Haven’t seen it (don’t know if I can stomach a 2 hour torture session captured on film regardless of the message), but in answer to Llamapoet’s last spoiler question:
In the Bible, Jesus says something to the effect of, “I will destroy the temple and rebuild it in 3 days.” Basically he was saying that instead of having the temple be an actual building, Jesus himself would become the new temple. So in the Bible, when Jesus dies, the temple cracks asunder. So yeah, that part was spot on, but if they don’t explain what Jesus said, then I can understand why that would be a bit much.
I don’t know why this is in a spoiler box, but in point of fact, the Gospels don’t say the Temple was torn asunder but only the Curtain of the Temple-- that is, the curtain which separated the internal chamber, the “Holy of Holies” from the public areas of the Temple.
If Gibson actually shows the Temple itself being destroyed, that would be non-Biblical.
Did you not notice that the film shows both nails through the hand and ropes tying the wrists to the cross?
John 21:24-27
As for long hair on Jesus, you may quote Paul’s disapproval of men with long hair, but remember that Paul never met Jesus, and Paul was perhaps a more Romanized Jew.
Since the thread is titled “Now that you’ve seen it…” I’m not going to use spoiler boxes.
When I posted last night, I forgot to mention that I thought the music was fantastic.
Re: the temple – in the movie (and Gospels), when Jesus dies, there is an earthquake. The Gospels mention that the curtain in the temple is torn in two from top to bottom as Diogenes says. The temple itself isn’t destroyed until the Romans do it about forty years later.
In the film, the earthquake definitely damages the temple - a fault line cracks open across the floor, the torches are overturned, things crumble and fall. There is significant damage. I don’t think we are shown enough to determine that the temple is destroyed completely, but if you didn’t know the history, I can see how you would infer that.
You clearly don’t understand analogies. I don’t want to hijack this thread anymore than it has been, so a better analogy would have been Fundie:Uneducated=Jew:circumsized. To be a fundie, you have to believe the Bible to be literally true down to the creation of the world in 6 24-hour days by God, and you have to completely reject all modern science. Is that not the very definition of uneducated?
And given that fundies believe that the modern world and its culture are ruled by Satan, I really will need a cite to show me that foreign, non-Christian films are popular fare in the backwoods towns that breed the fundie strain. Yeah, I’ll just bet that Wayne and Cindy down to the First Baptist Church are real fans of Pedro Almodovar or Chen Kaige.
To become a priest, you have to be in line with the central teachings. Yet Jesuits are considered by many to be the finest educators on the planet. How does that line up with your Fundie=Ignorant theory, gobear?
I can’t say what gobear would say, but it is my impression that Jesuits are not fundies, and are more in line with modern times (Pope accepting evolution as fact and all), where as Fundies=unducated protestant with long outdated ideas (hence, neanderthal), and firm convictions in the face of all evidence.
For example, my father always talks about how mankind found a chicken bone and those evil scientists invented the idea of dinosaurs from them, and all those bones you see in museams and pictures are nothing more than plaster casts, dreamed up in the minds of scientists and Evil-lutionists. Not amount of evidence, pictures or convincing will convince him, I have tried. I doubt any Jesuit could be so pig-headed.
I’ll just say that some of the fundamentalists I knew in college-- at a major, fairly prestigious, secular univeristy – not only enjoyed foreign films but also managed to get degrees in chemistry, political science, philosophy and economics (just to recall four that I knew well). Clearly they wouldn’t struggle with subtitles.
Jesuits, fundies? Are you insane? The Society of Jesus, as has been pointed out, exemplifies the best melding of Christian devotion to modern science. They are known for nurturing knowledge and scientific exploration Hate to break it you, but not all Christians are fundies, even though you folks continue to accuse me of saying the opposite. Isn’t deliberate lying supposed to be a sin?
Fundies are Christian fundamentalists, you know, the folks who think the Left Behind books should be filed in non-fiction, who believe the Bible to be literally true in every detail, who are ardent young-earth creationists, and who believe that diseases are as likely to be caused by demonic possession as by microbes. This does not apply to all Christians.
Airman, if you think Jesuits are fundies, you need to brush up on your knowledge of the Catholic Church and the history of the Jesuit order.
Saw the movie last night, here are my impressions:
I did not see anything that would spark anti-semitism. The Roman soldiers are the characters portrayed in the worst light.
Pontius Pilate seemed rather soft, compared to his historical reputation.
The violence was probably the most graphic I have seen. It takes up a very large portion of the movie, which makes it very agonizing to watch.
I thought the movie had some moving images, almost poetic in nature.
This is definitely not meant to be a documentary. This is an artistic rendering, so I don’t see any point in quabbling over historical inaccuracies.
The movie was well made, and Gibson was obviously commited to his vision. I thought the acting was very good, especially in the case of Peter and Mary.
[QUOTE=gobear]
To be a fundie, you have to believe the Bible to be literally true down to the creation of the world in 6 24-hour days by God, and you have to completely reject all modern science. Is that not the very definition of uneducated?
QUOTE]
First, many Old-Earth Creationists consider themselves to be Fundamentalist. (Some Young-Earthers disagree, of course. S) In my Fundist phase, I considered Young-Earthism but was mostly an Old-Earther. Second, the “professional” Young-Earthers (such as the Creation Research Institute) are anything but uneducated. They may be presuppositionalist, selective & even deluded/in denial, but they are not uneducated.
The definition of uneducated is “lacking education”, not “being educated but
adopting intellectually-unpopular interpretations of data”.
Ah, yes… thanks for straightening out the curtain vs. temple confusion. It’s been a while since I’ve read the Bible so my memory was shakey at best. But my point was just that it wasn’t so much a “Wrath of God” thing as it was a fulfilling of a prophecy and a symbol of the change from Old Testament and New Testament religious beliefs.
It may be an artistic interpretation, and thus Gibson is well within his rights to exercise artistic license, but since he’s been making such a big deal out of the historical accuracies of the film, you’d think that he’d be getting at least the languages right. I can sort of understand the nails in hands since that’s what they say in the Bible, but if he’s going to go through the bother of having everyone speaking Aramaic and Latin, then he should at least have it done correctly.
The characters of both Pilate and Herod seemed to be a little at odds with their historical counterparts. Pilate was known for his brutal rule over the Jews, yet the movie portrayed him very favorably. Herod was unnecessarily portrayed like some kind of first-century drag queen. Did he remind anyone else of Dom DeLouise?
I do think that separated from actual historical fact, the characters worked in the context of the movie. It was more dramatic for Pilate to have sympathy for Jesus and try to find a way to avoid crucifying him.
This thread has brought to the surface a strain of bigotry that is really distasteful, especially in a forum dedicated to the eradication of ignorance.
Just look at the wild suppositions thrown out so far:
The audience for this movie will be heavily weighted with “fundies” (note the slur).
“Fundies” are all stupid backwoods hicks with big hair who will resent having to read.
I was going to close with a “IANAFundie, but…” but on second thought – it doesn’t matter what I am or aren’t. It’s none of your damn business. Bigotry is bigotry.
You’re right, I will take it elsewhere, but for the record, there is nothing wrong with discrimination against things like ignorance(or being discriminate against, say murderers), especially if it can be helped, most importantly being “bigoted” as you all say, against ignorant people in a forum dedicated to fighting ignorance.
Duh? Fighting Ignorance… you fight against something you are trying to get rid of, which implies being bigoted against what you are fighting, no?
So in a forum against fighting ignorance, we should let ignorance have equal voice? We should not talk bad against ignorance, or quelch it when we can?
Next we should be considerate of all the stupid people in the world and stop talking bad about stupid people (which is a predominate theme at SDMB, btw), because it is being bigoted.
Yeah, ok, I will let leave this thread now. :rolleyes:
I was not sure of the symbolism of satan carrying the child/demon character. I heard some people remark after the movie that they thought is was some sort of anti-christ type character. I will be interested to see what others think.