Why "Passion of the Christ" has been labeled Anti Semitic

[Fight_n_back]

1) Mel Gibson belongs to a radical group of Catholics that believe Vatican II (which officially absolved Jews of the murder of g_d) was a plot by Masons and Jews to destroy Catholocism.

2) Vatican II has a list on what Jews found offensive about Passion Plays and asked Cathoilics to avoid using those images. Gibson used all those images.

3) The reason Jews found the images offensive is that Passion Plays were generally performed around Easter and then followed, coincidentally, by a pogrom.

So basically, even the Pope has declared this film anti semitic, even before it was produced.

As Christopher Hitchens points out, Gibson is lying when he says he went strictly according to the bible. There is no female, satanic succbus in the Garden of Gethsemene. There are no demonic oompa loompas chasing Judas in the bible. No raven eats a thief's eye in any of the gospels.

In general, it would be preferable to allow gays to decide what offends them, blacks to decide what offends them, Arabs to decide what offends them, etc...

[boobooday]

1. A new book of the Bible just discovered!

The Gospel According to Mel. It's all about torture, baby. And manliness.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[peacetalksforall]

2. And it's all about getting the blood to run in precise rivulets.

[bhunt70]

3. I never thought of satan in the movie as a woman, just fellini-esque

[Palestine]

4. This film seems very authentic

what happened, happened

[Fight_n_back]

5. How does that

address my post?

[scottcsmith]

6. You do realize

The torture and crucifixion scenes are based on the visions of a nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, who wrote of those visions in the 1800s in her book "The Dolorous Passion," and have little to do with history.

[truthspeaker]

11. we don't know what happened

Very little historical data on Jesus's crucifixion.

[tomreedtoon]

7. My real shock about "Passion..."

...which, by the way, I haven't seen and don't intend to see...

is the support given to a writer whom I formerly respected, the science fiction author Orson Scott Card. Previously, I thought Card a fairly liberal soul. He once recorded a nice cassette called "The Secular Humanist Revival" which blasted the Christian Right for their meddling in politics.

Okay, he said he was a Mormon and had worked as a missionary. I suspected his church might have placed him a little to the right of my own views. However, in this review he takes three opinions - that of a "film critic," a "believer" and an "American" - and supports the film wholeheartedly wearing all three hats. I believe he even claims that Jewish complaints against the film are a real cause of antisemitism.

Incidentally, those reviews are available at:

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-29-1.html

My own view? The film has shown that throughout many religions, but primarily Christian ones, there is a streak - a minority attitude, or so I hope - of cruelty and dark attitudes. It's bringing the people with those attitudes out and exposing them, showing exactly what those beliefs entail. In that sense, the film is doing a public service. Now we can decide whether we agree or disagree with those attitudes - which is what most of the critiques of this film are doing. That review sure exposed Mr. Card's real attitudes to me.

Public service or not, however, I still will not see the film.

[riverwalker]

8. Dubyas reaction

When Dubya saw The Passion of The Christ he remarked, "It was an OK movie I guess, but why were all those people so mad at Yanni"?

[Darranar]

9. Another point when it comes to "historical accuracy"...

The actor playing Jesus in the film is white.

If he did exist, there is almost no chance that he was white in reality.

[Solomon]

10. Shhhhh! That's the real point of the movie. Let's argue about all the

other stuff, so this little historical "fact" gets overlooked.

[ikojo]

12. I saw the Passion last night and found it

to be extremely antisemitic. The Romans are shown as having remorse at what they are doing. The rabbis on the other hand and the Jewish crowd are shown as having some sort of blood lust. In one scene toward the end of the movie, Caiphas is shown on a horse looking pretty satisfied about the crucifixion.

The Christians I went with could not understand why a Jew would find this movie antisemitic. Even after I sent them a couple articles detailing the historical use of the Passion play. One of them said, well that's one author's interpretation. NO it is HISTORY. It is how Passion plays have been used for hundreds of years to incite the masses against Jews.

I could not find one instance of Jews being portrayed in a positive light in this movie.

Of course showing the Romans as having remorse does not surprise me, after all Mel was brought up in the ROMAN Catholic church. Naturally he will have a more positive view of the Romans.

Odd that all the desciples and other Jews in the movie look like they could have come from the Middle East but Jesus looked as Aryan as anyone found in Germany.

There are many demons shown throughout the Jewish crowds as well. When the little kids taunt Judas and bite his hands, their faces turn into that of demons. I don't know if this is what Judas saw (was he hallucinating) or how Mel Gibson views the Jews.

Leni R. would have been proud!