NT Blog

An interesting and provocative piece today on The Passion of the Christ in Laksamana.net: The Politics and Economics Portal, with the now all-too-predictable title:

The Gospel According to Mel Gibson
Globalvision News Network - By Gabriel Ash

The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus dead because he was immensely popular and could ignite a rebellion; the Bible says so (although Gibson doesn't). Historians give the absent context. The Jewish leaders at the time were Roman puppets; (not unlike the Arab leaders of the modern Middle East) they maintained their position by collaborating with the Roman exploitation of their people. That is why Jesus' challenge was so attractive to the Jewish masses, and a real threat to the priestly leadership. Of course, that would have made Jesus as much a threat to Rome as he was to the High Priest; it is highly unlikely that Pilate would need a lot of prodding to execute a popular and charismatic rabble rouser. But the Gospel writers chose to de-emphasize Roman culpability. Writing after the destruction of the Temple, their audience was no longer Jewish. They did not want to call the wrath of Rome upon them, and they wanted their message to be appealing to Romans. They chose cooperation over confrontation with the empire, wise politics in retrospect.

With this background in mind, let's return to the story as it is. Pilate is given the best possible treatment in Gibson's film; the pro-imperial bias of the Gospel writers is enhanced and expanded with Gibson's own inventions. There is no criticism in the film of the colonial setting itself. On the contrary, Gibson goes out of his way to portray the nobility of spirit of Pilate and his wife. They are somber, almost ascetic. They don't share in the bloodlust of the "natives." Pilate criticizes the Jewish leaders for their lack of "due process" (not in the Bible). Gibson even invents an embarrassing philosophical discussion between Pilate and his wife about the nature of truth. They are not corrupt and hedonistic like the native puppet king Herod, represented in a scene that seems to be a homage to Fellini. On the contrary, their compassion is on display: Pilate offers Jesus water; his wife gives Mary some white linen to wipe Jesus' blood (both details are not in the Bible.)

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My Birmingham email address appears to be down along with all the Birmingham University web sites. If you need to get in touch, please use my blogines email address (but don't add this to your address book because it changes regularly).

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IMDb now has an absolutely massive list of reviews for The Passion of the Christ, at the moment 156 and counting. These are collected from sites external to IMDb, from newspapers etc.:

External Reviews for The Passion of the Christ

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this from CNN:

Spielberg: Won't comment on 'Passion'

First person he'll talk to will be Gibson

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Declaring himself "too smart to answer a question like that," Steven Spielberg on Wednesday deftly sidestepped the controversy surrounding fellow filmmaker Mel Gibson's box office smash, "The Passion of the Christ," which has been accused of anti-Semitism.

And from BBC News, another report on the possibility that Gibson will film something on the Maccabees:

Gibson to film Jewish 'Western'
Mel Gibson looks set to provoke further antipathy among the Jewish community with plans to make a film about the story behind the festival of Hanukkah.

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Sunday this morning (BBC Radio 4) kicked off with a short discussion of The Passion of the Christ ahead of its UK release this week. Two Catholics are brought in to discuss it, Father Peter Malone and Peter Stanford, the first of whom loved it and the second of whom did not. Peter Malone makes the useful point about the value of the flashback scenes during the crucifixion. Listen here:

The Passion Debate

Labels: Radio 4

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila comments on the "Mel Gibson as holocaust denier meme" in the following article:

The Protocols of Mel Gibson
Katha Pollitt

Jim rightly remarks on the inaccuracy of charging Gibson with holocaust denial in the light of his Diane Sawyer interview (and I would add, the Peggy Noonan one too), but adds that otherwise "Pollit has a lot of criticisms of the movie that are correct", commenting that she has an "understanding of the movie that otherwise is supported with some good arguments". I am not inclined to agree here. The lack of careful attention to the source material exhibited in the accusation of holocaust denial seems to me to typify the article as a whole. In the main it is so marked with polemic, caricature and abuse that it is difficult to assess any of its potentially more insightful comments. The title alone should put one on one's guard, but one's confidence is not increased by the idea that using a woman to play Satan is "a nice touch of misogyny" (given that the most positive roles also played by women). While there is much talk of villains who "look Semitic", there is no mention of the fact that the main support (Mary) is played by a Jew, so that the article tacitly reinforces the very racial stereotyping that it is attempting to counter.

A further inaccuracy is the statement that the scourging of Jesus only occurs in three of the Gospels (it is in all four). And there is some nonsense about the scourging being a "ten-minute homoerotic sadistic extravaganza". Like the frequent but equally misleading charge that this material is pornographic, the notion that it is "homoerotic" I find simply baffling.

This is a very poor piece of journalism.

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Yesterday's Guardian has a piece on The Passion of the Christ ahead of its UK release next week:

Passion players
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ finally hits our screens next week. If you want to worship, go to church, not the movies, says David Mamet - while three clerics reveal their reactions to the film

Mamet's piece is a bit too clever for my liking and ends up getting so involved that it says little about the film. You can tell that he is pleased with his line about "communion with the divine" being "better celebrated with the traditional bread and wine than with popcorn and Coca-Cola".

The three clerics mentioned in the subtitle are Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Dr Graham Kings, vicar and Father Kit Cunningham. One hated it, one loved it, one had mixed feelings. I am a bit troubled about a comment made by Neuberger:

There is no doubt that the Jews are presented in an overwhelmingly negative way. Caiaphas, the high priest, is a pompous ass. He - and the other priests - are depicted as fat and overdressed, in contrast with the thin and simply attired Jesus and his followers. The crowd of Jews is given Jesus back after the obscenely vicious scene of the scourging - and it is then that "the Jews" bay for Jesus's blood. They ask for him to be crucified - Pilate, who gave in to the Jews before, unwillingly, gives in again to satisfy their blood lust. This is a highly selective and dangerous reading of the Gospels.

Neuberger is right about the overwhelmingly negative depiction of Caiaphas but her use of "the Jews" here in quotation marks strikes me as quite inappropriate. Now it is possible that I missed it, but I did not notice any group in the film specifically characterised as "the Jews" in this way, yet Neuberger makes this into a quotation. Indeed, as I have pointed out before, the only character I remember being specifically characterised as "Jew" was Simon of Cyrene, undoubtedly the most sympathetic character in the film after Jesus and the Marys. I do think that Gibson could have taken more care to avoid elements that have led to the anti-Semitism charge, e.g. by getting some more historical consultants on board, but there is no way that one can have a serious discussion if one is importing elements into the film that are not there (again, subject to correction if I have remembered wrongly).

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for pointing out this excellent site:

Livius - Articles on Ancient History
By Jona Lendering

This is a series of clear, illustrated, hyperlinked articles on the ancient world. Includes massive section on Ancient Judaea including articles on Jewish Wars, Messiah and more. I have added a link on my Ancient World page.

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Christian History has a piece on the the medieval Passion plays and how an understanding of them informs one's appreciation of The Passion of the Christ:

The Ageless Drama of the Passion
Watching Gibson's film, we are transported 600 years back in time to a medieval art form.
By Jennifer Trafton

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for this one from the Jerusalem Post, which I am noting a little belatedly -- it's a week old -- butr I didn't want it to pass without drawing attention to it because interesting:

Essay: Who killed Jesus? Boring
By HILLEL HALKIN

There is something absurd in the Jewish eagerness, manifested once again in the clamor surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, to prove that "we" didn't kill Jesus. Honestly, it wasn't us, it was the Romans! We simply turned him in. This kind of plea-bargaining is not only demeaning and historically questionable, it is also unreflectingly accepting of the premise of traditional Christian theology that it really matters who killed Jesus because there is a collective responsibility for his death that damns the people of its perpetrators forever . . . . .

. . . . . Abba! I can read that a hundred times and still get a chill down my spine. The Aramaic word handed down to the authors of the Gospels as that used by Jesus to pray to his Father in heaven still means "father" in the colloquial Hebrew we speak every day in Israel. There is an intimacy and a tenderness in that colloquialism, uttered in prayer by no known rabbi of Jesus's time, that only a Hebrew speaker can savor.

I suppose this is merely to make what has become by now - though for thousands of years it was not - a commonplace observation: that the story of Jesus is a Jewish story, set in a Jewish world with Jewish characters and Jewish themes and Jewish preoccupations. Pontius Pilate is the only non-Jew in it. Its final chapters are not about how the "son of God" was killed by the Jewish people. They are about how some Jews helped to kill another Jew who had Jewish disciples and Jewish loyalties and Jewish thoughts and a Jewish message meant for Jews. The fact that by the time the Gospel stories were written, the message in question, or rather, a garbled version of it, was being addressed mainly to non-Jews does not obscure this . . . . .

. . . . . What's to be proud of is Jesus himself. Only Judaism could have produced such an extraordinary character.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this link:

Passion Play
Monday 05 of April, 2004 at 6.45pm - A special evening to discuss the significance of Mel's film, hosted by Jason Gardner

Cost: £6 at the door. Starting at 6.45pm for 7.00pm, doors open from 6.30pm. To book please contact Nicola on 020 7399 9555 or email mail@licc.org.uk.

Held at The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, St Peter's, Vere Street, London, W1G 0DQ

Mel Gibson's stirring re-creation of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life has ignited much discussion amongst film critics and theologians alike, but does The Passion of the Christ present a flawed or fair account of the nature and life of Jesus? What does the way in which the media and the Church have handled the film's success tell us about the future of Christ's image in the public eye? And can we gain from Gibson's focus on the crucifixion an understanding of the work of the Cross that speaks to today's world?

Four panellists with distinctive perspectives will be reflecting on these and other issues raised by the film before inviting questions from the floor. Dr John McDade, Jesuit Priest and Principal of Heythrop College will be discussing the particularly Catholic aspects of the film's theology; Nev Pierce, film critic for the BBC will look at how the UK and US media differed in their response to Mel Gibson and his film; Anna Robbins, lecturer in Theology and Contemporary Culture at the London School of Theology, will explore whether the Church's various strategies for using the film is likely to help or hinder Christian engagement with the world at large. Baptist Minister Dr Steve Nolan, whose PHD examined film theory and liturgy, will compare Gibson's 'incarnation' of the Christ to Jesus' previous outings on celluloid. Chairing the event will be LICC Youth Culture researcher Jason Gardner.

The Passion of the Christ opens on general release Friday 26th of March. Use the Cinema Search at www.bbc.co.uk/films to find out where it's on at a cinema near you during or after the release week.

LICC's Director, Mark Greene, reflects on Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ.
Click here to read his review.

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To coincide with the UK release of The Passion of the Christ, the reJesus web site has set up some materials:

Expressions: The Passion Movie

This will not be of a lot of interest to academics; its primary purpose is as a guide for those who are interested in the film or who have seen the film but who do not know a lot about the New Testament and Christianity.

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Although the official UK release of The Passion of the Christ is listed for March 26 (Friday), a quick glance around local cinemas confirms that the release date is actually March 24 (Wednesday). There is a new UK and Ireland web site for the film here:

The Passion of the Christ -- A Mel Gibson Film -- Official UK and Ireland Movie web site

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On Germany's reaction to the film ahead of its release there later this week, this BBC News story (thanks to Helenann Hartley and Bible and Interpretation for the link):

Germany wary of Passion reaction
German Jewish leaders and church officials have warned that The Passion of the Christ may stir up anti-Semitism when it opens in the country.

. . . . . "The anti-Semites will only have their views on Jews confirmed," said Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

German Protestant leader Wolfgang Huber said the film did not put Christ's suffering into proper perspective . . . .

. . . . German Catholic leaders called the film problematic, and the German Bishops' Conference said: "We urgently warn against using the suffering of Jesus as an instrument for anti-Semitism."

Salomon Korn said the film was a "sado-masochist orgy of violence" laden with "kitsch", while Wolfgang Huber described the film's violence as "intolerable".

Thanks to David Mackinder for this one in the New Republic Online:

STANLEY KAUFFMANN ON FILMS
Gibson's Offering

Meanwhile the money keeps rolling in, and the film has not even been released yet in many countries. This also linked on Bible and Interpretation; it is an article from the Washington Post:

Mel's New Testament Profits
Gibson Could Earn $500 Million From His Leap of Faith
By Anne Thompson

Because he provided the money behind the movie himself, Gibson stands to make several hundred million dollars. After just 21/2 weeks, "The Passion" has already earned a spot among the top 25 all-time domestic blockbusters, with $267.7 million through Monday, and beat "My Big Fat Greek Wedding's" record as the most successful independent release ever. This weekend, the gory religious epic will likely pass "The Matrix Reloaded's" $281 million gross to become the best-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

The piece ends by speculating on what Gibson will do with his millions and notes the possibility that he will make a film on the Maccabees, also reported elsewhere on the web and noted by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica.

And in the Guardian Unlimited, this extraordinary story:

Mel's Passion too much for Georgia couple

The theological implications of The Passion of the Christ proved too much for one God-fearing American couple last weekend when what began as a discussion on the content of Mel Gibson's movie ended with Georgia natives Sean and Melissa Davidson spending a night in police cells, each charged with battery.

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Ben Witherington III's response has now been added in Round 5 of the Scholarly Smackdown on The Passion of the Christ:

Round 5: Ben Witherington III

It remains interesting because Witherington is obviously no great fan of the film, so it is not as if we have Crossan anti- the film and Witherington pro. Their divisions are tending to relate more to why they have problems with it, Crossan largely because of its theology, its alleged anti-Semitism and its violence, Witherington because of its relative lack of fidelity to Scripture. Witherington agrees with Crossan's comments on the depiction of Pilate in the film and makes the useful point that without anything like Luke 13.1 there is no context for the portrayal. He prefers Rod Steiger's portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth.

Unfortunately, Witherington does not engage with Crossan's interesting material about the origins of the Passion Narrative during the reign of Herod Agrippa and makes one of those all-too-easy scholarly put-downs (smackdowns?!), that it is "an undue amount of pure speculation without historical foundation". I don't think that Crossan's remarks can be so lightly thrown aside. They are based on Gerd Theissen's excellent study of the Passion Narrative and represent, as far as I can see, something of a shift in Crossan's own view, which had previously seen very little of the Passion narrative as having an historical origin. They deserve more attention than that, especially if one of the points of the exchange is to demonstrate how the process of academic dialogue should take place. One of the things I like to try to discourage students to do is to use the throw-away one-liner as a substitute for engaging with one's critics.

Witherington concludes by commenting on the familiar theme of the scourging of Jesus:

So let me be plain—I think there are some real and troubling historical distortions in this movie. The one that bothers me perhaps the most is that each Gospel account devotes exactly one verse to the flagellation of Jesus; they do not emphasize it or highlight the fact. It's almost mentioned in passing. The enormous amplification of this to an unbearable extent in the movie is way beyond what poetic license should allow. For me, this is especially egregious since it is not the flagellation that produces the atonement for sins, but rather the death of Christ on the cross. In the movie, this somehow manages to be less gruesome than the flagellation. It seems an odd strategy to amplify the violence beyond biblical proportions in order to exalt the Prince of Peace!

Similar comments have been made in the reviews. All I can say of my experience of the film is that I did not find the crucifixion any less gruesome than the scourging scene and the comment puzzles me. I found the crucifixion itself far and away the most emotional part of the film. I also do not feel completely at ease with the language about what "produces the atonement for sins". Witherington is right that the Gospel writers place no emphasis on the scourging, though I can't help wondering whether the lack of detail is because readers are expected to have some idea of what this would have meant, in a culture in which fear of persecution was a reality.

Finally, Witherington and / or Beliefnet need to spell-check these messages before uploading. (I know, I can talk, but bear in mind that a daily blog takes much more writing time than a weekly email and it's just me -- no editor).

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On the Textweek weblog, Jenee Woodard announces that she has put together the following very useful compendium of links:

"The Passion of the Christ" Mel Gibson Movie - Articles, Study Guides, & Opinions

I have added a link to this on my The Passion of the Christ page.

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Oxford University Press have just released this new book:

Paul - His Story
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Francaise, Jerusalem

Price: £16.99 (Hardback)
0-19-926653-0
Publication date: 18 March 2004
276 pages, 2 maps, 216mm x 138mm

Description

An imaginative, engaging, and short biography of Saint Paul. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's disciplined imagination, nourished by a lifetime of research, shapes numerous textual, historical, and archaeological details into a colourful and enjoyable story of which Paul is the flawed but undefeated hero. Paul's travels and mission are put into a plausible biographical context. New insights into his personality are shown to provide a key to understanding his theological ideas. As a result, the Apostle comes to life as a complex, intensely human individual.

Readership: Ideal for anyone who wants a short and enjoyable account of Paul's life, psychology, travels, mission, and theological ideas. People interested in the development of Christianity, the early Church, or the historical basis of the Bible. Students in religion, theology, biblical studies, and ancient history.

Contents/contributors
1 The Early Years
2 Conversion and its Consequences
3 Apprenticeship in Antioch
4 A Journey into Europe
5 South to Achaia
6 Antioch and Jerusalem
7 The First Year in Ephesus
8 The Second Year in Ephesus
9 Conversations with Corinth
10 Macedonia and Illyricum
11 Farewell to the East
12 The Final Years

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this one:

Whose Passion? Media, Faith & Controversy
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
5:00 pm
Taper Hall Room 101

Join Diane Winston, USC Annenberg’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion for a provocative discussion with a panel of experts to discuss Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion of the Christ. Joining Prof. Winston for the discussion is Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic and USC Annenberg adjunct professor; Benedict Fitzgerald, co-screenwriter of The Passion of the Christ, Richard Fox, USC history professor and author of Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession, Barbara Nicolosi, executive director of Act One, Inc., and William Fulco, NEH Chair in Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Loyola Marymount University who served as the on-set filming consultant for the film . . . . . .

Watch the video

It's over an hour long and is fascinating viewing. The first main speaker is Benedict Fitzgerald, co-screen-writer who uses up most of his time reading out a review and does not use his time as well as one might have hoped. Next up is Richard Wightman Fox, author of Jesus in America, who makes lots of interesting points, e.g. he notes that the mirror of the anti-Semitism debate happened with Cecil B. de Mille's The King of Kings. That would certainly be something worth hearing more about. He talks a little about the fact that American evangelicals have, on the whole, loved this very Catholic film and speculates on the reasons. One of the reasons he offers is that the film gives evangelicals the opportunity to lay to rest once for all the memory of The Last Temptation of Christ and, to a lesser extent, Jesus Christ Superstar. In The Passion of the Christ there is no sexual fantasy about Mary Magdalene and no close friendship with Judas. A very interesting point.

The next contributor is Barbara Nicolosi who is also well worth hearing. She relates a story about a viewing she attended with Mel Gibson and some Church leaders. Afterwards one evangelical pastor pressed Gibson on the scene of Satan with the ugly baby. Where was this in the Bible? he wanted to know. Gibson replies that it's in there somewhere. Pressed further on what it's doing in the film, Gibson replies that he "Thought it was really creepy". Still dissatisfied, the pastor presses Gibson further: What was the source of this incident? Gibson replies, "I guess I just pulled it out of my ass". Nicolosi uses this to reflect on the way that an artist works. This is art, not documentary, and the interpretation of the events is indistinguishable from the narration of those events. (I am paraphrasing, of course, and not transcribing.)

William J. Fulco, S. J. is up next and his contribution is really engaging -- it's the first time I have seen him in action. Would that we could hear more of his defence of the film against its critics. He says that he is taken aback by many of the reviews of the film, especially those from the New York Times and the LA Times, which seem to miss the spiritual dimension to the film. He says that he has seen the film forty times because of having to watch the languages through the editing process and he reveals that he has cried every one of those forty times. He reflects on the way that people react to this film -- they seem either to love it or hate it. He thinks that this is because it is so "in your face". It is difficult to be neutral about it. He also relays an interesting story about his pushing Mel Gibson concerning the resurrection. He suggests to Gibson that the ending is problematic -- they need more depiction of the resurrection. At first Gibson is interested and wants to talk about it some more. The next time he sees him, he asks what they are going to do about the problem with the ending, but Gibson replies "What problem?" and Fulco realises that he is just the translator.

Kenneth Turan from the LA Times is the final speaker before the questions and offers a profound contrast to the others. He actually comes across very Eeyore. He does not want to be there, he repeats over and over again that he found the film and the controversy surrounding it really depressing and he talks about the hate mail that he has received. He says that he has never seen a reaction like this to any other film since he has begun reviewing and he finds it very depressing.

In the Question and Answer session (starts about 52 minutes in), a questioner brings up the question of Catherine Emmerich's contribution to the screenplay, so frequently discussed in the pre-publicity and publicity surrounding the film. Fulco and Fitzgerald both answer. Fulco says that Gibson "was not influenced by her ideology or anti-Semitism" but was looking for ideas. If one used soley the Biblical text, one would have a five-minute movie. He agrees that Emmerich has anti-Semitic stuff, he describes it as "God awful", says that it has nothing to do with the movie and describes it as a "canard" to bring in her position. Fitzgerald (who spent two years writing the script with Gibson) then comes in with the striking claim that "She had practically no influence whatsoever on any of this." He says that "She was, in some respects, the supplier of a couple of ideas, but these were not anti-Semitic ideas; they were ideas about how to treat Claudia Proclea (sic), who was the wife of Pilate." He adds that there are other texts about this character too. (I must admit that I am ignorant of these. Note: the Beliefnet breakdown also references Mary of Agreda's "City of God".)

At the same point, Richard Wightman Fox draws an interesting contrast between the way that Gibson portrays the scourging and the way that it was done in From the Manger to the Cross (1912), in which the viewer's attention is directed to the Roman soldier doing the scourging who is eventually too tired himself to go on. Fox feels that there are artistic ways of showing the scourging without turning it on the viewer to hurt the viewer.

There is another question about Gibson's father, his attitude to Vatican II and so on, and it is acknowledged by Fulco and Fitzgerald that Gibson's father has crazy views.

On the discussion of anti-Semitism, Barbara Nicolosi submits that The Last Temptation of Christ is more anti-Semitic than this film, but Richard Fox counters by saying that Scorsese set the standard for how to depict Caiaphas responsibly -- he dug deep to make sure that he did not use any non-Biblical racial stereotype.

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In the latest of the excellent series of reviews on The Passion of the Christ on Bible and Interpretation, Bruce Chilton offers the following:

Mel Gibson’s Passion Play
Mr. Gibson has fashioned a blunt instrument of propaganda, edged with artistry, whose visceral power gives it the potential to become his most lethal weapon of all.
By Bruce Chilton

I am beginning to think that I am the only NT scholar who actually liked this film! Happily I know that there are a few others of us because I've had one or two supportive comments in response to the blog. Chilton's review is written with some wit and features some useful insights, but ultimately it descends into unsavoury rhetoric. Several of his observations are unrecognisable to me. Consider this remark, for example,

In consideration of the weeping popcorn chompers around me, I did not laugh aloud. But reflective silence only confirmed my conviction that this is the funniest Jesus-movie since The Life of Brian.

I am amazed that anyone could find this film funny, even as a means of expressing real distaste for it in a negative review. The notion that Satan and the ugly baby look like Dr Evil and mini-me from Austin Powers I find difficult to take seriously.

As one begins the review, it looks like it's going to be a positive one. This remark about the opening scene in Gethsemane is, I think, exactly right:

Jesus’ psychic pain is at its height at this point. In fact, the film reaches is climax within three minutes or so; everything that follows is denouement. This is a very brave dramatic gamble and a success.

I found the Gethsemane scene so powerful that I felt that I was likely to find the entire film really engaging. It captures you right at the start. On the Gethsemane scene, Chilton also comments:

As he lies on the ground in his prayer to God in Gethsemane, Satan releases a snake. But once again on his feet, Jesus crushes the snake’s head and marches out to meet his tormenters. No, of course that scene is not in the Gospels; Satan and his snake are imported from medieval imagination. They represent a Christological reading of Genesis 3:15, tinged with the imagery of the Revelation. That is allowed in a passion play, as are all the scenes Mr. Gibson invents from legend and imagination.

Indeed -- and I would want to add that one does not even need to go back to the passion plays. All Jesus films, to varying degrees, work legend and imagination into their screenplays. Those that do it the least are Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew, Jesus (1979), Matthew (Visual Bible, 1996) and the recent Gospel of John (Visual Bible, 2003), but The Passion of the Christ is by no means the richest user of legend and imagination. I would say that King of Kings (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Miracle Maker (1999) and Jesus (1999) all have far greater input from legend and imagination that Gibson's film.

On the imagery of Jesus stamping on the snake's head, I agree with Chilton that ultimately this is based in Genesis 3.15, but it should be added that the theme is developed in the New Testament and finds its most direct source in Luke 10.19, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you."

But Chilton goes on:

And as in the case of any passion play, the artistry consists in what is invented, not in fidelity to the Gospels, and history is beside the point.

I think that this is too strong. There is plenty of artistry in the way that material from the Gospels is adapted by Gibson. Consider, for example, the use of flashbacks based on Gospel material. In Luke 22.61, the narrator casts the reader's mind back to the Last Supper at which Peter's denial had been prophesied, saying "The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had told him, 'Before a cock crows today, you will deny Me three times.'" What Gibson does with this verse is to use flashback: Peter denies Jesus, Jesus looks at him and the viewer is then shown the prophecy at the Last Supper. There is artistry in the way that the film-maker uses this device to dramatise a Gospel text. I don't recall having seen flashback used in this scene in other Jesus films (though cf. two other recent films for the use of flashback, the recent Gospel of John, utilising black-and-white, and The Miracle Maker, moving between claymation for the main narrative and animation for flashback).

Chilton asks about the death of Judas:

These vivid images do tip into camp from time to time. Judas hangs himself by taking the rope off a rotting donkey, a rope big enough to pull a barge. He ties himself to a tree overhanging a cliff. The viewer is left wondering how he got up there: Did Satan levitate him?

In a way, the question is irrelevant -- the power of the scene is in the cut from the scene involving the pursuit and haunting by demonic children, the dead donkey and Satan, to Judas alone, hanging dead on the tree. If one must ask the question, surely Judas climbed the tree.

I would also like to comment on the following:

The burial, by the way, completely eliminates the role of Joseph of Arimathea that is pivotal in the Gospels: an opportunity to portray crucial sympathy by one of Jesus’ contemporaries in Judaism is squandered. In any case, his immaculate linen shroud trembles in the breeze, awaiting shipment to Turin. He stands, his face, butt, and punctured right hand in profile. He marches out of the tomb much as he marched out to his tormenters in Gethsemane but to the marshal beat of a drum.

The point about Joseph of Arimathea is an interesting one -- yes, this is an opportunity missed. On the other hand, I don't know that the burial shroud particularly evoked the Turin shroud. Indeed if Gibson had been influenced by the latter, would he not have had the nails driven through the wrists in the crucifixion scene? Perhaps Chilton is being sarcastic. On the marching out of the tomb, I am puzzled -- this was not in the version of the film I saw, unless I am not remembering it accurately. Can anyone shed any light?

Another passage of interest is on stoning:

She [Mary Magdalene] is nearly stoned by a ring of people with rocks, much as in the stoning scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian rather than by the method of being thrown from a cliff and crushed with a large rock, which both the New Testament and the Mishnah refer to.

A couple of comments here. First, one does not need to go to Life of Brian to see depictions of this kind of stoning; the films Life of Brian is parodying depict stoning this way; likewise The Last Temptation of Christ, which postdated Life of Brian, again depicts it this way. In other words, the mention of Life of Brian in this context is unnecessary. Was there anything else in this scene in The Passion of the Christ that evoked Life of Brian? [Footnote: not a rhetorical question. Last Temptation self-consciously pays homage to Life of Brian in its Sermon on the Mount scene that follows on from the stoning. It's possible that Gibson did something similar, but if he did, I didn't notice it.]

And my second comment on this. Chilton refers to "the method of being thrown from a cliff and crushed with a large rock" as occurring in the New Testament and the Mishnah. However, the NT evidence is much less clear than Chilton implies. Presumably he is referring to Luke 4.29, "And they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff". But this does not specifically describe this process as stoning and it is only one text among several. Other texts suggest that the standard filmic depiction is reasonable:

• John 8.59: Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.
• John 10.31: The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.

Further, Acts 7.58-59 also appears to depict stoning in the traditionally understood way. And surely the very story under discussion (John 8.1-11) imagines the protagonists with stones, or what could the line, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8.7, NASB), mean? In other words, there is no need to invoke Life of Brian here; standard filmic depictions based on New Testament evidence would be enough.

By the end of his review, I have the feeling that Chilton's rhetoric is running away with him and there is little sense of proportion:

By mixing together the genre of the passion play with the pretension of historical accuracy, Gibson has inadvertently made his passion play into pious vaudeville. Claims that this film reflects the Gospels or history are cynical. Critics who treat it as a historical work have confused their profession with self-promotion. Were this film directed by Mel Brooks, we would have something to watch with pleasure. But Mr. Gibson’s Passion is libelous farce, poor art, and an incentive for credulous viewers to confuse Christian faith with hatred.

While I remain sceptical about any claims of special historical accuracy for this film, I do not think that it is "cynical" to suggest that it reflects the Gospels. Many of its lines are straight from the Gospels and on the whole more of its script is derived from the New Testament than is the case with several other Jesus films (cf. Darrell Bock's excellent guide). I would personally regard associating the film with Austin Powers, Monty Python and Mel Brooks as more peculiar than associating it with the New Testament. Nor is the film, for all its flaws, "poor art", as Chilton appears to acknowledge earlier in the review. And I find the assertion about "credulous viewers" confusing "Christian faith with hatred" a difficult one to assess in the light of the film's major, repeated theme through the crucifixion narrative of love of one another, love of enemies, prayer for persecutors and forgiveness of sin. For many viewers it is this theme of overwhelming love in the face of such appalling hatred and wickedness that makes the film so powerful. I do not think that viewers who feel this way are credulous, nor that there is any confusion of the Christian faith with hatred. Quite the contrary.

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for this link. The University of California Press has made available the complete text of the following:

David Daube, Appeasement or Resistance and Other Essays on New Testament Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)

The on-line edition is broken up into the four separate essays:

• The Old Testament in the New: A Jewish Perspective


• Temple Tax


• The Burdened Convert


• Appeasing or Resisting the Oppressor

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On Biblical Studies Resources, Jim West notes this article in WXII12.com:

Survey: 'The Passion' May Be Reducing Anti-Semitism

A new poll suggests fears that "The Passion of the Christ" would trigger anti-Semitism were unwarranted.

A nationwide survey conducted for the Institute for Jewish and Community Research finds that 83 percent of Americans familiar with the film say it's made them neither more nor less likely to blame today's Jews for Jesus' crucifixion.

Nine percent said Mel Gibson's film actually has made them less likely to blame today's Jews, while less than 2 percent said they're more likely to fault modern Jews or Jewish institutions.

The Institute's president, Gary Tobin, added that discussion of the issue has probably been good for Christian-Jewish relations.

The site also has a little repository of clips from the film:

Movie Clips, Interview Clips, Slide Show

So if you haven't seen it yet and want to whet your appetite, have a look at these five clips. The same article, as well as the clips, is available at Click2Houston.com, with thanks to Jeff Peterson for the link.

Jim also links to an article in a German publication, DW-World.de Deutsche Welle, "The Passion" stirs heated debate in Germany. But I don't seem to be able to access this -- error message. I've tried accessing the German language version without success.

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The trailer for The Passion of the Christ has arrived in UK cinemas -- I saw it yesterday.

Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link from BBC News:

Jim Caviezel's risky sacrifice
Catholic actor Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ, was blessed by the Pope at the Vatican on Monday.

Essentially this is an article about Caviezel's career to date. There's another similar article here:

Passion actor Caviezel meets Pope

And thanks to Mark Elliott at Bible and Interpretation for this one (also noted by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica):

Mel's Jesus: A "Real Man" or Just a Toon?
Paul V. M. Flesher
If you read the gospel accounts of the Passion before you view the film, it becomes immediately clear that The Passion does not consistently adhere to the biblical stories

It is an interesting and different take on the film, stressing Caviezel's portrayal of a "macho" Jesus, heroically standing up to the punishment meted out to him. The "toon" of the title relates to the problem that Jesus continues to be able to get up, to survive and carry on after the repeated torture, just like the toons of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the like. It is something that one wonders when seeing the film -- how could a man survive that kind of scourging? But a couple of thoughts occur to me in defence of the film. First, Jesus ben Ananias is said to have been "whipped till his bones were laid bare" in Josephus' War 6.5.3 and yet he apparently survives. Further, the Gospels depict Jesus' death on the cross as relatively quick -- six hours in the Synoptics and three hours in John; and in the latter he does not need to have his legs broken unlike the other men. It is entirely possible that if these stories originate in reasonably accurate memories, Jesus' scourging was severe and his death on the cross consequently quicker.

Bible and Interpretation have set aside a page for these academic articles on The Passion of the Christ here:

Essays From Bible and Interpretation on the Passion.

More are promised; it will be interesting to see who else is lined up.

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Stephen Shields at Faithmaps.org has produced an excellent collection of links to materials on The Passion of the Christ:

Links and Articles related to "The Passion of the Christ"
These resources are intended to aid in understanding the movie, the Scriptural and other sources informing it, and in evaluating its content historically.

I've added the link to my page on The Passion of the Christ.

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I was sorry to read on RogueClassicism of the death of Keith Hopkins. New York Times obituary:

Keith Hopkins, 69, Historian With an Unusual Approach, Is Dead
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

See also The Guardian. I never met Hopkins but almost did once -- he was a successful "media don" and was well liked by documentary makers who found his approach lively, engaging and televisual. So he appeared on New Testament related documentaries as well as those on the ancient world more broadly; I took part in an ITV series called The Apostles and the episode on Matthew featured Hopkins prominently as well as Graham Stanton.

Labels: obituaries

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The March issue of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament is now available. On-line access to the full text articles is for subscription / institutional subscriptions only:

Journal for the Study of the New Testament Vol. 26 No. 3 (March 2004)

Matthew and the Gentiles
Warren Carter

Engagement, Disengagement and Obstruction: Jesus’ Defense Strategies in Mark’s Trial and Execution Scenes (14.53-64; 15.1-39)
William Sanger Campbell

Brothers in Brackets?
Reidar Aasgaard

Poverty in Pauline Studies
Steven J. Friesen

Poverty in Pauline Studies: A Response to Steven Friesen
John Barclay

Constructing Poverty Scales for Graeco-Roman Society
Peter Oakes

Book Reviews

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Apparently The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988) is only this week getting its release in Mexico, a week ahead of the release there of The Passion of the Christ, according to this Reuters story on Yahoo! News:

Christ Film Reaches Mexico 16 Years Later
By Elizabeth Fullerton

Heavily Catholic Mexico outlawed director Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ" for portraying a weak-willed Jesus Christ tempted to have sex with Mary Magdalene.

It will finally debut in cinemas here on Friday.

The film's distributor said this week it was launching "this work of art so the Mexican public can decide for itself and draw its own conclusions."

The film has been timed to open exactly one week before the March 19 Mexican premiere of Gibson's "The Passion"

Still more evidence of this interesting side effect of the popularity of The Passion of the Christ, that it is increasing interest in other Jesus films. Let's hope for a TV airing in the UK of some Jesus films over Easter. Perhaps even some of the rarities, The Day Christ Died or Son of Man?

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T & T Clark International, the new imprint of Continuum that combines Sheffield Academic Press, T & T Clark and Trinity Press International, has now launched its own major new web site with up to date booklist, details on its editorial programme and so on:

T & T Clark International

The site will configure itself for you into U.S. / Canada or U.K. / Other. There are also some good offers in the Special Sales section.

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And following on from the previous entry, I had a look to see if Warren Carter has a faculty page and he does, with a full publications list (though now a little out of date since the Pilate book is listed as forthcoming). It's on Scholars: C and here is the link:

Warren Carter

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On Paleojudaica, a link to this interesting piece by Warren Carter (Pherigo Professor of New Testament at St. Paul's School of Theology) in the Kansas City Star:

A place for Pontius Pilate
Roman governor was merely playing his political part
By WARREN CARTER

It seems that Carter has published a book on Pontius Pilate. This had escaped by attention until now:

Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003)

Over on the Liturgical Press web site, they are headlining with this book with the line, "Have you seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ? Wondering what Pontius Pilate was really like?" Here's their blurb:

Pontius Pilate examines the portraits of this Roman governor found in the Gospels. Unlike some discussions of Pilate, this one takes Pilate’s role as governor and representative of Roman imperial power seriously. It views Pilate predominantly as a strong, efficient, and astute governor, not as a weak and indecisive man, pressured into killing Jesus against Pilate’s convictions. The conclusion considers some of the ethical and theological issues the scenes involving Pilate raise for contemporary readers.

Chapters are “Would the Real Pilate Please Stand Up?” “Reading the Gospel Accounts of Pilate,” “Governors and the Roman Imperial System,” “Mark’s Pilate,” “Matthew’s Pilate,” “Luke’s Pilate,” and “John’s Pilate.”

And they also have an excerpt available from the preface and introduction to the book:

Excerpt from Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for these links from BBC News:

Vatican sermon criticises Passion

A Vatican sermon has made a veiled criticism of Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa said if the film spread the belief that all Jews were responsible for Christ's death, it should be criticised.

But he said in a Lent sermon that "if it restricts itself to showing an influential group of Jews" were to blame, it could not be criticised.

MP slates Gibson's Christ movie

Labour MP Gerald Kaufman has attacked Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ as "damagingly anti-Semitic".

On ITV1's GMTV Sunday Programme, he slated the film's "gratuitous violence, ugliness, wallowing in blood and, it has to be said, crude anti-Semitism".

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for this new URL for Neotestamentica, now updated on the Journals page:

Neotestamentica

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With thanks to Holger Szesnat for several of these, some updates to the NT Gateway Scholars pages:

• Scholars: D: new URL for Robert Derrenbacker; Jonathan Draper added.


• Scholars: F: Gordon Fee's web page has gone.


• Scholars: H: Stanley Harstine's web page gone (he has moved to Friends University but no sign of web page there).

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On Biblical Studies Resources Weblog, Jim West mentions this article from The Guardian:

University bans staff websites after anti-semitism row
Polly Curtis

The gist is that members of staff used to be able to apply for personal web space on a central university server at the "web.bham.ac.uk" address. This has now been stopped. According to the above article, this was because of a row over anti-semitic content on one of the sites, but this was news to me -- I had been told that it was just because the old web server was being wound down and that the new policy was that staff with "personal" web space could transfer any academic materials onto the official university site. But whatever the background, this has not affected me because I keep my official homepage and university related materials on our main Department of Theology web site, for which I have the overall responsibility in any case, and all the rest of my stuff, e.g. the New Testament Gateway and weblog, is based in my own personal space at NTGateway.com. So there's no need to be concerned that any of my material will be disappearing. Having said that, I notice that my colleage Prof. David Parker's web page has disappeared since it was on the web.bham.ac.uk server so I will have a look to see if it can be rescued and put on our official site.

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for the link to this lengthy discussion of The Passion of the Christ from Mahlon Smith of Rutgers University, whom many will know from his fine web resources like the Synoptic Gospels Primer and Into His Own and some of us will know from his enjoyable contributions, once upon a time, to the Xtalk list, now very much missed. Here's the link. I haven't had a chance to read it all myself yet:

GIBSON AGONISTES: Anatomy of a Neo-Manichean Vision of Jesus
Mahlon H Smith
Rutgers University
Ash Wednesday 2004

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Thanks to Andy Goodliff for the reference to Douglas Campbell's faculty page at Duke Divinity School:

Douglas Campbell

Douglas was at Kings College London and I've made the adjustment on the Scholars: C page.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for pointing out that the latest addition to the Scholarly Smackdown featuring John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III is now available at Beliefnet. It's round 5 and it's Crossan's contribution and it features an interesting endorsement of Gerd Theissen's dating of the earliest version of the Passion Narrative, during the reign of Herod Agrippa in 41-44:

Round 5: John Dominic Crossan

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Christianity Today has produced an interesting round-up of reviews and comments on The Passion of the Christ:

Film Forum: Gibson's Passion Outraces Hidalgo at Box Office
By Jeffrey Overstreet

The article also comments on the TVM Judas (see previous blog entry).

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I did not get round to blogging about the Judas TVM airing on ABC in the USA on 8 March, not least because there is no sign of its availability either on TV or video here in the UK so I hardly noticed it. But Christianity Today has usefully gathered together a round-up of reviews here:

Judging Judas: TV Movie Offers 'Trippy' Jesus

IMDb has a page on it here:

Judas

Viewers have given it a pretty low rating, which reflects also the rather negative reviews. I notice from that page that it was filmed in Ouarzazate, Morocco, a favourite location for television biblical films including the CBS Jesus (dir. Roger Young, 1999).

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I mentioned Mark Vitalis Hoffman's homepage earlier this week, then added reference to his Crossmarks Christian Resources. I've now added a link on my page on The Passion of the Christ to the following page:

Resources for Gibson's The Passion of the Christ

This is Mark Hoffman's useful selection of annotated links to material on the film, a regularly updated collection listing background, reviews critical, reviews positive and more.

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This notice forwarded on behalf of Louise Lawrence:

Anthropology and the Old Testament
Research Symposium

CALL FOR PAPERS

Following on from the success of last year’s conference on Anthropology and Biblical Studies [the fruits of which are to be published in Aguilar, M. and Lawrence, L., (eds) Anthropology and Biblical Studies: Avenues of Research, Deo/SCM Press, 2004] another research symposium on Anthropology and the Old Testament has been planned for Friday 27th August, 2004. This will be held in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow. It is anticipated that papers delivered at this event will also be published in an edited volume.

Offers of papers are welcome from both anthropologists and biblical scholars on any aspect of reading or interpreting the Old Testament in light of anthropological and cross-cultural perspectives. Please send provisional titles and a short abstract to Dr Louise Lawrence (L.Lawrence@arts.gla.ac.uk) by the end of May. Any other queries please do not hesitate to contact Louise or Dr Mario Aguilar (mia2@st-andrews.ac.uk).

We look forward to hearing from you.

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I've adjusted the URL for George Aichele's homepage on Scholars: A. And thanks to Holger Szesnat for the new URLs for Dieter Sänger and Jeffrey Siker now adjusted on Scholars: S.

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In his Bible Software Review Weblog Rubén Gómez speaks of his shock, pain and indignation of the events earlier today (yesterday) in Madrid. My heartfelt sympathies and prayers go to those who have lost friends and family, and shared pain with Spanish friends like Rubén.

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for this interesting link. From the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, this Sightings piece is written by Margaret M. Mitchell of the University of Chicago Divinity School:

Special Gibson
Margaret M. Mitchell

The article is an interesting read; the "Special Gibson" of the title is a play on "Special Matthew" and "Special Luke" and is Mitchell's means of answering the now familiar question, "Is Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, anti-Semitic?" Mitchell's answer:

If we think of Mel Gibson as a modern-day fifth evangelist, we can ask, is his film "more" or "less" on this same trajectory of increasing blame on Jews for the death of Jesus? The verdict seems to me clearly on the "more," even "abundantly more," both for what Mr. Gibson chooses to include from the existing accounts, and, particularly, the "Special Gibson" (SpGib) material that conditions the interpretation of the traditional sources into which it is stitched.

However, the material Mitchell uses essentially demonstrates that Caiaphas's complicity in Jesus' death is enhanced in the film. Does this place the film on "this same trajectory of increasing blame on Jews"? Perhaps, but I am not so sure. "All the people said, 'His blood be on us and on our children'" (Matt. 27.25) -- this most famous line is a concern precisely because it is focused on "all the people". But in The Passion of the Christ, in so far as one can catch it at all, it is spoken not by "all the people" but by Caiaphas. Likewise, much of what Mitchell finds troubling is the film's depiction of Caiaphas and not of "the people" as a whole or of other representatives of it. I would have thought that there is an argument here that Gibson does not enhance potentially anti-Jewish elements in the Gospels but focuses a good deal on this one character who is admittedly portrayed as a villain. In other words, what Gibson avoids doing is to set up a negative group who through racial stereotyping might be intended to promote negative reactions to Jews and Judaism. Given that there are some Jesus films that could be so accused, especially, as I have mentioned before, Jesus Christ Superstar, I still feel that the debate, as it is often presented at the moment, really needs a little more nuance and careful attention to the film itself.

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Thanks to Andrew Criddle for this one from the Los Angeles Times

For Gibson, Devil Is in the Details
By Charlotte Allen
Charlotte Allen, the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus," co-edits the inkWell weblog for the Independent Women's Forum.

This is a really interesting read and I find myself in complete agreement with these sentiments:

I loved "The Passion," but I wanted to love it even more.

Gibson retained the services of Loyola Marymount University priest-scholar William Fulco in preparing his Latin-Aramaic screenplay. But he didn't consult more thoroughly with New Testament scholars who could have helped him craft a movie that would not only be the overwhelming Christian theological experience it is but also a more faithful evocation of Jesus' 1st century world. He might have gotten right such significant details as the languages that Jesus and his contemporaries probably spoke, the clothes they wore and the mechanics of crucifixion.

Interestingly, Allen puts this down not to a failure on the part of Gibson so much as a failure on the part of many (not all) New Testament scholars whose ideological biases give the discipline -- in her opinion -- a bad name. She has it in particularly for John Dominic Crossan and Paula Fredriksen (who themselves, of course, hardly agree with one another) but wishes that Gibson had called on the likes of Luke Johnson, Tom Wright and Ben Witherington. It is an interesting read and though I am not entirely happy with the caricaturing of the views of Fredriksen and Crossan, it is good to see the acknowledgement of the important role that New Testament scholars have to play in the public eye.

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This from David Mackinder who passes it on from the ChristLit list

As you know, the Mel Gibson movie “Passion” has provoked widespread interest. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Spring Arbor University (Michigan) and Regent University (Virginia) interested in obtaining more complete information on the reactions of moviegoers to the film. Would you consider placing a direct link to this web-based survey on your website? Is it also possible to send out the direct link below to one of your listservs/newsletters? Obviously, making it available in both ways would be preferable. If you are not able to help in the ways just described, we'd appreciate any additional contacts you might be able to provide.

Here's the survey link: http://www.edcomresearch.com/passion.html

After collecting and analyzing the data from various websites and listservs, we'll issue a press release to the mainstream media. Additional academic publications are planned as well. The cooperation of your organization will be mentioned in the press release if you request it. We'll provide you with a copy of the press release and a more complete executive summary of the data upon completion of the project.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me at rwoods@arbor.edu, 517.750.6490

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Thanks to Mark Elliott at Bible and Interpretation for pointing me to this new article on their site:

Some Critical Comments on Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of Christ in the Light of Historical Criticism
In memoriam Paul Winter
By Dr. Gerd Lüdemann
Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany
March 2004

It's a typically strident Lüdemann piece on anti-Judaism in the Gospels and would be a useful piece to set students to provoke discussion. Perhaps I'll circulate my own Jesus and the Gospels class to gauge reactions to it. One minor thing struck me. Lüdemann concludes:

a) Jesus’ death came at the hands of the Romans; b) his execution followed upon Roman legal proceedings, however summary; c) Jesus was condemned for a political crime.

I wonder just how strong (b) is given Philo's remarks which are also quoted by Lüdemann:

The Jewish philosopher Philo, an older contemporary of the apostle Paul, quotes from a letter of Agrippa I to the emperor Caligula that Pilate’s administration was characterized by “corruption, acts of violence, robberies, maltreatments, insults, continual executions without trial, endless and intolerable cruelties” (On the Embassy to Gaius 38). [My emphasis]

Without looking at any of the other evidence, and taking only Philo and Josephus into account as Lüdemann wishes to do, we could not be sure that Jesus had had even a summary trial from Pilate, could we?

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One not to miss -- AKMA points to Lawgeek's blog which has some highlights from Steve Martin's Script Notes on the Passion, e.g.

* Also, could he change water into wine in Last Supper scene? Would be a great moment, and it's legit. History compression is a movie tradition and could really brighten up the scene. Great trailer moment, too.

* Possible title change: "Lethal Passion." Kinda works. The more I say it outloud, the more I like it.

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Thanks to Melissa Quero at the BBC for this update on the series Bible Mysteries:

Although the series is interrupted intermittently for sport I'm pleased to tell you another episode - "Herod & the Bethlehem Massacre" will be transmitted on BBC2 this Sunday, 14th March at 12:40.

This is a link to the web site for the programme:

Bible Mysteries

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AKMA's Random Thoughts briefly mention this article from National Review Online:

Princeton’s Passion
A campus event
By Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky

This opinionated column was written by a student from Princeton about a debate held there about The Passion of the Christ. There's a report here on The Daily Princetonion

'Passion' sparks debate on director's role
Renata Stepanov

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, spoke in favor of Gibson, a personal acquaintance.

"I have never seen a more vicious and unethical assault on a filmmaker than on Mel Gibson in this film," Donohue said. "Gibson doesn't need to vet his movie by any scholars," he added, in reference to a panel of theologians who were disappointed with the film. "He's not an altar boy. It's his movie and his interpretation."

Of course it is not that Gibson needed to "vet" the film but that the use of an advisory committee might have helped him to navigate his way through many of the difficult and sensitive issues that have now arisen.

Ramos-Mrovsky's piece offers further reflections, including this concerning John Gager:

The first speaker, John Gager, an early-church historian, conceded that he had not seen the film. He preferred "to talk around it," but allowed that he might see it "out of a sense of professional responsibility." Gager assured us that "the Gospels do not place great emphasis on the suffering of Jesus," and argued that defenders of Gibson's film against charges of anti-Semitism were "either naïve, or disingenuous, or perhaps even both."

It is difficult to comment on this without some more idea of the context since, after all, it appears as a brief extract in a pretty polemical article, but at face value it seems a very strident thing to say if one has not even seen the film. How could one know whether "defenders of Gibson's film" were naïve and/or disengenuous without first seeing it?

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Thanks to David Mackinder for pointing out to me that the latest addition to the Scholarly Smackdown on The Passion of the Christ between John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III has appeared on beliefnet:

Round 4: Ben Witherington III

. . . . . Bringing in Adolf Hitler, an evil and grossly anti-Semitic person, to the discussion of this movie is way over the top. Mel Gibson is not trying to incite violence against or abuse of Jews with this movie. He is simply trying to show the great cost that Christ paid for the salvation of us all. Gibson shows that it is indeed the sin of us all, even of the disciples, which led to this death. So to accuse Gibson of even depraved indifference, or to draw comparisons with the old anti-Semitic Passion plays, is, frankly, not playing fair at all . . . . .

. . . . . I think that you, too, should be more open-minded about this and stop applying the hermeneutics of extreme fear and suspicion. That only makes your response more visceral, not more scholarly. You are interjecting fear and distortion into the discussion by saying things like "J'accuse." Before you rush to judgment, I suggest that you actually have a conversation with the man himself and see what you think. I try to put the fairest and kindest interpretation I can on another person's work of the heart. I would hope you would do that as well.

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Jim West notes in Biblical Studies Resources this Reuters article on a repeat screening for the CBS Mini Series Jesus (dir. Roger Young, 1999):

CBS to bring "Jesus" mini-series back

In the UK the film only received its network premier recently, just before Christmas last year, but it was stuck in the middle of the day on BBC2 so did not get a big audience. Apparently CBS are planning only to show the second half, which is a shame since the first half has some fine moments, e.g. Jesus' relationship with Mary of Bethany and Jesus' dancing. But they must be encouraged to show the so-called "international" version of this film, which has a different ending from the one which aired previously, the version that is on the video. I've seen both versions, the "CBS" one and the "international" one and the latter is greatly preferable, finishing with Jesus in modern day garb followed by children in the streets of Malta. David Bruce at Hollywood Jesus has a good site on this and some clips:

The differences between the CBS and International Versions

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Thanks to Jim West on Xtalk for this link to Joe Zias's own web page. It follows the trend noted by Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis recently which sees scholars setting up web sites with their own names:

JoeZias.com

It is headed "Science and Archaeology Group" (and entitled, presumably by mistake, "Curriculum Vitae") but if you scroll down a bit you come to some reproductions of articles by Zias:

Crucifixion in Antiquity: The Anthropological Evidence

The Cemeteries of Qumran, Celibacy: Confusion Laid to Rest?, Dead Sea Discoveries 7 (2000): 220-253

Health and Healing in the Land of Israel: A Paleopathological Perspective, originally in Mikhmanim (Spring 1999) [No further bibliographical details given]

The first of these also appears elsewhere on the web (Century One Foundation and James Tabor's site), so now three versions of the same piece. But on Zias's own site it comes with a new topical postscript very critical of the way crucifixion is depicted in The Passion of the Christ, something Zias has commented upon in various newspaper articles, especially in the week or so leading up to the American release (see older blog entries for details; search on "Zias"):

Postscript – The Mel Gibson Controversy

There is an element here that was new to me, the source for Mel Gibson's depiction of the crucifixion:

One can perhaps ask, why did he with a film budget of upwards of 30 million dollars, be so mistaken. It was not until 2003 that a colleague asked me to take a look at an article (The Jesus War) in the New Yorker (9/2003) that I realized the problem with the historicity of the whole film process. In the interview Gibson tells the author that his source of information for the crucifixion comes from an article “On the physical death of Jesus Christ” in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1986). Apparently Gibson was totally unaware of the fact that the journal, which goes back to the 19th century, had never received in all its history so many negative responses to any other scientific article. This article, full of errors and suppositions along with what one critic called ‘forensic mythology’ thus became the template on which Gibson’s film and all the gratuitous violence is largely based.

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Thanks to Mike Parsons for this link for those unfamiliar with the Stations of the Cross, clearly so major an element in Mel Gibson's thinking in The Passion of the Christ:

The Via Dolorosa
by James Wicker

While writing the screenplay for The Passion of the Christ , Mel Gibson has said that he took inspiration from a Roman Catholic and Orthodox tradition known as the Stations of the Cross. Since most evangelical Christians are unfamiliar with this tradition, this essay will briefly describe and outline it . . . .

The author, James Wicker, is Associate Professor of New Testament at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Jenee Woodard, of The Text This Week fame, has started her own blog. The Text This Week is essentially a lectionary resource for Christian preachers but it has become much more than that over the years and is useful also to Biblical scholars, students and lay people. It's a resource I often use. The new blog should be worth checking regularly:

Textweek Blog

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On Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson notes that the latest issue of the Journal of Theological Studies is now available and features several articles of interest to those in the field:

The Journal of Theological Studies
Volume 55, Issue 1, April 2004

Full text available to those with subsriptions or institutional subscriptions; and this time it is all available straight away rather than with a pause of a few weeks.

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I've added a link on my page on Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew to this recent article by George Aichele:

George Aichele, “Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini”, Cross Currents Winter 2002

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The previous blog entry reminds me that I am over a fortnight late on blogging this (blame it on The Passion):

Filología Neotestamentaria Vol. 7 (1994)

There are three articles available on-line from this volume:

WONG, S., "Leftovers of Louw-Nida's Lexicon. Some Considerations Towards "A Greek-Chinese Lexicon"", Vol. 7 (1994): 137-174

SIBINGA, J.S., "Exploring The Composition of Matth. 5-7. The Sermon on The Mount and some of its "Structures"", Vol. 7 (1994): 175-195

MACÍAS, B., "1 Cor 12,13: UNA CONJETURA RENACENTISTA... kai\ pa&ntej ei0j e3n pneu=ma e0poti/sqhmen.", Vol. 7 (1994): 209-214

And:

Filología Neotestamentaria 8 (1995)

All the articles from this volume are available on-line:

Thomas R. Hatina, "The Perfect Tense-Form in Recent Debate: Galatians as a Case Study.", Vol. 8 (1995): 3-22

Gerard Mussies, "Variation in the Book of Acts (Part II).", Vol. 8 (1995): 23-61

Josep Rius-Camps, "Las variantes de la Recensión Occidental de los Hechos de los Apóstoles (V) (Hch 2,14-40).", Vol. 8 (1995): 63-78

J. Duncan M. Derrett, "zo&nnumi, fe/rw, a!lloj: The Fate of Peter (Jn 21:18-19).", Vol. 8 (1995): 79-84

Juan Mateos-Jesús Peláez, "El adverbio a!rti en el Nuevo Testamento." , Vol. 8 (1995): 85-94

Chrys C. Caragounis, "The Error of Erasmus and Un-Greek Pronunciations of Greek.", Vol. 8 (1995): 151-185

Scot Snyder, "Participles and Imperatives in 1 Peter:A Re-Examination in the Light of Recent Scholarly Trends.", Vol. 8 (1995): 187-198

Josep Rius-Camps, "Las variantes de la Recensión Occidental de los Hechos de los Apóstoles (VI) (Hch 2,41-47)." , Vol. 8 (1995): 199-208

Juan Mateos, "u9pakou/w y términos afines en el Nuevo Testamento.", Vol. 8 (1995): 209-226

Note: it's almost midnight and I have not blogged on The Passion of the Christ all day; almost there.

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The on-line edition of Biblica, still free for all to view at the BSW web site, has been announced today:

Biblica 85 (2004) Fasc. 1

An innovation with this new edition is that each article is now also available in PDF -- a welcome development. Articles pertinent to the New Testament are:

Sjef van TILBORG, "The Danger at Midday: Death Threats in the Apocalypse", Vol. 85(2004): 1-23 [HTML] [PDF]

Hansjörg SCHMID, "How to Read the First Epistle of John Non-Polemically", Vol. 85(2004): 24-41 [HTML] [PDF]

Terrance CALLAN, "Use of the Letter of Jude by the Second Letter of Peter", Vol. 85(2004) 42-64 [HTML] [PDF]

Rick STRELAN, "Who Was Bar Jesus (Acts 13,6-12)? ", Vol. 85 (2004) 65-81 [HTML] [PDF]

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I mentioned earlier Mark Vitalis Hoffman's homepage. I have since realised that Mark Hoffman has made further resources available on his own web site:

Crossmarks Christian Resources

One thing of real interest is Hoffman's Yale dissertation (1996) directed by Wayne Meeks and Steven Fraade:

Psalm 22 (LXX 21) and the Crucifixion of Jesus

Hoffman has made abstract, table of contents and some samples available, including Introduction and Conclusion. Here's his abstract:

There are numerous allusions to Psalm 22 in the Gospel Passion narratives, but, lacking any pre-Christian evidence to indicate that this psalm was interpreted messianically, scholars have been unable to agree upon their significance. By illuminating the Scriptural context which shaped the interpretations of Psalm 22, by surveying its ancient textual transmission and translation, by examining how it was used in pre-Christian documents, and by studying the discussions involving it in the writings of the early Church Fathers and in the rabbinic corpus, this dissertation provides a firmer basis for answering the question, "How did the early Christians find Psalm 22 to be meaningful in understanding the crucifixion of Jesus?"

The results of this study provide new insights into the New Testament usage of particular details from Psalm 22 and also yield some cautions about how Psalm 22 is not to be interpreted or construed as having been used by the New Testament authors. Aspects of the psalm which connect it to traditions about a son of God, an heir of David, a servant (of the Lord), a prophet, or a righteous person are highlighted and shown to have provided the potential pathways for Psalm 22 to have become meaningful among early Christians in narrating and understanding the crucifixion of Jesus as Messiah.

While providing a valuable survey of the ancient interpretations of Psalm 22 and observing how Psalm 22 was found useful by early Christians, this dissertation suggests, however, that no unequivocal answer is possible for determining why Psalm 22 in particular became so crucial to them. Ultimately it is concluded that, perhaps because Jesus did indeed recite the opening words of Psalm 22 before he died, the potential ways of understanding Psalm 22 were explored by early Christians in order to claim that this psalm—which rightly could be and was read as being a psalm about a Davidic heir and a son of God—was about the Son of God, the Davidic heir acknowledged to be the Messiah.

What I've read of the thesis looks excellent, and it has enthusiastic endorsements from both Meeks and Fraade, so I am looking forward to reading the rest. Hoffman's dissertation looks pretty congenial to my thesis concerning the scripturalization of the Passion Narrative, viz. the notion that memory and tradition combined with the conviction that events happened "according to the Scriptures" and that this led the early Christians to begin retelling those events in the light of the Scriptures they saw as being fulfilled.

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A couple of people have emailed me to note that some malicious code had found its way onto the late Tony Fisher's popular Greek New Testament site. I often use this site myself but had not spotted the problem because I use the Google pop-up blocker. I got in touch with York University and I am happy to say that the site is now fixed and can be used again without nasty things happening.

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I'm a bit behind on blog entries after the Passion news and reviews whirlwind of the last couple of weeks. So belatedly, the latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature:

Heil, Christoph
Lukas und Q: Studien zur lukanischen Redaktion des Spruchevangeliums Q
Reviewed by Marco Frenschkowski

DeConick, April D.
Voices of the Mystics: Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian Literature
Reviewed by Susan Ramsey

Kerr, Alan R.
The Temple of Jesus' Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John
Reviewed by James P. Sweeney

Longenecker, Bruce W., ed.
Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment
Reviewed by Gert J. C. Jordaan

Saunders, Stanley P.
Philippians and Galatians
Reviewed by Robin Gallaher Branch

Stuhlmacher, Peter
Revisiting Paul's Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective: With an essay by Donald A. Hagner
Reviewed by Matt A. Jackson-McCabe

Glancy, Jennifer
Slavery in Early Christianity
Reviewed by Shelly Matthews

Minear, Paul
The Bible and the Historian: Breaking the Silence about God in Biblical Studies
Reviewed by Bruce A. Power

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A new addition to the Scholars: H page:

Mark Vitalis Hoffman
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, PA, U.S.A.

This page features a link to a larger site under the heading Current Courses, which is full of useful and interesting course materials. See in particular the following course:

The Witness of the Gospels

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This announced by Wieland Willker on b-greek:

The Acts of the Apostles: A Handbook on the Greek Text
by Martin M. Culy, Mikeal Carl Parsons
List Price: $29.95 / Amazon Price: $20.97
Paperback: 580 pages ;
Dimensions (in inches): 1.23 x 7.44 x 6.32
Publisher: Baylor Univ Pr; (February 2004)
ISBN: 0918954908

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Editorial Reviews
A. K. M. Adam, Associate Professor of New Testament, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary "Their work instantly moves to the front rank of necessary reference books for all readers of Acts . . ."

About the Author
MARTIN M. CULY is an associate professor of New Testament at Briercrest Biblical Seminary. Culy earned an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of North Dakota, the M.Div. from Grace Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D from Baylor University. MIKEAL C. PARSONS is a professor of religion at Baylor University. Parsons earned his Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of The Departure of Jesus in Luke-Acts (1987); Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts (1993); and, with Heidi J. Hornik, Illuminating Luke: The Infancy Narrative in Italian Renaissance Painting (2003).

Book Description
While the commentary tradition has, with some notable exceptions, shifted away from philology to take up questions of the social values, rhetorical conventions, and narrative strategies, this volume provides the textual, philological, and grammatical essentials to any act of interpretation. By working through this text systematically, readers will not only gain a firmer grasp of the peculiar shape of Acts' grammar, but given Acts' length and complexity, they will also become better equipped to approach the other New Testament documents with increased confidence, particularly other narrative literature.

Labels: b-greek

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Thanks to David Mackinder for the link to this article in the SBL Forum. Author looks familiar:

The Pleasures and Perils of Talking to the Media
Mark Goodacre

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Thanks to Jeff Peterson for the link to this polemical piece from the Washington Post:

Gibson's Blood Libel
By Charles Krauthammer

. . . . His other defense is that he is just telling the Gospel story. Nonsense. There is no single Gospel story of the Passion; there are subtle differences among the four accounts. Moreover, every text lends itself to interpretation. There have been dozens of cinematic renditions of this story, from Griffith to Pasolini to Zeffirelli. Gibson contradicts his own literalist defense when he speaks of his right to present his artistic vision. Artistic vision means personal interpretation.

And Gibson's personal interpretation is spectacularly vicious. Three of the Gospels have but a one-line reference to Jesus's scourging. The fourth has no reference at all. In Gibson's movie this becomes 10 minutes of the most unremitting sadism in the history of film. Why 10? Why not five? Why not two? Why not zero, as in Luke? Gibson chose 10 . . . .

This is actually pretty outrageous -- the author is castigating Gibson for a "literalist defense" but his attempt to establish the claim is based on error. All four Gospels mention flogging or scourging (Matt. 27.26 // Mark 15.15, φραγελλόω; Luke 23.16, παιδεύω; John 19.1, μαστιγόω). There is an important difference between Matthew and Mark on the one hand and Luke and John on the other. The first two Gospels have the scourging after the sentence whereas the latter two have it beforehand. But it is incorrect to say that it is absent in Luke.

Krauthammer goes on:

In none of the Gospels does the high priest Caiaphas stand there with his cruel, impassive fellow priests witnessing the scourging. In Gibson's movie they do. When it comes to the Jews, Gibson deviates from the Gospels -- glorying in his artistic vision -- time and again. He bends, he stretches, he makes stuff up. And these deviations point overwhelmingly in a single direction -- to the villainy and culpability of the Jews.

I am troubled here about the author's use of the word "the Jews". This, as far as I remember, is not a term used by the film in this antagonistic, Johannine-style way, and to use it in this kind of context is to import something into the film that is not there. Don't get me wrong -- I am no apologist for Gibson and I have repeatedly suggested in this blog that Gibson could have avoided many of the problems he has come up against by appointing a Visual Bible Gospel of John - style advisory committee. But it's now pretty clear to me that a lot of the reporting on alleged anti-semitism in this film is simply nowhere near careful enough. If we are to take the question of alleged anti-semitism seriously, it is essential that attention is paid both to the film itself and to the New Testament text. Sloppy reporting only makes the problem worse. This is a serious issue and it needs to be treated seriously and that involves taking real care to avoid misrepresentation. There is another example in the article, now a familiar motif:

Perhaps this should not be surprising, coming from a filmmaker whose public pronouncements on the Holocaust are as chillingly ambiguous and carefully calibrated as that of any sophisticated Holocaust denier.

As I have pointed out before, Gibson's statements in the two relevant interviews (Noonan and Sawyer) are only "chillingly ambiguous" if one ignores "Yes, of course" in the one and "Sure" in the other.

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Blogwatch: on Paleojudaica, Jim Davila has some interesting exchanges on the Aramaic in the film. In AKMA's Random Thoughts there is a post headed "Passion and Postmodernism" which is worth reading but I'd like to comment on when I get a moment.

Helenann Hartley sends me this link from BBC news about the every-increasing success of this film:

Passion film surpasses $200m mark
The film's trailer has been screened in churches in the US
Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ has sailed past the $200m (£108m) mark at the North American box office after two weeks.

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for passing along this sad news from the Washington Post:

Biblical Scholar Lucetta Mowry Dies
By Patricia Sullivan

M. Lucetta Mowry, 91, a biblical scholar, archaeologist and former dean at Wellesley College, died of pneumonia Feb. 23 at Northwest Hospital Center in Randallstown, Md. She lived in Sykesville, Md.

Dr. Mowry was a professor and academic dean at Wellesley for 36 years, retiring in 1981. She was a well-known New Testament scholar and author and taught on Hebrew scripture, Islam, Hinduism, modern Japanese religious sects and Gandhi's theory and practice of nonviolence.

She was part of the interdenominational committee set up by the National Council of Churches to update the Revised Standard Version of the Bible into contemporary but accurate language, a painstaking project that began in 1975 and lasted until the new version was published in 1989. Dr. Mowry's responsibility was translation of the Gospel according to John and the Johannine Epistles, and she was one of two committee members who were chosen to edit the completed translations . . . .

. . . . . As an archaeologist, she took part in two excavations in Jordan and one in Libya, where she dived into a harbor and found a 2nd-century Roman sea wall.

Her publications deal with subjects ranging from music in the Bible and poetry in the New Testament to the worship of the Hindu god Siva, called Saivism, in southern India and analysis of excavations at Herodian Jericho. Best known is her "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early Church," which the London Times Literary Supplement acclaimed as one of the 13 best books in the field of religion written by American authors in the 1960s.

She held Wellesley's Andrew W. Mellon emeritus professorship in the humanities . . . . .

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In RogueClassicism, David Meadows draws attention to this interesting piece in the Orlando Sentinel on rumours surrounding Mel Gibson's next film:

Gibson's next movie: A look at heroic Jews?
By Mark I. Pinsky

It's all rumour and hearsay and here is the bit of substance:

Alan Nierob, a spokesman for Gibson and his Icon Films, confirmed that the filmmaker has spoken in several interviews, including one with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, about looking to the Old Testament for stories, but said Gibson has not been specific about which stories.

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On Mystical Politics, Rebecca Lesses offers her thoughts on The Passion of the Christ (linked by Jim Davila on Paleojudaica). Rebecca Lesses found it "a powerful film -- but in a very disturbed and violent way". She writes:

The camera lingered lovingly on every injury that Jesus suffered. I think that this film would have a seriously negative impact upon children who viewed it -- personally, I think it should have gotten an NC-17 rating for violence.

On the second point, as I have commented before, this is not a film that children ought to see. I don't entirely understand the American rating system, but in the UK The Passion of the Christ is an 18 so no one under the age of 18 will be allowed in. On the previous point, I disagree. I did not think that the camera dwelt lovingly on Jesus' injuries and this is one of the reasons I find the pornography charge made by Lesses as well as other reviewers to be misplaced. The camera frequently turns away with the Marys, with the viewer, and does not allow us to see the worst. Like the Marys, we are constantly looking yet not wanting to look. Sometimes we catch the full horror and flinch; sometimes we do not. I think what I would like to hear from those who are using the term pornography in this context is how they are defining it because I find it singularly inappropriate.

Rebecca Lesses also writes:

The priests are dressed up in ridiculous regalia that to my eye did not resemble what Exodus describes as priestly garb (it is described in this week's Torah portion, Tezaveh). The camera lingers on their bearded faces, many with the stereotypical Jewish hooked nose.

I disagree with this too. Because of the pre-publicity about the alleged anti-Semitism, I was conscious of the potential problem of the representation of Jews in the film and one of the things I looked for were choice of actors and what their appearances might be intended to evoke. But I did not see anything that led me to believe that certain actors had been chosen to evoke classic racial stereotypes. And if one really must descend to the business of talking about shapes of noses, Peter -- for example -- does not look different from the priests.

The difficulty about any such discussion is that it can be in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps I am missing things that others are noticing. I think one of the only ways around this problem is to ask the question whether Jewish actors are used to play the Jewish priests and non-Jewish actors to play those sympathetic to Jesus. This, in my opinion, is one of the scandals about Jesus Christ Superstar -- it is clear that many of the priests are played by Jewish actors whereas few if any other parts in the film are played by Jewish actors. Now, in The Passion of the Christ the only actor I know to be Jewish is Maia Morgenstern who plays Mary the mother of Jesus (see blog entry on), the most sympathetic character in the entire film. Likewise, as I have previously pointed out, one of the other most sympathetic characters in the film is Simon of Cyrene, the only person in the entire film characterised with the single word "Jew".

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila draws attention to this piece in Archaeology Magazine:

LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: HOLLYWOOD HOLY LAND
Can anyone know the facts about the death of Jesus?
BY SANDRA SCHAM

[Archaeology, Volume 57 Number 2, March/April 2004]

The article features quotations from William Fulco, Paula Fredriksen, Adam Porter, Mark Chancey and others.

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Read AKMA's reflections on The Passion of the Christ on AKMA's Random Thoughts. And thanks to AKMA for pointing out in Comments that "Caiphas" is the Latin version of the name; so it's not a spelling error.

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I went to see The Passion of the Christ yesterday. I had my own trauma trying to find a place to park in Birmingham City Centre, eventually driving past the cinema and getting lost in a one way system, abandoning the car at the nearest available car park, wishing I had got the bus, and running like fury down Broad Street to make it in time. The viewing was essentially for Church leaders so I felt a little like Abe Foxman in Florida who sneaked in to a preview screening there; but I was honest about who I was and where I came from and they were happy to wave me in and give me a copy of the "promotional DVD" which I have yet to watch. I sat between two Anglican clergymen, both of whom I knew, and one a former colleague in the department here Birmingham so I did not feel too out of place.

I was absolutely dreading seeing the film. That may sound a little odd if you have followed my blog with its multiple postings on this film over recent weeks and months; you might almost think that I had an obsessive interest in the film. My worry was essentially focused on one thing: the violence. I am one of those people who just hates seeing violence anywhere in life. When the kids at school called "scrap", I was the one child who chose not to run to watch. I detest violence, find it very upsetting, and am not one of those people who finds is palatable as soon as it is represented on screen. And I know I am not alone in this. One colleague has told me that he has no intention to view the film at all. "I don't do violence", he said. Another friend emailed me and suggested I took a stand and did not go. But my problem is that I have followed Jesus films since I was a child. I have always been fascinated by the attempts to depict Jesus' life. I remember gathering round with the family to watch Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth on Sunday nights in 1977, something of a major national event. I always loved seeing King of Kings when it was shown every Easter and learnt to think of Jesus as looking like Jeffrey Hunter. Later, as a teenager, I loved Jesus Christ Superstar, the film, the soundtrack, the stageshow; I could not get enough of it. I still love it now. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why I also loved Life of Brian when it came out in 1979. I had grown up on Monty Python and Jesus films, and here were the two combined!

When I began lecturing in Birmingham, I found that using clips of Jesus films were a marvellous way of sparking off discussion, of getting students interested in the subject. At this stage I discovered Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, the lecturer's dream, so full of interesting scenes to spark discussion, whether historical, theological or filmic. When I began lecturing on Jesus films, I often used to say that it was unlikely that we would get a major Jesus film in the old Hollywood epic tradition. How wrong I was. First The Miracle Maker and the CBS Jesus in 1999-2000, and now The Passion of the Christ. I simply had to see this new film, albeit allegedly one of the most violent films ever made.

I am not going to try to write a review on The Passion of the Christ. There are reviews galore in this film, and I have repeatedly drawn attention to them here. And, as I have frequently commented, these film critics really know how to write; academics could learn a few things from them. Many of my thoughts have thus already been expressed more coherently by other critics. The review that came to my mind most frequently when watching the film was Mark Kermode's. He is quite right that the film is "shocking . . . but utterly compelling". I thought several times about his comment on Newsnight Review last week that one had a kind of "ominous dread" of what was to come next.

This is a very powerful film. This film gets inside your head and makes you think about it. You wake up at night thinking about it. The images are so compelling, so moving that they demand a lot from you. I wonder whether those reviewers who have reacted with vitriol are actually trying to expel the images from their minds, to prevent the film from doing its work.

Having seen the film, I am surprised about just how over the top some of these reviews are. The repeated charge of "pornography" seems quite out of place to me. Yes, the film is horribly violent but it is not gratuitously violent. Pornography is all about titillating the viewer, drawing him/her to want more to satiate their appetite for flesh. Mel Gibson does not encourage the viewer to want to see more. All the time he is asking you to turn away, to think about what is happening, to be appalled at the Roman guards' brutality, to share both of the Marys' grief. This is not pornography. Indeed the scourging scene, so often commented upon in the reviews, is not twenty minutes of watching Jesus being scourged. The camera itself cannot bear to look on and repeatedly draws away, sometimes so far that you can only hear it in the distance. I am not saying that it is not traumatic. It is. Very traumatic, deeply disturbing, very upsetting. Of course it is possible that a particular kind of viewer might derive sadistic pleasure from looking upon this, but if so they do so against the grain of the film. Unlike pornography, it is not beckoning you to watch more, much less to revel in it. The real villains of the piece, the sadistic Roman guards, are the ones who are utterly depraved. They are able to look on, to laugh, to increase the torment. The viewer turns away, cries, demands them to stop.

Many of the reviews have said that the crucifixion almost comes as an anti-climax after the scourging. I disagree. Watching the soldiers crucify Jesus was easily the most traumatic part of the film. Really upsetting. The use of flashback here is particularly moving, the Last Supper, "Love one another . . .", the Good Shepherd, the Sermon on the Mount,"Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors . . ." Very powerful. The Greatest Story Ever Told attempted to do something similar by juxtaposing John the Baptist's beheading and Antipas's demand that Jesus be arrested with "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake . . .", which is brought forward as the first beatitude. But the link is easily lost; Gibson really makes it work with the use of flashback.

Some have commented that the flashbacks are all too brief. I understand those comments. One longs to see more, especially as Jim Caviezel's Jesus is so warm and personable. The scene in Nazareth, when Jesus builds a tall table and shows it to Mary, is delightful. It is the kind of table that people may use in the future ("It could catch on"). Jesus and Mary both laugh. There is a trend here in recent Jesus films that bucks the trend of all the older films. In an article I wrote in 1997 about Jesus Christ Superstar, I commented on how rare it is to see Jesus smile anything other than a beatific smile in a Jesus film. Yet since then, we have had several portrayals of Jesus as a man with a sense of humour, from Bruce Marchiano's American applie-pie Jesus in the Visual Bible's Matthew (1996), to Jeremy Sisko's Jesus (1999), the first Jesus to dance, to the claymated Jesus voiced by Ralph Fiennes in The Miracle Maker (2000) who jokes with Mary and Martha and makes his parables amusing, to the most recent Jesus, Henry Ian Cusick in the Visual Bible's The Gospel of John (2003), who pulls off the remarkable feat of making the Johannine Jesus warm and friendly.

But having said that the flashbacks in The Passion of the Christ are terrific, I think the timing is about right. It just tantalises the viewer with reminders of Jesus' life. They provide the film's context, encouraging the viewers to fill in more from their own knowledge. It would be interesting to ask how the film would view to someone who had no knowledge at all of the Jesus story, like the Japanese viewers John Dominic Crossan was referring to in his most recent piece on beliefnet. My guess is that the flashbacks would appear so fascinating, so tantalising, that it would leave one wanting to find out more, perhaps even to read the Gospels! Perhaps Mel Gibson will think of cashing in by doing a film on Jesus' ministry. After all, prequels are all the rage these days. And, in my humble opinion, it is how the Gospels were themselves built up; the Passion Narrative came first, the extended introduction afterwards. (Go on, Mel, do us another Jesus film!)

Now some reviews have said that the film has no real feel of joy, of triumph, of redemption. That was not my experience of it. [Note: SPOILER COMING] It is true that it gives us the briefest of glimpses of the resurrection, but it leaves the viewer on that note -- Jesus has not even emerged from the tomb yet -- and you are left dwelling on what happens next. Again, it drives you back to the Gospels. In fact the ending reminded me a little of the ending of Mark's Gospel; it has that tantalising feel of "But I want to know what happened next". Given the historic difficulties faced by Jesus films in portraying the resurrection effectively, this could be seen as a brilliant decision. Gibson has resisted what would have been an obvious and perhaps clichéd final scene with Jesus meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden, so that the film could have been framed by those two gardens at each end of the story.

But also there was redemption in the cataclysmic events that happen at the death of Jesus, a tear from heaven, an earthquake, the devil cast to the pit of hell, a remarkable scene. I thought it was implied pretty strongly that the soldiers, the Temple authorities, Pilate, everyone realised that something world shattering had happened. Nothing was ever going to be the same again for any of these characters.

On the alleged anti-Semitism, in the film itself, this has been at best greatly overstated. Many of the elements that troubled the so-called ad hoc committee about the early script do not appear in the film. Perhaps, after all, their views were taken into account. With respect to the Matt. 27.25 line, "His blood be on us and on our children", it is not only that there is no subtitle but that it is lost in the crowd -- you can hardly even hear Caiaphas say it. Part of the problem now is that it is difficult to watch the film without scrutinising it at every turn for signs of anti-Semitism and one can end up seeing things that really are not there. Paula Fredriksen commented on Caiaphas's bad teeth, for example. Well, yes, he has bad teeth but so do many of the other characters on screen.

One of the ways of looking at this is to ask how the film's depiction of Jewish leaders compares with that of other Jesus films. I would say that Jesus Christ Superstar comes off far worse. In that film the Jewish authorities are on the whole played by Jewish actors whereas Jesus and his disciples are not. It carelessly writes in phrases like "permanent solution". The Passion of the Christ does not, on the other hand, enhance any of the admittedly troubling elements in the Gospels. Perhaps it could have done more to make some of the Jewish authorities less clearly out-and-out baddies; it could have done more to show Pilate's nasty, ruthless side. All these and similar elements might have been given some more attention had Gibson assembled an advisory committee consisting of Jews and Christians and others as did Garth Dabrinsky on The Gospel of John.

But that point having been conceded, I think those who have gone looking for anti-Semitism in the film have missed some pretty important elements that severely limit the plausibility of the charge. In particular, I am amazed that no one in any review I have seen (and I have read a lot!) comments on Simon of Cyrene. This is a wonderful character, beginning very reluctant to help this random criminal but in time realising that he is in the presence of someone special and encouraging Jesus. And he is directly castigated by one of the Roman guards as "Jew!" Now, I think I am correct in saying that this is the only character in the entire film who is specifically characterised as a Jew, and he is one of the most sympathetic characters in the film. I regard this point as significant and am annoyed that something so blatant has been universally missed by critics.

I would also want to echo those who say that the baddies in this film are without question the Roman guards, nasty, depraved, violent, selfish men who occupy a great deal of screen time.

One or two other random thoughts: Bob Schacht's review on Xtalk, focusing on the stations of the cross, provides a brilliant insight into the film and I was grateful to have read that before seeing it. It is quite right. It explains why the road to Golgotha is so long -- it occupies much of the film.

In reviews I have seen, no one has mentioned Veronica's appearance on the road to Golgotha. Perhaps people are not familiar with this legend, that Veronica gave Jesus a cloth and he wiped his face and his face was imprinted upon it for ever more. And one more thing -- in the subtitles Caiaphas was repeatedly spelt "Caiphas". An error?

In conclusion, a powerful film. Shocking, violent, utterly compelling; an amazing cinematic experience. On the Guardian's film site, I rated it at 8/10.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link from The Tablet from the principal of Heythrop College in London (where, once upon a time, I was a tutorial assistant):

A remarkable Passion
John McDade
Mel Gibson has made a stunning and justifiably violent account of a Christ who bears the weight of the world's sin. But, says our critic, his film is not anti-Semitic

An excerpt:

When Christ rises from his prayer in the Garden, he crushes under his heel the snake which has crept from the devil's bosom - in iconography it is Mary who crushes the head of the serpent, and this sends us back to the conflict between the serpent and Eve's offspring in Genesis 3:15. When Christ dies, there is a remarkable shot (a God's-eye perspective?) in which Golgotha, seen from above, is like a globe of the world from which the figures of Satan and his brood are summarily eliminated. The devil (and certainly not the Jewish people) is the real antagonist of Christ; one of the film's structural features is the polarity between Satan and Mary, eyeing each other on the road to Golgotha. "See, mother," Christ tells her as he falls a second time, "I make all things new" - a remarkable line from Revelation 21:5. Satan mimics Mary's motherhood by cradling a devil-child in her bosom (a child who drives Judas to kill himself for his suicide on the tree is the devil's counterpoint to Christ's tree of life), while at the end of the film, Mary holds her dead Son in her lap in a Caravaggio-style pietà, looking outwards towards the viewer - the one point in the film which explicitly engages the viewer in the drama.

In one of the most moving sequences, drawn from the writings of Sr Catherine Emmerich, an eighteenth-century German visionary, the Blessed Virgin and Mary Magdalene are given towels by Pilate's wife which they then use to soak up the blood from the scourging at the pillar. Gibson uses this action to give a flashback to Magdalene's rescue by Jesus from the Pharisees' stones: she is identified as the woman caught in adultery. The sequence of the scourging - lasting for 20 minutes or so - is dramatically the high point of the film. After the first series of beatings, Christ, already brutally scarred, raises himself up from the stones and prepares to take more: this is the Son of God carrying through his divine work. When, finally, the Cross is about to be lifted up and set in the hole prepared for it, we are shown in flashback Christ raising the bread at the Last Supper - "This is my body for the life of the world" - and then the Cross is dropped into place. The Eucharistic Body, the Sin-bearing Body and - right at the end, in a brief, silent, enigmatic sequence - the Risen Body, are the single locus of salvation. Gibson gives us profound themes from orthodox Christian faith in a popular medium; that, in itself, is remarkable . . . . .

. . . . . Gibson has not given us a film that manipulates its audience, and certainly not one which provokes Christians to anti-Jewish sentiments. He does not incite the viewer to view Jews negatively, nor - although violence is pervasive - does he elicit any vicarious thrill at what takes place. Nor does he encourage hatred of any person or group in the film. This film is not in the tradition of Passion Plays. Christ's forgiveness of all, spoken from the Cross, is dramatically serious and guides the viewer about how to think and feel. Contrast this with real cinematic manipulation of hatred and violence . . . . .

I disagree about Emmerich's vision of the mopping up of the blood as "one of the most moving sequences"; I wasn't quite sure what the purpose was of them cleaning up after Jesus. But otherwise, an interesting review.

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It seems that this week's Church Times makes The Passion of the Christ its cover story, but no on-line versions of the articles unfortunately.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this item from BBC News:

Italy 'triples Passion screens'
The Passion was filmed in Italy last year. The Italian release of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ is to be tripled from 150 prints to more than 500, it has been reported.

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I have blogged several times about William J. Fulco, S. J., who was "Theological Consultant and Translator of Latin / Aramaic" (if I remember the credit correctly) on The Passion of the Christ. On RogueClassicism, David Meadows points out this interesting little article about Fulco and his work on the Aramaic and the Latin in the film. This appears on Metromix.com but originates from the Chicago Tribune:

AT RANDOM ON LANGUAGE
The Jesuit scholar who translated `The Passion'
By Nathan Bierma

On the subtitles:

"He was real hard-set against them," said Alan Nierob, Gibson's publicist. "He initially thought they would be a distraction. . . . It's a very visual movie."

Gibson also wanted to avoid the phony air of British English that has plagued so many film renditions of the life of Jesus Christ, Nierob said.

Well it doesn't sound phony if you are British! And for those who can cope with "the phony air of British English", I would strongly commend Henry Ian Cusick's recent performance as Jesus in the Gospel of John. Having said that, I loved the use of Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ. The article goes on with some nonsense about Greek and Latin, but herewith Fulco's interesting comments:

"I tracked down some obscene graffiti from Roman army camps," Fulco said. "Somebody who knows Latin really well, their ears will fall off. We didn't subtitle those words."

Fulco even confessed to some linguistic mischief.

"Here and there I put in playful things which nobody will know. There's one scene where Caiaphas turns to his cohorts and says something in Aramaic. The subtitle says, `You take care of it.' He's actually saying, `Take care of my laundry.'"

Other linguistic tricks of Fulco's serve a function in the script.

For example, he incorporated deliberate dialogue errors in the scenes where the Roman soldiers, speaking Aramaic, are shouting to Jewish crowds, who respond in Latin. To illustrate the groups' inability to communicate with each other, each side speaks with incorrect pronunciations and word endings.

Later, "there's an exchange where Pilate addresses Jesus in Aramaic, and Jesus answers in Latin. It's kind of a nifty little symbolic thing: Jesus is going to beat him at his own game," Fulco said. "One line [in that exchange] I kind of enjoyed is when Jesus says, `My power is given from above, otherwise my followers would not have allowed this.' That's [spoken in] the pluperfect subjunctive."

It is the strangest experience reading these articles after having seen the film. I have read so many articles on this film, as anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, but until now I had no point of reference.

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The Passion of the Christ is gradually making its way around the country in preview screenings for church leaders and the like. Today it arrived in Birmingham and I went along. I'll offer some reflections later -- still a bit shell-shocked at the moment -- but this review is from Matthew Page who saw the film yesterday. Thanks to Matthew for sending this over; several of his comments resonate with my own thoughts on the film.

The Passion of the Christ
A review by Matthew Page

If you believe everything you’ve been told about this film then you’re probably expecting the most realistic, anti-Semitic film to ever usher in a major revival. So it’s probably best to lay aside those brain cells assigned to the task of remembering all the pre-release discussion and concentrate on the film itself.

And it is an unusual one. A smash hit filmed in two almost dead languages. The resurrection of a genre in a generation far more cynical than that which killed it. A violent film about love. Victory through death. This web of apparent contradictions seems appropriate for a film about the ultimate paradox -–Jesus – God in human form.

That this was a labour of love for Mel Gibson is well known. Most people seem greatly impressed that he spent his own money to finance it. However, what I personally find a far greater testimony to his devotion to the project is the way that he spent that money. 40 years ago George Stevens also spent $25 million making The Greatest Story Ever Told. This was an astronomical amount in those days, but it doesn’t look even half as good as The Passion (although it was twice as long!). It’s the care that Gibson has taken that speaks loudest; lavish sets painstakingly detailed make-up, detailed costumes. Jerusalem just feels real, in a way that the campy sixties biblical epics just don’t touch. Furthermore, hardly a camera shot goes by which doesn’t seem to have undergone an awful lot of consideration, and reconsideration, until it is just right.

Sadly, most of these highs seem to have been missed by many of the reviews. Instead praise in the Christian press has focused on two areas – its power to move people and its realism and historical accuracy. Personally I wasn’t greatly moved. Partly I guess that whereas many people have hardly ever seen a film about Jesus, I have seen 20-30 and have undergone many times what a lot of people are experiencing for the first time - being moved by a Jesus film. Perhaps more significantly I never really accepted that this was Jesus. There is so little time to get acquainted with Caviezel’s Jesus and thus connect with him before he begins his ordeal. Additionally, whilst the use of Aramaic was academically interesting I found it emotionally distancing (despite having watched many foreign films).

I also found the violence and uneven historicity took me out of the film. Some of this was to enable the film look more like Caravaggio’s paintings, but this left the much trumpeted realism resting almost solely on the amount of violence and blood. Whilst I admire the leap away from the sanitised crucifixions of Jesus of Nazareth and King of Kings (where actor Jeffrey Hunter had to shave his armpits!), Gibson seems to have leaped so far that he flies over the end of the sand pit altogether and crashes into an advertising hoarding. Its one thing to dwell on the violence, but another to import additional acts of violence so more dwelling can be achieved. Scenes such as those where Jesus is thrown over a bridge, or a crow pecks out the bad thief’s eyes can be defended as artistic license. However, artistic license is essentially the outworking of the director’s mind, how he views the person / story concerned. Here, nearly all of the insertions are extra violence, extra torture, extra blood – Mel clearly has issues. In places this compromises the plausibility of the story itself. The Romans were brutal, but they were also disciplined. They wouldn’t have needed to be told a third time to calm down. A Pilate as weak as this one would never have lasted in ruthless Roman society. Perhaps most telling is that the film spends longer on the road to Golgotha than on the time spent on the cross itself. The actual crucifixion was far longer in reality, but passes quickly here. It’s almost as if once Jesus is on the cross Gibson can’t do anything more to him, and so moves on.

Such quibbles should not detract too greatly from the overall quality of the film. The performances are uniformly excellent. The most poignant moments for me came from looking at Mary’s reacrions, not Jesus. The colours and textures in the film are beautiful, but restrained, and there is some great camera work. Gibson pulls all the tricks out of the bag in this respect. There are shots from high above, and shots from the ground, points of view and upside down angles. Long ponderous takes are mixed with fast disorientating sequences. There are a few too many slow motion shots; perhaps the teardrop seemed a bit too sentimental and the earthquake too DeMille, but mostly these devices work well. It took me a while to decide that I liked the horror-esque techniques in a seemingly straight historical drama, but on reflection they capture the strangeness of that unique day when the “hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered”.

There is much to applaud Gibson for. The Passion of the Christ is a Jesus film which manages to give Jesus Gravitas without detracting from his humanity. In fact of all of the films that I’ve seen this one best captures Jesus’ dual nature – divinity & humanity. This is a Jesus that I could follow, and after decades of Robert Powell’s blue eyes, Jeffrey Hunter’s monotone, Willem Dafoe’s instability and Bruce Marchiano’s cheesy grin that is a major achievement.

Will it fan the flames of another round of anti-Semitic pogroms? Probably not. Will it be the key to opening the floodgates of a major revival? Fairly unlikely I imagine. Will it give a generation a Jesus they can relate to and some understanding of what he did for them? Possibly. And for a film about Christ, that is probably the highest single piece of praise you can give.

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Thanks to Jim West in his blog and on Xtalk for this link with the sad news of the death of Jürgen Roloff and a brief obituary:

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Roloff verstorben
Am 21. Februar 2004 ist Prof. Dr. Jürgen Roloff, emeritierter ordentlicher Professor für Neues Testament an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, im Alter von 73 Jahren verstorben.

Labels: obituaries

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Thanks to Kevin Bush, author of the Tom Wright Page, for this news. This study week has been advertised:

Reading Paul in the Third Millennium
A Study Week in Rome with Bishop N.T. Wright
Sunday 16 May — Friday 21 May, 2004

And the previously mentioned programme on the resurrection will be showing (in the UK) on Channel 4 at 7 pm GMT on Easter Monday. He is also doing four programmes on Radio 3 on the four Sundays running up to Easter called "Spring Journey." I'll keep a look out for the latter and post links here if they are archived.

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Thanks to Dalen Jackson for drawing my attention to some material from Michael J. Cook of Hebrew Union in Cincinnati, USA. He was one of those who was on the famous "ad hoc committee" that reported on the script of The Passion of the Christ last year (along with Paula Fredriksen, Mary Boys, Amy-Jill Levine, Gene Fisher and Eugene Korn. Any others?). This is his public statement on the Reform Judaism web site:

Commission On Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism:
Some Jewish Reactions to Mel Gibson's, "The Passion of the Christ"
by Michael J. Cook, Ph.D

There is then a more recent update which is pretty cynical about the whole Icon spin-machine. It is undated but is clearly issued before Cook has seen the film:

Commission On Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism
Update on Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"
by Michael J. Cook, Ph.D

On the same site, Cook has made available a long PDF document made up of excerpts from correspondence he has had with colleagues about how to tackle the reactions to the film. The document was prepared before he had seen the film and there is a long checklist at the end to see how far the final version differed from the script that was so criticised by the ad hoc committee:

Excerpts from Postings Concerning:
“OUR GIBSON STRATEGY” ©
including a “Checklist” of 48 critical motifs to look for in the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ
by Michael J. Cook, Ph.D.

If you've followed the controversy surrounding the film, it makes interesting reading.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for pointing out to me that the next round (4) of the Crossan and Witherington correspondence on The Passion of the Christ has begun at beliefnet (so far just Crossan's fourth email). Incidentally, why on earth is it called "Scholarly Smackdown"? What is that supposed to mean?

Scholarly Smackdown: Round 4 (Crossan)

In this instalment, Crossan focuses again on the question of anti-Semitism, relating his own experience of visiting an Oberammergau Passion Play in 1960 and going on to give his own reading of the identity of the crowd in Mark (cf. his previous contributions to this exchange) and asking questions about how the film will play in places like Japan, where many will not know the story, or to Muslim audiences. "What will Muslims see when 'the Jews' act so viciously to Jesus, a prophet from their Holy Quran?" Not many of the Muslims I know would be likely to go to see this film, I think, so the question may not arise. But I'd also guess that those who do would be more concerned about Jesus dying on the cross, which the Qu'ran does not affirm, than about alleged depictions of Jews, not least in that the term "the Jews" is not one that the film (apparently) uses. But I may be wrong.

Update (22.05): Dwight Peterson and David Mackinder help me out with my ignorance over "smackdown", apparently a term from professional wrestling. The image is presumably of two scholars, one "liberal" and one "conservative" battling it out as would two sweaty wrestlers. Not a happy image!

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Thanks to Jeff Peterson for the link to this piece on NRO:

Portrait of Pilate
Critics miss the point in Gibson's portrayal of Pontius Pilate
John O'Sullivan

. . . . Pilate is portrayed as a sympathetic character, they argue, who wants to spare the innocent Christ but who yields to the demands of Caiaphas and the mob that He should be crucified. Caiaphas, however, harbors no such reluctance. He agitates clearly for Christ's death. And this is undoubtedly what Gibson's film shows — just as it is also undoubtedly the account in the Gospels.

But is it anti-Semitic? For what the critics miss is that this account makes Pilate a far worse villain than Caiaphas. After all, Caiaphas believed that Christ had committed the ultimate sin of blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God. As a leading representative of religious laws that condemned adulterers to death by stoning, he was almost bound to call for His execution. Caiaphas is making a terrible mistake. He may also have corrupt political motives for his actions. But he is plainly sincere in believing that, however conveniently, he has the law of God on his side.

Pilate is on much weaker ground. He condemns to death a man he believes to be innocent — and he does so, moreover, in a shifty manner that seeks to fix all guilt for the murder on Caiaphas and the mob and to exculpate himself.

From the standpoint of the New Testament, according to the traditional teaching of the Christian church, and in Mel Gibson's movie, Pilate is by far the greater villain. And if any charge of bigotry can be sustained against Gibson, it is that of anti-Romanism since in addition to Pilate's murderous cowardice, the Roman soldiers are shown gleefully enjoying their torture of Christ . . . . .

It's an interesting potential corrective to the claim that Pilate is exonerated either in the film or in the Gospels, though it does not engage with the key points made by many Biblical scholars, viz. the difference between the portrait of Pilate in the Gospels and his portrait in Philo and Josephus; the historical problems associated with Caiaphas apparently manipulting Pilate; and the specific issue of "innocence" and "guilt", the terms around which the issues is debated.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this one from BBC News:

Passion 'could earn Gibson £160m'
The film has had one of the biggest openings in US cinema history
Director Mel Gibson could personally earn more than $300m (£160m) from The Passion of the Christ, according to respected US financial experts Forbes.

And to Jim West for this one on Biblical Studies Resources, also from BBC News:

Clergy's verdict on Passion film
Some church groups in the US have been given screenings of the film
Religious figures in Scotland have been giving their verdicts on Mel Gibson's controversial new film which portrays the death of Jesus.

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On b-greek, Carl Conrad recommends several blogs of interest, including this one, for which thanks. If, as a result of that message, there are any fresh visitors here, let me explain that the last couple of weeks has been a bit unusual in this blog's six month history in featuring about ninety per cent of its posts on the new film The Passion of the Christ. I know that my interest in Jesus films is not shared by all readers of the blog and I suspect that some are heartily sick of the whole thing. Some readers have joked with me about the sheer volume of posts on the topic. But even if you are not interested in the topic of Jesus films, you may be interested in some of the debates that have been spawned by it, and the Biblical scholars who have appeared in the press in connection with this (Paula Fredriksen, John Dominic Crossan, Amy-Jill Levine, Joe Zias, Krister Stendahl, Geza Vermes to name just a handful of the many). In due course, the blog will look a little more balanced again and will continue to cover all the areas of interest to users of the NT Gateway, including -- of course -- the Greek New Testament. Indeed that day may come sooner than expected. I am going to see a preview of the film tomorrow and if the reports of the violence are anything to go by, it's entirely possible that I will not manage to sit through it all!

Labels: b-greek

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this excellent piece from Easterblogg:

Mel Gibson versus Franco Zeffirelli

A couple of excerpts:

In Jesus of Nazareth the Sanhedrin conducts a lengthy, reasoned debate about the meaning of prophecy, religious liberty, and the dangers of an uprising against Rome. Zeffirelli's debate is a little stilted, but depicts the Sanhedrin as containing men of conscience who were deeply divided about how they should treat Christ. At one point one of Zeffirelli's elders exclaims, "We are a people who love ideas and argument, then reject our prophets." Zeffirelli's Caiaphas is a doddering old man who dreads rebellion and is obsessed with fear that if Jesus really is the Messiah, then he will replace Caiaphas as leader. In sum, Zeffirelli presents the elders as real human beings, not cartoon villains.

The most telling point of difference between the films is the utter lack of joy in Gibson's telling. The Passion of the Christ is all torture, screaming, bleeding, and weeping. There's no sense that anything about Christ or his ministry is hopeful. Even in flashback scenes that precede the torture close-ups Gibson is so keen about, all is sad and depressing. We see a one-minute flashback to the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus preaches expressionless as if reading from the Federal Register, while the crowd looks about as happy as if they'd been forced there at gunpoint. There's a one-minute flashback to the Last Supper: Jesus drones in monotone while the expressions of disciples suggest they're all facing execution. This is either a total misreading of the Christian story, or reflects Gibson's desire to make that story one about misery rather than love. The Sermon on the Mount proclaimed a new hope for the human prospect; the Last Supper was a night of warm intimacy among friends. You'd never know from Gibson . . . .

. . . . . Mel Gibson appears not to like the joyful, hopeful, universalist message of Christianity. Fundamentalism of all faiths and denominations tends to be angry at the world, and Gibson's is at bottom an angry telling of the Jesus story--an argument that Christ's followers should be full of fury about their enemies and their mistreatment. Perhaps Gibson, a wealthy celebrity, sits around telling himself that he is being mistreated by enemies. Or perhaps Gibson simply longed to earn millions by being the first filmmaker to manage the race-to-the-bottom feat of presenting a gratuitous, exploitive version of the crucifixion. Take your pick of these unattractive alternatives, then stick to Franco Zeffirelli. . . . . .

Two minor quibbles. Zeffirelli is called "the previous big-name-director attempt at the Jesus story". I'd say Martin Scorsese qualifies for that. And I am not sure about the comment that "The Gospels also never say Jesus was beaten by the Temple guards who arrest him". Mark 14.65?

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for this link to an article that quotes Krister Stendahl and Amy-Jill Levine extensively. It is from the Episcopal News Service and located on the Worldwide Faith News and it focuses on a "Forum for Inter-Religious Understanding" held at Rhode Island on 18 February:

Rhode Islanders consider The Passion
by Andrew Wetmore

Levine referred to her presence on what is usually called the "ad hoc committee" (though not here); it's worth quoting this line because of previous blog entries on it:

Levine said she had taken part in an ecumenical review committee that looked at the film script with Gibson's knowledge.

The comments quoted are all worth reading, including this:

Offering some advice for those who will see the Gibson movie, Levine said, "When you sit in the theatre and watch this story, picture my 13-year-old son on one side of you and my neighbor from down the street, who survived the Holocaust, on the other side. Try to see what they would see."

Concluding, Levine said, "This move is a symptom, not the problem. The problem is that Jews and Christians do not really know each other. They need to."

And from Stendahl's comments:

It was not until after World War II and the Second Vatican Council, Stendahl said, that "Christians began to learn how the things we say sound in the ears of the Jews. We have a new situation which calls upon us to make new attempts to help one another against the undesirable side effects of our devotion. The historical record is shocking."

The cross, he said, is a symbol of faith and hope for Christians. "But the Cross reminds Arabs of the Crusades. The Cross reminds the Jews of the Crusades and the pogroms (massacres). Historically, most attacks on the Jews in Europe took place in Holy Week, after the people in church heard the Passion narrative."

Stendahl suggested that, to live together, we have to practice three principles of communal living:

1. "Let the Other define herself. 75% of what our tradition says of another tradition is bearing false witness."

2. "Compare equal to equal. We all have our extremists and nuts. Don't compare ideal Christianity with the actual or distorted form of the Other."

3. "We will never have good relations without an element of holy envy. Find something in the Other that is beautiful and meaningful and that tells you something about God. You are not called upon to absorb it or to pass judgment on it."

Like many others, including Crossan, Stendahl sees the violence in the film as "pornographic":

"Violence is pornographic. I've always thought the suffering of Christ and the shout 'why have you forsaken me?' is the pain of the martyr-the pain of wondering was it all in vain, had it all been wrong. That's where the deep suffering is, not in the physical abuse." The way in which the movie describes the Passion, he continued, "is a celebration of suffering and death instead of a celebration of life and of the triumphal resurrection."

As I have commented before, one of the enormous effects for good that this film is having is that it is providing an opportunity for Biblical scholars to communicate to a broader public than usual. People are interested in what they are saying. Some people, who have not previously been exposed to it, are asking to hear the kind of discussion that has been going on in the academy for the last generation.

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I apologise in advance to anyone who will be offended by my posting a link to an article from The Onion here, but some readers might join me in finding this very amusing and -- in its own satirical way -- pretty astute:

Jesus demands creative control over next movie

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On About Ancient/Classical History, N. S. Gill draws attention to a reproduction of a short dictionary article by Benjamin Jowett from 1875:

Crux
Article by Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford on pp. 370-371 of William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875

One element is worth mentioning in relation to discussion over The Passion of the Christ:

The manner of it was as follows:— The criminal, after sentence pronounced, carried his cross to the place of execution; a custom mentioned by Plutarch (De Tard. Dei Vind. ἓκαστος τῶν κακούργων ἐκφέρει τὸν αὐτοῦ σταυρόν), and Artemidorus (Oneir. ii.61), as well as in the Gospels. From Livy (xxxiii.36) and Valerius Maximus (i.7), scourging appears to have formed a part of this, as of other capital punishments among the Romans. The scourging of our Saviour, however, is not to be regarded in this light, for, as Grotius and Hammond have observed, it was inflicted before sentence was pronounced (St. Luke, xxiii.16; St. John, xix.1.6).

The scourging also appears, though, in Matt. 27.26 // Mark 15.15 just before crucifixion (καὶ παρέδωκεν τὸν Ἰησοῦν φραγελλώσας ἵνα σταυρωθῇ).

Update (4 April 2006): Benjamin Jowett's article, Crux has moved to a new location and I have adjusted the link above.

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I commented recently on the fact that The Passion of the Christ identifies Mary Magdalene with the woman taken in adultery (John 8.1-11) and so, for all the recent publicity attempting to rehabilitate Mary Magdalene, this film perpetrates an age-old identification. I have checked up The Gospel of John on this one and it is, indeed, two separate actresses who play these roles, Inga Cadranel the woman taken in adultery and Lynsey Baxter Mary Magdalene.

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Ben Witherington III has a review of The Gospel of John on the Christianity Today web site:

The Gospel of John
review by Dr. Ben Witherington, III

Although in some sections he prefers Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, he liked the film very much indeed:

. . . . It all adds up to what I think is the best portrayal of Jesus ever offered in a feature length film . . . . .

. . . . . But these are niggling complaints. On the whole, the portrayal is telling and sometimes compelling—thanks especially to the fine acting by Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Jesus. With a beguiling simple grace and style, Cusick convincingly presents us with a Jesus who is both human, and so very clearly more than human—no small task. There is a warmth and passion to Cusick's winsome portrayal. He tells his first followers "Come and see," and even as a viewer, you want to do so.

I agree with Witherington on this one. The Gospel of John is a tremendous achievement. Cusick's portrayal of Jesus has made me rethink the way I view the Johannine Christ.

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Lots of reviewers and others have drawn attention to one scene in The Passion of the Christ featuring Satan carrying an ugly baby with hair on its back. Christianity Today have taken the trouble to ask Mel Gibson about this:

What's Up With the Ugly Baby?
Everyone's asking about the Passion scene where Satan is carrying a hideous infant.
by Mark Moring

. . . . It's evil distorting what's good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old 'baby' with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it's almost too much—just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place."

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AKMA has posted his thoughts On the Passion, Before I See It. It's an excellent post and I agree with everything in it. Just one excerpt, but read it all:

. . . . . Now, the matter of context remains an interpretive choice — by opting out of a portrayal of Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry, by ignoring the closely-reasoned controversies with his theological rivals, Gibson chooses to represent Jesus as unaccountably persecuted; he contrasts obscene suffering with utter innocence. But that’s neither the gospels’ narrative version of Jesus’ life and significance nor even the passion narrative that, even in Mark, constitutes a heightened, concentrated narrative exposition of how Jesus ends up on the cross. Gibson chooses to film only the grimmest moments from a narrative that ranges from shared joys to confusion and dismay to transcendent ecstasy to brutal, dehumanizing torture. He has the artistic freedom and theological rationale for so choosing — but that’s a choice, not a simple restaging of historical events.

I like the idea of posting thoughts before going to see it; I may try to do the same.

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Several years ago it was often reported that Paul Verhoeven, director of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Robocop and Starship Troopers, was working on or planning a Jesus film. At one stage it was even hoped that he would be able to release it for the millennium. He was apparently a regular attender at meetings of the Jesus Seminar and appeared to be taking this project very seriously. I have heard very little about this recently, however. Has he given up the idea? Perhaps he could cash in on some of the hype surrounding The Passion of the Christ and at the same time make a very different film. He is apparently pretty interested in consulting Biblical scholars and clearly would want to focus much more on Jesus' life. The working title was Christ the Man. I thought it would be interesting to see if there is any more up to date news on the web concerning Verhoeven's project but googling only brings up older material. Perhaps the best round up of material on this is at PaulVerhoeven.net dating to October 1998:

Jesus and Verhoeven

But there is nothing more recent that I have heard. Anyone out there know anything?

Labels: Verhoeven Jesus Film

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila has a very sensible post on the topic of Mel Gibson as a holocaust denier and criticizes those who are perpetrating this for (at best) selective quotation and not checking their sources properly. I spotted yesterday another egregious example of this but did not get a moment to comment on it. Christopher Hitchens writes the following in his polemical article in Slate, Schlock, Yes; Awe, No; Fascism, Probably:

It's important to scan the Reader's Digest interview with Mel Gibson. He was questioned by Peggy Noonan, who was almost as simperingly lenient in print as Diane Sawyer was on the small screen. Noonan asked him a question that he must have known was coming, and which he must have prepared for, and she asked him in effect to "make nice" and agree that the Holocaust actually had occurred. His answer was, to all effects and purposes, a cold and flat "no." A lot of people, he agreed, had died in the last war. No doubt many Jews were among the casualties. It's one of the most frigid and shrugging things I have ever read. You would not know from this response that the war was begun by a fascist ruling party that believed in a Jewish world conspiracy, and thus that all of those killed were in part victims of anti-Semitism.

His answer in this interview was not "to all effects and purposes, a cold and flat 'no'"; he actually answered "Yes, of course" and attempted to add to this some personal context (viz. that he personally knew holocaust survivors). See my blog entry on this. It really comes to something when a reporter can manage to turn "Yes, of course" into "to all effects and purposes, a cold and flat 'no'". This is irresponsible. And it is as bad that Hitchens apparently knows of the Diane Sawyer interview too (note his reference to this interview in the paragraph quoted above) in which, as I have commented before, his affirmation that the holocaust happened is even clearer, if you can get clearer than "Yes, of course".

I have not yet seen The Passion of the Christ, which has not been released yet in the UK, and so I cannot yet comment on the charges of alleged anti-semitism. But it seems to me a shame that the proper discussion about how the film depicts the passion narrative should continue to get clouded by what is clearly an irresponsible charge of holocaust denial.

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On the Johannine Literature list, Jeffrey Staley suggests that subscribers draw attention to Passion of the Christ articles in which they (scholars) have been interviewed. Herewith two of Staley's, the first from the Seattle Times

'Passion': The Gospel according to Mel Gibson
By Janet I. Tu

. . . . . SU's Staley says while the Gospels provide "historical nuggets of truth and accuracy," it's important to remember they were written by believers.

"This would be like someone in George Bush's Cabinet writing for posterity the significance of George Bush. It doesn't mean everything in there is wrong. It just means if you're a historian, you're going to have to weigh it carefully." . . . .

The second is from Tribnet.com:

A challenging figure for moviemakers to depict Jesus
SOREN ANDERSEN; The News Tribune

"Most are too reverential," says Jeffrey L. Staley, a professor of theology at Seattle University who teaches a course on Jesus in movies. "The Jesuses portrayed on film appear more godlike than human. This makes it difficult for anyone other than a devout Christian to connect with the Jesus characters."

The worst screen Jesus, in Staley's opinion? Max von Sydow, star of "The Greatest Story Ever Told." The picture, Staley said via e-mail, "is so awful because its Jesus is too 'awe-ful.' The Swedish blue-eyed von Sydow's Jesus seems to float through the film without ever really touching the Earth."

I quite agree -- well said Jeffrey. The whole article is worth reading, with comments from Douglas Oakman and others. One more excerpt:

. . . . Staley sees "The Life of Brian," the Monty Python troupe's rowdy 1979 parable about a bumbling Christlike savior, as belonging to a group of films that depart significantly from the more traditional Jesus pictures yet are truer to the spirit and message of Christ. Also on this list are "Jesus Christ Superstar," "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Jesus of Montreal."

"Once the devout Christian gets past the jokes and scandalous scenes, these films are much more thought-provoking and challenging than the reverential ones, and in this way they reflect a key element of the Gospels' Jesus. Anyone who goes into the Jerusalem temple and overturns moneychangers' tables is anything but reverential," Staley said . . . . .

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The March edition of the SBL Forum is now available and the special theme is The Passion of the Christ with this blurb:

Mel Gibson's controversial film, The Passion of The Christ, stirs emotion, reflection, and debate. This month, SBL Forum focuses on biblical studies and film, and the cinematic representation of Jesus and biblical accounts.

There are several very interesting looking essays:

Biblical Allusions, Biblical Illusions: Hollywood Blockbuster and Scripture
by Nicola Denzey
"Despite the claim of the majority of Americans that religion (by which most mean Christianity) is important, despite their claims to attend church services regularly, knowledge of the Bible is often confined to sound-bytes or pseudo-scripture. In this environment, Gibson must see The Passion of the Christ as vitally corrective."

Filming Jesus: Between Authority and Heresy
by Paul V. M. Flesher
and Robert Torry
"Jesus films are about the meaning of Jesus, not about the reality of Jesus. While the depiction of Scripture, as well as the appeal to history, tradition, and theology, help authorize the scenes added into the film, it is the additions that impose their meaning upon Scripture and not vice-versa."

History, Hollywood, and the Bible: Some Thoughts on Gibson's Passion
by Paula Fredriksen

Judas the Film: Storytellers Then and Now
by John Dart
"Starkly different from Gibson's experiment with Aramaic and Latin dialogue, Judas has Jesus conversing in contemporary English."

The Problem of the Cinematic Jesus
by W. Barnes Tatum
"In academic circles and within the SBL itself, there has been a surge of interest in cinema generally and in the Jesus-genre specifically. Not only are commercially produced Jesus-films used in classroom settings but entire semester courses are dedicated to them."

Barnes Tatum's article features a link to the NT Gateway and a little blurb -- nice to see.

Labels: Paula Fredriksen

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I post the following announcement for Dr Andrei Orlov of the Theology dept, Marquette University. It concerns a series of lectures by Professor Jarl Fossum that will take place this April on the campus of Marquette University.

The Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism

The Department of Theology of Marquette University

are pleased to invite you to a series of lectures by

JARL FOSSUM

Friday, April 23, 2004 3 pm, Olin Hall (EN 120)

MEDIATOR NOMEN DEI: Assumptionist and Pre-Existent Christology: The Exalted Servant of the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 and the Eternal Son of the Logos Hymn in the Johannine Prologue


Saturday, April 24, 2004 10 am, Olin Hall (EN 120)

WOMAN IN THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS (LOGIA 22 AND 114)


Saturday, April 24, 2004 3 pm, Olin Hall (EN 120)

PAYING TAXES TO CAESAR (MARK 12:13-17) AND JEWISH MYSTICISM


Professor Fossum is a major representative of what is sometimes referred to as "the new History of Religions School." He is the author of a classic study on The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Mediation Concepts and the Origin of Gnosticism. Other contributions to the study of traditions that shaped Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity are collected in the volume The Image of the Invisible God: Essays on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christology.

All sessions are open to the public and will take place on the campus of Marquette University. For the directions to the campus see: http://www.marquette.edu/pages/home/about/visit/directions.

For further information contact Dr. Andrei Orlov, Marquette University Theology Department, P.O. Box 1881 Milwaukee, WI USA 52201-1881, andrei.orlov@mu.edu.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this link from Slate:

Schlock, Yes; Awe, No; Fascism, Probably
The flogging Mel Gibson demands.
By Christopher Hitchens

The article is pure polemic; Hitchens does not have a good thing to say about Gibson or the film. Also in Slate, this article compares Jim Caviezel's portrayal of Jesus with Ted Neely (Jesus Christ Superstar) and Willem Dafoe (Last Temptation of Christ), longing for their more human Jesuses, and suggesting that this film, like those, reflects the period of the film's production:

Ecce Homo?
The new celluloid Jesus doesn't seem real.
By Sian Gibby

. . . . Ted Neely's Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar is the angry rebel—the charismatic activist hippie. This Christ hit the screens during the Vietnam era, and thus his Jesus is preoccupied with fighting the powers-that-be, the government. He is quick to anger, bright, sharp, and in control. He answers with alacrity the questions the disciples put to him; he knows what he is doing; he's the empowered, self-aware dissident. Even in Gethsemane, he doesn't evince doubt. When he asks if the cup could pass him by, he already knows it can't and he is pissed off about it. And when he acquiesces to God's will, the anger is still there, just translated into intensity of purpose . . . . .

. . . . . This Jesus [Dafoe's] is befuddled and maybe only incidentally "right" about his mission. He is not sure of anything about himself, as Judas and Peter complain to him. "First it was love then it was the ax, and now you have to die!?" They worry privately to each other, "What if he changes his mind again?" Mary Magdalene sneers at his masculinity—mirroring the kinds of insecurity animating a time in which the men's movement in the '80s and early '90s was striving to reconnect with its manhood, after the "castrating" women's movement had done its work.

The '80s were also a hyper-realist decade, when spiritual identity was regrouping for the big booms of the '90s (the heyday of the New Age and the revival of Big Churches), and Nikos Kazantzakis' mentally-ill Jesus made sense. When this Jesus does miracles, they either don't smack of the supernatural (when Peter thinks they've run out of wine at the party and Jesus insists that there is still plenty, this could easily be Peter's boozy miscalculation); or else they seem to surprise even him. Ultimately, these miracle scenes don't mesh with the rest of the film, which largely consists of Jesus angsting. This Jesus doesn't seem divine. He is an uptight insecure mess, powerless, like the rest of us, in the crack-smoking, money-crazed "Me" era.

And now we find ourselves in a hyper-violent period, in which even little children are inured to celluloid viciousness. Enter Jim Caviezel's Jesus, who is absolutely conventional, conservative; the Jesus of a kiddie Bible, come to life. He says all the things we expect him to say (I was waiting for all the famous lines, mouthing them in the darkness like a Rocky Horror devotee: "My God, my God; why have you forsaken me?" "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do," etc.) and nothing else. We crave Neely's or Dafoe's humanness here, if only as a means of accessing, or at least understanding, this man . . . . .

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Here's another article quoting John Dominic Crossan's views on The Passion of the Christ:

Biblical scholar criticizes 'Passion'
Noted theologian to visit Lawrence for workshops
By Jim Baker, Journal-World

"There's not much more that I can say other than this is the most savage movie I have ever seen. I've never seen anything like this. It is two hours of unrelenting brutality," said Crossan, who saw "The Passion" Wednesday at a theater near the Orlando, Fla., suburb where he lives.

"That has actually raised for me the issue of whether it's actually pornographic to watch this for two hours."

That's several times now that the word pornographic has been used in reviews of this film. Crossan also comments on the film's theology:

As disturbing as he found the violence in "The Passion," Crossan said he was more shocked by the vivid display of director Gibson's personal theology and the Christian thought upon which it draws: displaced punishment, the idea Jesus had to accept divine judgment due all the world for its sin.

"Vicarious atonement, when it's laid out theologically, sounds rather nice. But actually what Gibson has done is made us face what it looks like. And I think he may have laid bare the savage heart of that theology," Crossan said.

"He forces us, I think, to look at that and ask: Do we believe in this God? And secondly, Should we? And what are the alternatives?" . . . .

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Thanks to David Mackinder for the link to this interesting article from Beliefnet:

Mel Gibson's 'Passion'
What makes this film different?
Jack Miles

The author dwells on some now familiar themes, e.g. the spectre of Bible-belt evangelicals enthusiastically endorsing a film that is "flamboyantly, counter-Reformationally Roman". Like Kermode he sees it as something of a horror movie. His main focus, though, is on the subtitles, both in general and in relation to one specific line:

As a cinematic matter, the boldest innovation in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ," is its use of language and subtitles to create, in a religious film, the illusion of documentary. Dialogue in a number of recent English-language feature films has fostered this kind of illusion by shifting into a second language plus subtitles for a few minutes at a time. “Dances With Wolves,” for example, shifted at several points into the Amerindian language Lakota. But no film that I know of unfolds in its entirety in subtitles beneath a language other than that of its primary audience.

Aramaic and Latin, the two languages in which the dialogue of “The Passion” is spoken, are not just foreign but dead. Aramaic survives only in a few remote corners of the Middle East. Latin is no longer spoken anywhere. The documentary illusion created by subtitles under ancient languages thus simulates a voyage not so much to a distant land as to a distant era. To the extent that any work of art derived from a classic must make it new by making it strange, this is a brilliant stroke. Yet the brilliance has a deeply regrettable secondary effect . . . .

. . . . . Rejecting the offer, a priest shouts a phrase in Aramaic that might or might not be intelligible in Tel Aviv. But then the Jewish crowd takes up the same cry in a slightly different grammatical form. They scream in unison a single, terrible word that happens to be identical in Israeli Hebrew and in Aramaic, and they scream it again and again as if it were a football cheer: Yitstalev! Yitstalev! Yitstalev! “Let him be crucified!” . . . .

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On Paula Fredriksen's criticism of Gibson's emphasis on suffering as
anachronistic, Jeff Peterson writes the following:

It seems to me this is qualified by the use of πασχεῖν in the NT (Mark 8:31, 9:12, et parr.; Acts 3:18 and 17:3; Heb 13:12 et al.; and several times in 1 Peter). Some of these might be taken as synonymous with ἀποθανεῖν, but not all: especially in 1 Pet 2:23, Jesus suffers and refrains from reviling but entrusts his case to God; it's not coincidental that the clearest NT allusion to Gibson's epigraph (Isa 53:5) comes in 1 Pet 2:24. There's doubtless a complex evolution from Mark and 1 Peter et al. to Catholic devotion to Gibson's interpretation, and I'm not denying some troubling elements in that development, but it's against the evidence to say that no early Christians found salvific value in Jesus' suffering; presumably this was strongest among those groups with some experience or prospect of martyrdom, as I would argue is already true of Mark's audience in the few years following Nero's action, when for the first time organized general hostility seemed like a possible future for adherents to Jesus (cf. Mark 4:17; 13:13).

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On Saturday I mentioned Newsnight Review on The Passion of the Christ, which featured film critic Mark Kermode. Yesterday's Observer features his review:

Drenched in the blood of Christ
Mel Gibson's Passion is the ultimate horror movie, steeped in guts and gore. Our reviewer, a regular churchgoer, found it shocking... but utterly compelling
Mark Kermode

The article reveals that Kermode is working on a Channel 4 documentary on Gibson. A couple of excerpts from this very interesting take on the film, one of the most positive I have seen, and in its own way quite funny:

. . . . . Ultimately, for all the theological bluster and intense inter-faith arguments which it has provoked, The Passion seems to me a quintessential horror film, a visceral cinematic assault which is no more or less 'Christian' than Ken Russell's The Devils or Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. All are examples of extreme movie-making from flamboyant film-makers who are passionately obsessed with the mysteries of Catholicism. But all are also rooted in the saleable aesthetic of the carnival sideshow; promising the audience an eye-opening spectacle of grotesque proportions.

Fainthearted viewers of The Passion who have so far avoided the fleshy shocks of gore cinema may find themselves mentally reciting that old monster movie mantra: 'It's only a movie, it's only a movie...' If there is a lesson I would wish such viewers to take away from Gibson's bloody epic it is that, contrary to the hollerings of the Daily Mail, the pleasures of horror cinema are not primarily sadistic but masochistic. One woman in Wichita has already reportedly expired during a screening of The Passion, inspiring breathless Exorcist-style press stories of the life-threatening powers of the film. All of which will doubtless add to its crowd-pulling clout . . . . .

Like me and about seven other people in the UK, Kermode is a credit-watcher. (Note to everyone else: you often miss interesting little post-credit sequences in your rush to the car park). He is the first person to have spotted this:

Elsewhere in the credits we find make-up effects stalwarts Keith VanderLaan and Greg Cannom, horror graduates who honed their skills on shockers such as the vampiric epic Bram Stoker's Dracula and the grisly modern-gothic chiller Hannibal.

And one more excerpt from the conclusion to the review:

To someone who believes in the invigorating power of extreme cinema, it seems entirely fitting that Gibson has leaned so heavily upon the horror genre to express his clearly tortured Christian faith. When the evangelist Billy Graham (who famously condemned The Exorcist as 'evil') likens The Passion of the Christ to 'a lifetime of sermons', I hear a man experiencing a Damascene (if probably temporary) conversion to the transcendent power of shocking cinema. As an unrepentant gore-geek, I have no problem with the unremitting physicality of The Passion, and admire the dexterity with which it ruthlessly terrorises its audience. Yet any sense that Christianity has less to do with enduring sublime suffering than with helping the poor and needy seems lost in the anguished howl of the film. Personally I have found more of religious substance in the 'secular' prison drama of The Shawshank Redemption, or the strangely comedic ramblings of the cult psychological thriller The Ninth Configuration.

In the end, Gibson has created an exploitation movie par excellence, fittingly shot in Italy whose national cinema has produced both Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew and Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, those twin visions of heaven and hell between which The Passion of the Christ ultimately falls.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this one from BBC News:

Gibson's Passion tops box office
The Passion of the Christ has gone straight to the top of the North American box office chart.

It took an estimated $76.2m (£40.7m) from Friday to Sunday and these takings are the seventh highest in US cinema history.

On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila draws attention to a nice piece from today's Guardian:

What's popcorn in Aramaic?
Its alleged anti-semitism isn't the only problem with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. There's also the small matter of it being in Aramaic. To help enrich your enjoyment, here is a handy glossary of useful terms
Tim Dowling

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After the mammoth week for postings last week, the NTGateway weblog felt it needed a sabbath rest yesterday, but now it's back. In the Philo of Alexandria blog, Torrey Seland notes that his Resource Pages for Biblical Studies have been updated -- now the March edition. It's mainly Philo links; full list here. (Note: one of the new links is to an article by Gregory Sterling in Harvard Theological Review at Find Articles and this seems now to be a dead link. Alas, it looks like all the links to the 2001 edition of Harvard Theological Review are dead now on Find Articles. The list of contents is still available, but none of the links are active. This follows on from all the other 1998-2003 issues of HTR disappearing from Find Articles.)

And if you haven't looked at it yet, the latest Explorator was posted by David Meadows yesterday and as always, there is plenty of interest:

Explorator 6.44

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this:

Jesus opera actor Anderson dies
Actor and singer Carl Anderson, best known for playing Judas in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, has died from leukaemia, aged 58.

An excerpt from the short article:

Anderson featured in both the original Broadway production of the show, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and the film version in 1973.

He stepped into the stage version after actor Ben Vereen, who was originally playing Judas, fell ill.

Anderson also performed in revivals of the show in 1992 and 2002.

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Paula Fredriksen has been involved with the controversy over this film from the beginning -- I have mentioned her article Mad Mel here before. Now, after having seen the film, Fredriksen has gathered her thoughts, again in New Republic Online:

Pain Principle
by Paula Fredriksen

I think the article is subscription-only, but you can get a free trial subscription. Some of the article goes over the controversy over the "ad hoc committee" and the script. Although I have commented recently that the allegations of theft should not be made in the absence of a sustained case or an answer to Fredriksen's post, there is still one grey area here. I hadn't noticed it so clearly in the previous article, but there is a question here. How did Fisher get his copy of the script? Fredriksen only talks about his having "received" it and does not explain where it came from:

Later that spring, Gene Fisher, interfaith officer for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) contacted Icon, Gibson's production company, about having the movie's script reviewed by an ad hoc committee of scholars. Gibson was trumpeting the fidelity, historical and scriptural, of his film, and Fisher was offering him some free--and confidential--feedback. Fisher and Eugene Korn of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) assembled an ecumenical group of professors, which I was invited to join. Fisher informed William Fulco (the person who had translated the script into Aramaic and Latin and our main contact on the Icon side) on April 17 that he had received a copy of the script; on April 24, Fisher and Gibson spoke. Icon received our report in early May.

Perhaps we will never know. The rest of Fredriksen's review deals with Gibson's amazing achievement in marketing (what she sees as) a medieval Catholic vision of Christianity to many Protestants; and there is some reflection on the relationship of the film to the Gospels:

. . . . . The Christ that Gibson is selling is not the Christ of the first-century scriptures, though elements of his story are drawn from them. The first-century Christ, presented primarily in the four gospels, redeemed not through his suffering, but through his death and resurrection, which promised his return. The evangelists mediated historical traditions about Jesus' life and teachings, interpreting these through their own understanding of Jewish scriptures. Their meditations on ancient sacred texts especially shaped their presentations of the edges of Jesus' life--his birth and his death. The many narrative details of the gospels' passion stories deliberately echo various verses from the prophets and the psalms. Their point: that Jesus died, and was raised, according to the Scriptures. The matching of event to ancient prophecy established, for the evangelists and for their communities, the authority of their stories.

Gibson missed the evangelists' point. His opening screen flashes a verse from Isaiah 53: "He was wounded for our transgressions; by his stripes we are healed." What served as prophetic authorization for the gospels' proclamation, Gibson takes as an invitation to explore, in lurid and lingering detail, how a human body would look if pulped, pummeled, and flayed. Part of this orientation comes from the Catholicism of his childhood. Part of it, as he has repeatedly claimed, comes from the visions of an early nineteenth-century stigmatic nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich. (Knowing what my catechism classes were like in twentieth-century Rhode Island, I can only imagine what hers were like in eighteenth-century Westphalia.) Part of it, of course, is just Gibson's favorite visual vernacular, on display from Mad Max through Braveheart and beyond.

Thus Gibson's Christ, a theological figure whose origins lie in late medieval Europe, saves not through dying so much as through endless, unspeakable, unbearable suffering. That's the core of Gibson's movie. The rest is window-dressing. The costuming, like the music, is lushly theatrical. The bad guys wear black, their Jewishness coded by prayer shawls, big noses, and bad teeth. The Jewish soldiers who form the arresting party look like visiting Romulan dignitaries, or extras from the chorus of Nabucco. The faces of the two Marys are framed by nun-like veils. (I half expected Monica Belucci to whip out a rosary along the Stations of the Cross.) And Gibson's much-touted use of ancient languages, like the high quality of his celluloid gore, was a nod to verisimilitude, not real history. Pilate chatted in Aramaic; Jesus (at this point in the movie, I confess, I groaned aloud) in perfect Church Latin . . . . .

Labels: Paula Fredriksen

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Last night, Newsnight Review had a feature on The Passion of the Christ -- thanks to David Mackinder for mentioning this. You can view the feature here:

Newsnight Review 27 February

Just click on "video" and the programme will begin. It is the first item on the programme and it lasts for about ten minutes. It's a useful discussion. Tim Lott, an atheist, thinks highly of the film and he says that it made him want to read the Gospels again. He also commented that the use of Aramaic helped to make the most retold of stories seem fresh and different. They all use the word "visceral" and Mark Kermode sees it as a horror film, speaking of the ominous dread of what is coming up next. There is also a clip of the film -- the first I have seen outside of the trailer. It is the arrest of Jesus and you get to hear some Aramaic. That's one thing I am looking forward to seeing (hearing) in the film.

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There is a most interesting article by Adele Reinhartz in the latest edition of The New Republic. I may be wrong, but I think the only way to access the article is to subscribe and then download the whole issue (as a PDF); I've done so without having to part with money. Anyway, the reference is as follows:

Adele Reinhartz, "Jesus of Hollywood: From D. W. Griffith to Mel Gibson", The New Republic March 8 2004: 26-29.

An excerpt:

Does Gibson’s film, do all these films, foment anti-Semitism? The matter must be considered carefully. If the question is, do they intend to stir up hostile feelings toward Jews that under certain conditions might lead to physical violence, the answer is no. Each film has its own theme and emphasis, but none of them, Gibson’s film included, with the possible exception of Der Galiläer, aims to be anti-Semitic. But if the question is, do these films help to perpetuate certain beliefs and stereotypes that have been implicated in anti-Semitism, then the answer must be yes, Gibson’s film included. Whatever film-makers’ intentions might be, they cannot exert complete control of the message that people will take away from their films. I do not anticipate any anti-Semitic incidents at my neighborhood cineplex as viewers of Gibson’s melodrama leave the theater. But it is appalling that this film, like most of its predecessors, has added to the visual library of images in which the Jews are portrayed as conniving, bloodthirsty Christ-killers. The Passion of the Christ is morally careless, and now it, too, is upon us and our children.

Reinhartz, you may recall, is something of an expert on Jesus films in general, and the depiction of Jews in particular. See, for example:

Adele Reinhartz, “Jesus in Film: Hollywood Perspectives on the Jewishness of Jesus”, Journal of Religion and Film Vol. 2, Number 2 (Fall 1998).

Or more recently:

Adele Reinhartz, "Passion-ate Moments in the Jesus Film Genre", Journal of Religion and Film Vol. 8, Special Issue no. 1 (2004)

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Thanks to Jim West for this link:

Christians, Critics Sound off on Gibson's Passion
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

This is a useful round-up of different views of the film.

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I mentioned earlier Geza Vermes's comments on The Passion of the Christ now that he has seen a preview (see earlier blog entry). Vermes's full article is not in the on-line version of The Guardian but I've found a version elsewhere, on Mathaba.net:

Celluloid brutality, Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ'
Mel Gibson's film about Christ is horribly gory, historically wrong - and it will inspire judeophobia
by Geza Vermes

I am still in a state of shock having sat through two hours of almost uninterrupted gratuitous brutality, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I hope I will never be obliged to see something as dreadful again . . . .

. . . . . The light element in The Passion of the Christ is supplied by the use of Latin and Aramaic. Not only are Pilate and Jesus(!) fluent Latin speakers, but even the soldiers of the Jerusalem garrison, who were most probably Aramaic- and Greek-speaking recruits from Syria, converse happily in a clumsy Latin with Italian Church pronunciation. I did not find it easy to follow the Aramaic which was mixed with unnecessary Hebraisms . . . . .

Update (Saturday): Vermes article now available on the Guardian Unlimited web site:

Celluloid brutality
Mel Gibson's film about Christ is horribly gory, historically wrong - and it will inspire judeophobia
Geza Vermes

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Helenann Hartley asks about the report that someone had a heart attack while watching The Passion of the Christ, something that was mentioned on Richard and Judy yesterday. Here's the story from Reuters, here reported on MSNBC:

Woman dies during ‘Passion’ screening
She had heart attack during the crucifixion scene

Helenann Hartley also draws my attention to the Church Times who are running a poll to see how many of their readers are planning to go to see the film. It is currently at 60.5% who are and 39.5% who are not. There is what I call a "round-up" article too, which won't tell you anything new if you've been following the news story in recent weeks and months:

Passions run high over violent act of faith by Mel Gibson
by Bill Bowder

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for sending over the link to this review:

Review: Gibson's The Passion of the Christ
By Victoria Lindrea

There is not a great deal of interest in this one.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this one from the New Republic Online. Again, these American film critics really know how to write. How about someone sets up a scholarship to send New Testament scholars to wherever it is that these American film reviewers learn their craft? This one is more akin than the previous one to the majority of the reviews that have emerged, pretty sickened by the obsession with blood. It is now the third time I have seen the word "pornography" in connection with the film, this time "pious pornography".

MEL GIBSON'S LETHAL WEAPON.
The Worship of Blood
by Leon Wieseltier

There are still some miracles that movies cannot accomplish. If, in the manner of the bleeding images of the old Christian legends, it were possible for Mel Gibson's film itself to bleed, and the blood with which it soaks its wretched hero to burst through the screen and soak its wretched audience, it would have done so. For The Passion of the Christ is intoxicated by blood, by its beauty and its sanctity. The bloodthirstiness of Gibson's film is startling, and quickly sickening. The fluid is everywhere. It drips, it runs, it spatters, it jumps. It trickles down the post at which Jesus is flagellated and down the cross upon which he is crucified, and the camera only reluctantly tears itself away from the scarlet scenery. The flagellation scene and the crucifixion scene are frenzies of blood. When Jesus is nailed to the wood, the drops of blood that spring from his wound are filmed in slow-motion, with a twisted tenderness. (Ecce slo-mo.) It all concludes in the shower of blood that issues from the corpse of Jesus when it is pierced by the Roman soldier's spear . . . .

. . . . . Gibson is under the impression that he has done nothing more than put God's word into film. No Hollywood insider was ever so inside. "Critics who have a problem with me don't really have a problem with me and this film," he told Diane Sawyer, "they have a problem with the four Gospels." From such a statement it is impossible not to conclude that the man is staggeringly ignorant of his own patrimony. For the Gospels, like all great religious texts, have been interpreted in many different ways, to accommodate the needs and the desires of many different souls; and Gibson's account of these events is, like every other account, a particular construction of them. The Passion of the Christ is the expression of certain theological and artistic preferences. It is, more specifically, a noisy contemporary instance of a tradition of interpretation that came into its own in the late medieval centuries . . . . .

. . . . . The Passion of the Christ is the work of a religious sensibility of remarkable coarseness. It is by turns grossly physical and grossly magical, childishly literalist, gladly credulous, comically masculine. Gibson's faith is finally pre-theological, the kind of conviction that abhors thought, superstitiously fascinated by Satan and "the other realm," a manic variety of Christian folk religion.

It will be objected that I see only pious pornography in The Passion of the Christ because I am not a believer in the Christ. This is certainly so . . . . .

. . . . . The Passion of The Christ is an unwitting incitement to secularism, because it leaves you desperate to escape its standpoint, to find another way of regarding the horror that you have just observed. This is unfair to, well, Christianity, since Christianity is not a cult of Gibsonesque gore. But there is a religion toward which Gibson's movie is even more unfair than it is to its own. In its representation of its Jewish characters, The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing, or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of anti-Semitism, in art and in film. What is so shocking about Gibson's Jews is how unreconstructed they are in their stereotypical appearances and actions. These are not merely anti-Semitic images; these are classically anti-Semitic images. In this regard, Gibson is most certainly a traditionalist . . . . .

. . . . . . His notion of authenticity has no time for history. Historiographically speaking, after all, there is no such thing as gospel truth; and so his portrayal of the Jews is based on nothing more than his own imagination of what they looked like and sounded like. And Gibson's imagination has offered no resistance to the iconographical inheritance of Western anti-Semitism. Again, these things are not passively received. They are willingly accepted. Gibson created this movie; it was not revealed to him. Like his picture of Jesus, his picture of the Jews is the consequence of certain religious and cinematic decisions for which he must be held accountable. He has chosen to give millions of people the impression that Jews are culpable for the death of Jesus. In making this choice, which defies not only the scruples of scholars but also the teaching of the Catholic Church, Gibson has provided a fine illustration of the cafeteria Catholicism of the right . . . . .

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Thanks to Jeff Peterson for sending over this link from the National Review Online:

Violence to Scripture?
Viewing The Passion.
By S. T. Karnick

This is an interestingly different take on the film and argues that in spite of the brutality, nay because of it, The Passion of the Christ has a powerful message. My excerpts won't give the full flavour, but I give some anyway:

Rather less of the film is taken up with the violence and brutality toward the Christ than many critics are suggesting. During the atrocious flogging by the Roman guards, for example, the director cuts away from Jesus to Mary, and he follows her through the courtyard and concentrates on her reactions and experiences while we hear the lashes striking home in the background. He certainly leaves the scene of the beating not a moment too soon for most audience members, but he could, after all, have stayed to show the entire thing. Yet he did not. Moreover, during the scenes of torment he cuts away several times to flashbacks that connect aspects of Christ's suffering to moments of his life that once again draw the viewer to consider his own unrighteousness and consequent complicity in the suffering . . . .

. . . . . In addition, Jesus asks God the Father more than once to forgive his tormentors. If he can endure this unimaginable suffering and still not call down fire from Heaven, can we not at least be strong enough to watch it in a movie? The notion that we are too weak even to see a recreation of what Jesus managed actually to endure, and which he underwent without enmity toward his tormentors, is in fact utterly grotesque and fundamentally insulting in the lack of fortitude it assumes of us.

Hence, one could perhaps be forgiven for wondering about certain critics' likely motives in so "warning" potential audiences without sufficiently stressing the reason for this violence. Certainly they cannot wish to spare people the very experience of complicity in Christ's suffering that Gibson takes such pains to establish, can they? For that is the likely effect of their warnings — that some people will avoid the film as too intense. The Passion of the Christ is forceful indeed, and that power makes the film undeniably difficult to endure, but such intensity in films is precisely what these very same critics are usually most likely to praise . . . .

. . . . There are, moreover, positive moments in the film. An important one is the portrayal of Jesus astounding willingness to forgive his enemies even on the point of death and after suffering stupendous agony he did not deserve in the slightest. In addition, some of the visuals are startling in their beauty, inspired by medieval paintings redolent of great piety and faith. The overhead shot of Jesus as he expires on the cross is achingly beautiful, surely as close as mere cinema can come to being appropriate to the moment . . . . .

. . . . . This film is meant to be like the spikes that are so vividly and horrifyingly driven into the Christ's hands and feet as he is fastened to the cross. As Gibson portrays the scene, blood spurts up horrifyingly from Jesus palms, just as it surely must have done two millennia ago. The Passion of the Christ is as pointed as those spikes. It does one thing. It implicates the viewer in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ nearly 2,000 years ago, and it does so with undeniable power.

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Here's an interesting review in Africana:

Africana Reviews: The Passion of the Christ
Mel Gibson has never presented viewers with an intellectual challenge, but with The Passion of the Christ that is exactly what he's done.
Reviewed by Armond White

. . . . Part of the confusion comes from the fact that there has rarely before been a mainstream movie that professed Catholic precepts. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew was essentially a Marxist parable. Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ was a lapsed-Catholic extravaganza. Like Kevin Smith’s Dogma, it was more skeptical than spiritual. Scorsese’s overwrought and hermeneutically ponderous style ignited controversy from Christian spokesmen but his film was simply flashier than such films as King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Hollywood’s previous Christ films were Protestant or ecumenical in approach. Gibson’s movie is extremely Catholic in its focus on hideous/gorgeous suffering. He brings to life the bloody essence of the Crucifixion iconography . . . .

. . . . Gibson must also be defended against critics who suddenly complain about his violent style. It’s Gibson’s previous use of violence without impact that was unacceptable, in The Passion of the Christ the violent scenes are conceived ethically like the sacrifices shown in a war movie. Gibson connects to the old Negro spiritual “By His stripes we are healed” — the black gospel recognition of hideous/gorgeous suffering.

The most beautiful moment in the film is a flashback to Jesus the carpenter building a table that stands high off the ground. It symbolizes Christ elevating mankind from its meanest habits. But this is a rare moment of subtlety and loveliness. For the majority of the film, that proverbial art theme (Man’s Inhumanity to Man) is stressed, even over the primary fact of Resurrection. It proves Gibson has done things the Hollywood way for too long.

For black viewers it’s always been hard to get past the chauvinistic traditions of Christian art — even in Norman Jewison’s visionary 1973 film Jesus Christ Superstar we had to endure a black Judas (played by Carl Anderson whose earnest portrayal won him a Golden Globe nomination). Not even Scorsese could resist this tradition. His The Last Temptation of Christ abetted the idea of a blond, blue-eyed Jesus. (He went against Scriptural description, favoring European hegemony — even though Scorsese himself is a descendant of dark-eyed Southern Italians.) Believers who are moviegoers have to resolve the issue of spiritual representation for themselves, which is why Jesus Christ Superstar still has the most inquiring — most postmodern — moment of all movies about the Passion. During Christ (Ted Neely’s) Garden of Gethsemane aria Jewison edits-in a montage of various fine art renderings of the Passion. By that trope, Jewison opened up the Gospels culturally and aesthetically. Gibson’s movie is not that advanced. Instead, it is powerfully, earnestly traditional.

Nice to hear someone enthusing about Jesus Christ Superstar, still one of my favourite Jesus films.

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An interesting article in today's Guardian:

Gibson film ignores vow to remove blood libel
Director keeps in infamous line - but in Aramaic only
Stephen Bates and John Hooper in Rome

The claim relates, of course, to the inclusion in the film of Matthew 27.25, "His blood be on us and on our children", though not in the subtitles:

Mel Gibson has reneged on a promise to remove the infamous scriptural blood libel, in which the Jews allegedly accepted responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, from his film The Passion of the Christ, according to one of the world's foremost scholars, who saw a preview showing yesterday.

The scholar concerned is Geza Vermes, who is very critical of the film

Geza Vermes, a former professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford and the author of five books on the life of Christ, writes of the film in today's Guardian: "I have never seen anything so dreadful and I hope I never will." . . . .

. . . . Prof Vermes immediately picked holes in the film, criticising its use of "Catholic church Latin" by the Roman soldiers instead of the Greek they would have spoken, pointing out that Pilate is referred to as the "governor" rather than the prefect of the province and spotting that the wrong Aramaic word for God is used throughout.

And there is critique of the film from British Jews

The British Board of Deputies of British Jews said: "It would have been better if this film had never been made. The glorification of violence and bloodshed and the reinforcement of medieval stereotyping of the Jewish people are extremely dangerous."

But as a Jesus film buff, I am most interested in the following comments from Franco Zeffirelli:

In Rome, the veteran Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli, who himself made a controversial film about the life of Christ, said Gibson was "sinisterly attracted to the most unrestrained violence".

In an article for the newspaper Corriere della Sera, Zeffirelli wrote: "[In America] mothers want at all costs for their children to see the film... What conclusion will children in particular be able to draw from it other than that the Jews were to blame for all that bloodshed? This way we set ourselves back centuries."

It will be worth seeing if it is possible to dig out an internet version of Zeffirelli's article. Let's see next if someone can grab Martin Scorsese for his opinion!

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Beliefnet have now posted part 3 of the John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III exchange on The Passion of the Christ and, in particular, the theological issues surrounding it:

Scholarly Smackdown Part 3: Christ's Death: Because, From or For Our Sins?

Witherington has now seen the film. Some comments later.

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I have mentioned William Fulco, S. J. a few times in connection with The Passion of the Christ. On Xtalk, Jeffrey Gibson posts a link to this interesting interview with him:

Father Fulco's Baptism of Fire
What happens when a Jesuit scholar gets deeply moved in a controversial film
Loyola Marymount's William Fulco and Ed Siebert in conversation

The interview is not recent; it's a badly produced PDF, sometimes difficult to follow, but there are some interesting bits and bobs in it and it is easily the most detailed material from Fulco I have seen. One tidbit is that "We (Fulco and Gibson) discussed whether it should be Latin or Greek" and they decided on Latin "for artistic reasons".

What would be interesting to see now would be a fresh interview with Fulco now that the film has been released. What does he make of the final version? What does he make of the criticisms, especially with regard to historical accuracy?

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I mentioned this review in quoting from another, but Dwight Peterson helpfully provides the URL for the review:

NAILED
by DAVID DENBY
Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

It's all worth reading, but here's his concluding paragraph:

What is most depressing about “The Passion” is the thought that people will take their children to see it. Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” not “Let the little children watch me suffer.” How will parents deal with the pain, terror, and anger that children will doubtless feel as they watch a man flayed and pierced until dead? The despair of the movie is hard to shrug off, and Gibson’s timing couldn’t be more unfortunate: another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism is the last thing we need.

Will people really take their children to see this? I really hope not. I wouldn't dream of taking mine, not the remotest chance.

Aside from the content of these reviews, which I cannot judge until I've seen the film, some of these reviewers have such a wonderful command of the English language that I am beginning to think I read too much academic prose. I don't suppose I've ever read so many reviews of just one film, let alone over such a short period of time, but my goodness have some of these reviewers got a nice turn of phrase!

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With a month to go until the release of The Passion of the Christ here in the UK, it is finding its way increasingly into our media, if primarily to cast a glance on the way that Americans are reacting to it. I woke up this morning to a report from Los Angeles on the film on the Today programme. And today's Guardian has a feature:

Passion pulls in the multitudes
Opening of film depicting Christ's last hours inspires and inflames US
Tania Branigan, and Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

This is a good round-up article, with highlights from the reviews. It suggests that the film will not make anything like the same impact in the UK, which I think is right.

Update: Thanks to Helenann Hartley for sending this one over from BBC Online:

Crowds and protests greet Passion
The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's controversial film about Jesus, took about $20m (£11m) at US box offices in its opening day, according to a report.

Update: Today's Daily Telegraph has The Passion of the Christ above its main headline, just under the header. There are two articles on-line:

US in awe as The Passion is released
By Oliver Poole in Irvine, California

British Jews angry at Gibson film

Update: Richard and Judy (not a programme I normally watch -- my Mum rang me up!) even had a feature on The Passion of the Christ tonight; three people in the studio chatting about the film, two Jews who hated it and one Catholic who liked it; sorry -- didn't get their names.

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Jim West has set up a new blog to accompany his Biblical Studies Resources pages:

Biblical Studies Resources
A Resource Weblog for all areas of Biblical Studies

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Beliefnet have set up a weblog for news about The Passion of the Christ:

Beliefnet's 'Passion' Weblog
A continuing update of the latest news and commentary relating to Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ.'

There is no RSS feed, though, so you will have to visit specially.

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In Paleojudaica, Jim Davila draws attention to this useful piece at Beliefnet:

'The Passion': What's Not in the Bible--and Why?
Gibson drew from extrabiblical sources to create his version of the Passion. A look at how those sources influenced his film.
By the Beliefnet Staff

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It seems that the competition for the most negative review is hotting up (see earlier blog entry). Thanks to David Mackinder for sending this one over, also mentioned on Paleojudaica: Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. They echo the sentiments of George Pevere, blogged yesterday and use the same word, pornography:

At the same time, the movie was to me deeply disturbing. In a word, it is pornography. By pornography, I mean the reduction of all human thought and feeling and personhood to mere flesh. The center-piece of the movie is an absolutely disgusting and despicable piece of sadism that has no real basis in any of the Gospels. It shows a man being flayed alive - slowly, methodically and with increasing savagery. We first of all witness the use of sticks, then whips, then multiple whips with barbed glass or metal. We see flesh being torn out of a man's body. Just so that we can appreciate the pain, we see the whip first tear chunks out of a wooden table. Then we see pieces of human skin flying through the air. We see Jesus come back for more. We see blood spattering on the torturers' faces. We see muscled thugs exhausted from shredding every inch of this man's body. And then they turn him over and do it all again. It goes on for ever. And then we see his mother wiping up masses and masses of blood. It is an absolutely unforgivable, vile, disgusting scene. No human being could sruvive it. Yet for Gibson, it is the h'ors d'oeuvre for his porn movie. The whole movie is some kind of sick combination of the theology of Opus Dei and the film-making of Quentin Tarantino. There is nothing in the Gospels that indicates this level of extreme, endless savagery and there is no theological reason for it. It doesn't even evoke emotion in the audience. It is designed to prompt the crudest human pity and emotional blackmail - which it obviously does. But then it seems to me designed to evoke a sick kind of fascination. Of over two hours, about half the movie is simple wordless sadism on a level and with a relentlessness that I have never witnessed in a movie before. And you have to ask yourself: why? The suffering of Christ is bad and gruesome enough without exaggerating it to this insane degree. Theologically, the point is not that Jesus suffered more than any human being ever has on a physical level. It is that his suffering was profound and voluntary and the culmination of a life and a teaching that Gibson essentially omits. One more example. Toward the end, unsatisfied with showing a man flayed alive, nailed gruesomely to a cross, one eye shut from being smashed in, blood covering his entire body, Gibson has a large crow perch on the neighboring cross and peck another man's eyes out. Why? Because the porn needed yet another money shot.

The whole review available here. On the theological problem here, see the related comments of Gerald Caron and John Dominic Crossan.

The piece also has an interesting comment on the debate over the film's anti-Semitism. One of the questions I sometimes ask of a Jesus film to get some debate going is whether the depiction of Jesus' Passion in any way enhances the negative depiction of the Jewish leaders, or accentuates the innocence of Pilate. Sullivan is essentially asking this question of The Passion of the Christ:

Is it anti-Semitic? The question has to be placed in the context of the Gospels and it is hard to reproduce the story without risking such inferences. But in my view, Gibson goes much further than what might be forgivable. The first scene in which Caiphas appears has him relaying to Judas how much money he has agreed to hand over in return for Jesus. The Jew - fussing over money again! There are a few actors in those scenes who look like classic hook-nosed Jews of Nazi imagery, hissing and plotting and fulminating against the Christ. For good measure, Gibson has the Jewish priestly elite beat Jesus up as well, before they hand him over to the Romans; and he has Jesus telling Pilate that he is not responsible - the Jewish elite is. Pilate and his wife are portrayed as saints forced by politics and the Jewish elders to kill a man they know is innocent. Again, this reflects part of the Gospels, but Gibson goes further. He presents Pilate's wife as actually finding Mary, providing towels to wipe up Jesus' blood, arguing for Jesus' release. Yes, the Roman torturers are obviously evil; yes, a few Jews dissent; and, of course, all the disciples are Jewish. I wouldn't say that this movie is motivated by anti-Semitism. It's motivated by psychotic sadism. But Gibson does nothing to mitigate the dangerous anti-Semitic elements of the story and goes some way toward exaggerating and highlighting them. To my mind, that is categorically unforgivable. Anti-Semitism is the original sin of Christianity. Far from expiating it, this movie clearly enjoys taunting those Catholics as well as Jews who are determined to confront that legacy. In that sense alone, it is a deeply immoral work of art.

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Jim Davila has collected together and commented on some interesting pieces on the use of Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ:

Aramaic speakers go to see the Passion of the Christ

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On Xtalk, Bob Schacht has some fascinating reflections on The Passion of the Christ. If you are not subscribed, the previous link will take you to his message; here is an excerpt:

Here's my insight(?) on the best way to understand this movie. In Jungian psychology, there's a process of meditation called Active Imagination. When applied to Christian meditation, it means imagining yourself in the situation you're reading about. You read the pericope, then you sit back, close your eyes, and try to visualize the situation, and make it come to life. The text is your starting point, but you are not limited to what is in the text. The goal is to 'flesh out' the text, projecting yourself into its Sitz im Leben.

Gibson comes from a traditional Catholic background. Therefore his texts for the Passion are not just the Gospels as we have them, but the Stations of the Cross, and the Pieta. If you were to do a survey of traditionalist Catholic churches, I'll bet you'd find a Pieta in most of them (there's one in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary a few blocks down the street from the Episcopal Church that I attend), as well as Stations of the Cross-- at least during Lent. As I think of the movie, I think every one of the Stations is represented. Although there is some variation about the stations, perhaps the most popular traditional Catholic version is that of St Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-1787), with 14 stations (For an illustrated online version, see http://www.catholictradition.org/stations.htm.) The importance of this for present purposes is that 5 of these 14 are non-scriptural (i.e., not to be found in the canonical Gospels), and Gibson has all 5. The other 9 are taken from, or implied by, passages from all 4 canonical Gospels (e.g., John 20:25 is used to imply that he was nailed to the Cross). Michelangelo's Pieta is not one of the Stations, but its place in Catholic Tradition is so great that any visualization of the Passion can scarcely ignore it.

In addition to the Stations and the Pieta, the whole thing is framed by a quote at the beginning of the movie from one of Isaiah's Servant Songs, 53 . . .

. . . . . So the basic script for the movie, IMHO, was set by Isaiah 53, the Stations of the Cross, and the Pieta, fleshed out by Gibson's own "active imagination." In his active traditionalist imagination, Romans speak Latin (isn't that what they're taught in school?), so that's what they speak in the movie. The quote from Isaiah at the beginning tells us that it is irrelevant whether the Jews or the Romans were to blame; Jesus' suffering was required by the doctrine of Atonement, and since our (collective) sin is so great, his suffering had to be great enough to match. This accounts for the gratuitous extra images of suffering, such as the Roman soldier who pulls Jesus' shoulder out of its socket in order to stretch his hand out before nailing it to the cross, which are part of Gibson's act of Active Imagination."

I've not seen the film yet myself, but from what I've read and heard, this sounds like a pretty compelling way of looking at it. It sheds light on Gibson's reticence to have named academic advisors for the film.

Update: see this article on Beliefnet for more on the relationship of the film to the stations of the cross:

What's Catholic About 'The Passion'? A Lot
The Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, and Catholic mystics' visions shape Mel Gibson's work.
By Jennifer Waters

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Holger Szesnat referred me to a the Mikra discussion group for some ebay links to some extraordinary merchandise, mugs, oval pewter pocket reminder (pocket piece), an oval pewter lapel pin, and a pack of 25 witness cards. I suppose one should have expected all this, but it hadn't occurred to me that we'd be experiencing the true horror of Passion mugs! I'm afraid there's a whole web site devoted to this stuff, ShareThePassionOfTheChrist.com. The motto used on all this tat is "Dying was his reason for living", which, if you ask me, is pretty dubious theologically.

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for sending over a link to John Paul Heil's homepage. I have added this to the NT Gateway Scholars: H and in due course I will link to several useful on-line articles he has made available. In the mean time I wanted to draw attention to this topical piece:

John Paul Heil, "The Blood of Jesus in Matthew: A Narrative-Critical Perspective", Perspectives in Religious Studies 18 (1991): 117-24

His conclusion (since there's no abstract):

Our investigation of the theme of the blood of Jesus in the Matthean narrative has led to the proposal of a new, additional meaning to the whole Jewish people's calling down of the blood of Jesus upon themselves and their children (27:25). The innocent "blood" of Jesus that all the Jewish people are willing to accept the full responsibility for shedding is the same "blood" that Jesus at his last supper designated as "my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many for the forgiveness of sins" (26:28). Precisely and paradoxically because the whole Jewish people brought upon themselves the tragic "price" as well as the salvific "value" for shedding the innocent blood of Jesus as a "prophet" and the suffering "righteous one" of God, they make possible the forgiveness of the sins of all people, including Peter who wept bitterly in remorse after denying Jesus (26:59- 75), Judas who repented his sin of betraying Jesus' innocent blood (27:3-10), and the whole Jewish people who invoked his atoning blood upon themselves and their future generations.

Update (1 March): link to this article added to Matthew: Books, Articles and Reviews page.

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Thanks to Jeff Peterson for sending over the link to this funny and poignant take on the Passion hullabaloo by a Jewish actor and humorist in the Weekly Standard

Passions
We're all holding our breath on this one.
by Larry Miller

. . . . JESUS KNEW he had to suffer and die on the cross. He wasn't alone, by the way. Two hundred and fifty thousand other Jews were crucified by the Romans in the same period. (Probably not according to Mel's father, but still . . .) Yet out of all the victims of this astonishing cruelty, Jesus Christ was the only one who rose and became God to two billion people, unless you count Miramax . . . .

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I referred to Geoff Pevere's Toronto Star review of The Passion of the Christ as the most negative I'd seen so far. David Mackinder refers me to Gregg Easterbrook's widely-read Easterblogg. In the entry dated 02.25.04, he refers to Mel Gibson's deeply cynical accomplishment and says:

"The Gospels emphasize Christ's suffering on the cross; Gibson has decided to emphasize Christ's suffering via the whip. Strange that Gibson should feel he understands Jesus' final hours better than the Gospel writers did. Maybe this is simply his artistic interpretation--but remember, Gibson is presenting his movie as the long-suppressed truth, not as an artistic interpretation that may or may not be right.

Beneath all the God-talk by Gibson is a commercial enterprise. Gibson's film career has been anchored in glorification of violence (the Mad Max movies) and in preposterous overstatement of the actual occurrence of violence (the Lethal Weapon movies). Gibson knows the sad Hollywood lesson--for which audiences are ultimately to blame--that glorifying or exaggerating violence is a path to ticket sales. So Gibson decides to make a movie about Jesus, and what one thing differentiates his movie from the many previous films of the same story? Exaggerated glorification of violence."

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National Geographic has an article on Mary Magdalene featuring some comments from Karen King; it is spurred on, as usual, by the Da Vinci Code:

Da Vinci Code Spurs Debate: Who Was Mary Magdalene?
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
February 25, 2004

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this link from PBS's Religion and Ethics News Weekly

INTERVIEW: Jim Caviezel by Kim Lawton

You can read this story or watch a four minute feature combining the the interview with clips from the trailer and some kind of news conference.

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This is pretty much the most negative review I've seen so far, and the first from Canada, from the Toronto Star:

A dark and bloody spectacle
As sex is to the body in hardcore porn, violence is to the ruin of the body of Christ in The Passion
GEOFF PEVERE

. . . . Even from my position of relative spiritual impoverishment, I have no doubt that Gibson believes completely and utterly in the divinity of his mission. From precisely the same position however, I also believe, just as completely and utterly, The Passion Of The Christ to be a work of fundamentalist pornography. What graphic sex is to the use of the body in hardcore porno, graphic violence is to destruction of the body of Christ in this Passion . . . .

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Thanks to David Mackinder for these links in today's New York Times:

Good and Evil Locked in Violent Showdown
A. O. Scott

. . . . . What makes the movie so grim and ugly is Mr. Gibson's inability to think beyond the conventional logic of movie narrative. In most movies — certainly in most movies directed by or starring Mr. Gibson — violence against the innocent demands righteous vengeance in the third act, an expectation that Mr. Gibson in this case whips up and leaves unsatisfied.

On its own, apart from whatever beliefs a viewer might bring to it, "The Passion of the Christ" never provides a clear sense of what all of this bloodshed was for, an inconclusiveness that is Mr. Gibson's most serious artistic failure. The Gospels, at least in some interpretations, suggest that the story ends in forgiveness. But such an ending seems beyond Mr. Gibson's imaginative capacities . . . . "

Do You Recognize This Jesus?
Kenneth L. Woodward

In this "op-ed" piece, Woodward argues that many evangelicals as well as other Christians will be shocked by what they see:

. . . . . Indeed, Mr. Gibson's film leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story that contemporary Christianity now emphasizes. His Jesus does not demand a "born again" experience, as most evangelists do, in order to gain salvation. He does not heal the sick or exorcise demons, as Pentecostals emphasize. He doesn't promote social causes, as liberal denominations do. He certainly doesn't crusade against gender discrimination, as some feminists believe he did, nor does he teach that we all possess an inner divinity, as today's nouveau Gnostics believe. One cannot imagine this Jesus joining a New Age sunrise Easter service overlooking the Pacific.

Like Jeremiah, Jesus is a Jewish prophet rejected by the leaders of his own people, and abandoned by his handpicked disciples. Besides taking an awful beating, he is cruelly tempted to despair by a Satan whom millions of church-going Christians no longer believe in, and dies in obedience to a heavenly Father who, by today's standards, would stand convicted of child abuse. In short, this Jesus carries a cross that not many Christians are ready to share . . . .

Then this piece reports on a panel of experts from different religious backgrounds who were invited to watch the film and then discuss it earlier this week:

'Passion' Disturbs a Panel of Religious Leaders
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

This one is an interesting read and, incidentally, answers my question about Matthew 27.25; David Sandmel in this article confirms that the line is in the film but the subtitle is dropped.

If you still want more, New York Times has also made a special collection of annotated links available:

Spotlight on "The Passion of the Christ"

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The next few articles in Christianity Today's March issue, in which The Passion of the Christ is the cover story, have now been posted on-line. The first is an interesting piece by Michael Medved, a Jewish writer and broadcaster who has spoken out vociferously against the Anti-Defamatiion League's stance on the film over the last year or so:

The Passion and Prejudice
Why I asked the Anti-Defamation League to give Mel Gibson a break.
by Michael Medved

Medved mentions the Paula Fredriksen article just mentioned, commenting:

The rumors about the movie reached such intensity that The New Republic published "Mad Mel," an attack by Paula Fredriksen, a professor at Boston University who had not seen the picture.

Though Fredriksen's polemical language is clearly a bar to any possibility of reconciliation between the two sides, Medved's implication that Fredriksen's attack was unprovoked may be incorrect. The article mentioned was written some time after the events Medved goes on to describe (the ad hoc committe's report on the script) and not before (see previous blog entry).

The next piece is the second instalment of Holly McLure's "Behind the Scenes" series. This is less interesting than the previous one; its main purpose is to tell us what a great chap Mel Gibson is. He wears a red nose and clowns about, apparently:

Behind the Scenes of The Passion
On the set with Holly McClure

Labels: Paula Fredriksen

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I commented earlier that since the question of stolen script comes up repeatedly in news stories and now even in an academic review, I would like to comment on this. The gist of the accusation is this. In March-April last year, a committee assembled to look at a script of (what was then being called) The Passion. This "ad hoc" group was made up of Eugene Fisher from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Eugene Corn from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and seven New Testament scholars, four Catholics and three Jews. The group issued a fairly critical report on the script, in particular drawing attention to alleged anti-Semitism. It was this report, just under a year ago, that began the controversy that has surrounded the film ever since. Now, was the script which the "ad hoc committee" obtained stolen? This appears to have been alleged by Icon Productions after the group had published their report but to my knowledge the accusation was not investigated or followed up in any way. Two members of the ad hoc committee, on the other hand, have commented on the accusation in print. The first is Paula Fredriksen, who in an article published in The New Republic On-line on 25 July 2003, explained the situation from her perspective at some length. Unfortunately, she uses some rather polemical language at points, but the article is at least detailed and specific and leaves little doubt that as far as she is concerned, the script was not stolen:

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GIBSON.
Mad Mel
by Paula Fredriksen

Here are the relevant parts excerpted:

. . . . . On March 25, the day before they invited me on board, Fisher and Korn exchanged communications with one William Fulco, S.J., who teaches in the department of classics and archaeology at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit institution in Los Angeles. He had served as Gibson's librettist, translating the script from English into Aramaic and Latin. His intimacy with the script was perhaps the reason that he assumed, or was assigned, his role; for as long as the dialogue lasted, Fulco was the main contact on the Icon side.

Fisher and Korn had faxed Fulco two documents on criteria for evaluating dramatizations of Jesus's Passion, one issued by the USCCB in 1988, the second produced jointly by the USCCB and the ADL in 2001. In response, Fulco thanked them, and assured both men that the script was devoid of any hint of antiJewishness. In fact, he claimed, it was "totally in accord with the [USCCB/ADL] documents." Fulco's struggles with the translation, he says in this e-mail, had engraved the script in his memory. ("I know [it] almost backwards.") Shooting had concluded, Fulco said, only the prior week. Fulco then added two points of information relevant to future events--that he was "preparing accurate subtitles" (what had happened to Gibson's "point of honor"?) and that "the film follows the script quite faithfully." (Since the reporter from The Wall Street Journal had mentioned seeing "a first look at a rough cut of the film," it must have been substantially assembled before March 7.)

A few weeks later, on April 14, Fisher wrote to the group of scholars and to another USCCB officer: "I have just received the good news that we will receive the script for our analysis and comment within the next couple of days." The scholars had to promise confidentiality: we could not circulate the script outside of our group, "though of course your comments can be public." On April 17, Fisher informed Fulco that he had received the script and had sent copies out to the scholars. We received them and read them over Easter weekend.

The whole group heard again from Fisher on April 25. "Gibson called me last night," Fisher began. "He had with him McEveety [another Icon producer] and Fulco." Gibson said that he wanted Fisher to convey to the scholars that he does not share his father's views, that some of his best friends are Jewish, that he is sensitive to anti-Semitism and opposed to it. "As an Irish Catholic Australian," wrote Fisher in his e-mail, Gibson "knows more than a bit about religious and social prejudice and [he] relates to Jews as fellow sufferers from it.... He's open to what we have to say, but still a bit cautious." At this point Fisher still thought that we could work with Gibson to try to improve his film . . . . .

. . . . . The script, when we got it, shocked us. Nothing of Gibson's published remarks, or of Fulco's and Gibson's private assurances, had prepared us for what we saw. Each scholar, independent of the others, wrote his or her own comments on the document. We then boiled them down, bulleted our points, and made the whole discussion easy to digest. The first section of our report explained the historical connection between passion plays and the slaughter of European Jews, the dress rehearsals for the Shoah. Then we summarized our responses to the script. We pinpointed its historical errors and--again, since Gibson has so trumpeted his own Catholicism--its deviations from magisterial principles of biblical interpretation. We concluded with general recommendations for certain changes in the script. Four short appendices--two historical, two directly script-related--traversed this same terrain from different directions. A final appendix provided excerpts from official Catholic teaching.Receiving criticism is never easy. As teachers and as scholars, who regularly give and get criticism, we knew this. We also knew that we were asking Gibson to revise his script substantially. We knew that we were working against his enthusiasm, his utter lack of knowledge, and his investment of time and money. We pinned our hopes on his avowed interest in historicity, on his evident willingness to hear what we had to say, and on his decency. In retrospect, we also functioned with a naïveté that is peculiar to educators: the belief that, once an error is made plain, a person will prefer the truth.

Fulco knew by April 27 what the substance of our response had been: Fisher had already communicated privately with him. By May 2, we had our eighteen-page report assembled. Fisher and Korn co-wrote the cover letter on USCCB stationery, and sent the report to Icon by May 5. On May 9, members of the group received our copies. We waited. Icon was silent. When Korn phoned Fulco on May 12 to get his sense of the report, Fulco declined to share his views. He did mention that he, Gibson, and other Icon executives were scheduled to meet the following day. More silence.

Meanwhile, disturbances began to accrue. After a story about Gibson's movie ran in the Los Angeles Times, one of the group's members, Mary Boys, S.N.J.M., received "three vicious letters filled with personal attacks and anti-Semitic drivel." (Boys is a chaired professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, an adviser on ecumenical affairs to the USCCB, a member of the Catholic Biblical Association, and a tireless worker in the area of Catholic-Jewish relations. She knows anti-Semitic drivel when she sees it.) At the same time, another member of the scholars group, Father John Pawlikowski, O.S.M., professor of social ethics at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, mentioned an unhappy encounter that a friend of his--like Fulco, a professor at Loyola Marymount--had had with other Jesuits following Loyola's commencement ceremonies on May 11. On that day, Gibson had received an honorary doctorate. These Jesuits informed Pawlikowski's colleague that "Father Fulco has written a beautiful script; how could we possibly attack him? How could anyone criticize the story of the Passion? They were all aware of our report, so Fulco is obviously spreading the word."

We were surprised: we had understood that, for the time being, our report, like Gibson's script, was meant to be kept between us and Icon. "They"--Fulco, Gibson, and company--"are simply going to discredit us," Pawlikowski concluded. On May 16, the truth of his words, and the reasons for Icon's silence, became clear. On that date, Fisher, Korn, the ADL, and the USCCB received a letter from Gibson's attorney. Dated May 9, written within days of Icon's receipt of our report, the letter had sat for a week while we waited for their response, and Gibson collected his degree, and Fulco avoided Korn, and the Icon executives and Fulco conferred.

"As you are fully aware, you are in possession of property stolen from Icon, namely a draft of the screenplay for the Picture," the letter began. "At no time did Mr. Gibson authorize the release of this material to you or to any other third party for dissemination to you." The lawyering went on for another page: "You have admitted that you came into possession of this stolen property by means that are illegal." "You are now attempting to force my clients to alter the screenplay to the Picture to suit your own religious views." Our side was threatening to discredit the film, and to intimidate Gibson. ("This act is itself illegal--it is called extortion.") All scripts were to be returned by 5:00 p.m. on May 13. (Poor organization, since this letter was faxed three days after its own deadline.) Court orders, lawsuits, reserved rights and remedies, and all sorts of terrible consequences might and could and would follow. Very truly yours, et cetera.

"Gibson, Fulco and McEveety were all on the phone with me well before," Fisher wrote to me on May 20. "They knew we had the script, as they had known for some time, and did not ask for it back." Icon's new claim also made nonsense of the earlier condition of confidentiality to which we had assented before seeing the screenplay: who else would have required that? No matter. Lawyers were in the saddle; reason was dying . . . . ."

If Fredriksen's perceptions are right, there is little doubt -- the script was not stolen. Her report is backed up by a second member of the ad hoc committee, Amy-Jill Levine:

The Real Problem with "Passion"

This was published on Beliefnet also last summer, but it is not dated. Levine writes:

After questioning our panel's motives, Mr. Medved referred to the Gibson camp's charge that we used a "stolen" script. Indeed, Mr. Gibson's backers have consistently accused this committee of being underhanded and immoral: first, they claim, we obtained the script illegally. This is wrong: Gibson's company, Icon Productions, knew we had it, and Mr. Gibson personally expressed interest in hearing our views.

As far as I know, there have been no published attempts to refute Levine's and Fredriksen's explanations of the matter. They remain the only accounts, and Fredriksen's is the only rigorous, blow-by-blow account available. Until any published refutations of these accounts appear, I would suggest that the accusation of theft is dropped by those who comment on the film.

Labels: Paula Fredriksen

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The Passion of the Christ is released today in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I won't get a chance to see it myself until a preview screening next week, so if any blog readers who see it soon would like to offer their thoughts, please send me an email. (Please note, of course, that I cannot guarantee that I will reproduce your thoughts). I'd be particularly interested to hear a couple of factual things that haven't been cleared up yet: (1) Does the film have a postscript as petitioned here and discussed frequently in this blog? (2) Has Caiaphas's "His blood be on us and on our children" been included in the film or not? You might need some Aramaic for this since the most recent report said that the line was included but not subtitled. Many thanks.

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Instead of adding to my continually updated mega-post of yesterday, Passion of the Christ: News and Reviews round-up, I'll begin fresh posts for news and reviews today. Thanks to Jeff Peterson for the link to this overwhelmingly positive review:

Gibson’s Passion
Russell Hittinger and Elizabeth Lev
First Things 141 (March 2004): 7-10.

It finds it "the best movie ever made about Jesus Christ"; here are some excerpts:

. . . . . Zefferelli’s movie is comparable to a Ghirlandaio painting—exquisite, but the figures occupy only half the canvas. By contrast, Gibson’s figures are in the style of Michelangelo, filling the screen, looming over us, threatening to enter our space. It is unnerving art. When the Roman soldiers call out “vertere crucem” the audience tenses. The soldiers lift the cross, prop it on its side for an agonizing moment, and then let it fall over towards us. As it crashes to the ground, an audible gasp sounds in the theater. The viewer is denied the detachment of looking through a window into a faraway world and is drawn into the scenes as a humble, perhaps helpless, participant . . . .

. . . . . But all of this makes Gibson’s Passion nearly the opposite of the arcane and politically fraught tradition of the passion play. Such performances were often staged to incite the audience to choose sides, to “save” the integrity and honor of Christ by constituting a kind of party against Judas, the Jews, and the mob in Pilate’s courtyard. Had Gibson used the power of film to give this twisted but all-too-human political stereotype a new lease on life, concerns about the film stirring up anti-Judaism or hostility against nonbelievers would be justified. To his credit, however, Gibson denies the audience any shred of political or religious triumph, or, for that matter, defeat. Even a viewer who already knows and religiously believes in the final outcome of the story must struggle to keep watching, which is humiliating in its own right. There might be reason for scholars and religious authorities to raise questions about Gibson’s synthesizing of distinct scriptural accounts of the passion, or about his use of extra-biblical iconography. But it is hard to imagine anyone coming out of Gibson’s movie with an appetite for a religiously politicized passion. If anything, this is the definitive post-passion-play passion . . . . ."

The review also comments: "theological criticisms and concerns were expressed on the basis of an unofficial script apparently stolen from Gibson’s production company". Since this material about a "stolen" script is still getting regularly repeated, in my view unfairly, I will add a comment on this later.

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for sending over the link to this homepage:

Petros Vassiliadis

I've added the link to my Scholars: U-Z page. Vassiliadis is at the University of Thessaloniki and he has made his homepage available in Greek and English versions. I am know him from his stuff on Q. The good news is that he has lots of full text reproductions of his own articles (though the font is absolutely awful -- you might need to copy and paste); go to his Detailed Bibliography and scroll down a bit.

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With the release of The Passion of the Christ in the USA tomorrow, it's time to round up some of the news and reviews. I commented earlier on Christianity Today's coverage; the second of the two articles there mentions that Mel Gibson's feet appear in the stoning of the woman taken in adultery scene; so now we know that we see both his hands (crucifixion scene) and his feet.

Thanks to Helenann Hartley for these two from BBC News:

Christ film 'riddled with errors'

Bible belt devoted to Christ film

The first of these is a version of the Reuters story commented on earlier.

This Reuters story provides a useful round-up of all the early reviews of the film, which show some interesting variety:

Critics Pan and Praise Gibson's 'Passion'
By Arthur Spiegelman

. . . . "One of the cruelest movies in the history of cinema," says the New Yorker's David Denby in a negative review that also calls the film "a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminated procession of treachery, beatings, blood and agony."

Critic Denby adds, 'For two hours ... we watch, stupefied as a handsome, strapping, at times half-naked young man is slowly tortured to death. Gibson is thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ and is so meagerly involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus's message of love into one of hate.". . . . .

. . . . . Daily Variety's reviewer Todd McCarthy was more positive about the film, saying, "If an age produces the renditions of classic stories that reflect those times, then 'The Passion of the Christ,' which is violent, contentious, emotional, extreme and highly proficient, must be the Jesus movie for this era.

"It is also gravely intense and the work of a man as deeply committed to his subject as one could hope for or, for that matter, want.... (The picture's) notoriety might soon be mitigated for mainstream audiences by word of mouth centered on the prolonged suffering and very vivid gore; at the same time, many true believers ... will be deeply moved. ..."

McCarthy rejected the idea that the film was anti-Semitic and added, "The passion according to Mel is potent stuff, but rather like a full course of bitter herbs without as much as a taste of honey." . . . . .

. . . . . Newsweek's David Ansen said, "Relentlessly savage, 'The Passion' plays like the Gospel according to the Marquis de Sade. The film that has been getting rapturous advance raves from evangelical Christians turns out to be an R-rated inspirational movie no child can, or should, see. To these secular eyes at least, Gibson's movie is more likely to inspire nightmares than devotion."

He added, "It's the sadism, not the alleged anti-Semitism, that is most striking. (For the record, I don't think Gibson is anti-Semitic; but those inclined toward bigotry could easily find fuel for their fire here.)"

Time Magazine's Richard Corliss, in a review headlined "The Goriest Story Ever Told," said the audience for this film is fairly narrow: True believers with cast-iron stomachs; people who can stand to be grossed out as they are edified. And a few movie critics who can't help admiring Mad Mel for the spiritual compulsion that drove him to invent a new genre --- the religious splatter art film -- and bring it to searing life, death and resurrection.

There are some great one-liners there -- "the goriest story ever told" sounds like something that is going to stick. There is a theme that crops up repeatedly in the reviews -- the graphic, brutal violence -- and makes a much stronger impression than anything else.

The article briefly mentions the following review from the Chicago-Sun Times, which is also blogged by Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis:

Review of The Passion of the Christ
Roger Ebert

. . . . . If ever there was a film with the correct title, that film is Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Although the word passion has become mixed up with romance, its Latin origins refer to suffering and pain; later Christian theology broadened that to include Christ's love for mankind, which made him willing to suffer and die for us.

The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen . . . .

. . . . . David Ansen, a critic I respect, finds in Newsweek that Gibson has gone too far. "The relentless gore is self-defeating," he writes. "Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins."

This is a completely valid response to the film, and I quote Ansen because I suspect he speaks for many audience members, who will enter the theater in a devout or spiritual mood and emerge deeply disturbed. You must be prepared for whippings, flayings, beatings, the crunch of bones, the agony of screams, the cruelty of the sadistic centurions, the rivulets of blood that crisscross every inch of Jesus' body. Some will leave before the end.

This is not a Passion like any other ever filmed. Perhaps that is the best reason for it. I grew up on those pious Hollywood biblical epics of the 1950s, which looked like holy cards brought to life. I remember my grin when Time magazine noted that Jeffrey Hunter, starring as Christ in "King of Kings" (1961), had shaved his armpits. (Not Hunter's fault; the film's Crucifixion scene had to be re-shot because preview audiences objected to Jesus' hairy chest.) . . . . .

. . . . Pilate is seen going through his well-known doubts before finally washing his hands of the matter and turning Jesus over to the priests, but Caiaphas, who also had doubts, is not seen as sympathetically. The critic Steven D. Greydanus, in a useful analysis of the film, writes: "The film omits the canonical line from John's gospel in which Caiaphas argues that it is better for one man to die for the people [so] that the nation be saved.

"Had Gibson retained this line, perhaps giving Caiaphas a measure of the inner conflict he gave to Pilate, it could have underscored the similarities between Caiaphas and Pilate and helped defuse the issue of anti-Semitism." . . . . .

. . . . . Is the film "good" or "great?" I imagine each person's reaction (visceral, theological, artistic) will differ. I was moved by the depth of feeling, by the skill of the actors and technicians, by their desire to see this project through no matter what. To discuss individual performances, such as James Caviezel's heroic depiction of the ordeal, is almost beside the point. This isn't a movie about performances, although it has powerful ones, or about technique, although it is awesome, or about cinematography (although Caleb Deschanel paints with an artist's eye), or music (although John Debney supports the content without distracting from it).

It is a film about an idea. An idea that it is necessary to fully comprehend the Passion if Christianity is to make any sense. Gibson has communicated his idea with a singleminded urgency. Many will disagree. Some will agree, but be horrified by the graphic treatment. I myself am no longer religious in the sense that a long-ago altar boy thought he should be, but I can respond to the power of belief whether I agree or not, and when I find it in a film, I must respect it.

Next, thanks to David Mackinder for this link from the New Republic Online

Passion Players
by Reihan Salam

This article describes itself as "TNR's "Guide to the Passion Pundits" in which "we explain what the most prominent players on both sides of the Passion debate have said, and what you can expect them to say in the weeks to come."

This article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has some good informed comment from NT scholars -- John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and Amy-Jill Levine:

What do the Gospels say?
Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' raises anew the question of why Jesus was crucified
By JOHN BLAKE

There is a useful line or two in this opinion piece from yesterday's Daily Telegraph, including one I excerpt below:

Mel Gibson's 'Passion of Christ' is an act of faith, not hatred
By Barbara Amiel

. . . . . It puzzles me that someone as bright as Mr Foxman can still fall into the "Banned in Boston" trap. Audiences who would never dream of going to see a film with dialogue entirely in Aramaic and Latin – as this film is – have now had their attention drawn to it by this controversy. No one can seriously believe that dormant anti-Semites will be awakened by this film, no matter how villainous the depiction of the Sanhedrin or bloodthirsty the mob. Any latent anti-Semite has far more virulent snake charmers to bring him out of his basket . . . . .

Here's another interesting review of the film, this time from Metromix.com; it is wonderfully written with a great turn of phrase; I've added a couple of excerpts afterwards (I'm updating this blog entry as I spot stuff, so I apologise for the relatively haphazard order here):

Movie review: 'The Passion of the Christ'
By Michael Wilmington
Chicago Tribune Movie Critic
2-1/2 stars (out of 4)

. . . . . No movie version of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection — a story filmed many times in many ways by directors as various as Cecil B. DeMille (1927's "The King of Kings"), Pier Paolo Pasolini (1966's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew") and Scorsese (1988's "Temptation") — has ever immersed us in such a cinematic torture chamber, spilled so much believable blood or focused with such savage insistence on Christ's wounds and manhandling. When the crown of thorns stabs Jesus' forehead or the nails crunch into his palms, I felt less epiphany than empathetic pain . . . . .

. . . . Gibson is a talented, ambitious filmmaker who takes real chances, playing "Hamlet" or directing "The Man Without a Face" — and though he didn't really deserve the Oscar he won for directing "Braveheart," it's good to see him taking even riskier shots here. "Passion" certainly avoids the picture-postcard religiosity of the standard Hollywood Bible epic, and it's not at all boring. But though Gibson's vision — so tactile and violent — may be a world away from the sometimes saccharine treatments of DeMille or Franco Zeffirelli ("Jesus of Nazareth"), it's also distant from the transcendence that might have made this either a great film or moving religious testimony.

"Passion," for all its high intent, lacks artistic and even spiritual balance. At the risk of being glib, this "Passion" has more power and gore than power and glory, more blood and guts than blood and redemption. Focusing on the excruciating agony of the flagellation and crucifixion, Gibson and Caviezel never really take us deeply into Jesus' heart or soul, as Scorsese did in his much-reviled but richer film of Nikos Kazantzakis' "Last Temptation." . . . .

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In Paleojudaica, Jim Davila comments on the question of Mel Gibson and holocaust denial, pointing to the Volokh Conspiracy blog, which had commented on Peggy Noonan's Reader's Digest interview with Gibson. In my own opinion, too much has been made of Gibson's comments in this interview. David Bernstein says:

An interviewer asks, do you believe the Holocaust happened? Gibson doesn't just say, "yes, it did, of course." He doesn't even say, yes, of course, and we should remember it, along with other great tragedies of the 20th century.

Actually, Gibson does say "yes, of course"; the problem arises from the fact that he says it halfway through the paragraph in question:

Peggy Noonan: "You're going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?"

Gibson: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union." (emphasis added).

What one has to remember is that this is not a carefully worded, written response to a question but an orally delivered answer. The unequivocal answer to the question comes half-way through the paragraph. This is actually pretty natural in orally delivered answers. When one reads transcripts of radio interviews, for example, it is remarkable to see how often the written version loses a key element that the ear picks up instinctively. I think Gibson is trying to answer the question unequivocally with his "Yes, of course" but is prefacing it by saying that that this is not just hearsay -- he knows it personally from friends and parents of friends. Bear in mind that Maria Morgenstern, who plays Mary the mother of Jesus in the film, is the daughter of a holocaust survivor; her grandfather died at Auschwitz (see blog entry on).

The reason I am sure that this is the right way to read the comments above is that more recently, his answer has been even clearer -- the ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, e.g. reported by WNBC:

'Passion' Strife Swells With Gibson's Dad's Holocaust Dispute

Mel Gibson has largely remained silent when asked about his father in interviews. He told ABC's Diane Sawyer Monday, "Gotta leave it alone, Diane," when the interviewer probed him about Hutton Gibson's reported anti-Semitism.

Mel Gibson did tell Sawyer, however, his viewpoints about the Holocaust.

"Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenseless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do, absolutely," Mel Gibson told Sawyer. "It was an atrocity of monumental proportions."

"And you believe there were millions -- 6 million?" Sawyer asked, to which Mel Gibson responded, "Sure."

My own feeling is that this is something of a red herring in the discussion of The Passion of the Christ. It seems likely that we may need to take the charges of anti-Semitism in The Passion of the Christ seriously -- I don't know until I go to see the film next week -- but I don't think Gibson is a holocaust denier.

Update (22.45): On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila updates his piece with reference to the Diane Sawyer interview.

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Christianity Today has now posted on-line more of the material from its latest issue, in which The Passion of the Christ is the cover-story. This interview was released on-line yesterday:

'Dude, That Was Graphic'
Mel Gibson talks about The Passion of The Christ
by David Neff and Jane Johnson Struck

In it Mel Gibson talks about the "spiritual warfare" involved in producing the film, from successful prayers for its success, to the technological problems in post-production. There is an interesting detail on the creative process and the adherence to Scripture:

Wow, the Scriptures are the Scriptures—I mean they're unchangeable, although many people try to change them. And I think that my first duty is to be as faithful as possible in telling the story so that it doesn't contradict the Scriptures.
Now, so long as it didn't do that, I felt that I had a pretty wide berth for artistic interpretation, and to fill in some of the spaces with logic, with imagination, with various other readings.

For example, Judas goes to kill himself and I had him being tormented by children. I made up the children idea and that they were somehow diabolical, so they weren't real children. And that he was on a hillside and he looked at a dead goat, and then he goes and kills himself, hangs himself with a halter. I thought, so where's he going to get the halter? Well wait a minute, it should be a dead donkey with a halter on. I mean there's nothing that said there was a dead donkey there, but why not? It just says he "hung himself with an halter" [Matt. 27:5, Douay].

Next, there's a "Behind the Scenes" insight from Holly McLure:

Behind the Scenes of The Passion
On the set with Holly McClure

McClure acted as a kind of consultant on the film and explains how she contributed to the depiction of Mary Magdalene:

. . . . . Two weeks later Mel called me and asked me what I thought. I told him it was brilliant, and that Christians would love it. He asked if I had any suggestions. And I did.

I saw a potential problem with Mary Magdalene. Mel had her in every scene with Mary (Jesus' mother) and John, but there was no scene to connect this woman to Jesus. I asked, "Is she his sister? His wife? A lover? You have to pretend like no one knows this story. You have to ask why this woman would follow Jesus so faithfully."

After a pause, Mel said, "You're right. I need a flashback to connect her relationship to him. I've been working on this script for almost nine years and no one has ever pointed that out to me."

I smiled and said, "Well maybe it takes a woman to see that Mary needs an introduction—and so people don't get the wrong idea. Maybe you could add a scene like the one where men are going to stone a woman and …" Mel jumped in excitedly and said, "Yeah, Jesus steps in and saves her, and I'll show the guys dropping the stones one by one and Mary looks up at Jesus!"

So it seems that the film perpetuates the identification of Mary Magdalene with the woman taken in adultery in John 8, which is in so many of the Jesus films and really milked in Last Temptation of Christ. So in spite of all the publicity Mary Magdalene has received in the popular media recently, her rehabilitation has been put on hold and the image of her as an adulterer and a prostitute looks set to be reaffirmed once again. Incidentally, the woman taken in adultery is played by a different actress from the one playing Mary Magdalene in The Gospel of John.

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Further to my previous blog entry, I've dug around a little more on William Fulco. This is from an article published in Deseretnews.com on Saturday, an articled headed "Director Mel Gibson defends his Passion":

Once the script was written (in English), Gibson brought in a Jesuit scholar who specializes in Aramaic and Latin — the Rev. William Fulco of Loyola Marymount University — to translate. Fulco also offered technical advice and occasionally served as chaplain for the cast and crew.

Fulco became aware of Gibson's more conservative views, but the priest says it never bothered him.

"My viewpoint is that the church is a very big tree in which many colorful birds make their nests. And Mel is a pretty colorful bird."

This article from newsobserver.com of January 21 fills in a little more:

TERRY MATTINGLY: The passion of Mel Gibson

Jesuits rarely receive frantic calls from Hollywood megastars rushing to finish movies that are causing media firestorms. But the Rev. William Fulco is getting used to it, as Mel Gibson completes his cathartic epic, "The Passion of the Christ."

While mixing dialogue the other day, Gibson hit a scene in which a man standing at a door lacked something to say. The director needed a line - right now. Fulco's first question was unique to this project: Was this character supposed to speak Latin or first-century Aramaic? "Mel said the camera was not on the speaker's face, so we did not need to synchronize what he said with the movements of his mouth," said Fulco, who translated the screenplay into the two ancient languages, with English subtitles.

"The character needed to say something in Aramaic in the ballpark of, 'What do you want?' So I had him say in rather colloquial early Aramaic, 'MAH? MAH BA'EH?' That is literally, 'What? What wanting?'" That worked.

It has been nearly two years since Fulco answered the telephone and heard a strange voice blurt out: "Hey, Padre! It's Mel!" Gibson's proposal was unusual, but fit the Jesuit's skills as a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Fulco began digging into Hebrew texts seeking the roots of the now-dead Aramaic language, while simultaneously exploring dialects such as Syriac spoken today in tiny Christian enclaves in Iran, Syria and Turkey.

He also stepped into heated academic debates between those who favor a more Italian-friendly Latin and those who reject this approach.

"I'm getting hate mail about Latin pronunciations," said Fulco. "On guy wrote who was angry about what he called 'these ecclesiastical bastardizations' of the Latin. Not only was he going to boycott the movie, he said he was going to call his high-school Latin teacher and tell her to boycott the movie as well. ... I have to keep reminding people: This is not a documentary. We had to make artistic choices."

The latter comments echo Crossan's (previous blog entry).

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On RogueClassicism, David Meadows draws attention to this Reuters piece (which you'll find syndicated elsewhere):

Scholars find fault in Gibson's "Passion"
Megan Goldin

John Dominic Crossan has again been on duty:

"Jesus talking to (Pontius) Pilate and Pilate to Jesus in Latin!" exclaimed John Dominic Crossan, a professor of religious studies at the Chicago-based Roman Catholic De Paul University. "I mean in your dreams. It would have been Greek."

Latin was reserved for official decrees or used by the elite. Most Roman centurions in the Holy Land spoke Greek rather than Latin, historians and archaeologists told Reuters."

Crossan adds that it was "so badly pronounced in the film that it was almost incomprehensible". And one of the points I made in the reconstruction of "the face" is echoed here by both Joe Zias (who also worked on "the face") and Lawrence Schiffman:

"He has a long-haired Jesus...Jesus didn't have long hair," said physical anthropologist Joe Zias, who has studied hundreds of skeletons found in archaeological digs in Jerusalem. "Jewish men back in antiquity did not have long hair."

"The Jewish texts ridiculed long hair as something Roman or Greek," said New York University's Lawrence Schiffman.

Along with extensive writings from the period, experts also point to a frieze on Rome's Arch of Titus, erected after Jerusalem was captured in AD 70 to celebrate the victory, which shows Jewish men with short hair taken into captivity.

The article goes on with more detail on the crucifixion and here again they are asking the right person, Joe Zias:

The depiction of the crucifixion was the part of the film most riddled with errors for Zias, who studied the skeleton of a crucified Jewish man from Jesus's time -- the only remains ever found of a crucified victim from antiquity.

Zias said Jesus would not have carried the entire cross to the crucifixion as vertical beams were kept permanently in place by the ever efficient Romans.

"Nobody was physically able to carry the thing (the entire cross).It weighed about 350 lb (159 kg)," Zias said. "He (Jesus) carried the cross-beam, maximum."

Nor would Jesus have worn a loin-cloth in the crucifixion as did actor James Caviezel who portrayed him in the film.

"Crucifixion was a form of state terror. They humiliated the crucified victim. Everybody was naked. Men, women and children," Zias said.

Jesus, he added, would have been tied or nailed to the cross through the wrists, not the hands as shown in the film.

"You cannot crucify a person through the hands because there is nothing there but skin and muscle. It will tear."

This picks up on earlier pieces about the crucifixion, also featuring Crossan and Zias (see blog entry February 20). David Meadows comments:

Seriously, though ... I haven't been able to find any mention of the historical advisers (if any) to this one. I'd be curious to know whether a Classicist was consulted ...

Agreed. One of my own repeatedly expressed concerns about this film is that it does not use an academic advisory board, unlike the two most recent Jesus films, The Gospel of John and The Miracle Maker, both of which avoided many of the problems now dogging The Passion of the Christ. The only named historical consultant on The Passion of the Christ appears to be William Fulco of Loyola Marymount University, who has been named as the person who did the retroversions to Latin and Aramaic. Whether he had any wider role (e.g. in a broader advisory capacity) is not clear, but appears unlikely.

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The number of visitors to the NT Gateway has risen massively over the last fortnight. Up until recently, the site (overall, including the blog) had an average of about 1,300 visitors (4,000 hits) a day. But for the first time last week, there were over 2,000 visitors in a single day (Monday) and then this continued all week. Yesterday there were 2,307 visits (6,013 hits) which is an even bigger rise. It's nice that the site is so popular but I am wondering what is causing the major rise. Although the blog is bringing many of the additional hits, it looks like The Passion of the Christ has also generated many hits, not least because of the context provided by my Celluloid Jesus pages. Still the vast majority of hits appear to come from Google (e.g. try typing "New Testament" into Google and hitting "I'm feeling lucky"). Anyway, many thanks for the support. It's a happy man who gets encouragement for what what he enjoys doing anyway.

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I received my copy of The Good Book pack from the BBC today. I am very happy with the way it has been produced -- it's gorgeous looking and colourful -- not the kind of thing we academics are used to. The pack is basically a 100-page illustrated book written by Nick Margesson (on the Bible and Abraham), Walter Moberly (Moses, David), Hugh Williamson (Isaiah), me (Jesus, Paul) and Rachel Barker (notes for teachers); and with it are three CDs of the radio series narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi. The book is aimed at the interested general reader and schools (aged 14-16). If you would like to order a copy (at £7.95 for a full colour illustrated book and three CDs), this is the URL:

Beyond the Broadcast: The Good Book Pack

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I have only just spotted this while on the BBC Religion and Ethics homepage looking at other things. It's a nine part series being broadcast on Sunday lunchtimes and covering a different theme in each episode:

Bible Mysteries

The first two episodes, Who killed Jesus? and Joshua and the Battle of Jericho went out on 15 February; the third, on Joseph, went out yesterday. I'll look out for future episodes and will try to send out an alert ahead of time. [Anyone at BBC Religion and Ethics reading this blog is welcome to send me reminders of this and anything similar : ) ].

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There was a short feature yesterday morning on the BBC Radio 4 programme Sunday. Roger Bolton interviews Alistair McGrath and Dan Cohn Sherbok:

The Passion debate

It's not clear from the feature whether either of the two have seen the film and my guess is that they haven't, so the discussion a little less focused than it might have been. Dan Cohn Sherbok is concerned that the film could encourage anti-Semitism; Alistair McGrath seems less convinced and is hopeful that the film will provide the opportunity for people to reflect on the Passion Narrative.

Labels: Radio 4

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Thanks to Catherine Smith for this link: last Monday night's Night Waves on BBC Radio 3 featured a discussion of anti-semitism and the Gospels and featured Judith Lieu and Daniel Boyarin. You can listen here:

Nightwaves: Monday 16 February

Go to about 8 and a half minutes in. The feature lasts for ten minutes or so. Tonight's Night Waves is apparently to feature a review of The Passion of the Christ -- listen live from the previous link or later I will post the URL for the archived version.

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David Meadows has sent out the latest Explorator (6.43). It includes a link to this New York Times article (free subscription necessary):

What did Jesus really look like?
David Gibson

The article begins, inevitably, with The Passion of the Christ:

The title role is played by Jim Caviezel, a dark-haired, blue-eyed star whose brooding good looks have been compared to those of Montgomery Clift. He doesn't exactly fit the archaeological evidence that the average man of Jesus' day was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and a bantamlike 110 pounds. Given the harsh conditions, especially for working stiffs like the members of Jesus' family, combined with Jesus' ascetic lifestyle, which included walking everywhere, scholars agree that he was most likely a rather sinewy peasant, as tough as a root and about as appealing.

But it goes on to discuss depictions of Jesus throughout Christian history, coming eventually to a new image produced for a television programme to be broadcast in the USA today:

Trying to run back through the gantlet [sic] of images and icons built up over the centuries and rediscover the true face of Jesus is no mean feat. While filming a new documentary about the historical Jesus ("The Mystery of Jesus" on "CNN Presents," tomorrow night at 8, Eastern time; 7, Central time; and 5, Pacific time), our production team sought the most accurate idea of what Jesus might have looked like. We chose a retired British medical artist, Richard Neave, who has made a career out of reconstructing the faces of famous historical figures from scant archaeological traces. Mr. Neave had worked with the BBC on a similar project a few years before, making a composite cast of three Semitic skulls from first-century Palestine and using them as the basis for fleshing out the face of a contemporary of Jesus, if not Jesus himself.

The facial overlay that the BBC then put on Mr. Neave's work didn't please him or many others, however. He wasn't upset that some thought that the face made Jesus look like a New York taxi driver. Rather, he didn't like the eyes and the mouth, and what the historian Robin M. Jensen, writing recently in Christian Century, called "a particular dumbfounded — one might say stupid — expression."

Since I was involved with the construction of this face, let me fill in some details here.

(1) This is the first I have heard about a "composite cast of three Semitic skulls". As far as I was aware, and in the discussions I had with the others about this, there was one skull and this one chosen by Joe Zias, who is the first person you see in the feature at the end of the third episode of Son of God (called Jesus: The Complete Story in the USA). However, looking again at the video of Richard Neave at work, there are other skulls in his lab so it is possible that there were three and that this was simplified to one in the production and publicity.

(2) I am interested to hear that Neave was dissatisfied by the eyes and mouth on the face since these were modelled by Neave himself. However, it may be that Neave's concern is with the appearance and colour of the eyes and mouth that came about as a result of the computerisation process. This process was carried out by Redvision in Manchester, who did all of the CGI work on the series (and won an award for it). This was where I became involved with the process. After a series of phone-calls and emails about the face with the series producer (Michael Wakelin) and director (Jean Claude Bragard), I spent a day at Redvision in Manchester filming the sequence that was included in the documentary. Though I'm oversimplifying, my main contributions were essentially (a) to draw attention to Paul's remarks about hair length in 1 Corinthians 11; and (b) to show the team pictures of the way that Jews were depicted in the wall paintings in the synagogue at Dura Europos (mid third century CE). This resulted in a change in the way that the face had originally looked -- it had had long, sandy hair and beard and a paler complexion. You can still see this original version in the Son of God book produced by Angela Tilby; I imagine that the newer version was not ready when her book, loosely based on the series, went to press. They were actually a little annoyed about my thing about hair length given that the actor who played Jesus in the documentary had the long hair (e.g. see the picture here). But to their credit, they wanted to try to get it right.

(3) I am inclined to agree that the look of the face was not ideal, though I thought it not so much "stupid" looking as rather anxious looking. Some thought it neanderthal; others that it looked like someone who might appear on Crimewatch. When I was on Channel 4's Big Breakfast, one of the production staff suggested that it was Dave Lee Travis (an old Radio 1 DJ in the 1970s and 1980s). But all of these, like the current article, missed the point and not surprisingly so. This was never attempting to be "the face of Jesus"; it was never claiming to be "the face of Christ". It was simply an attempt to build up and represent as accurately as possible what one average Jew from that time and that place might have looked like. So where did the "face of Jesus" stuff come from? Here's my reading of the situation. The BBC, quite understandably, wanted to get some good publicity for this expensive, landmark series. This face handed the BBC a golden opportunity for worldwide publicity on a plate. At a news conference, the BBC were unveiling their spring schedule for 2001, the face was released and the media lapped it up. The next morning, there it was on the front of The Times, "Is this the face of Jesus?" Of course in media-speak, a headline with a question mark should usually be answered with a resounding "No"; but once the link has been made, it doesn't go away. A side-note: Tom Wright, who was one of the consultants on the programme, was not that enthusiastic about the face, but commented that at least it got Jesus onto the front page of The Times!

So with that extra background, now back to Saturday's New York Times article by David Gibson with which we began:

Hoping to rectify the problem, we hired a New York artist, Donato Giancola, and reworked the portrait, using Mr. Neave's skull and information from other experts. The results, to my mind, were a more noble, even soulful, Jesus, and yet historically believable — I hope something closer to the itinerant Galilean of history. Even so, the results looked uncannily like Mr. Giancola himself, which was part coincidence — he actually resembles the face Mr. Neave produced — and part inevitability. Artists are always painting themselves, just as believers are always making themselves the models for the divine.

I suppose my problem with this is that it confuses what was originally being attempted by us all (to create an approximation of what an average first century Jew from Israel might have looked like) with the hype and publicity the attempt generated ("Is this the real face of Jesus?" etc.). The fact that there was no attempt to make the face look "soulful" or "noble" was, in a way, the point of the exercise. And just because we might find a particular look more appealing, can that really bring us "closer to the itinerant Galilean of history"? I don't think I can see how it could -- this is uncannily like those discussions about how often the scholarly portraits of the historical Jesus resemble the portraits of the the scholar doing the painting.

One further comment: although I appear in The Son of God / Jesus: The Complete Story, and in March 2001 did a lot of the publicity in connection with "the face" (one reporter told me that Richard Neave was too expensive), I am now rarely credited with any role in it. I'm not alone in this. One major example is a feature which uses material I and others contributed to the project (albeit now in rather garbled form) but only mentions Neave; neither Joe Zias nor Redvision are appear. Indeed it does not even mention the BBC except in locating the source of the photograph:

The Real Face Of Jesus
Advances in forensic science reveal the most famous face in history.
BY MIKE FILLON

This was the cover story in Popular Mechanics in December 2002, admittedly not a journal many New Testament scholars read on a regular basis. At first I was still a little annoyed not to get a mention in what is attempting to be a thorough and detailed piece, but later I realised that it was good news because of the way this was always going to get treated by the media. Notice that here even the question-mark has disappeared. It is now announced as "the real face of Jesus". It is remarkable how quickly this has developed from an interesting experiment in a TV documentary, to "Is this the face of Jesus?", to "the real face of Jesus". Given the derision I've experienced from some academic colleagues (one senior colleage shouted across the car-park: "Mark, this is not reputable stuff"), perhaps a little anonymity here is welcome.

Update (24 February): Thanks to David Meadows for these links to the older news material which he had featured in Explorator at the time. The first is from ABC News and even mentions me! It is typical of the kind of thing I was talking about above. At the time I was amazed that several scholars were reported as saying that we simply did not know what Jesus looked like. Since this was one of the things that we were saying ourselves, it was a useless criticism and I felt a bit embarrassed for them.

Your Own Personal Jesus
Documentary Uses Computer Imagery to Create Reconstruction of Jesus' Face
By Jennifer Askin [March 27 2001]

And here are two from the BBC:

Looking for the Historical Jesus
Alex Webb

BBC Unveils Hi-Tech Jesus

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Also in Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson comments on the on-line availability of the article by Annette Yoshiko Reed:

This brings me to one of my favorite points. Had her article not been freely available on-line, I probably would not have come across it recently while I was looking for something else, read it, and then recalled it when commenting on Irenaeus. Serendipity often plays a role in scholarship, but the chance discovery of another's important work requires access, and free availability on-line of articles is a good way to provide that access.

I could not agree more -- there are many articles that I have run across on-line in the last few years that I would never have seen if they had not been on-line. One of the odd things to me about this point is that there was a ferocious debate recently in my institution when some of the current periodicals were removed from the open shelves of the library to the stack on the grounds that these could now be accessed on-line via our institutional subscriptions. Several academics in the debate tried to explain to the library people that this meant the end of serendipity and the casual browsing of recent journal articles. It was odd to me because it was the exact opposite of my own experience -- I have read the journals more regularly and more up-to-the-minute since they've been available electronically. But the best way to get your stuff known remains to put it on-line yourself, available for all. The journals usually give permission to do this and it gets your stuff read far more widely than if it is only in the journal. Long live academic serendipity in the internet era!

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In Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson draws attention to an on-line article by James A. Kelhoffer, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at St. Louis University, and links to his web page. I've added the link to my Scholars: I, J, K page and will add some links to the articles too in due course.

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