Explore "Repent and do not Judge" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
London, Sixth Sunday after Trinity, July 8, 1934.
The first incident to which this passage in Luke refers was very much the news of the day, in the context of revolutionary activity in Palestine during Jesus' ministry. Pilate particularly feared Galileans as the worst rebels and, on this occasion, had slaughtered a group of them who had come to worship in the temple in Jerusalem. Those who died at Siloam belonged to another rebel group, perhaps Zealots. Bonhoeffer preached this sermon only a week after news from Germany that spread shock and horror in Britain: Hitler's powerful SS troops, claiming that a Putsch (coup) was imminent, had massacred many of Hitler's rivals in the Nazi party. Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi reported that more than two hundred people had been killed.