Posted on 08/11/2003 7:39:54 AM PDT by dennisw
Mel Gets Hell On His ‘Passion’
Eric J. Greenberg
Hollywood hero Mel Gibson may be a straight shooter on the silver screen, but his accusation of theft against a group of interfaith scholars is way off target.
So says the Anti-Defamation League and a group of Catholic scholars, who dismiss as Hollywood fantasy Gibson’s charge that the scholars used a stolen script to criticize as dangerously anti-Semitic his forthcoming movie about the final hours of Jesus’ life.
The ADL last week declared its support for the seven interfaith scholars — four Catholic and three Jewish — only days after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops washed its hands of the interfaith team and its 18-page report.
The report cites numerous anti-Semitic scenes and violations of Roman Catholic teachings in the “The Passion,” which Gibson is directing and co-wrote. Gibson said the film, which is to be released next spring, is based on the Four Gospels.
“ADL fully stands behind their report” calling on Gibson to revise the film.
ADL noted that in the report, made public by The Jewish Week, the scholars “unanimously agreed that the screenplay ... was replete with objectionable elements that would promote anti-Semitism.”
In a new twist to the controversy, ADL said that contrary to Gibson’s claims, his ICON Productions was well aware that the interfaith team had been reviewing the script in late April and early May. At that point, Gibson and ICON “indicated their willingness to consider the scholar’s suggestions,” ADL confirmed.
Rabbi Eugene Korn, ADL’s director of interfaith affairs, told The Jewish Week that on May 2, Gibson was privately sent the scholars’ report, which outlines the anti-Semitic scenes and violations of Roman Catholic teachings. But ICON responded by threatening a lawsuit, Rabbi Korn said.
In a letter dated May 9, ICON for the first time hurled the accusation that the scholars had used a stolen early draft of the script.
Meanwhile, the controversy has caused a rift between the Bishops Conference and four of its top interfaith advisers.
The Catholic members of the interfaith team drafted a strong letter to the Rev. Arthur Kennedy, the conference’s director of ecumenical affairs, expressing their outrage at USCCB capitulation to Gibson’s legal threat. They said the action threatens Catholic teaching and their own credibility. (Their position is posted at www.bc.edu/cjlearning.)
“The charge that we stole [the script] is absurd and insulting,” said the June 25 letter signed by Mary Boys of Union Theological Seminary, Philip Cunningham of Boston University, the Rev. John Pawlikowski of the Chicago Theological Union and the Rev. Lawrence Frizzell of Seton Hall University.
They disputed as “regrettable” the Bishops Conference apology to Gibson and as “misleading” its June 11 press release claiming that the conference did not “establish” the interfaith team to study the script.
“We were in fact assembled by Dr. [Eugene] Fisher [associate director of ecumenical affairs at the Bishops Conference] and Rabbi Korn,” the letter stated.
The scholars called on the Bishops Conference to issue a public clarification that they did not steal the script and support their recommendations.
“We do not deserve being left ‘high and dry,’ ” the scholars said.
The team of scholars has not said how it obtained the script.
Gibson’s critics also warned that he is apparently using as sources an 18th century mystical anti-Semitic book by a German nun, Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, and a tome by Mary of Agreda, a 17th century Spanish aristocrat. This contradicts Gibson’s claim that he is using only the Gospels.
Emmerich’s book is a diary of the nun’s visions, many of which are anti-Semitic, according to Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Emmerich “told of a vision she had in which she rescued from purgatory an old Jewish woman who confessed to her that Jews strangled Christian children and used their blood in the observance of their rituals,” Rabbi Hier said.
Mary of Agreda wrote that all Jews continue to be afflicted because of their involvement in Jesus’ death.
“For filmmakers to do justice to the biblical accounts of the passion, they must complement their artistic vision with sound scholarship, which includes knowledge of how the passion accounts have been used historically to disparage and attack Jews and Judaism,” ADL said.
Asked by The Jewish Week if Gibson has or will consult with interfaith experts before the movie is released, ICON producer Steve McEveety said in a statement: “As is consistent with the filmmaking process, we have, and will continue to consult the resources necessary to create the most accurate and honest presentation of the story as possible.”
I have absolutely NO interest in this sort of debate. The four Gospels, as well as the New Testament, (and the Old Testament, while we're at it) is the Word of God...to Christians. They are True words. Period. End of story. It's non-negotiable.
If you're not a Christian, please, find somebody else to bug, because I don't go around questioning the authenticity of other religions' holy texts, and I don't get into it with non-Christians who try to go down this road with me.
Amos 8:9-10 "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD ,
"I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your religious feasts into mourning
and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
Zechariah 12:10 "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
Even the Old Testament can sound antisemitic when it rebukes the people of Israel. My guess is this is just hype meant to discredit a faithful retelling of the story.
Absolutely. They have the power to tell the one billion+ Christians of the world what to do with gospels. Damn, those ADL Jews are powerful! </sarcasm>
Oh, I don't hide from that! ;-) The Koran in particular even allows for changing of verses from time to time... Supposedly Allah put that in there to trip up the unbelievers. *Sigh* Allah most merciful and benevolent. (ahem)
Why was the Last Temptation of Christ so offensive to Christians anyway?
I know you're being facetious, but Jesus isn't central or necessary to the Jewish faith, whereas Jesus-as-Messiah is the entire basis for Christianity. If someone, especially a non-Jew, were to try to engage you in a debate, the basis of which was that what was in the Torah was wrong or incomplete, the implication being that your beliefs are wrong, you wouldn't particularly go for it, either. For instance, Muslims claim Ishmael, not Isaac, was the favored, legitimate son of Abraham. Who wants to get into that sort of argument when it would go absolutely nowhere?
Muslims aren't going to go for Gibson's movie because they don't even believe Jesus died on the cross, much less was resurrected. They believe this "prophet" Jesus was assumed into heaven, sort of like Elijah.
So that's why I personally don't like that sort of debate. It's a waste of time between two people who each have a predetermined position that they will not be budged from. Now this is just me, but I find I have a low tolerance level for it, which is why I refrain from it. It's sort of like hearing people telling lies about my mother or father. In other words, I just can't help how I feel about it, and I don't see why I should have to. I'm sure there are plenty other Christians perfectly comfortable with it, but just not me.
Improbable as it may seem, many Christians today are so weak as to reject 2000-year-old core beliefs that the dominant media declares anti-Semitic. A prime example is the fact that many Christians no longer support the evangelization of Jews.
This is despite the fact that the first and foremost purpose of Christian religion is the evangelization of Jews to whom Christ preached almost exclusively. St. Paul prophesizes that Jews would convert en mass after becoming disillusioned with the Anti-Christ.
In the context of today's movement to suppress "The Passion", the ADL plays the role of the Sanhedrin in condemning truth. Modernist Catholic "scholars" play the role of Judas Iscariot as betrayers. The Bishop's conference plays the role of Pilot in that it facilitates the injustice while attempting to avoid blame.
This is from the website "Christian Classics:"
http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/npnf201/htm/iii.vi.x.htm
Josephus relates that there were four high priests in succession from Annas to Caiaphas. Thus in the same book of the Antiquities7 he writes as follows: “Valerius Gratus8 having put an end to the priesthood of Ananus9 appoints Ishmael,10 the son of Fabi, high priest. And having removed him after a little he appoints Eleazer,11 the son of Ananus the high priest, to the same office. And having removed him also at the end of a year he gives the high priesthood to Simon,12 the son of Camithus. But he likewise held the honor no more than a year, when Josephus, called also Caiaphas,13 succeeded him.” Accordingly the whole time of our Saviour’s ministry is shown to have been not quite four full years, four high priests, from Annas to the accession of Caiaphas, having held office a year each. The Gospel therefore has rightly indicated Caiaphas as the high priest under whom the Saviour suffered. From which also we can see that the time of our Saviour’s ministry does not disagree with the foregoing investigation.
So Gratus, Pilate's predecessor as governor of Judea, removed four High Priests in four years until he found one, Caiaphas, who was enough of a toady to do his bidding. The gospels do not mention any of this. Caiaphas served at the pleasure of the Roman governor. This is beyond dispute.
And don't forget that the High Priesthood was a very lucrative position. One false move and Caiaphas could lose all that.
Actually, Jesus as son of God is the entire basis for Christianity. The Ebionites, Jewish Christians who believed Jesus was merely the Messiah, were branded heretics.
I really have no interest in debating Christians except when they start telling me that I killed Christ.
Even if one takes the gospels as completely true, there is no proof in them that any Jew is responsible for killing Christ, except for Caiaphas, who was a quisling and a Roman appointee.
There's no equivalence. Besides, there's a long history of secular rulers appointing religious leaders. None of this has ever made a single one illegitimate, nor is there any suggestion from any source, Jewish or otherwise, that Caiaphas was ever considered illegitimate. That is a nice standard. I suppose Hitler or Mussolini could have replaced the Pope and that would have been legitimate?
The reality is that Hellenistic High priests imposed by foreign rulers were not legitimate. Read the Book of the Maccabees.
There is also a question of who the puppet High Priests represented: the Jews, the Hellenistic collaborators, or Rome. Ideally, the High Priest tried to support all three. However, his position was finally dependent only on the collaborators and Romans.
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