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| The Passion of Mel By Antonio C. Abaya March 24, 2004 My �globalized� DVD copy of Mel Gibson�s �The Passion of the Christ� is only a �clear copy�, in the language of the trade, not a digital transfer from a digital original. Meaning, someone just video-ed it inside a movie house somewhere, which is why you sometimes see silhouettes of people moving across the screen as they navigate their way in the dark to or from their seats. In addition, my globalized DVD copy lacks the last few seconds or minutes of the film. Its last frame is that of Jesus of Nazareth inside his final resting place, liberated from his tomb and apparently alive, then all is engulfed in a sudden, anti-climactic eternal darkness. Surely the film�s real ending was more dramatic than that. But, never mind. No film in living memory has been written about by so many serious writers who are not professional film critics, that it has become a runaway hit at the box office. Not bad for a Hollywood film spoken entirely in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin. Millions of American film goers in the cornball heartland, who are known to shy away from any film that requires them to read subtitles, have flocked to this one in droves, and many of them are said to have wept and sobbed as the drama of the Passion unfolded before their eyes. What has Mel Gibson wrought? Nothing less than The Greatest Blood-and-Gore Story Ever Told. The violence is truly phenomenal and the blood splatters generously all over the screen. Especially in the flogging scene, when Jesus is manhandled by two burly Roman guards who whip him with supple twigs to within a centimeter of his life. An innocent non-Christian viewer of The Passion may well ask himself if he has somehow unknowingly wandered into a sado-masochistic cult film, such is the physical violence given prominence by Gibson. I do not know how this will play in pacifist Sweden. As recently as twenty years ago, and perhaps up to now, Sweden had film censors who were very liberal with sex scenes but who were very uptight about scenes of violence. Violence on women, children and animals were strictly forbidden. Violence on or between men � such as prolonged fistfights, which Hollywood does so well � were legally limited to x-seconds or x-minutes, and the censors viewed such films armed with stopwatches to make sure those limits were observed. Mel�s Passion definitely breaks those limits 30 minutes into the film and onwards almost to the end. The question has to be asked: Why? Not being a Biblical scholar, I reread parts of the four Gospels to see how the Evangelists themselves treated the flogging scene, and I was surprised at how perfunctorily they had written about it. Matthew: �(The Roman guards) spat upon him and took the reed (from Jesus� hand) and kept striking him on the head.� (Ch 27, xxx). Mark: �They began to salute him with �Hail, King of the Jews!� and kept striking his head with a reed and spitting upon him�� (Ch 15, xix-xx). Luke: �Therefore, I (Pontius Pilate) shall have him flogged and then release him.� (Ch 23, xvii). John: �Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed him in a purple cloak and they came to him and said, �Hail, King of the Jews!� and they struck him repeatedly.� (Ch 19, i-iii). But in the Gospel According to Mel Gibson, the flogging of Jesus is a central focus, competing even with the crucifixion itself in cinematic emphasis. It is as if Gibson is saying that while the crucifixion and the subsequent lightning storm and earthquake opened the Gates of Heaven for Jesus and thus suggested his divinity, it was the flogging that underlined his humanity. And Gibson�s Jesus is struck not just on the head (as Matthew and Mark wrote), but all over his body. His back is lacerated and swollen with dozens of wounds, and so are both his legs and the soles of his feet. And the blows are interspersed with insulting remarks, some untranslated from the Latin, from the sadistic guards, and counted up, also untranslated from the Latin, for a diligent record-keeper: 32 lashes with supple twigs, 38 with leather and thongs, etc. Sado-masochism was never this graphic or detailed on film. One assumes that Gibson, a devout and conservative Roman Catholic from Australia, made The Passion to articulate a statement. And that statement could well be that in our modern, secular world, where murder and mayhem are a nightly and daily subject of TV entertainment � it is said that the average American child will have witnessed 33,000 murders and homicides on TV by the time he grows up to be an average American adult � even the most pious believers (except Mel and others like him) have become insensitive to and forgetful of the physical pain that Jesus suffered to save us from our sins. The Passion serves to remind the faithful of this lapse and, judging from the number of viewers who sob and weep during the film, Gibson has been phenomenally and single-handedly successful in reviving a more visceral appreciation of Jesus� pain and suffering. But he is preaching to the converted. A non-believer viewing The Passion would be appalled at the graphic violence, but he is not likely to make an emotional connection because he is not aware � or, if he is aware, he does not care - that Jesus (or anyone else), without asking his permission, suffered and died for his sins. The Passion is not a universal religious film like, say, The Seventh Seal, by Ingmar Bergman (1956), which captured in a 13th century Swedish setting man�s timeless and tireless search for God. Is it anti-Semitic? The Passion has been attacked as being so. I disagree. In the film, as in the Gospels, the Jews and their elders cry out for the crucifixion of Jesus for being a false Messiah, even as Pontius Pilate protests that he finds no crime (against Rome) in the accused. Yet it is the Romans who scourge and flog and mock Jesus � as graphically emphasized by the film, but not by the Gospels - and it is the Romans who crucify him, crucifixion being a Roman punishment for political crimes, not a Jewish punishment for blasphemy. And Jesus was not the only Jew to be crucified by the Romans. The exceptionally cruel Pilate is said to have ordered the crucifixion of 2,000 rebellious Jews in a single day and is credited with as many as 400,000 during his governorship of Judea (26 to 36 AD). It is highly unlikely, therefore, that the anti-Semitic Pilate needed any prodding from the Jewish elders to decide to crucify yet another Jew. Pilate did so because Jesus was perceived to be a security threat to Pax Romana, like the thousands of other Jews whom he had condemned to be crucified. And yet the bias has persisted through two millennia that the four Gospels are anti-Semitic, as are the Passion plays derived from them in medieval Europe, including the celebrated Oberammergau in Bavaria, the most Catholic part of Germany, which also gave birth to the Jew-hating Nazional Socialismus party of Adolf Hitler. This bias stems from the tendency of all four Gospels to absolve the Romans of any complicity in the death of Jesus. Pilate is portrayed as finding no crime (against Rome) in the Nazarene, and as untypically vacillating in his judgment of Jesus, who was just another trouble-making Jew to him. Matthew even writes that Pilate ritualistically washed his hands of the blood of Jesus (Ch 27, xxiv), a highly symbolic act memorialized through 1,900 years in the Lavabo portion of the Catholic Mass. That the three other Evangelists did not mention this incident has led to speculation that it was an unfactual embroidery deliberately inserted by whoever wrote the Matthew gospel to achieve the overall goal, which was to absolve the Romans of any responsibility for the death of Jesus. But why would the Evangelists go out of their way to do that? In a word, survival. The four Gospels were written over a period of 40 years, between 60 and 100 AD, during which the early Christians were an endangered minority in the Roman Empire. To blame the Romans for the death of Jesus would have planted the seeds of discord between the Christians and their Roman overlords and would have led to their early persecution and disappearance as a religious sect. (The actual persecution of the Christians did not start in earnest until 249 AD, under Emperor Decius, reached its peak under Emperor Diocletian in 284-305 AD, and stopped only with the signing of the Edict of Milan by Constantine and Licinius in 313.) So, if not the Romans, then who to blame for the death of Jesus but the Jews? Nobody liked them, anyway, not the Romans, not the non-Judaic Christians. Indeed, one of the endearing epithets hurled by Christians at the Jews for the past 1,900 years is �Christ killers!� which has resonated all the way to Auschwitz and beyond, historical facts notwithstanding. By graphically showing who it was that actually did the flogging, the kicking, the spitting, the mocking, the punching, the slapping, the crowning with thorns, the nailing, the spearing of the breast, and the crucifying � and who merely shouted �Crucify him!� � The Passion may actually soften 1,900 years of Jew-hating in the Christian world. If The Passion is anti-anything at all, it has to be anti-Roman and, by extension, anti-Italian. Will the Mafia now break Mel Gibson�s legs? ***** The bulk of this article appears in the April 03, 2004 issue of the Philippines Free Press magazine. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �The Passion of Mel� (Through the pilipinasforum egroup) Mr. Abaya... Mel Gibson is preaching to the "converted?" I think Mel Gibson is preaching to the "Nominals." Though you are right to say that he is not preaching to the unbeliever, but to the supposed believer - to people like us who claim to be followers of the Christ and yet act and think like we are not. To us who missed the point of calling ourselves Christians and yet have not lived up to it. This is to remind us that it should have been us flogged and nailed to the cross instead of Him. And to the unbeliever whom you said "but he is not likely to make an emotional connection because he is not aware - or, if he is aware, he does not care - that Jesus (or anyone else), without asking his permission, suffered and died for his sins." >>> this is precisely the essence of Gibson's message, how will such an unbeliever believe in the Christ we claim to follow when the unbeliever could not understand why? As for your claim that the Gospels are anti-Semitic and not anti-Romans because of the prevailing situation then, I will have to disagree. The Gospel and the whole Bible for that matter were written by the divine inspiration of God that if you trace the 66 books from Genesis to Revelation - you will see one common theme. The Gospels are not anti-Semitic, if you look back the Old Testament, they portray how far the chosen people of God had become so far with their God. Hence, they cannot be interpreted as independent of the whole Bible. The Gospels were not written for survival against the Romans. On the contrary, they were written because of the growing thrist of people to know more about the Christ. You were right that the Gospels were written around 60 to 100 AD, some 30 years after Jesus was crucified. With the Gospels were written around the same time were the epistles of Paul. In fact, the letter to the Romans was written while Paul was imprisoned in Caesaria in AD 57. That means the gospel has reached Rome in just a period of 25 years. Besides, the burning of Rome in AD 64 was blamed by Nero to the Christians - they were already being martyred then and not 249 AD as you claim. If the Passion is for anti-anything, it is for anti-nominalism... Blessings, Alvin Ang, [email protected] March 26, 2004 MY REPLY. True, the Christians were persecuted intermittently before 249 AD, just as the Jews were persecuted intermittently in local pogroms by various Christian communities throughout medieval Europe, from Spain to Germany to Russia., for being �Christ Killers!� But the systematic attempt to wipe out the Christians from the Roman Empire started only in 249 AD, under Emperor Decius, and reached its zenith under Emperor Diocletian (284-305), and did not formally stop until the Edict of Milan was signed by Constantine and Licinius in 313�.which can be likened to the Final Solution of the Jewish problem by the Nazis from 1942 to 1945, which was stopped only by their military defeat. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww amazing that one can write a long critique on the right or wrongness of a religious movie that has been STOLEN from the maker. do you not see the irony and wrongness of that kind of move???? Lucy Tantoco, [email protected] March 27, 2004 MY REPLY. Frankly, I don�t understand what you mean, so I do not know what to reply. Are you saying that Mel Gibson STOLE this movie from God? Or that this globalized DVD copy was STOLEN from Mel Gibson? If the latter, I do not see �the irony and wrongness of that kind of move� since I was not judging the �right or wrongness � of this religious movie. I was judging its merits as film and as historical document. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Thank you for this wonderfully written masterpiece. I would like to change the title to The Passion of Tony. Art Montesa, [email protected] March 27, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww ....in cases of controversies people tend to seek their own highest authorities if their minds cannot fully understand....I go with John Paul II's alleged remark about the film : " It is the way it was "......further people should be advised that this is not a German Moreno.."This is Entertainment " but a Gibson " Documentary"....whatever, thanks for your review......yr Tinine Bautista, [email protected] March 27, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww tony, this column is very well done. bravo. have a good day and i will let you know when we sit down again. cheers. Gil Santos, [email protected] March 27, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Tony: Your column on the film Passion Of The Christ was a true masterpiece. I have yet to see the movie, but I'm looking forward to watching it soon. Thanks for adding a new dimension to Mel Gibson's work. ~ Jimmy Pimentel, [email protected] March 30, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (Through the pilipinasforum egroup, in reply to Alving Ang above) --- alvin ang <[email protected]> wrote: > Mr. Abaya... > Mel Gibson is preaching to the "converted?" I think > Mel Gibson is preaching to the "Nominals." The Passion is a wake-up call for ALL even for Mel Gibson himself. He said, "I went to the wounds of Christ in order to cure my wounds." (Now that's full of irony for Protestants who went to watch the movie. More later.) > Though you are right to say that he is not preaching to the unbeliever, but to the >supposed believer - to people like us who claim to be followers of the Christ and yet act >and think like we are not. Supposed believer .... who claim to be followers of Christ? So, are these the "nominals" you are talking about? > To us who missed the point of calling ourselves Christians and yet have not lived up to >it. This is to remind us that it should have been us flogged and nailed to the cross > instead of Him. Mr. Ang, how then do we live up to be "Christians"? By remembering His "wounds" or going to Bali during Holy Week? Jesus said if we want to be his disciple, we should carry His cross and follow him. I believe He is asking us to do more than raising our hands to indicate we want to "become a Christian". The Bible says, Jesus wants us to become His disciples, not Christians. :-) > As for your claim that the Gospels are anti-Semitic and not anti-Romans because of the > prevailing situation then, I will have to disagree. Please read Acts 13:46-48 "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." Still, I do not believe the Bible is anti-Judaism. Religious anti-Semitism was furthered by Christian preachers in the Middle Ages because Jews chose to follow a faith that they actually knew is false out of "desire to offend God". (OTOH, racial anti-Semitism considers Jews or Semites as inferior to Aryans, or Indo-Europeans.) Does the movie The Passion tend to project anti-Semitism? Two actual scenes not written in the gospels: 1.Little Jewish boys throw rocks at Judas. The Jewish boys turn into devils. 2. A temple priest and the temple guards beat Jesus so badly he could have died there, put a sack to cover his head, throw him over a bridge, and then pull him back up on chains. Under the bridge are demonic figures enjoying the show. > If the Passion is for anti-anything, it is for anti-nominalism... > BLessings, > Alvin Let me say again that Mel Gibson is also preaching to the nominal Protestants? In his article, Five Reasons Not to Go See The Passion of The Christ, Andrew J. Webb of Banner of Truth (Biblical Christianity Through Literature), writes: "The script for the Passion of The Christ contains much extra-biblical material, and is based in part on a mystical Roman Catholic devotional work by an 18th century German nun (Sister Anne Emmerich) entitled The Dolorous Passion of Christ.....For evangelicals, who would feel very uncomfortable with a version of the Bible that puts words into the mouth of Christ that He never spoke, to endorse a movie that does the very same thing seems hopelessly inconsistent....For modern evangelicals to embrace a vehicle that is inauthentic in order to achieve evangelistic ends (James Dobson and Billy Graham's advice) indicates a serious decline in faithfulness." "The script of The Passion of The Christ was specifically intended to link the crucifixion of Christ with what Roman Catholics believe is the re-sacrificing of Christ that occurs in the mass. Gibson's intent is to show that the sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the altar (the mass) are the same thing. Protestant evangelicals have historically rejected the idea that Christ can be sacrificed again and declared it "abominable" (per Protestant Westminster Confession)" "The fact that evangelicals have uncritically endorsed it speaks volumes about how far the Evangelical Protestant understanding of Christ's death and the related subject of justification have slipped since the Reformation." (Another digression: On a personal note, my former superior gave me a picture of Jesus Christ nailed on the Cross. The picture of a suffering and almost dead Jesus no longer had a place in their home. He has "accepted" Jesus Christ and is now a pastor. But last Feb 25, Ash Wednesday in the Roman Catholic calendar, he gave me a movie pass courtesy of his church.) In sum, I think we should not sneer at other people's "nominalism" or excessive worship practices. We are all entitled to our own paths. If Protestants want a cross stripped clean, with exact rectilinearity, 90 degrees, so be it. If Calvinists want a bare church with no pictures so be it. I want my Jesus alive, His wounds my wounds, His sufferings I regularly recall in silent meditation, His resurrection an occasion for renewal. I give the final word to Mel Gibson: "In the Old Covenant, blood was required. In the New Covenant, blood was required. Jesus could have pricked His finger, but He didn't; He went all the way." Ansel Augustin, [email protected] March 30, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (Through the pilipinasforum egroup, in reply to Ansel Augustin above) Hi Ansel, Thanks for your comments. I agree with you that the Passion is a wake-up call for us all. In fact, my saying NOMINAL encompasses all who call themselves Christians, Catholics, and Protestants alike. > Mr. Ang, how then do we live up to be "Christians"? By remembering His "wounds" or > going to Bali during Holy Week? Jesus said if we want to be his disciple, we should >carry His cross and follow him. I believe He is asking us to do more than raising our> >hands to indicate we want to "become a Christian". The Bible says, Jesus wants us to >become His disciples, not Christians. :-) Living up to become a Christian is not just about remembering His wounds or becoming holy during Holy Week. It is a daily discovery of knowing and believing Jesus. And a Christian is of course is a disciple of Jesus Christ, so there is no conflict on these too. > Please read Acts 13:46-48 "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, >you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets >did your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the >coming of the Righteous One, whom you have betrayed and murdered, you who >received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." > Still, I do not believe the Bible is anti-Judaism. Religious anti-Semitism was furthered >by Christian preachers in the Middle Ages because Jews chose to follow a faith that >they actually knew is false out of "desire to offend God". (OTOH, racial anti-Semitism >considers Jews or Semites as inferior to Aryans, or Indo-Europeans Precisely my point in saying to Mr. Abaya that the Gospels are not anti-Semitic nor was it written to appease the Romans. The Gospels simply confirm what the Prophet Isaiah wrote 750 years before the coming of Christ. In Isaiah 53:2-5 "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." Like your pastor friend, Billy Graham and James Dobson, my thinking is that this movie helps in helping ALL Christians understand what Christ went through as described in Isaiah and in the Gospels. Andrew Webb has his own opinion, but most evangelical Christians I believe think otherwise. (I understand Greenhills Christian Fellowship even sponsored its Premiere showing). This is a movie that ALL Christians should appreciate not only from its artistic perspective but from its deeper message. Similarly, my saying that this movie is anti-NOMINALIST is not about the excessiveness of worship...but rather the lack of our own passion for our love for the Lord. Blessings, Alvin Ang, [email protected] March 30, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Kuya Tony, Uncanny but keen assumption on the real facts that surround the death of Jesus. This might just be the revelation that the Jews needed to shrug off the persecution that they have suffered through the years. This whole scenario applies to this day wherein politicians point at each other on who to blame for having a drowsy government and economy. Don't be surprised that one day you'll get calls from prominent Jews, thanking you for the rebuttal. Best regards, Bong L. Sempio, [email protected] April 02, 2004 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |