Why Mel Owes One to the Jews

Two weeks before Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" flashes onto two thousand screens, online ticket merchants are reporting that up to half their total sales are for advance purchases for the film. One Dallas multiplex has reserved all 20 of its screens for "The Passion." I am neither a prophet nor a movie critic. I am merely an Orthodox rabbi using ancient Jewish wisdom to make three predictions about "The Passion."

One, Mel Gibson and Icon Productions will make a great deal of money. Those distributors who surrendered to pressure from Jewish organizations and passed on the movie will be kicking themselves, while Newmarket Films will laugh all the way to the bank. Theater owners are going to love this film.

Two, "The Passion" will become famous as the most serious and substantive biblical movie ever made. It will be one of the most talked-about entertainment events in history. It is currently on the cover of Newsweek and Vanity Fair.

My third prediction is that the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent as "The Passion" uplifts and inspires them. It will propel vast numbers of unreligious Americans to embrace Christianity. The movie will one day be seen as a harbinger of America's third great religious reawakening.

Those Jewish organizations that have squandered both time and money futilely protesting "The Passion," ostensibly in order to prevent pogroms in Pittsburgh, can hardly be proud of their performance. They failed at everything they attempted. They were hoping to ruin Gibson rather than enrich him. They were hoping to suppress "The Passion" rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.

Here I digress slightly to exercise the Jewish value of "giving the benefit of the doubt" by discounting cynical suggestions growing in popularity that the very public nature of their attack on Gibson exposed their real purpose-fund-raising. Apparently, frightening wealthy widows in Florida about anti-Semitic thugs prowling the streets of America causes them to open their pocketbooks and refill the coffers of groups with little other raison d'être. But let's assume the groups were hoping to help Jews.

However, instead of helping the Jewish community, they have inflicted lasting harm. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, they have triggered anger, hurt and resentment. Hosting the Toward Tradition radio show and speaking before many audiences nationwide, I enjoy extensive communication with Christian America, and what I hear is troubling. Fearful of attracting the ire of Jewish groups that are so quick to hurl the "anti-Semite" epithet, some Christians are reluctant to speak out. Although one can bludgeon resentful people into silence, behind closed doors emotions continue to simmer.

I consider it crucially important for Christians to know that not all Jews are in agreement with their self-appointed spokesmen. Most American Jews, experiencing warm and gracious interactions each day with their Christian fellow citizens, would feel awkward trying to explain why so many Jewish organizations seem focused on an agenda hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Many individual Jews have shared with me their embarrassment that groups, ostensibly representing them, attack "The Passion" but are silent about depraved entertainment that encourages killing cops and brutalizing women.

Citing artistic freedom, Jewish groups helped protect sacrilegious exhibits such as the anti-Christian feces extravaganza presented by the Brooklyn Museum four years ago. One can hardly blame Christians for assuming that Jews feel artistic freedom is important only when exercised by those hostile toward Christianity. However, this is not how all Jews feel.

From audiences around America, I am encountering bitterness at Jewish organizations insisting that belief in the New Testament is de facto evidence of anti-Semitism. Christians heard Jewish leaders denouncing Gibson for making a movie that follows Gospel accounts of the crucifixion long before any of them had even seen the movie.

Furthermore, Christians are hurt that Jewish groups are presuming to teach them what Christian Scripture "really means." Listen to a rabbi whom I debated on the Fox television show hosted by Bill O'Reilly last September. This is what he said, "We have a responsibility as Jews, as thinking Jews, as people of theology, to respond to our Christian brothers and to engage them, be it Protestants, be it Catholics, and say, 'Look, this is not your history, this is not your theology, this does not represent what you believe in.'"

He happens to be a respected rabbi and a good one, but he too has bought into the preposterous proposition that Jews will re-educate Christians about Christian theology and history. Is it any wonder that this breathtaking arrogance spurs bitterness?

Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews' best (and perhaps, only) friends also feel bitter at Jews believing that "The Passion" is revealing startling new information about the crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews thinking that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles of history into snarling, Jew-hating predators.

Christians are baffled by Jews who don't understand that President George Washington, who knew and revered every word of the Gospels, was still able to write that oft-quoted beautiful letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, offering friendship and full participation in America to the Jewish community.

One of the directors of the AJC recently warned that "The Passion" "could undermine the sense of community between Christians and Jews that's going on in this country. We're not allowing the film to do that." No sir, it isn't the film that threatens the sense of community; it is the arrogant and intemperate response of Jewish organizations that does so.

Jewish organizations, hoping to help but failing so spectacularly, refute all myths of Jewish intelligence. How could their plans have been so misguided and the execution so inept?

Ancient Jewish wisdom teaches that nothing confuses one's thinking more than being in the grip of the two powerful emotions, love and hate. The actions of these Jewish organizations sadly suggest that they are in the grip of a hatred for Christianity that is only harming Jews.

Today, peril threatens all Americans, both Jews and Christians. Many of the men and women in the front lines find great support in their Christian faith. It is strange that Jewish organizations, purporting to protect Jews, think that insulting allies is the preferred way to carry out that mandate.

A ferocious Rottweiler dog in your suburban home will quickly estrange your family from the neighborhood. For those of us in the Jewish community who cherish friendship with our neighbors, some Jewish organizations have become our Rottweilers. God help us.

God bless you too. I don't know what makes you think that I don't know Him as our Triune God. I am an Orthodox Christian.

I hope people will see "The Passion" as an artist's rendition and not confuse it with fact.

If Gibson made this movie to appease his soul, I think the monastic life would have been a more proper choice to show one's love for God.

Perhaps we will all abstain from evil and wicked thought and deeds this week and prove to the skeptics the true message of our beloved Lord.

You're wrong. We now know that Matthew's Gospel was written before the fall of the Temple and have fragments dating back to 65 A.D.--only about thirty-two years after the death of Christ. The date is exact because the manuscript was found with a business contract with that date and written by the same scribe on the same papyrus.

Heck, we have memoirs of the Vietnam war still being written that go back that many years. We have accounts of WWII that were still being published fifty years later. We've got reporters swarming all over what Bush did thirty years ago in the National Guard. Why should the veracity of the Gospels be considered any less credible, especially when they are backed by independent sources and by internal evidence.

You say, "I don't know how much you remember what happened sixty years ago, but that's a long stretch for anyone's mind." Not really, not if what had happened was so significant and had impressed itself so deeply and vividly on my mind. Many old people can tell you what people had said to them fifty years ago when they were younger, especially if the event being recalled had been told to others many times over. I have a 92 year old acquaintance who tells of her younger years with clarity and great vivacity. It is not unusual.

You say, "There are no contemporary accounts to back them up. Please don't bring up Josephus and Titus! They are not contemporary accounts, but passing comments ex post facto." But why should you expect that there would be anything more than passing references to the "wonderworker" and carpenter, as Josephus called Jesus? The apostles were just fishermen. Judea was a backwater in the Empire, very far from sophisticated Rome or Athens where the real action was in the Empire. It is enough that we have not only the four Gospels, but St. Paul's letters as well. These have the same legitimacy as any profane document from the ancient world--more, actually, because there is more in the way of supportive manuscript evidence.

God bless you too. I don't know what makes you think that I don't know Him as our Triune God. I am an Orthodox Christian.

Oh sorry! LOL!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe I shouldn't confuse non-Passion fan with non-Jesus fan. Sorry about that! Hehe.

I think as a Christian you'll be very happy with what this movie does. If it saves souls and brings people closer to their Lord, Mel not becoming a monk will have paid off.

Also, many people think of crucifixion in the abstract. They don't realize what it means to suffer for others. Jesus suffered for others to an unbelievable extent, not only to redeem our sins, but also because of them and because he was so perfectly good.

Some of us - especially myself - can't suffer enough on an internet board to put up with the sins of another poster without being unkind.

What you are saying is all plausible. One may not expect to read about Jesus in Rome or Athens but it is equally plausible that a wonder worker with thousands of followers, and a very annoyed Jewish priesthood, would be recorded in Jerusalem, or elsewhere in Israel by the Jews as well as the local Roman authorities.

After all, Jesus was saying things the Jews considered a terrible blasphemy, and clearly opposed to the Scriptures (Isa 43:10-11):

"Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me...and apart from me there is no savior."

Anyone claiming, even indirectly, to be the Son of God, and had a large following, would most probably have something recorded about him. The incredible lack of such independent profane contemporary recordings suggest that Jesus didn't have a large following and that his impact on the Jews was exaggerated in the Gospels, for an as of yet unknown reason.

One must ask how many people would follow Jesus today if he appeared as an ordinary farmer claiming to be the Son of God, and telling everyone to love him if they want to be saved, to love him more than we love our own family, or if he forced his way into the Walstreet Exchange and disrupted the trading there?

The fact is that Jesus' life remains and enigma known only through the Gospels which are neither contemporary, nor independent, nor unbiased accounts.

Even Gibson distanced hismelf from those who are likely to claim "historical authenticity" of his movie base. In his own words, he amde the movie, the way he believed how it all probably happened.

But, that being so, does not in any way take away from the message of the Gospels.

Maybe I shouldn't confuse non-Passion fan with non-Jesus fan

I haven't seen the movie yet, so how can I be its fan?

Also, many people think of crucifixion in the abstract

And of 1.3 million abortions a year, and of the starving, and even of our dead and wounded who are being brought home through the back door in the dark. Most people choose to think in the abstract either by ignoring it or making up a nice story about it.

One of the reasons Vietnam was became so unpopular was precisely the steady dose of (biased but graphic) realism on TV every night, making abstraction almost impossible.

Even our own concept of ourselves is an abstraction. Most of us never think that it takes light 8 minutes from the Sun to reach us, traveling at 160,000 miles/second, in order to imagine the vastness of space and the insignificance of our physical being. That's why Hollywood is booming.

I think as a Christian you'll be very happy with what this movie does. If it saves souls

Goodness! I hope you don't really mean that! Salvation takes a lot more than seeing a movie and praising the Lord.

New Testament documents should be judged by the same rules as profane documents when it comes to historicity. But some scholars reject the validity of the Gospel events even before they begin to investigate. They begin by holding that miracles are impossible and move on from there. To them the falsity of the Gospels are self-evident and beyond dispute precisely because they record the miraculous.

To a Christian this is not only unfair, it is unreasonable. What could be the motive behind the writing of the New Testament if it was not to record events that actually happened? What had the disciples of Jesus to gain from recording false accounts? They were hounded and persecuted. We know from separate sources that Peter (Mark was his follower), Paul and Luke were martyred. Each of them was also poor and lived off the dole. Not a one of them prospered financially from what they preached. What possibly could have been their motives for writing falsely about Jesus--to the extent that they suffered hardships, exile and execution in order to teach about him? People are not normally willing to suffer and die for lies. This flies in the face of human nature. Obviously they believed in what they taught.

One of the way modern scholars get around this dilemma is to say that while they don't deliberately deceive, the Gospels are just myths on a par with pagan mythologies. They are fairy tales originating in the imaginations of their writers and based vaguely and loosely on true historical events. To hold this theory--which is the most common one today--there is an absolute need to assign the composition of the narratives to a much later date, usually to some time in the second century, a time sufficient to show that history gradually had evolved into mythology. The problem with this theory is that the ante-Nicene writers of the second century such as Tertullian, St. Irenaeus, Clement and others affirm that the Gospels they venerated were much older. In fact, fragments of Matthew's Gospel dating back to as early as thirty-two years after Jesus' death have recently been found, together with a business contract that had been dated exactly. This discovery blows to smithereens the "myth" theory which changes the traditional time-frame for composition.

There is also corroborating scientific evidence supportive of the authenticity of the Gospels in their details as eye-witness accounts. Matthew's Gospel, for instance, affirms many facts about the period before the destruction of the Temple that we know to be true from separate documentary sources. Archeological digs have also affirmed John's description of the praetorian court of Pilate. Some of the narratives are of events so detailed and realistic, they preclude attribution to fiction. All the Gospels, moreover, lack the kind of idealization that is normally associated with inauthenticity by scholars. Cowardly behavior on the apostles' part, for instance, during the arrest and execution of Jesus is all recorded and is a powerful testimony to truthfulness.

Now you are putting words in my mouth. The Gospels are valid even if they are not identical or presumably historically authoritative. And, one can say with certainty that they are not identical. John's work is even more different than the other three. But that does not take away from the message of the Gospels, which is the core of Christianity.

Yes, I am Orthodox and I have no fear to question anything regarding my faith. Any apparent errors that one encounters always turns out to be the work of men and not of God.

Faith begins with an encounter with God. Of all the situations that bring people to God, movies represent a minuscule contribution. I doubt that God needs controversial movies.

Thank you. Your answer still does do not explain why there are no contemporary Christian or non-Christian accounts of Jesus if He had thousands of followers and if He struck fear in the powerful Jewish priests. Not an iota.

You also know that the Gospels were written in succession and not at the same time. No one doubts their martyrdom, no one doubts their faith. They knew something that we can only hope to know one day, because very few Christians would be willing to be martyred.

No one believes the Gospels "less" than the profane sources -- that is if there were any profane sources to compare. The fact (thus far, and that's all we have to go on) is that the only people who wrote about this most significant Man were only His followers, and none other. And even that is post facto and anything but simultanous.

I don't understand your objection when you say, "Your answer still does do not explain why there are no contemporary Christian or non-Christian accounts of Jesus if He had thousands of followers and if He struck fear in the powerful Jewish priests."

The New Testament documents ARE contemporary Christian accounts. Because of this, other Christians took great care to preserve these manuscripts, copying and recopying them. To date there are over 4000 manuscripts or manuscript fragments extant from the ancient world, far more than any other piece of ancient writing, some dating back to either the first or second centuries. In addition, those who came a generation later and wrote about Jesus should not be discounted as witnesses. Many were the disciples of those who had known Jesus personally. St. Polycarp was a disciple of John, for instance. Polycarp's disciple was St. Irenaeus. Such writers are powerfully persuasive when they speak to the historicity of the Gospel narrative. These are very valid corroborations for texts that ancient.

You need besides to put all this in proper perspective. You demand more evidence than it is possible for scholars to produce for even profane writings. Most of the literature from two thousand years ago is lost. Even the Greek and Roman writings which have survived come down to us from manuscripts that date, at best, to maybe the fifth century, if even that. Most derive from manuscripts copied during the ninth or tenth centuries. The originals have been lost. We know that the vast majority of works were never copied. This would also be true of Talmudic chronicles which were transmitted orally until they were set down in written form much later, long after the death of Christ. By this time Jesus had already become a distant memory.

If you don't believe the accuracy of the Gospels you can't really call yourself an "orthodox" Christian. This is akin to someone who doesn't believe in Newton's laws of gravity calling himself an orthodox physicist. IOW you don't have Christianity 101 which is belief in the word.

The Word is the Word and the Gospel is the Gospel, it's not a "message" or a buffet where we select whatever we like according to our worldly thought processes.

Besides that your worldly argument that there isn't some kind of 2,000 year old document with accounting of Jesus is a waste of time. First the various Gospels ARE documents. Also if there were other benign documents why would they be so preserved when we have very little from that time/area to begin with. We don't even have precious artifacts from the temple.

What I find amazing is that this most studied book in history doesn't have any documentation disproving it.

Let me put it this way: recently a grave site was uncovered in Iraq of children who had been massacred by Saddam's Baathists. There was no report of this by any of the media except a very brief mention, I believe, on Fox. Nobody remembers it, though we're aware there were mass graves. It's forgotten by most of us--but I'll bet not to those closely involved. Sophisticates move on, but the lowly Iraqis who lost their kids remember.

My point is that this was even more true in the ancient world than it is today. Josephus makes no mention of the Holy Innocents, nor would we expect that he would since they were insignificant in the scheme of things. Moreover, the probability is that the number of children killed by Herod was more likely somewhere around twenty in number, not the thousands later mentioned in some exaggerated pious accounts.

Having said this, there is no doubt the story of the Holy Innocents tallies with what we know about Herod--that he was a Saddamlike murderer who killed even members of his own family out of pathological jealousy and fear. There's an inherent probability in the story, therefore, especially since those murders which are recorded in profane chronicles were committed in every case for the sole purpose of perpetuating his power. The slaughter of the Innocents would tally with these as another crime of the same sort.

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