob violence directed upon Jews. In 1338, for example, the city council of Freiburg in Germany actually forbade the inclusion of anti-Jewish scenes from the local Passion play because of their potential to incite havoc, and in 1539 passion plays were banned in Rome because of the violent assaults inflicted against Roman Jews in previous years. These passion plays portrayed the Jews as being a bloodthirsty people bent on killing Jesus (who were eventually cursed by God for their heinous act*), and showed Judaism as an outmoded, legalistic, harsh religion.
- Building on the early Christian idea that the havoc wreaked by the first Jewish-Roman War of AD 66-70 (and later, the Bar-Kochba revolt of 132-135) is a punishment for the Jewish rejection of Jesus and a sign of God’s vindicating His Messiah, some later Christians had conflated two separate events - the death of Jesus and the two revolts - so as to make it appear that the latter occurred as a direct consequence of the former. (Historically of course, Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews were expelled for quite different reasons.)
In a Greek work known as
The Paradosis of Pilate, for example, Caesar is very enraged upon learning that Pilate has put Jesus to death and has him arrested. When Pilate divulges that he had Jesus crucified " on account of the wickedness and rebellion of the lawless and ungodly Jews," Caesar sends a letter to “Licianus, the governor of the chief places of the East” ordering him to “take action against [the Jews], and scatter them, and make them slaves among all the nations; and having driven them out of the whole of Judaea, make them the smallest of nations, so that it may not any longer be seen at all, because they are full of wickedness.” Pilate meanwhile is put to death by beheading, but not before he prays to Jesus and receives a reassurance that “all the generations and families of the nations shall count you blessed, because under you have been fulfilled all those things said about me by the prophets.”
The one that had the most impact in the West, however, is a 9th-century apocryphal work known as the
Vindicta Salvatoris (aka The Avenging of the Savior). The work begins with two sick kings – Tiberius (who is historically the emperor at the time of Jesus’ death) and Titus/Tirus/Tyrus, “a court official of Tiberius in the kingdom of Aquitania, for a city of Libia which is called Burdigala” (based obviously on
the military commander and later emperor who besieged and captured Jerusalem in AD 70).
Titus, who hears from a messenger about Jesus, becomes deeply moved by what he had heard and offended that the Jewish people had treated their Savior so cruelly. As a result he vows to avenge Jesus, threatening violent reprisals against them. As soon as he had uttered this, the cancer which afflicts his face is miraculously cured!
Newly converted and baptized, Titus and his colleague Vespasian (again, based on
the eponymous general who is the real-life Titus’ father and predecessor) then launch a violent assault on the Jews and lay siege to Jerusalem for seven to eight years. All the while King Herod (!) - or in some versions Archelaus (!) - kills himself, the eleven thousand soldiers guarding Jerusalem (!)
commit mass suicide, food rations run out that people had to eat dirt. Eventually the survivors, after surrendering the city, were then captured and either put to death in various ways or sold into slavery for a cheap price. (Thirty people were sold for one denarius - because Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of silver!) As for Tiberius, well, he is cured by an image of Jesus (either painted or miraculously formed, depending on the version) owned by Veronica (yes,
that Veronica), the woman formerly with the issue of blood.
This somewhat garbled retelling of the fall of Jerusalem (and Veronica and Tiberius/Vespasian) has become popular enough that later medieval works also adopted the story. In fact, “the destruction of Jerusalem” (by which they mean not so much the historical event Josephus writes about, but the Christian legend - with all its virulent anti-Jewish undertones - as recounted by the
Vindicta Salvatoris and deritative works) was a pretty common topic for mystery plays during the Middle Ages.
) To the woman’s (and everyone’s) relief, the Pharisees finally says “Amen” and everyone goes on continuing what they are doing.