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Updated: June 24, 2009 3:19 PM
Too clever by half, Gerda Peachey imagines she has an oh-so-clever quip against local criminal defence lawyer G. Jack Harris. Peachey takes over a badly translated passage from the Gospel of Luke 11:52 “Woe to you lawyers.”
Luke ascribes these words to rabbi Yehoshua ben Yosif of Nazarit, although nobody has a clue as to how Luke came across those words in the first place. The original source(s) that gospel authors drew upon are lost in historical mystery.
Contemporary criminal defence lawyers are not mocked. They know that the misleading gospel reference to so-called “lawyers” has nothing to do with their profession 2,000 years later.
Instead, the “lawyers” referred to by rabbi Yehoshua are more like minor theologians. They resemble the canon lawyers that the church later developed for more than a thousand years.
Ironically, when rabbi Yehoshua was crucified he had no criminal defence lawyer. Think how history would have been changed if there had been one.
Greg Lamming
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