Mel Gibson & Passion: Does the New Testament in the Bible Constitute "Hate" Literature?

We all need to resolve the controversy over Mel Gibson's movie, "Passion", once and for all.

Mel Gibson used the storyline in the New Testament, as the basis of the script for his movie. Abe Foxman & the ADL consider Gibson's movie as being hateful and anti-semitic.

What is next? Is Mr. Foxman going to call on all hotels all over the country, to remove copies of the Gideon Bible in their hotel rooms? He certainly would not want all those hotel visitors exposed to the "hate" in the New Testament. Didn't you know, according to Foxman's reasoning, a crazed hotel customer may attack Jews after spending one night in an American hotel, because of the "anti-semitic" content of the hotel room Bible?

This is from a Hal Lindsey column of Feb 5th, 2004, published in WorldNetDaily:

In Canada, it is a violation of that country's hate-speech laws to express my opinion regarding homosexual conduct. A man was recently charged with hate crimes in Canada for posting a billboard that contained Bible references prohibiting homosexual conduct. Similar laws exist in other allegedly "free democracies."

the link is http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36938

The problem with that is what is historically accurate? It's well known the Bible has been through countless translations, every time the result of the agenda of religious fanatics.

AS I mentioned earlier, I'm Jewish, so my view differs from that of most of those who have commented on this subject. I am willing to consider other sources and evidence, for instance.

But for the true believer, the Bible literalist who, like Mr. Gibson, considers the Gospels to be the inerrant, inspired word of G-d, the concept of historical accuracy is confined to maintaining consistency with the four Gospels to the greatest possible degree. Judging it by any other standard is equivalent to criticising a production of, for instance, "Hamlet" for its violence. The fact that he read and studied other sources to learn how others had interpreted the same source material does not detract from the seriousness of his attempt at scriptural fidelity.

What he has done is to take a relatively sparse description of events and add the detail that he envisioned to create the visual scenes, the dialog, and some of the in-between events that are not described but provide continuity for what is there. Literary license? Of course. But did he insert material that is inconsistent with the source material, or omit anything critical to a reasonably complete exposition of the Gospel story?

Jews have a special advantage in their documentation. Each of our documents - the Torah - is a faithful, letter by letter, mark by mark, hand copy of another torah, whose pedigree can be traced back to the earliest such documents known, centuries before Christ. Back to the Word of G-d? We believe it, but we do not actually have handwriting samples from Abraham or Moses for comparison.

Christians also have a gap between events and their record, but both the period they record and the delay is shorter. For one thing, they adopt all of Jewish history and legend as their own. And of course, the events described center on the short life of a single extraordinary individual rather than the history of an entire people.

Gibson has said - and I accept his statement - that his movie is an expression of his faith, presented in the medium he knows best. Da Vinci gave us the Last Supper in his medium, and Michelangelo the Pieta in his, as expressions of their faith, all from the same text. But they might have chosen a different medium today, and only time will tell if Gibson has achieved even a small fraction of their genius working in his medium.

Gibson claims to have made every effort to remain true to the Bible texts, which do not have identical descriptions of the same events. Personal note: Next month I will begin to teach a course in Managerial Economics in a MBA program, a course I took years ago and am frantically trying to get back up to speed on. Economics is based on abstractions and models, which are drastically simplified representations of reality. Any textual description of events is another kind of model, a drastic simplification of the events chronicled. The Gospels do not describe the man three rows back in the crowd, shouting at the guy next to him who just stepped on his foot. But where the text describes a nondescript crowd, a film requires a bunch of individuals like this guy, each portrayed appropriately. After all a picture is worth quite a few words, and at 24 frames per second, 90 minutes or so is a lotta pictures.

So of course he has to fill in detail and provide continuity that is NOT in the Gospels. Does it fit with the source material - no significant contradictions, nothing added that conflicts with the message? And of course, he has to include everything necessary to tell the story. Has he succeeded? I'm eager to find out.

I am sick of the lies and character assassination directed at this by the likes of Abe Foxman, who claims to represent a hell of a lot more Jews than he really does. I do not believe in treating anyone with the level of disrespect and dishonesty that we have seen here - or that we have seen from the men seeking to replace the President.

I have listened to both sides of this; one side is loud, disrespectful, and makes no sense, the other has been earnest and gentlemanly. I will judge for myself.

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