Posted on 02/26/2004 8:32:25 AM PST by .cnI redruM
There is a remote possibility you may hear something about The Passion of the Christ over the next few days. Yours truly would like to add a small point about scripture and a large point about theology.
The small point is that Mel Gibson's movie depicts Jesus as horrifically brutalized before his crucifixion, and though it is possible events happened this way, according to scripture it is far from certain. All four Gospels report that Pilate ordered Jesus "flogged" or "scourged" before sending him to the cross. But that's all the Gospels say: There is no description in any of the four books regarding how bad the flogging might have been. Gibson's assumption that the flogging was sustained and horrific could be right, but then, a lot of guesses could be right; Gibson is presenting a guess. Mark and John say that Roman police hit Jesus with their hands and with "a reed;" Matthew and Luke say that Roman officers blindfolded Jesus, hit him, and then mocked him by taunting, "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?" That's it for the Gospel accounts of the torturing of Jesus. Moviegoers will be given the impression that in seeing Jesus horrifically beaten, they are finally beholding the awful, historical truth. They're not--they are beholding a moviemaker's guess.
The Gospels emphasize Christ's suffering on the cross; Gibson has decided to emphasize Christ's suffering via the whip. Strange that Gibson should feel he understands Jesus' final hours better than the Gospel writers did. Maybe this is simply his artistic interpretation--but remember, Gibson is presenting his movie as the long-suppressed truth, not as an artistic interpretation that may or may not be right.
Beneath all the God-talk by Gibson is a commercial enterprise. Gibson's film career has been anchored in glorification of violence (the Mad Max movies) and in preposterous overstatement of the actual occurrence of violence (the Lethal Weapon movies). Gibson knows the sad Hollywood lesson--for which audiences are ultimately to blame--that glorifying or exaggerating violence is a path to ticket sales. So Gibson decides to make a movie about Jesus, and what one thing differentiates his movie from the many previous films of the same story? Exaggerated glorification of violence.
Numerous other devout depictions of the Jesus story--including the 1979 movie simply called Jesus, which, as recently reported by Easterblogg's colleague Franklin Foer, numbers among the most-watched films of all time owing to its showing in churches--downplay the flogging of Jesus and focus instead on his suffering on the cross. That is to say, numerous other devout depictions of the Jesus story take the same approach as taken by the four Gospel writers. Gibson instead decided to emphasize and glorify the story's violence. Hollywood has indoctrinated audiences to expect to see violence glorified and exaggerated: Gibson now gives audiences a Jesus story in which the violence, not the spiritual message, is the centerpiece. This is a deeply cynical exercise, and one that results in money in Gibson's pocket.
Now the large point about theology. Much of the discussion over The Passion of the Christ focuses on whether it is fair to present the Jewish people or Jewish leaders of the time as the agent of Christ's death. This debate is hardly new, of course; the great philosopher and Catholic monk Peter Abelard was excommunicated partly for asserting, in 1136, that it was wrong to blame Jews for the death of Christ. For a skillful and detailed treatment of this question in history, see Jon Meacham's article from Newsweek.
The point about theology is so simple and basic that it is in danger of being lost in The Passion of the Christ debate--and surely is lost in the movie itself. The point is that according to Christian belief, all people are equally to blame for the death of Christ, and all people are redeemed by his suffering and resurrection. Jesus' ministry and story had to happen somewhere. That it happened among Jews and Romans is no more significant than if it had happened among Turks and Persians or Slavs and Finns or any other groups. All people are equally to blame for the death of Christ, and all people are redeemed by his suffering and resurrection.
The Gospel of Matthew reports at 20:17-19:
As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day." Whether you believe these events actually happened--I do--does not matter to understanding the theological meaning of Jesus's fate, that all people are equally to blame for the death of Christ and all people are redeemed by his resurrection. The Gospels and the letters of the apostles support this conclusion; the majority of Christian commentary supports this conclusion; that all people were to blame for the death of Christ and all people are redeemed has even been the formal position of the Catholic Church since the Council of Trent almost 500 years ago. The Passion of the Christ seems to urge its audience to turn away from the universal spiritual message of Jesus and toward base political anger; that is quite an accomplishment, and a deeply cynical one.
How very christian of you.
Piffle. There is no mystery here. I have been quite clear about the exact nature of the conspicuous capacity of the Gospels to instill fatal hatred for jews in christian hearts--which will continue to happen if the christian churches don't perform a genuine act of contrition, by making some very slight omissions to render the gospels truthfully. That is asking very little in comparison to the magnetude of the past sins committed by christians toward jews since Constantine turned it into an evangelical religion with a military component.
The real Christians I know are loving, compassionate etc... many have/will risk they lives doing missionary work for people they do even know.
Was Torquemada a real christian? How about the Pope that drowned the Anabaptest children? How about the chieftains of the 1st Crusade who sacked and burned ghettos on the way to the Holy Land? How about the priests who molest children and the Vicars that protect them? How about the priests who kidnapped jewish children to be brought up catholic in foreign lands? That's a mighty select sampling of christians you are drawing conclusions from.
1. The scene of Judas accepting money was offensive. Judas wanted Jesus to violently rebel. Money was not his main motivation. To have Judas on his knees on the floor grubbing for the coins that dropped, is extra biblical and can be considered anti semetic in that it glamourizes an anti jewish stereotype.
2. Jesus being nearly garroted by the fall off the bridge in chains was extra biblical, and again was just another shock to the senses that was done for that purpose. Not to convey what the scripture said.
3. Pilate was withdrawn from Jerusulem ironically, years later, for being such a brutal S.O.B. He was not a "good guy". He may have washed his hands, but the blood was still there all the same. Jesus is Christ. He revealed himself. Pilate's wife may or may not have comforted and aided Mary, and gave her towels, but that isn't in the bible. Gibson humanized them, yet did not humanize the Jewish Priests, who were wrong and malicious, but they were still human beings.
4. Gibson twisted the timing of events. If you read your scripture, you know that Barabas was released first before Jesus was flogged by the Romans. Gibson has "good guy" Pilate, having Jesus be flogged first, sort of offering up this punishment first, in order to mollify the crowd, so that when the choice between Jesus and Barabas came up, the crowd would have mercy on Jesus who already suffered. See Pilate wasn't so bad. Wrong. Barabas was a free man before the whipping.
5. Some historical arguments. THe man was drawn from the crowd the moment Christ took the cross, in order to make sure that it would get to the top. He wasn't picked out in the middle. This according to scripture. Secondly, in the movie, at one point, a couple Romans helped out for a while.
6. The crow. Only point of that was to assault our senses. It didn't happen. People would have noted that.
7. Judas being chased by the children, stumbling on the rotting, maggot covered donkey. Again, extra biblical, it's chief purpose was again to assault our senses, and it just didn't happen.
8. The flipping over of the cross was another brutality, that was not recorded, yet again, Mel decided that there wasn't enough violence in the account, so he would add some more.
9. Mary Magdalene as the prostitute. It's now considered by many that she was just demon possessed. Nowhere in the bible does it state that she was the prostitute. It was just assumed by later theologans that she was that person.
That all being said, I do feel that the movie is valuable because it shows us much of what Christ physically endured. My big fault with the movie was that Christ's greatest death was Thanatos, or spiritual death. Thousands of people were whipped and crucified brutally by the romans. We do not worship them. Christ's spiritual death was even greater than the physical one. His seperation from the father, his taking on the sins of this world. In the midst of the bloodbath that Gibson created, I think he might have taken more time on the spiritual death, other than a few passing lines and moments.
Addendum. There is a mother out there who is a major league idiot. During the end of the flaying scene, a 4 year old child, ran crying out our aisle, her mother chasing after her. Any parent who brings a 4 year old to see this movie is unfit to have children.
Although controversial, this is my opinion. Again, these are my negative opinions on the movie. I do think that the acting was wonderful, the cinematography great, etc. I just had some "issues"/
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