News reports have concentrated on the flashy but mostly incidental moments in the text. Where the pope rejects the idea that Jesus was a revolutionary, aiming at the political overthrow of Jerusalem's Roman overlords, for example. Or the passage which seems to gesture at Islamist terrorism: "The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all," he notes. "Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary, it is a favourite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be." Indeed, "It serves, not humanity, but inhumanity."

Some attention has been paid to the passage where Benedict discusses the need for Christians to "visibly" unite — the Mormon Church's Deseret News calling it "a veiled call for other Christians to convert to Catholicism". And then there's all the notice given to the parts of the book where Benedict affirms the teaching of Vatican II's Nostra Aetate (the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions) in rejecting the notion that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Indeed, in the first instance, "the circle of accusers who instigate Jesus's death is precisely indicated in the Fourth Gospel and clearly limited: it is the Temple aristocracy." And then, in the Gospel of Mark:

The circle of accusers is broadened in the context of the Passover amnesty (Barabbas or Jesus): the "ochlos" enters the scene and opts for the release of Barabbas. "Ochlos" in the first instance simply means a crowd of people, the "masses." The word frequently has a pejorative connotation, meaning "mob." In any event, it does not refer to the Jewish people as such [...] Effectively this "crowd" is made up of the followers of Barabbas who have been mobilised to secure the amnesty for him: as a rebel against Roman power he could naturally count on a good number of supporters. So the Barabbas party, the "crowd," was conspicuous while the followers of Jesus remained hidden out of fear; this meant that the vox populi, on which Roman law was built, was represented one-sidedly. In Mark's account, then, as well as "the Jews," that is to say the dominant priestly circle, the ochlos comes into play, the circle of Barabbas's supporters, but not the Jewish people as such.

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