[rface]

I thought Liz taylor did a good job as Cleopatra.

[evets]

[MEG33]

If you google Nazirite,you will see the difference between Nazarene and Nazirite.The site I reached said it may be John the Baptist was a Nazirite but very doubtful Jesus was.

[montag813]

Nazarene is from nazar, meaning "unshorn." The next time you see a dreadlocked youth walking down the street, rebelling against society wearing baggy pants and shoes untied, then just think that today’s Jesus might look like him.

Huh? Yes Nazar means "unshorn", but it most certainly does not mean "unshorn dreadlocks". Why doesnt she film her own movie and cast Ziggy Marley as Jesus, and see how many people go and see it.

[N. Theknow]

Gibson inaccurately depicts Jesus as European, with straight hair and blue eyes.

Yeah! Right!

Wanta know something even worse?

Those wounds he had in the movie - FAKE! It was all make-up. They weren't real!

Ash Wednesday was Feb. 25th and it is still being attacked on any and all levels.

From my 88 year old Mother who was interviewed by a newspaper reporter as she came out of the theater on Ash Wednesday evening. Obviously the interviewer thought she might be appalled as a little old lady with two walking canes coming from the movie:

"Gibson was certainly truer to the gospels than Cecil B. DeMille was to the book of Exodus."

"Violent? Gory? Bloody? Well, it was a crucifixion. It wasn't supposed to be a festive occasion."

"All my conscious life I have recognized that it was a terrible thing that my Lord and Saviour had to endure for my sins because of His love for me. Thus it comes as no shock to me to view someone's depiction of those events in a movie. In fact, it was not quite as violent as I had imagined."

"Did I find anything about the movie disturbing?

"Yes, actually. The Latin dialect they used was not one with which I was familiar. I was able to follow it somewhat but I cringed when Pilate used the accusative case 'Ecce homo' instead of the nominative case 'Ecce hominem.' Other than that, it was quite well done."

[MEGoody]

"Gibson inaccurately depicts Jesus as European, with straight hair and blue eyes."

The straight hair - big deal. Many Jews have straight hair. Some even have blue eyes. But frankly, I don't remember Jim's eyes being blue in the film. I remember them being brown. Am I wrong?

[stands2reason]

Psst --- Cleopatra was Greek, not black.

And Buddha wasn't black. Sorry.

[Map Kernow]

Don't forget Confucius, for Heaven's sake: he was black, too. His name in Chinese is "Kung Fu," proving he was a badass black man, not some wimpy Chinese scholar guy.

[Natural Law]

The author of the article doesn't know hummus from shinola! Clopatra was indeed a Ptolemaic Greek whose ethnic origins were in modern Macedonia. She was very European and quite possibly blond.

There are those believe that ethnically, Jesus was the offspring of a Roman Soldier and Jewish mother. Since no photographs exist of the pre-Arab indigenous peoples we will just have to accept Gibson's vision as being no better or worse than anyone elses.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

Miss Kimbrough,

Please tell me you didn't learn all of this fascinating information in your African Studies class. If so, honey, you should ask for a refund.

[Dr. Frank fan]

The Passion didn't "give" Jesus "European traits". The Passion had Jesus portrayed by an actor who, the letter writer seems to think, has "European traits" (whatever those are - which Europeans? Celts, Normans, Rus, Franks, what?)

What the letter writer seems to be saying is that James Caviezel should not have been given the role because of the way he look (too "European"). Maybe so, but one has to balance this against acting ability and charisma - one has to do this balancing act for all movie roles. Anthony Hopkins did not look at all like Richard Nixon in Nixon. I still thought he did a good job.

Gibson inaccurately depicts Jesus as European,

Gibson does not by any means "depict Jesus as European". He depicts Jesus as a Jew, among Jews. It's not like in the film he gives Jesus a backstory where he comes from the Saxons, or something. He uses a "European" actor to play Jesus, but that's not the same thing.

Jesus had woolly hair and brass-colored skin.

I don't see how the letter writer can know this. In any event, so what if he did. One has to use some actor or another to portray Jesus. That actor may or may not resemble this person's idea of what Jesus looked like. Deal with it. If this person has a problem with James Caviezel's acting job, let's hear it.

Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, was populated by men who wore dreadlocks and never cut their hair.

Don't know about the "dreadlocks" part. Anyway, this is irrelevant.

The next time you see a dreadlocked youth walking down the street, rebelling against society wearing baggy pants and shoes untied, then just think that today’s Jesus might look like him.

To wear baggy pants with untied shoelaces is hardly to "rebel against society". This letter is approaching silliness.

Gibson sparked the Second Coming by placing Jesus outside of the "church,"

Huh?

we finally get to openly talk about him as a black man on Earth and not some figment of our imagination.

Jesus as a "black man"? Ok, now we're in loony territory.

Kenya Kimbrough American Family Rights Association

Hmmm, is this that organization that thinks that all black people are "sun people" and Europeans are "ice people"? I remember hearing theories like this back on Dennis Prager's old TV show....

cuckoo cuckoo

[Tallguy]

This is a greater distortion than Elizabeth Taylor’s role as Cleopatra.

On that point, I'd have to say we don't know what Cleopatra looked like. She may have been light-skinned. She was descended from Ptolomy, one of Alexander the Great's Macedonian generals. As such, she was more Greek than Egyptian.

[GretchenEE]

Another good reason to heed the admonition, "Don't believe everything you read."

I've never seen a movie so picked apart in my life, and now the "critiques" are wandering off into the hallucinatory zone.

[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

[Bonny Dick]

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

[Bonny Dick]

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