The Passion of Christ

[Guest guest]

I received this by email titled "Copied from a Hindu American website debating Mel's 'masterpiece'". So I came to the site to verify the reference, that it did indeed come from this site (you can't believe everything you read on the internet). And I found it, and I read pages and pages of debate about 'The Passion of the Christ'. But I don't understand what this particular posting is trying to say. It seems to be from an Arab debating not Mel's movie but the middle east crisis and who are the rightful owners of the land.

 

Any comments or insights?

[Guest guest]

An ignorant idiot says:

atheists have no intellectual honesty to speak of. If they did they would refer to themselves as agnostics. But instead they boldly claim they know the truth and that truth is there is no God. As if they have analyzed everything and come to the final conclusive truth. Such arogant minds.

 

What pathetic .. It is theists who are arrogant prats, claiming to know for certain there is a god. Go read up about Occam's razor, illiterate jerk.

[Guest guest]

Say: many historians realize that the jewish numbers on holocaust do not add up.

 

Illiterate Nazi bilge.

[gHari]

I consider anyone who has not read the Bhagavad-gita to be illiterate.

 

To accept Occam's Razor as a universal law is certainly presumptuous; hasty induction at best, laziness at worst.

 

To discount the correlating direct evidence provided by realized souls throughout the ages regarding God's transcendental reality, that is simply irrational, accepting our existence and existence itself as something trivial mechanical mundane (in order to fit it into our tiny brains). Not knowing the lives and pronouncements of these saints is true illiteracy.

 

[krsna]

Python film to challenge Passion

 

 

Monty Python said The Life of Brian spoofed Bible films and intolerance

Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ.

The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.

 

Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson's blockbuster with the lines "Mel or Monty?", "The Passion or the Python?"

 

Distributor Rainbow said it hoped the film would "serve as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel's movie".

 

The Life of Brian follows a Jewish character from Nazareth who is worshipped as the Messiah then crucified by Romans.

 

We decided this is an important time to re-release this film

 

Henry Jaglom

Rainbow Film Company

 

 

Can religion and films mix?

It was condemned as blasphemous before its original release, although Monty Python said it was intended as a spoof on Bible films and intolerance rather than Christianity.

 

The film could not be completed until former Beatle George Harrison stepped in to finance it after EMI Films withdrew, fearing it was too controversial.

 

Rainbow president Henry Jaglom said: "We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion."

 

He said the surviving members of the Monty Python comedy team "all agreed this was a good time" to bring back the film and would help promote it.

 

Mr Jaglom, whose partner John Goldstone produced the original film, said trailers for the comedy would start to appear in cinemas on Good Friday.

 

 

[stonehearted]

I actually have my VHS copy out to use as an antidote in case I decide to see Gibson's flick.

[mahak]

Refreshing news. The UFO scene is really surreal, highly recommended film by this writer.

 

Hare Krsna, ys, mahaksadasa

 

PS About George, in the cartoon, yellow submarine, there are two moments that always send chills down my spine and even tears in my eyes. Its when George enters the movie and the last song, especially the wonderful guitar playin on "It's All Too Much".

[krsna]

Christ, you know it ain't easy

 

Lurid, sadistic and anti-semitic, Mel Gibson's film has performed box-office miracles in the US, but Joe Queenan is one Catholic who wasn't converted

 

Saturday March 27, 2004

The Guardian

 

 

The Passion of the Christ: an anti-semitic orgy of almost uninterrupted violence

Traditional screenplay format dictates that the audience be introduced to the central theme of a film during its first 10 minutes. Very much a traditionalist, Mel Gibson quickly introduces the theme of The Passion Of The Christ - those nasty Jews killed My Sweet Lord - then settles into the trademark mayhem that made Braveheart and The Patriot so appealing to fans of disembowellings, impalings, beheadings and general depravity.

 

But this time, Gibson has outdone himself. When I was visiting Edinburgh two years ago, several friends complained that Gibson had short-changed carnage buffs in Braveheart by pussyfooting around the issue of William Wallace's public castration. Duly chastened, the director has concocted a film so festive in its lurid, graphic, semi-pornographic, homoerotic violence that not even the most bloodthirsty film-goer could complain about failing to get his money's worth. If you're a male flagellation buff out for a night on the town with a girlfriend who hates Jerry Seinfeld and the rest

of the children of Israel, I honestly can't think of a better date flick.

 

A devout Catholic - the three scariest words any Jew is ever likely to hear - Gibson has based his film on the accounts of Christ's demise supplied by the Gospels. In his mind, this apparently provides the film with a sort of historical pedigree. Less devout Catholics like me recognise that the four Gospels are documents of dubious accuracy whose message falls directly into the yawning chasm between myth and propaganda. We do not know who wrote them, we do not know when they were written, they are certainly not eyewitness accounts, but we can be fairly certain that they are the work of harried Christians who were less concerned about offending powerless Jews than powerful Romans.

 

For whatever the reason - and it is not hard to guess the true motivating factor here - Gibson has accepted the hateful notion that the Jews and the Jews alone wanted Jesus dead, and that the Romans were somehow hoodwinked into carrying out his execution. To its credit, the Catholic Church itself has gone out of its way in the wake of the Holocaust to declare this loathsome version of events morally anathema. To his discredit, Gibson has chosen to reopen the same old wounds by portraying the Jews as bestial Christ-killers. If you think The Passion Of The Christ is a huge money-maker now, imagine the opening night take in Berlin and Munich had it been filmed 60 or 70 years earlier.

 

The film itself is an orgy of almost uninterrupted violence. After the Jewish powers-that-be have used their cunning wiles to intimidate Pontius Pilate into condemning the Messiah, Jesus is beaten with implements that tear the flesh from every portion of his anatomy. His skin is ripped to shreds. His eye is smashed shut. His head is crowned with thorns. His left arm is ripped from the socket to facilitate his Crucifixion. Seemingly, Gibson wished to convey the sense that Christ's execution was no day at the beach, perhaps objecting to the demure depictions of his torment in the 14 Stations of the Cross that adorn virtually every Catholic church on the planet. It was, of course, the inhuman treatment of this one Jew that led to the even more inhuman treatment of six million Jews by a Christian people during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was no day at the beach either.

 

Devout Christians may object to the flippant tone I have adopted here, but anti-semitism as spectacular as Gibson's does not deserve to be treated with anything but contempt. Though a few Jews in the film seem to object to Christ's martyrdom, the high priests and most of the spectators lining the road to Calvary seem to thoroughly enjoy the spectacle, and a good time is had by all. And while the Roman executioners are presented as sadistic cretins, the film's unmistakable message is that Pontius Pilate and the boys were merely tools of the Jews, that without the manipulation of the high priests and the enthusiastic mob, they would have merely dished out a good thrashing and sent the Messiah on his way. But the Jews were out for blood.

 

Any doubts about the director's medieval world-view evaporate when Satan is seen strolling among the high priests, who have turned out in their Sunday best to watch Jesus being ripped to shreds. Gibson depicts the Prince of Darkness as a mysterious chrome-dome who looks a bit like the sinister maître d's employed in many fine dining establishments. It will be interesting to see if this is how Satan actually looks should Gibson ever meet him personally. Perhaps he already has.

 

Technically speaking, the film is well filmed but monotonous. The violence is so nauseating and repetitive that it is actually a relief when Christ is finally nailed to the cross, as the viewer knows that the ordeal will soon be over, and the nails make a refreshing change from the whips, canes and truncheons. Filmed in the very finest biblical languages, the screenplay is predictably terse, supported by a reliable faux-exotic soundtrack, with roll-the-eyes acting right out of silent films. As Christ the sacred stud, Jim Caviezel doesn't have much to do except say "Ouch" in Aramaic. As the Virgin Mary, Maia Morgenstern doesn't have much to do except look depressed. As the assorted Jews, the rest of the cast doesn't have much to do except look evil.

 

It is well-known that Gibson's father Hutton is a Holocaust denier who recently wisecracked that most of the Jews allegedly murdered by the Germans had merely relocated to the Bronx. Gibson fils has said that nothing will ever drive a wedge between him and Pops; judging from The Passion Of The Christ, he needn't worry on that score. As Dad might put it: This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Any Jew-hater would be.

 

[krsna]

Christian scholar questions Gibson's depiction of Jesus

Theology taken from nun's meditations

 

Passion is dangerous, sadistic, expert says

 

 

RON CSILLAG

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

 

For such a solemn, serious scholar, John Dominic Crossan sure is animated — and peeved. He can barely stop fidgeting, rolling his eyes, sighing, and shaking his head in that exasperated way a teacher might reserve for a student who just doesn't get it.

 

Try as the interviewer might to steer the conversation into other areas, the professor emeritus of religious studies at Chicago's DePaul University, charter member of the Jesus Seminar and one of the world's most renowned experts on the founder of Christianity, can't resist returning to the errant student.

 

Clearly, Mel Gibson gets an F — and a bloody thumbs down.

 

"This is the most savage movie I have ever seen. I've never seen anything like it. It is two hours of unrelenting brutality." That was Crossan's reaction immediately after viewing Gibson's cinematic firestorm, The Passion Of The Christ, in January in Orlando, Fla. along with more than 5,000 evangelical Christian pastors.

 

"They all knelt and prayed afterwards," he said in an interview while attending the recent annual meeting in Niagara Falls, Ont., of the SnowStar Institute, dedicated to advancing religious literacy and tolerance. "I wanted to pray too, (but) not the same prayer."

 

The plea to God Crossan had in mind was for a single conservative Christian "to come out and say, `and what did you think of God? The God who came up with this monstrous plan — what did you think about that?'

 

"I have said that if this is the way God is, this punishing God who takes it out on Jesus instead of us, then we should not worship that God. We're dealing with a savage God and we are in really serious trouble if that's what God is like."

 

Crossan isn't done with his question: "Is your God a punishing God who demands punishment for sin but, who instead of taking it out on us, takes it out on his own beloved son?

 

"I'm waiting for some strong evangelical with a conscience to say, `Wait a minute. This is not our Jesus. This is not our God.'"

 

Now 70, Crossan has written 20 books in the past 30 years on the historical Jesus, four of which have become national religious bestsellers, including The Historical Jesus: The Life Of A Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991) and Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994). The Irish born, one-time Roman Catholic priest is also a former co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, a controversial group of theologians and scholars that meets twice a year to debate the Jesus of history — mainly what he said, could have said, and definitely didn't say.

 

Crossan is certain about this: Gibson's Jesus looks nothing like the Jesus Crossan has come to know. Devoid of Christ's ministry, it's "like telling the story of Martin Luther King by focusing on him getting hit by the bullet."

 

But Crossan is aware of the movie's intent. He knows Gibson's title says it all.

 

"He said he's not interested in (Jesus') ministry and resurrection, but his sacrifice. But (Gibson) has gone from sacrifice to suffering, and from suffering to sadism. What he's decided to do, and what every passion play does, is to take the four Gospels and reduce them to one. Then you take what each of them does and reduce that to (Jesus') death.

 

"Then you reduce death to passion, which means to suffer. He shows the last hours (in Jesus' life) as suffering, and I think at that point, it becomes sadism because all that shows you is people thoroughly enjoying beating Jesus to a bloody pulp.

 

"I'm sure the Crucifixion was horrible," Crossan goes on. "I'm sure the scourging was horrible. I think rape is also horrible but I don't think we should dramatize it or show it in detail. It would be pornography."

 

 

--

It's a `huge irony that all these conservative Christians are awestruck over a movie that is based on an extremely conservative Roman Catholic nun's meditations'

--

 

 

As disturbing as he found the violence in The Passion, Crossan says he was more shocked by the vivid display of Gibson's personal theology, which is pinched not so much from the New Testament as another source: the often lurid meditations of Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, an Augustinian nun, mystic, visionary, and, some say, prophet who lived from 1774 to 1824.

 

"The movie is 5 per cent from the Gospels, 80 per cent from Anne Catherine Emmerich and the rest from Gibson. If she was copyrighted, he'd be sued, or she would get a major screenwriting credit," Crossan says with a chuckle.

 

But he becomes very earnest when he says he finds it a "huge irony that all these conservative Christians are awestruck over a movie that is based on an extremely conservative Roman Catholic nun's meditations," and not on the very scriptures they hold as inerrant.

 

As for the charge that the movie will fan anti-Semitism, and may already have, Crossan says every Christian "should bend over backward" to be sensitive to Jewish concerns, "since you know what has happened out of these stories. Don't just be politically correct, but be terribly careful. You're dealing with dynamite."

 

But Gibson has dropped the explosives, Crossan feels, and that could leave a large blast radius.

 

The theologian has used the phrase widely: The director has shown "depraved indifference" to how the movie will be received in the Muslim world, where Jesus is regarded as a great prophet, and in Europe, where anti-Semitism is again not only fashionable but almost de rigueur.

 

"I think it will be a disaster," Crossan says. "I think these images will get into peoples' minds, especially the crowds (the one that calls for Jesus' blood; huge in the film but which Crossan believes really numbered no more than a dozen) and a devil figure. These are the most ghastly images and these are going to be in people's minds."

 

Ultimately, what the film will convey to foreign markets is that "there are Jews who are bad and there are ex-Jews, called Christians, who are good."

 

Crossan's trademark is speaking his mind, whether it's about Gibson's film or the Bible itself. He's posited that even the traditional understanding of the Gospels as historical fact is not only wrong but dangerous.

 

The last chapters of the Gospels and the first chapters of Acts, taken literally, "trivialize Christianity and brutalize Judaism," he's written. That has created in Christianity "a lethal deceit that sours its soul, hardens its heart, and savages its spirit."

 

Gibson's movie, like Oliver Stone's JFK, has the potential to mix myth, faith and history — and present it as fact, much like Christianity itself, "which often asserts that its faith is based on fact not interpretation, history not myth, actual event not supreme fiction. I find that assertion internally corrosive and externally offensive."

 

As a Christian, Crossan feels he has a duty to show why some people wanted to worship Jesus but others wanted to execute him. Which brings him to the present day: If Jesus were to return tomorrow, "he would be eliminated with extreme prejudice as soon as possible. The only question would be how.

 

"Assassination would be likely. We would eradicate him because he would threaten the deepest norms of civilization, which I summarize as: `I want to keep mine and take yours.' Jesus said that is not the rule of God. That is not just.

 

"You should come out of that movie saying, 'I think I've got it. We would do the same.'"

 

The Passion will force a lot of people to think about Jesus, Crossan concedes, "but I would never have wanted it to happen this way."

[krsna]

The Passion of the Christ

 

 

March 5, 2004

 

I finally went and saw it last night.

 

Because mine is a marketing and publicity website, a brief comment about that before we move on: The opposition to this movie, and the public accusations against it, guaranteed its success.

 

You see, when people are told that they should not go to a movie, or should not read a book because it's “bad,” people will automatically go to it. The exact same thing happened 15 years ago when Martin Scorsese produced his film The Last Temptation of Christ. Christians were angry at his perversion of the story, and their outrage made an ordinary movie producer's name a household word.

 

The Passion movie has sparked a debate about anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson, Gibson's particular sect of Catholicism, and the extreme violence that it depicts. That's what everyone's arguing about out on all the TV shows and websites.

 

For me, however, The Passion of the Christ was not about Mel Gibson. It was not about the Jews. Or the Romans. Or the politics of first-century Palestine .

 

It's about what happens when man meets God, but doesn't recognize him.

 

Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me.” Meaning that however we treat the poor, the sick, the weak, the homeless, the orphans, the fatherless, those in prison – however we treat them, is how we have chosen to treat God.

 

So here's the plot: God comes to live among us, but as an ordinary man. A man whose teachings and actions cut straight to the bone. A man whose principles threaten to topple the status quo. A man who does not retaliate, because he has made a decision to not fight back.

 

Those with political power hate him. Men who claim to represent God and do not, accuse him of being a devil and a God-hater. Because they lack legal authority, they join forces with the State.

 

In order to keep the peace, Pilate, the State Administrator, obscenely inverts justice, setting a guilty man free and sentencing an innocent man to death. Then he washes his hands of the whole deal. (Is Pilate any different from any other politician in public office?)

 

So why does this happen?

 

Because man likes his religion – but he hates God.

 

Man's hatred is poured out on the innocent, in all its ugly fury.

 

This film spares no details in depicting their vile hatred. And as I'm watching these men mercilessly beat Jesus, my mind flashes back to a scene in my own life.

 

It's the spring of 1982. I'm in 7th grade. I hang out with three other guys at school most of the time, and one of them is my locker mate, a guy named Jeremy.

 

The four of us would eat lunch together every day, but Jeremy was annoying. Gradually we began to dislike Jeremy. We declared that Jeremy was a ‘fag.' And one day when Jeremy was absent, the three of us decided that we didn't want Jeremy to eat lunch with us anymore.

 

After school, we told Jeremy we were going to beat him up – three on one. Jeremy turned and started to run. I remember his palpable fear and his hot tears. He ran fast. We chased him down the street for three or four blocks.

 

We finally gave up and he got away.

 

Had we caught him, in all honesty, we probably would have beaten him up.

 

Well, we got what we wanted: Jeremy never tried to eat lunch with us again. Nor did Jeremy keep his stuff in our locker after that.

 

So I'm watching these thugs deriving great pleasure from torturing an innocent man, and this picture of chasing Jeremy down the street in 7th grade, which I hadn't thought of in years, suddenly appears in my mind's eye. And a voice inside my head: This movie isn't about the Jews killing Jesus, Perry. This movie is about YOU. This is YOU beating up Jesus, just like you tried to beat up Jeremy.

 

The only difference between Jesus and Jeremy was that Jesus didn't run away.

 

“Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.”

 

On Ash Wednesday, the day the Passion movie opened, I put up a website http://Passion.InCrisis.Info and started asking people's opinions about it. I got thousands of responses.

 

Now that project is a whole story in and of itself, but nearly all of the comments I have received express one of the two following sentiments:

 

“This is the most powerful movie I have ever seen, because I suddenly realize that I did this to Jesus, and that Jesus willingly died for my sin.”

“Why do we need a movie like this? There's no need to dredge this up, and besides, none of it ever really happened anyway. This film is just a bloodthirsty depiction of senseless violence, and it's only going to breed more violence. It's preposterous!”

I have not spoken to a single person who felt neutral about this movie. It is intensely polarizing.

 

The cross: A picture of suffering and injustice. Isn't it interesting that the cross, in all its ugliness and terror, is the universal symbol of Christianity? Isn't that a strange way to “brand” your cause or movement? As logos go, isn't it a little bit lacking in aesthetic appeal?

 

Sure is. But what does it mean?

 

It means that Jesus is brother to every person who has suffered injustice. It means that he stood in the place of every person who has lived in terror and oppression and slavery. It means that while we grapple life's great questions – why is there evil, why is there suffering, why is there so much pain in the world – instead of writing some kind of “answer” to these questions for us on a chalkboard (as though that would help), God instead came and lived among us, suffered with us, and died for us and with us.

 

Next to Jesus are two criminals.

 

One says to Jesus “Hey, if you're the Son of God, why don't you save yourself – and us too! ”

 

That criminal got himself on that cross by his own doing. But is he accepting responsibility for his actions?

 

No.

 

He's just blaming God for all his problems.

 

But what about the other guy?

 

At first he joins in with the first guy, but then he stops. He says “We deserve this, because of what we've done. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

 

Then he says to Jesus: “Please remember me in your kingdom.”

 

Jesus reply: “Today you'll be with me in Paradise.”

 

Those two criminals are a snapshot of the entire world. We've all done wrong, to someone. And now we can either blame God for our problems, or accept responsibility for the mess we're in and ask God to be merciful.

 

Ultimately, everyone responds to God either one way – or the other.

 

This movie is a mirror. It shows us the unattractive truth of our human condition. And it certainly reminded me that I've committed more than my share of wrongs. If anybody knows a guy named Jeremy who was a 7th grader at Pound Junior High School in Lincoln Nebraska in 1982, pass this along to him, because I owe him a humble apology. What I did to you was wrong, Jeremy.

 

Jesus' teachings were radical and scandalous. He claimed to be the Son of God. He said he would rise from the dead, and by most historical accounts, he did. He stepped into the world and split time in half: BC and AD. And his words still resonate throughout the earth in 2004.

 

Still rolls the stone from the grave.

 

I hope you'll go see this movie. And I hope you'll look beyond the surface-level debate, to the deeper meaning – and ponder the implications it has for me and you.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Perry Marshall

[Bhakta Don Muntean]

Here is what Prabhupada might say with respect to this movie:

 

"...Yesterday Janardana took me to a nice church...a very nice wooden structural workmanship with colorful figures and windows, decorated with nicely painted pictures about the Crucifixion of Lord Jesus Christ. Everything [about that] was grotesque. Generally the...religion depends on this Crucifixion incident in the life of Lord Jesus Christ, but I think depiction of this incident simply stimulates the tensions of difference of opinion, and difference of religious principles, between the Jews and the Christians..." [Letter dated July 07, 1968]

[Guest guest]

the soul is never slain

not in a jillion years ..oh well