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.
Isaiah 53
1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Note to Esterbrook, *pierced him with a spear*, not tickled him with a reed or pinch him with their hands. Yes, this was to make sure he was dead so he would not have felt it, but it kind of indicates how they treated their victims. They would have broken his leg if he had been alive, but in fulfillment of scripture his bones were not broken.
I keep remembering scenes from Jesus Christ Superstar (which I loved as a teen, to the upset of my pastor). Caiaphas and Annas sang a song where one was this fabulous deep bass and the other an annoying whiny tenor. They were fantastic, singing of their fear of Jesus and plotting against him--and they were unquestionably and unapologetically the heavies in that movie. There wasn't even a moderating Nicodemus in the musical, that I recall.
Nobody seemed to think that was antisemitic... lo these many years!
And the crowd that turned on Jesus in the musical was clearly the canaille of the scriptures, "Crucify him!" What, and crucify your king? "We Have no King But Caesar!"
There is no criticism I've read of "Passion" that could not be leveled at JCSuperstar.
\Scourge\, n. [F. escourg['e]e, fr. L. excoriata (sc. scutica) a stripped off (lash or whip), fr. excoriare to strip, to skin. See {Excoriate}.]
Logically, scourging then was a method of punishment in which sections of skin were stripped off.
One cannot do that with one or two blows. Gibson had to show the length of the whipping in order to explain the missing skin.
Scourging was a particularly feared form of punishment.
Well, not exactly. In fact, Esterbrook is not even close.
1. Jesus' message was peculiarly a correction to and rejection of the so-called 'sacred traditions' of the Jews which had grown up around the God-given Law. He was also establishing a New Covenant with mankind which modified and carried forward previous covenants given to the Jews. It would have been impossible for Him to deliver this correction and this New Covenant in any other context than that of the Jews.
Moreover, because Jesus was who He was, He was fulfilling a large number of prophecies to the Jews. The "Turks and Persians or Slavs and Finns" would have been unaware of these prophecies and therefore when Jesus explained His own fulfillment of these prophecies, it would have been meaningless to them.
He had to come in the context of the people then called "Jews".
2. "All people" are not 'equally to blame' for His death. Jesus was killed in space-time history by particular people. The people who call themselves "Jews" today or "Italians" today are absolutely unrelated to the Jews and Romans of that day -- and not to 'blame' for the death of Jesus. [Similarly, those who lived and died prior to Jesus' time did not kill Him.] Those who are to 'blame' for it are only those particular men among His contemporaries in a particular time and place who conspired to kill him and implemented it. [Clearly, for example, the disciples and followers of Jesus, also contemporaries, did not kill Him.]
Now here's the subtlety. There can be no dispute, from the Scriptures, that Christ died to make salvation available to ALL men. Thus, those in our time who reject Him, reject the very purpose of His death and thereby accept and ratify the conspiracy of those who killed Him, in effect joining the conspiracy nunc pro tunc.
Moreover, it was the sinfulness of the conspirators -- the same sinfulness which we all have -- which made their conspiracy to kill the Son of God possible. Thus, it is surely possible that, had we lived at that time, we might have joined the conspiracy. [Although all of us reading the Gospel accounts would like to think that we would have been among His followers and not among His killers. Obviously, we cannot know.]
3. Most critically, while He died to make salvation available to all, clearly "all people" are NOT "redeemed by his suffering and resurrection." We cannot judge with certainty who is and who is not redeemed, (we can surely speculate that Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung, for example, are not among the redeemed), but we know the criteria: that those who receive Him and follow Him are redeemed and those who reject Him and do not follow Him are not so redeemed. So, we know the criteria, just not the results of the application of those criteria.
So what Esterbrook writes in wrong on all counts.
That is not true. I have never read or heard Gibson expressing this movie as a "long-suppessed truth". Quite opposite, he has stated this is his (Gibson's) interpretation.
The last impression I've had is of "frenzy". More like somber contemplation.
Yes, many of us do believe Gibson has hit pretty much squarely on exactly what happened.
You don't have to agree, but that's what most of us think.
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