Why is Mel Gibson's movie anti-semitic?

Great Debates
61

Orthodoxa, just a few double takes here.

Those who express “concern” are just using a “smokescreen” to cover up their true intent/desire to ban the film? If only they had more power they would express their true desires. The fact that someone of Shas wants to ban it in Israel proves it.

Christians in Israel are victims of “Israeli persecution” such that their numbers are dwindling?

“‘Racist, antisemitic, and homophobic’ are often used by the left as code words for tradionalist Christians”?

Oooookay.

Hey your reporting what was actually in the film was helpful to any informed opinion; if I end up with an opinion on the matter it will have to be based on such second hand reviews as yours, Avalonian’s, and others, because I have no desire to see this for myself. But this last post … whoo boy.

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I saw this film a few hours ago. Knowing this debate was ongoing, I kept my mind open and tried to see it from the viewpoint of my former boss, a devout Jewish man. I looked at it from my own religious background as well, my family is Pentecostal, and the older generations are very firm in their beliefs.

I spent a good deal of my childhood on a pew in a Pentecostal church. Never once did I hear a preacher utter a statement against the Jews. Instead, we were taught that the Jews were God’s chosen people.

The Pharisees are prominently displayed as the ones who desperately wanted Jesus of Nazareth dead. But even in the initial scene that another poster mentioned regarding his trial in the middle of the night, a Pharisee disagreed with the others, and he was subsequently led out of the temple screaming. Throughout the movie citizens are shown cursing and yelling at Jesus during the appearances in front of Pilate, during the flogging which he endured, and while he is walking to the crucifixion, and at the spot where he was crucified. Yes, the citizens were Jewish, but I felt no anger towards them for being Jewish. I could not understand why they would be so happy to see a person suffer, but not because of their religion, because they were humans. I understand that such punishments were not unusual at this time in the history of the world, but as a modern person, I cannot understand the mindset that would allow someone to hurt another person in this way.

Pilate may have been given a free pass in this movie, washing his hands of the ordeal, attempting to have him freed by offering him or Babbaras, and even sending him to King Herrod. However, the Roman soldiers are mostly shown as barbaric drunkards, enjoying their parts in the violence more than anyone. I wondered why they would be so happy about what they were doing when they weren’t angry with Jesus, he had not violated their laws or done anything that they found offensive. It was pointed out to me that they hated the Jews as much as anyone, and found that hurting Jesus was fun merely because he was Jewish. (I do not know the validity of that statement myself.)

I do not feel that the film is anti-semitic, and I do not feel that people of my faith, or other Christian faiths are anti-semitic. The Christian religions teach love and understanding, even to one’s enemies. People have done horrible things in the name of Christianity but I submit that this is not the intention of their teachings, and not the intent of this film.

The death of Jesus was necessary, in the Christian belief. I watched the film thinking that these people saved my soul, even if their only intention was to hurt someone they didn’t believe in.

~J

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This presumably derives from this article in Friday’s Guardian by Geza Vermes, the emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford, who states that the film does just this.

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– I’m sorry if you feel that way.

– Except that they are extreme fundies with power.

– I agree. Unfortunately, there are some that seem to feel that portraying the 1st Century equivalent of Shas in a negative light is anti-semitism.

– I am glad that we agree on that matter.

– Which I very much doubt that he would do. IMHO, all he did was to try to portray a story that’s an important part of his faith, and was called everything up to and including Nazi for his efforts before the film had even been seen.

– And I would defend your right to make your objections. I would hope that you would actually view the film before trashing it, though.

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The way i see it, after having just watched the movie, i saw no anti-semitism prominently displayed, because the movie was portrayed in such a way that semitism wasn’t the focus of the movie at all. The film isn’t about jewish people as a whole, but it includes some jewish leaders that crucified Jesus. If watching this movie gives you an anti-semitic feeling, you are being swayed by Satan, or you are looking at the movie from the wrong point of view. The movie is about one mans sacrifice, not one denominations reputation

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– I very much thought so, too. I am not ashamed to admit that those last moments you refer to brought me to tears. In the context of that part of the story in which Simon was a participant, it was evident that the Roman’s barbaric cruelty toward Jesus was specifically because he was a Jew. And that was not at all lost upon Gibson’s version of Simon. His final sad glance at Jesus’ face at Golgotha seemed to sum up the agony of persecution for centuries past and present. Simon seemed to relay the message that while he couldn’t set everything right, he could at the very least refuse to be a part of the problem. His brave refusal to treat Jesus as less than a human worthy of at least a modicum of respect was profoundly moving.

– Unfortunately, many have not bothered to see it before saying that.

67

– My original posting of the Shas ‘ban the movie’ news article was in response to Jackmannii’s statement that he had not heard of any attempts to suppress the movie. I provided an example of a blatant attempt to ban the movie. Yeah, it is my personal opinion that there are fundies here that would be overjoyed if the film were banned/had never been made/etc. Your opinion may vary. But when I see groups denouncing a film a year before it has even been seen, that raises up the red flags for me.

– Yes, that is my position. That is not to say that Christians are in any way whatsoever treated any better by the thugs of the Palestinian Authority, but Israel isn’t a haven for them either. They are stuck between the rock of the PA and the hard place of Israel and most of the world really could care less what is done to them.

About half of my home parish (I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian) are Palestinian refugees. Many left Israel in fear for their lives.

For some small examples of Israeli persecution on the government-scale:

http://www.ncccusa.org/news/02news80a.html

http://www.ncccusa.org/news/99news14a.html

– Most of the Israeli govt. actions against Christians in the Holy Land are of this sort. Not an outright ban, just progressively making it more and more difficult for Christians to stay and conduct their business while simultaneously adding more and more benefits for Jews to come take their place. Ethnic cleansing in slow motion.

– On the more individual level, incidents like this decribed below have occured. Several of the families in my parish had this man as their priest when they lived in the Holy Land. When a priest is hacked to death in his Church and the Israeli govt. does absolutely NOTHING about it – other than make noises about seizing the property – then that sounds like persecution to me.

http://allsaintsofamerica.org/martyrs/nmphilou.html

– That’s my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

– I’m glad if I was helpful. I would emphasize, though, that especially in a medium like film that there is no substitute for actually seeing it. The way things are framed, the expressions on people’s faces, the music, etc. all are melded together in a way that makes it difficult to relay the full experience. For example, the Sanhedrin are all wearing very distinctive clerical dress, walking around with ceremonial-looking staves, ect. that makes their particular nasty behaviour come across to me personally as more of a warning against the dangers of giving religious leaders too much secular authority. In contrast, many of the ‘ordinary Jews’ like Simon are portrayed much more positively.

68

I saw the movie on Saturday during a matinee (sold out, as was the showing right before it).

I believe that anyone who has (a) seen the movie, (b) read the gospels and © was aware of the claim of anti-semitism HAD to have seen elements that could be seen as inciting anti-semetic sentiments.

Compared to the source material, there is a much more pronounced emphasis on the jewish church leaders and their role in inciting the crowds. They play a prominent role throughout the movie that they did not play in the gospels.

Is it inherently anti-semetic? No. But that’s not what’s being claimed. What’s being claimed is a false portrayal of jewish leaders and their role in Christ’s cruxifiction. Is that portrayal false? Yes, it certainly is.

Are people responsible for knowing the difference between a movie, their faith, and the gospels? Of course they are. Does a movie have the ability to incite emotions and feelings? Absolutely. Is “The Passion of the Christ” going to lead to anti-semetic actions/sentiments? That is to be determined.

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I’m curious as to what proportion of those who have criticized Gibson’s movie for unfairly imputing vicarious guilt to a group that everyone knows did not carry out the arrest of Christ or pass the sentence or drive the nails, because of their alleged passive/active complicity, previously showed such concern for (as opposed to actively participating in) the condemnation of:

(a) Pius XII;
(b) “German society;”
© Swiss banks;

None of whom per se, concededly, killed or betrayed a single victim of the Nazis. With the exception of (b) in some loose sense of societal guilt, the worst that has been said about (a) and © is that they were insufficiently affirmatively active in opposing bad acts by third parties against third parties, about which they knew or could have known, and did so for personal advantage or out of indifference.

Based on what little we know about Christ’s time and his disruptive role in the social order, at the least it seems fair to say (as the Gospels and Gibson would have it) that a subset of his confreres did not accept him or his alleged status and thus would not have risked much to save him.

Not a big believer in vicarious or societal guilt in any context, but this is not the first time that it’s occurred to me that the rush to condemn various individuals and groups and institutions as “complicit” or “inaqeuately vocal” in opposition to 20th century persecutions might be a poor move for a group who’d historically been harshly tarred themselves with the vicarious-group-guilt brush in connection with a first century persecution . . . .

70

I think your complaint regarding Pius XII and “German society” might work better as an analogy if there had been condemnation of the descendants of either Pius X* or of Germans of the Nazi era (in the same manner that hostility towards Jews has persisted for thousands of years after the Crucifixion).

Criticism of the Swiss banking industry has also extended into the decades after the war in which officials ignored their role in stashing Nazi loot and resisted attempts to determine what restitution was due to Holocaust victims and their descendants. It took more than 50 years for some resolution of this situation to take place.

*no sacrilegious implications intended here.

71

None taken. I agree with you that the accusations of complicity or acquiescence in persecution become more invidious the more they are brought forward to the present day. But I’d argue that this is the case to a considerable extent with condemnation of the targets I’ve mentioned. I suppose some critics are speaking in a detached historical tone. But those who have led the charge are not simply saying “Boy, on our reading of history, that Pius was a jerk.” They are, often, imputing Pius’s suppositious “guilt” for not singlehandedly saving all the Jews of Europe to the Church as institution (including the Church in its present incaranation) and posing the quesiton “What must a religion of love and goodness do to confront its history of hatred and harm, and to perform restitution?” See, e.g.:

http://www.fairness.com/resources/one?resource_id=5143

I’m thinking an article entitled “The Guilt Of The Church” and demanding present-day restitution is pretty firmly in the camp of the vicarious/ancestor-based blood libel (putting aside whether Pius is any more or less culpable for not saving the Jews than Caiphas himself was for not saving, or for going after, Jesus). Which is fine if you really think there’s profit going down that path as to either Caiphas’s heirs or Pius’s. I don’t.

See also:

and
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~acarreon/during%20the%20war.htm
(demanding that the present-day Church “admit the guilt” it bears in connection with Nazism).

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Your analogy is weak, Huerta88.

Would not the better analogy be to the Priesthood of the Temple, and not to “Jews” in general?

After all, those cites seem to be demanding restitution or recognition of wrongdoing from the Church, not from “Catholics” in general.

So the argument would go “accusing the Church these days of failure or complicity during the Nazi era is like accusing the Priesthood of the Temple of institutional failure or complicity in the case of the death of Jesus”.

Which points out two further problems with the analogy: (1) the Priesthood of the Temple no longer exists, and hasn’t existed for a couple of thousand years or so; and (2) it is not certain that Jesus ever existed at all; he could easily be a mythological character.

No, I don’t think blaming the death of a mythological character on an institution that doesn’t exist any more is quite the same as blaming an institution that does exist for failures during an all-too-real disaster of human evil that happened within living memory.

Whether an institution can be blamed for failures (rather than individuals), or whether these particular individuals and institutions should be blamed at all, is a totally different argument. On its face, your argument by analogy is worthless.