catapult magazine

https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20030728&s=fredriksen072803

The New Republic has an article about a new Mel Gibson directed film slated for a spring 2004 release called The Passion. Nothing like a good film about Jesus to stir up political and religious tensions. This article is a retort to what the author claims was a smear campaign by Gibson’s production company, Icon. This is the first I’ve heard of the film, so I don’t know the other side of story. Fascinating read.

I, too, had questions about the crow thing and the table scene, but I believe both are found in the apocrypha, or in passages that were canonized as part of the Scriptures in some circles of the Catholic church.

I’ve been hearing alot from critics about how they think Gibson should have focused more on Jesus’ teachings, as if we’d get something different, a different story, than what we get in the Passion scenes. But how is Gibson’s Passion not consistent, even the culmination, of Jesus’ teachings?

Weren’t the apocryphal texts (Maccabees, etc) written before the time of Christ? Even if there are such texts written about Christ, I doubt Jesus would be described as the inventor of the modern (western) table and chair. Real schlock that.

As for the message of the movie, I think it was consistent with the story of the gospels. But Christ’s message of love, salvation, and hope was weakened by what seemed to me vindictive pokes and jabs at those who reject Christ. If the Christ’s message is true, then God will judge unbelievers, but probably not by sending ravens to munch on their eyeballs or by burning the high priest’s hand. God isn’t that petty, is he?

Nah, God would never send plagues of locusts or make rivers flow blood or cause anything to spontaneously combust, like a bush (or the hand of a high priest) or anything. Nope.

That would be so petty.

(do I get a prize for being the first person to embrace dorkiness and use an emoticon?)

mrsanniep, in your experience does God act like that? Is there a division of labour between God and Satan where God hurts bad people and Satan hurts good people?

Did I miss something in World History where God and Satan are on the same plane? Punishment, as I understand it (and would be interested to be convinced otherwise) can only be doled out by one who is fit to judge. This would make Satan completely incapable of judging anyone.

Anyone remember the worms eating Herod after he had cursed God? How PETTY!!!!!

I’m really getting concerned with the arrogance with which we approach the concept of what God can and can’t or should and shouldn’t do.

The apocryphal texts canonized by the Roman Catholic Church were written before Christ. Their NT canon is the same as that of Protestant churches. As far as I know, there are apocryphal gospels (e.g. The Gospel of Thomas), but I don’t think these are relevant to Mel Gibson’s Passion.

The crow and possibly the table scene may have come fromt the visions of St. Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824). Her visions are recorded in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The book bears the nihil obstat (“nothing objectionable”) and the impramatur of the Roman Catholic Church.

Go to www.passion-movie.com/promote/book.html to hear Gibson talk about how this book inspired him to read the Gospels and make the movie. I’ve heard that some of the scenes not recorded in the Gospels come from this book.

I haven’t seen this thing, and I’m not sure if I will. Maybe on video. I’ll be honest that I’m skeptical of it, but mostly I am sick of the hype and the arguments, and I am satisfied with not being able to have an opinion on it.
I’m curious as to why this was so big, even before it came out (it obviously wasn’t a sleeper hit). The Gospel of John came out a few months ago, and this was a film financed by evangelicals, faithfully followed the Gospels, and was actually released in theaters. Why didn’t the national Christan media culture get behind that and make it a blockbuster as well as The Passion? It’s an honest question. For those of you who have seen The Passion, do you think it was so popular because it was flashier and had more violence, basically more sensational? Or was it because it was an excuse to fight against the New York Secularist Leftist Jews who were not a fan of Gibson’s conseravtive standpoint? Or was it because The Passion was specifically about personal salvation from sin, which of course would appeal to the mainstream Chrisitan culture? I’m not asking why it might be better, rather more popular.
I ask this because i was thinking back to other Christ movies I’ve seen and thinking about what they were actually about beyond the story of Jesus. There’s Last Tempation of Christ, which is a whole different ball of wax, but there’s also The Gospel According to St. Matthew. It’s quite good, very simple, and extraordinarily faithful to the source (there wasn’t even a script, just the gospel). It’s probably one that a lot of Christians haven’t seen, and I think it would be fun to screen it for a bunch of Christians, get their reaction, and then tell them that it was made by an atheist, Marxist, homosexual.
Jesus, in this film, is not tall, not particularly good looking, nor constantly smiling dreamily as if in some Zen-like trance. He’s more firey, dirty, and angry. You start to remember that Christ was talking about the poor, widowed, and the orphaned, not just metaphorically. He also spoke about economics, not just personal salvation.
And who wants to hear about that?
Is that perhaps an accurate assement of why The Passion was so popular, supposedly “the best evangalizing tool in 2000 years,” or what ever that quote was? It seems to be completely attuned with the national Christian media culture obsessed with the apocoplyse, battles between angels and demons, and general sensationalism.

I think the reason it was so popular was because it pissed so many people off. Right off the bat there was hype about it, both good, bad and ugly. That’s something that the Gospel of John never got. I think many Christians went to see it (many churches in this area booked private screenings for their congregations) so they could defend it in their own minds to the accusations they were hearing in the media.
I think the movie was very well done. There were some cheesy parts and some parts that upset me in a bad way, but overall, I’m glad I saw it. I loved the opening. The first thing we see is Jesus praying to the Father establishing that relationship. The next thing we see is the weakness of the disciples when they fall asleep. It set the stage rather well.