Fidelity to the Word of God (En Archae ein h'Gibson)

Another e-mailer sort-of defends Gibson's presentation of the Gospels:

[Have you read] Matthew 27:25, and so forth? The
current theological position is that the guilt for the crucifixion is universally applicable to all of mankind, of course, but there is certainly no question that the testimony of the gospels is that Pilate was reluctant to convict or execute; that the priests and scribes of Jerusalem demanded crucifixion; that the people of Jerusalem chose Barrabas to be released, not
Jesus; that priests and others mocked Jesus in the course of his sufferings. If one were, like Mr. Gibson, a believing Christian, one would presumably accept the testimony of the four gospels of the New Testament as veracious, and if so, one could hardly avoid an Oberamergau [sic]-like depiction of hostile priests, scribe, and community. I would assume that, if one were a believing Jew, one would say something like: "And they (the priests and scribes and people of Jerusalem) were right to act as they did, and he got what he deserved" (possibly in private, when sufficiently outnumbered). But it seems to me that both sides are perfectly entitled to hold mutually unacceptable opinions on all this. I do not believe that the events of the Christian Passion can be edited down into a universally agreeable version on which both believing communities can happily sit down and read together every spring. Consequently, I think Jewish demands for censorship of the Christian gospels, and suppression of negative depictions of Jewish behavior in the course of depictions of the Passion of Christ, are absurd, self-serving, and presumptuous.

Well, for starters, I think I've already made it clear that I take the Voltaire line on censorship. And I certainly agree that "the events of the Christian Passion [cannot] be edited down into a universally agreeable version on which both believing communities can happily sit down and read together." That's the point though, isn't it? The Gospels themselves do not agree with one another. So Gibson's claim that he is merely a faithful lamb presenting the Revealed Word of God immediately exposes itself as both self-pitying and self-aggrandizing horseshit. Anyone who wishes to dramatize the Gospels has to employ editorial discretion constantly. And every time Gibson was called upon to make such interpretive determinations, he decided on the most anti-Jewish version of events the Gospel stories provide. E.g.: Although Gibson lyingly claimed that he had excised the controversial "blood-guilt" verse in Matthew (and not any of the other Gospels), all he in fact did was remove the English-language subtitle while preserving the Aramaic soundtrack. Serbian Orthodox distributors will have their own chance to add subtitles, and audiences in Egypt, say, or Saudi Arabia will understand the Aramaic and not even need subtitles; refer to what I said in the posting below about pogrom-inducement.

Moreover, Gibson consistently adds details to the narrative that are not present in any of the Gospels---though they might well be interpolations of much more recent (and, need I say, virulently anti-Semitic) interpreters. The Gospels themselves, for example, characterize Pilate as a cold-blooded bureaucrat who shirked responsibility (washing his hands and all that), while the best historical accounts portray him as a cruel overlord who enjoyed or at least took satisfaction in the suppression of Jewish national sentiment through harsh punishments. So the Pilate who is introspective, conflicted, and above all sympathetic---to say nothing of the darling Frau Pilate---is an invention of Gibson's diseased fantasy (or was it the anti-semitic 18th century German nun upon whom he relied so heavily).

I could go further: Why is it that all the Jewish characters look like profiles in a Nazi physiognomy textbook (except Jesus and his disciples who are all 6-footers and look like they come from Hyannisport)? Why does Satan travel among Jewish children and turn them into demons? But the case has already been made quite well.

Incidentally, not all of Gibson's editorial decisions tell in favor of anti-Semitism (though none tell against it); sometimes he seems to include things just for the sake of adding to the film's sadism quotient. The most obvious example is Jesus's interminable flogging and torture, which garners a few non-graphic sentences in some of the Gospels, but becomes the shlock-horror frontespiece of the film. I believe the current Vatican line is that Catholics should not focus their attention on Jesus's physical suffering, but that can't matter much to Gibson, who is closely connected to a pre-Enlightenment splinter group that thinks that the throne of St. Peter is vacant.

Apropos of mainstream/sane Catholicism, one correspondent writes:

"His blood be upon us and our children" cannot be understood to extend beyond a handful of generations (seven at the very most). [Where does the number seven come from?--ed.](This is called "higher criticism"). Therefore to say that Jews in the Middle Ages, or contemporary Jews, or even Second Century Jews bore any responsibility for the crucifixion greater than that of Man generally is an error. Furthermore to impute the guilt of the crowd that cried out to people at home minding their own business or to their children is irrational.

To paraphrase the grammar (though not the vocabulary) of Father Andrew Greeley, this film is sadomasochistic pornography that has nothing to do with Jesus.