‘The Passion’ inaccurately gives Jesus European traits

Columbia, Missouri Daily Tribune ^ | Thursday, April 1, 2004 | Kenya Kimbrough

[TopQuark]

we also don't really know how much genetic drift has taken place amongst the Jewish population over 2000 years of diaspora and pogroms.

That actually has been researched. Assimilation is a very recent phenomenon: about two hundred years long. Genetics is largely there.

[Verginius Rufus]

"Ecce homo" has "man" in the nominative case (just as in St. Jerome's translation of John 19.5); "hominem" is the accusative.

As far as I could tell while watching the movie, the Latin seemed to be grammatically correct, but the pronunciation was the so-called Italian pronunciation, which was anachronistic..."c" before "e" would have been pronounced like a "k" by a Roman in those days, not like a "ch."

[johnb838]

Logic and reason are the tools of white oppression.

[Restorer]

Moses was black, according to early portraits.

What early portraits? Certainly weren't Hebrew. No images and all that.

However, Moses' wife was probably what we today would refer to as black.

[Kenny Bunk]

Just heard the most amazing critique of "Passion" on NPR. The interviewee, an Irish theologian, made delightfully polite mincemeat out of the interviewer, who was a jerk. (Mar Eliason or some other such Nina Totenberg-ish NPR standard-issue bolshevik broadcast clymer.)

However, the good father made several telling points: Here they are:

A.

This film is a summation of the story in all four gospel, and thus leaves out many of the differences betwen them, and they are telling differences

B.

The Jewish (of course) mobs in Jerusalem were on Jesus' side. That is why Judas had to get Him alone at night to turn Him over to the priests of the Temple. The Sanhedrin and Pharisees dared not risk apprehending Him in daylight, in town. It would have provoked a riot and made the Romans really angry. The Pharisees and Sanhedrin used Judas to circumvent the POPULAR SUPPORT FOR JESUS AMONG THE ORDINARY JEWS OF THE TOWN. This is most clearly shown in the Gospel according to Mark.

C.

In the very first decades of what became the Christian Church, everyone was a Jew. In fact, if you weren't, and wanted to follow Christ, you became a Jew, then a "Christian" Jew. That is a Follower of Christ. (As shown by Simon the Cyrene) In fact, for 300 years, the Romans considered Christianity more or less a Jewish sect. It was Paul who opened Christianity up to the non-Jewish world, and in many quarters that was a controversial and not a popular move. In fact, it was Christianity's first big internal disagreement!

D.

Mel's movie revives the medieval focus on the Passion of Christ as opposed to what we know about the rest of His life, which is lightly treated by flashbacks in the film. In this, the good father says that ther is some substance to claims that the film coiuld possibly be construed as anti-semitic, in that it ignores the fact of the wide-spread Jewish popular support for Jesus;getting it all wrong when it actually suggests the opposite.

Thank you all for tolerating this shabby and incomplete report, as I was driving and got out of range. Perhaps others heard it?

[smokinleroy]

Nazarene is from nazar, meaning "unshorn"

I thought Nazareth meant "place of greater handcrafted stringed instruments". Look here

[rustbucket]

I'd have to say we don't know what Cleopatra looked like.

I've seen her likeness on statues and busts from the period in which she lived. Here are a collection of them: Cleopatra. She's Cleopatra VII. Definitely Greek, I would say.

Now Madam Cleo is another matter.

[ThanhPhero]

Buddha could have been black but not related to Africans. There is a large population fo people in that part of the world whose skin color is as black as human skin can get but they are fine featured and many have blue eyes. They are pure Caucasions. I think they are called Dravidians.

[Bonny Dick]

Sir Isaac Newton, Galaleo, and Einstein were also black.

[Bonny Dick]

Sir Isaac Newton, Galaleo, and Einstein were also black.

[Sans-Culotte]

Jesus had woolly hair and brass-colored skin.

This description is from Revelation, in which many symbolic or allegorical or metaphorical terms are used to describe Christ. In the above description, it is saying Christ appeared as a bronze statue (or at least His feet did). At other times, He is described as a lamb-"the lamb that was slain".

None of these descriptions should be considered eyewitness accounts as to how Christ appeared during His Incarnation, but the "feet like burnished bronze" and "hair as white as wool" descriptions get a lot of mileage amongst Afrocentric types as "proof" that Jesus was black (or at least bronze).

Sadly, such people are missing the main point of Jesus's mission, which, fortunately, Mel Gibson depicted so well in the movie.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Good point!

(I hadn't realized there were "historical" descriptions available.)

But look at the Shroud of Turin: that is the "classic source" of Christ's face: full beard, longer, thinner face, straight hair - about shoulder length, roughly th e same as your description!

(Which, by the way, calls to mind how the supposed forger's found this document and THEN were able to duplicate the features 1400 years later on the Shroud......)

Granted, some argue about it's legitimacy, but wouldn't it be foolish for Mel Gibson (given this description and the Shroud's "mirror image" NOT to have used both as a "model" of what He looked like?