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93 Reflections on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ Louis H. Feldman As Elie Wiesel has said, the world is willing to forget the slaughter of six million innocent Jews sixty years ago, but it will never forget the execution of that one Jew two thousand years ago. What we have in the film The Passion is a Passion play of the sort that used to be put on in Oberammergau and that was always an occasion not merely for the production of the play, but also for raising the population against the Jews. And I believe that the danger of such a film is tremendous, precisely because it is of the Passion play type; and this will be the most watched Passion play in history. Billy Graham has remarked that The Passion is a lifetime of sermons in one movie. Michael Novak, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., writes, “This drama . . . is situated in the soul of each of us, where a war is being fought out. . . . It brings one to one’s knees. Silence is what one craves at the end.” 1 Nevertheless, a measured, yet critical response to the film, The Passion of the Christ, must also be stated. 2 The film opened to packed houses in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. 3 According to Hamze Mansoor, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front of Jordan, “The Jews are most upset because it reveals their crimes against the prophets, reformers, and whoever contradicts their opinions.” Mel Gibson himself has said that the film stems from a personal crisis about twelve years ago that found him on the verge of suicide, forcing him to re-examine his faith, and, in particular, to meditate upon the nature of suffering, pain, forgiveness, and redemption. Furthermore, Gibson has been quoted as saying that he was particularly inspired by the visions of an early-nineteenth-century German mystic and stigmatic nun, Anna Katharina Emmerich, as recorded by Clemens Brentano, the nineteenth-century German romantic poet. 4 Sister Anna Katharina claimed 94 LOUIS H. FELDMAN to receive visitations from Jesus, as a result of which she describes the scourging of Jesus in gruesome and brutal detail. This is the nun who reports that an old Jewish woman told her that the Jews in former times, both in Germany and elsewhere, had strangled many Christians, principally children, and used their blood for all sorts of diabolical practices. She asserts that the Jews still follow such practices in Germany and elsewhere but do so very secretly because of commercial ties with Christians. Her world-view of a cosmic battle between demonic powers, joined with Jews, against the believers in Jesus pervades Gibson ’s film. This is the nun who has already attained the title of “venerable,” indicating that she had lived a life of heroic virtue and who has, at various times, been considered for possible sainthood. What has Mel Gibson done in this movie? He himself has said that his intention was to make “a responsible, historically accurate movie.” Indeed, The Passion is presented as a documentary. He has been quoted as saying that this is what he wanted critics to consider, whether it is historically accurate, whether it is a responsible movie. The fact that he chose to have the movie in two languages that most people do not know—the Jews speak Aramaic and the Romans speak Latin (the rumor is that Gibson originally planned not to include subtitles)—would seem to be a key to his intention. Indeed, the original reaction of Pope John Paul II to the film is reported to have been precisely this, “It is as it was,” although Vatican officials later denied this. Gibson wanted to have people think that this is the way it really was—this is what really was said by both the Jews and by the Romans. The fact that he chose Latin is a very significant point because at that particular time, in that particular place in Judea, Latin was not the prevalent language , although, in all fairness, it must be stated that, as Matthew Dillon has noted, 5 it was the official language of the law courts and the army, the two major contexts where it occurs in the film; and an inscription with the name of Pontius Pilate inscribed in Latin has been found in Caesarea in Judea. The soldiers in the Roman army apparently came predominantly from the immediate area...

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