Mel Gibson's controversial film on the Crucifixion has been pilloried by Jewish leaders but is being hailed by US Catholics as the best recruiting tool for 2,000 years.
NEW YORK -- Ac**** America last week thousands of Christian pastors and priests sat down in front of their television sets to watch a special hour-long broadcast on a Christian cable channel. The subject was Mel Gibson's controversial film about the death of Christ.
But the objective was not just to watch a clip from the movie and an interview with Gibson. It was instead to learn how to use The Passion as a religious tool, how to use it to convert people and how to plan for the film's release in just two weeks. For many Christian Americans, The Passion will soon no longer be just a film. It will be a religious experience.
For some, that experience will be a bitter one. Even before its release the film has stirred an intense debate in the country's many Christian churches, raising controversial issues that have dogged Church history for millennia. Some critics have labelled it anti-Semitic because they are disturbed by its brutal depiction of Christ's death at the hands of the Jewish authorities in first-century Jerusalem.
Others believe it may also prompt a re-examination by many Americans of Jesus's identity as a Jewish preacher and the complex relationship between Judaism and the birth of Christianity.
The Passion has been seized on by American Christians as the biggest marketing opportunity in their history. In Plano, Texas, one Baptist church has hired out an entire 20-screen cinema for the 25 February opening night. In Costa Mesa, California, local congregations have had their services cancelled on the opening weekend. Instead they will be taken to the cinema to see the film.
The Catholic League has already given away 3,000 discounted tickets. Christian marketing firms are preparing to distribute tens of millions of tracts, prayer cards, CDs and even door hangers, all bearing images or messages from the film. One Californian marketing firm, called Outreach, is coaching church leaders on how to blanket-buy cinema tickets for the film, organise mass viewings and distribute the film's literature around their neighbourhoods. Daniel Southern, the president of an evangelical firm, the American Tract Society, said the film is 'one of the greatest opportunities for evangelism in 2,000 years'.
But it does not stop there. A concentrated campaign of showing the film to carefully selected Christian audiences has produced the sort of 'buzz' that Hollywood executives would usually pay millions of dollars for. Gibson has staged screenings for at least 10,000 pastors and other Christian leaders over the past two months. At one screening, 300 Jesuit priests watched the film in California.
'I think it is going to be significant in the whole history of Christianity,' said Louis Giovino, a director at the Catholic League. Giovino has seen the film and said it struck him as so powerful that it could be used as a tool for conversion. 'It is definitely going to impact on people. It is the most powerful movie that I have ever seen. If I pray, I now use images from the film,' he said.
Even the film's critics accept that it is going to have a huge impact on Christians ac**** the world. 'More people will see this in the next three months than saw traditional Passion plays over the past 2,000 years,' said Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, which believes that the film could cause anti-Semitism.
Controversy has long dogged the film. It is Gibson's personal project and he has poured $25 million of his own fortune into making it. He also stunned Hollywood by deciding to make the film entirely in Aramaic and Latin, the authentic languages of the Middle East at the time of Christ. He even resisted the idea of using English subtitles, but later relented and has inserted them into the movie.
Gibson also drew the wrath of elements of the Vatican last month, after producers for the film claimed the Pope had hailed it with the phrase 'it is as it was' after a private viewing in Rome. Vatican officials later tried to backtrack from the comments, saying that the Pope never commented on art.
But the true controversy surrounding The Passion is the allegation that it blames Jewish people for killing Christ. Historically many anti-Semites have used this 'blood guilt' argument as a justification for attacks on Jews.
'We have a problem here. Already one quarter of Americans believe Jews killed Jesus, and that's before this movie comes out,' said Foxman, who secretly attended a Christian screening of the film in Florida.
The Passion follows a literal interpretation of the Gospels. It depicts their betrayal of Jesus by the Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob. 'The Jews and a group of sadistic Roman soldiers are the only ones portrayed as evil. The Jews make bloodthirsty calls for Jesus's death on a continuous basis,' Foxman said.
Gibson is a follower of an obscure ultra-traditionalist Catholic sect that rejects many recent reforms of the Catholic Church, does not recognise the current Pope and still conducts Mass in Latin. Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, also stoked up problems when he told one interviewer that the Vatican reforms of the 1960s had been a 'Masonic plot backed by the Jews'.
Gibson has vehemently denied any anti-Semitism in the film, saying that it is a faithful interpretation of scripture. But he raised eyebrows when he claimed that he witnessed agnostics and Muslims on the movie set convert to Christianity during production. He has also warned of a 'dark force' that tried to interrupt screenings and told how actor Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus, was struck by lightning during filming.
In a bid to defuse some of the tension around the film's release, Gibson last week wrote to the Anti-Defamation League after reportedly deleting a key scene in which a priest calls down an eternal curse on the Jews. 'You are a man of integrity and a man of faith and I do not take your concerns lightly... all who ever breathe life on this Earth are children of God and my most binding obligation to them, as a brother in this waking world, is to love them,' Gibson wrote.
However, Gibson did not address any of Foxman's specific questions about the film. Foxman has now written back to Gibson asking that he include a 'post-script' in the film that will ask its viewers not to come away with anti-Semitic feelings. 'Your words do not mitigate our concerns about the potential consequences of your film... How will the film be viewed by others? Could the images of your film be used by those who are disposed toward hatred to harden their hearts?'
Foxman is still convinced that the film will play into a rise in anti-Semitic attacks ac**** the world, though he accepts that Gibson himself is not at all anti-Semitic. 'He has a very strong belief. But it is others we are worried about. We just fear that people will come away from watching this and blame the Jews,' he said.
But many Christians dismiss Foxman's concerns. 'Anything like this is going to get resistance. But it is ridiculous. I have seen the movie too, and I did not see any hatred of the Jews,' said Giovino.
One thing is certain though: the hype surrounding the film is going to ensure a box-office smash. Experts predict Gibson will recoup his $25m investment on the opening weekend alone.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1143458,00.html
Comment
Alton Raines
2-9-04
Here's how ridiculous this is. We're talking about a people whose most sacred holy text is little more than a perpetual indictiment of their own national sins for over 5000 years! Now suddenly Jews don't want to face up to their history? Anyone who knows the Old Testament knows that it is literally jam packed with Israel's historic sins and lamentations for sins. Maybe it's just a little too much to own up to having, as Peter (a Jew) put it to the people of Israel, "you...who...murdered the Lord of Life"?! Yeah, it's not a nice thing to nail God incarnate to a c**** in order to hang on to some land and money. But that's what they did. That's what they have to face. Pilate was wanting to let Jesus go, according to the records. He had no desire to put him to death. He offered the people a choice, and they chose Barabbas, a known murderer, over Jesus, "who did no wrong." And it wasn't just the high priests in on the conspiracy against the Lord, Pilate asked the people, "Who do you want? Who shall I release? Who will be crucified?" It was the PEOPLE who cried out for Barabbas, and when asked of Jesus they cried out "Crucify him!"
This is what they did. This is what they must face. This is the truth. This is reality. Now, anyone who dares to speak the truth of the matter is going to be labeled an anti-semite. Well, then so be it! Anti-semite it is. Better an anti-semite than one who would obscure the truth! I don't have an anti-jewish bone in my body, but truth is more important than "ecummenical harmony." Screw that. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." He wasn't known for being verbose!
Who Killed Christ?
Newsweek says we can't rely on the New Testament for the answer
By Michael A. Hoffman II
Copyright 2004 revisionisthistory.org
The following excerpts from the Feb. 16, 2004 Newsweek magazine cover story, "Who Killed Christ?" were chosen to reveal the core of Newsweek's prevarication and mendacity. To read the window-dressing intended to make the lies palatable examine the article in its entirety at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4212741/
Note that Newsweek does not deal with David Klinghoffer's assertions in the Los Angeles Times (Jan. 1, 2004) that the Talmud itself upholds the accuracy of Gibson's film.
Newsweek proclaims that the New Testament is not always "a faithful record of historical events." In that case, what is? Why not debate the relative merits of the various sources, both Biblical and non-Biblical, rather than merely derogating the Christian account, while upholding the supposed omniscience of a "history" that is never adequately sourced, except for vague references to skimpy citations by Tacitus and Philo and allusions to Josephus that do not bear scrutiny? Newsweek claims veracity for any pro-Pharisee version of history and shoots holes in ancient Christian accounts because the Newsweek article is an exercize in public relations for Judaism, not objective scholarship.
Newsweek mocks the Evangelist Matthew's depiction of a vengeful Jewish mob: "...consider the source of the dialogue: a partisan Gospel writer." In the eyes of Newsweek, anything in the Gospel that points to the complicity of the religious leadership of the Jews in the death of Christ is suspect, "partisan."
In instances where Newsweek imagines the New Testament can be used to blunt criticism of Judaism, however, the New Testament account is upheld and we are cautioned against "misreading it." But in those instances where the New Testament is unambiguous in assigning guilt for Christ's death to the majority of the Jews of His day, then Newsweek advises us to discount the New Testament. What hypocrisy!
Newsweek deviously pretends that when Christ said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," He was referring to the Pharisees. Actually the Church has always taught that the cosmic crime of the Pharisees is that they knew precisely who Jesus was and demanded his execution in spite of that knowledge. Christ was begging forgiveness for the Roman soldiers, who surely had no idea who the "King of the Jews" was.
Newsweek insists on the absolute villainy and culpability of the Romans. This is a fixed dogma with Newsweek. This fallacy has been a mainstay of Judaic propaganda about the crucifixion and Newsweek is careful to toe the party line. And yet what does Newsweek have to say about the fact that the Roman army acted as God's avenging troops when it destroyed the Temple in AD 70 and smashed the corrupt rule of the Pharisees over Jerusalem? What of the Roman centurion, about whom Jesus said he could not find greater faith in all of Israel?
Even the rabbis' Talmud affirms that Christ was given a trial (rather than being summarily executed by the Pharisees themselves), only because he had found favor with the (Roman) authorities. This important corroborative datum is excluded from the Newsweek article.
At the conclusion of the Newsweek essay, the pedantic author explains with painstaking didactism how Gibson might have "avoided this firestorm." Newsweek advises that Mel should have simply made a bland, politically-correct, toadying film in accordance with guidelines issued by the modern Catholic Church, which "suggest dropping scenes of large, chanting Jewish crowds and avoiding the device of a Sanhedrin trial." In other words, Mel should have engaged in self-censorship in order to appease commissars like Abe Foxman and gain favorable notice in rags like Newsweek.
Newsweek sees nothing ironic in counseling an artist to avoid controversy by submitting his work to history-by-committee-of-Philistines. Even though Newsweek in the past has consistently defended the most outrageously blasphemous and pornographic books, films and other anti-Establishment "works of art" on the lofty basis of the "prerogative of the artist," all of that radical defiance is suspended when the artist is Mel Gibson and the Establishment being defied is Jewish. Newsweek's message to Gibson is that he would be wise to domesticate his vision and dumb down his movie until it constitutes pabulum. That was not Newsweek's message to Martin Scorcese when the latter deeply offended Christians with his film, "The Last Temptation of Christ."
Perhaps the true significance of the Newsweek cover story is in the degree to which Gibson's movie has frightened the Establishment, hence the massive media damage-control that runs the risk of overkill and blowback -- winning sympathy for the beseiged Gibson and generating millions of dollars worth of free publicity for his film, which debuts Feb. 25.
NEWSWEEK, "Who Killed Christ?" Feb. 16 cover story
"...the Bible can be a problematic source. Though countless believers take it as the immutable word of God, Scripture is not always a faithful record of historical events; the Bible is the product of human authors who were writing in particular times and places with particular points to make and visions to advance. And the roots of Christian anti-Semitism lie in overly literal readings which are, in fact, misreadings of many New Testament texts...
"...two NEWSWEEK screenings of a rough cut of the movie raise important historical issues about how Gibson chose to portray the Jewish people and the Romans. To take the film's account of the Passion literally will give most audiences a misleading picture of what probably happened in those epochal hours so long ago. The Jewish priests and their followers are the villains, demanding the death of Jesus again and again; Pilate is a malleable governor forced into handing down the death sentence...Pilate was not the humane figure Gibson depicts...
"So why was the Gospel story-- the story Gibson has drawn on --told in a way that makes 'the Jews' look worse than the Romans? The Bible did not descend from heaven fully formed and edged in gilt. The writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John shaped their narratives several decades after Jesus' death to attract converts and make their young religion understood by many Christians to be a faction of Judaism attractive to as broad an audience as possible.
"...we can begin to understand the origins of the unflattering Gospel image of the Temple establishment...the writers downplayed the role of the ruling Romans in Jesus' death. The advocates of Christianity -- then a new, struggling faith -- understandably chose to placate, not antagonize, the powers that were. Why remind the world that the earthly empire which still ran the Mediterranean had executed your hero as a revolutionary?
"...In the memorable if manufactured crowd scene in the version of the movie screened by NEWSWEEK, Gibson included a line that has had dire consequences for the Jewish people through the ages. The prefect is again improbably resisting the crowd, the picture of a just ruler. Frustrated, desperate, bloodthirsty, the mob says: 'His blood be on us and on our children!' Gibson ultimately cut the cry from the film, and he was right to do so. Again, consider the source of the dialogue: a partisan Gospel writer. The Gospels were composed to present Jesus in the best possible light to potential converts in the Roman Empire and to put the Temple leadership in the worst possible light.
"...A moment later in Gibson's movie, Pilate is questioning Jesus and, facing a silent prisoner, says, 'You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?' Jesus then replies: '... he who delivered me to you has the greater sin.' The 'he' in this case is Caiaphas. John's point in putting this line in Jesus' mouth is almost certainly to take a gibe at the Temple elite. But in the dramatic milieu of the movie, it can be taken to mean that the Jews, through Caiaphas, are more responsible for Jesus' death than the Romans arean implication unsupported by history...
"The Roman soldiers who torture Jesus and bully him toward Golgotha are portrayed as evil, taunting and vicious, and they almost certainly were. ..After Jesus, carrying his c****, sees the faces of the priests, he is shown saying: 'No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.' Is this intended to absolve the priests? Perhaps. From the c****, Jesus says: 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
"...Are the gospels themselves anti-Semitic?...they are polemics, written by followers of a certain sect who disdained other factions... Without understanding the milieu in which the texts were composed, we can easily misinterpret them. The tragic history of the persecution of the Jewish people since the Passion clearly shows what can go wrong when the Gospels are not read with care...
"The justification for anti-Semitism was articulated by Pope Innocent III, who reigned in the early years of the 13th century: 'the blasphemers of the Christian name,' he said, should be 'forced into the servitude of which they made themselves deserving when they raised their sacrilegious hands against Him who had come to confer true liberty upon them, thus calling down His blood upon themselves and their children.' After the horror of Hitler's Final Solution, the Roman Church began to reassess its relationship with the Jewish people...
"Was there any way for him (Gibson) to have made a movie about the Passion and avoided this firestorm? There was. There are a number of existing Catholic pastoral instructions detailing the ways in which the faithful should dramatize or discuss the Passion. 'To attempt to utilize the four passion narratives literally by picking one passage from one gospel and the next from another gospel, and so forth,' reads one such instruction, 'is to risk violating the integrity of the texts themselves... it is not sufficient for the producers of passion dramatizations to respond to responsible criticism simply by appealing to the notion that 'it's in the Bible'.
"The church also urges 'the greatest caution' when 'it is a question of passages that seem to show the Jewish people as such in an unfavorable light.' The teachings suggest dropping scenes of large, chanting Jewish crowds and avoiding the device of a Sanhedrin trial. They also note that there is evidence Pilate was not a 'vacillating administrator'...The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, NEWSWEEK has learned, is publishing these teachings in book form to coincide with the release of Gibson's movie...
"...Bluntly put, Jesus had to die for the Christian story to unfold, and the proper Christian posture toward the Jewish people should be one of respect, for the man Christians choose to see as their savior came from the ancient tribe of Judah, the very name from which 'Jew' is derived..."
http://www.rense.com/general48/who.htm
