A teaching assistant at the University of California Santa Barbara came under fire on Twitter after he tweeted, he would "find and assassinate Jesus of Nazareth." The teaching assistant has since deleted his Twitter account.
Timothy Snediker, the teaching assistant who is also a doctoral student in religious studies at the university, made the statement that came as a response to an open question by a Twitter user. The user asked: "If you were dropped 2000 years back in time with nothing but the knowledge you have now – what would you do?".
Teaching assistant Deleted Twitter Account
Snediker retweeted the question answering: "Easy I would find and assassinate Jesus of Nazareth." He then went on to elaborate his answer in another tweet saying: "Theologically speaking, it would be really important to get him before his calling and ministry begins, so that gives me roughly a decade to make it to Palestine, locate the man, and make my move. I don't want to be the heroic Judas Avant la Lettre."
The teaching assistant's comments quickly received sharp criticism with some Twitter users questioning his qualifications. This prompted Snediker to delete his Twitter account. Before deleting, he changed his profile bio to "Tim has repented, now he wants to save Jesus."
Conservative writer Rod Dreher took to Twitter to criticize Snediker's views on Jesus. "If you go to his faculty page, you'll see the department statement backing BLM. It says that the study of religion teaches that 'human life is holy because God is holy.' Hmm...," Dreher's tweet read.
A Twitter user who went by the name David Pecchia said: "If Tim thinks he could kill Jesus before Jesus wanted to be killed then he must be assuming Jesus was not divine. This brings the question, why get a Ph.D. in Religious studies? Isn't that like flat-Earther studying astronomy or a creationist studying evolution?".
This is not the first time that UC Santa Barbara or its staff has faced criticism over religious views. In 2018, Hindu advocacy group the Universal Society of Hinduism alleged the university's course misrepresentation of the Hindu goddess Kali, according to the College Fix.
At the time the group sought details over the course titled "Dark Goddesses and Black Madonnas." The university told the College Fix that it would not turn over the syllabus saying that it was "proprietary" and not covered by public-records laws.
