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3/3/04 The Passion of Jesus Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ," is a powerful statement dramatizing and implicitly attempting to authenticate visually the Christian interpretation of the gospel stories of the capture, trial, and execution of Jesus. It also invites discussion on the main questions it raises in the attempt to answer them cinematically: Who killed Jesus, and why? The "Passion" presents the suffering of Jesus in gruesome detail. On a physical level, I doubt the real Jesus suffered as gravely as depicted in the film, since, although I am no doctor, I rate that no human being would have survived long enough to be crucified had he been beaten so terribly and lost so much blood in the process. But I grant Mel Gibson the license to exaggerate the suffering of Jesus (the fact that his name was "Yeshua" has now been popularized) because his suffering is, after all, the Christian sacrifice offered up for the sins of all mankind. His life was not lost, if we believe the gospels, since he rose again and lived eternally (and always knew he would). If his suffering was not prolonged and worse than any conceivable suffering, then there is practically no sacrifice; a divine creature, benefiting from an infinite ability to philosophize, is certainly no less capable of rendering fear and pain a "thing of the mind" than your average Vulcan (if I may allude to another character from literature, albeit a completely fictional one). There is no such thing as "inconceivable" pain or torture to an omniscient being, much less "insuperable" pain or torture to one that is omnipotent. It strikes me instead as incongruous that a divine being would find himself so completely lacking in conviction that he would ask another aspect of himself (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being but three aspects of one God in the Christian view) "to take the bitter cup from him" if there could be another way. Obviously an omnipotent being could find another way, if he wanted to, so the question is really moot. But if God had ordained this way, why would God be asking himself to provide another? But let's concede for the sake of argument that somehow the human/divine dichotomy makes even an omnipotent, omniscient divinity lose his perspective. There are many other nearly insurmountable problems with the overall story of those famous twelve hours. The Jews' behavior is inexplicable. Why did the High Priest and the mass of Jews in Jerusalem conceive of so bloodthirsty a desire to see a Jew die by a method of torture that was hated because it was routinely practiced on loyal Jews who fought against the Roman occupation? Jesus had committed violence in the temple and had perhaps threatened to destroy it and rebuild it in three days. If that was blasphemy, the penalty was stoning, not crucifixion. But we are talking about the same Jesus who, according to the gospels, entered the city on the colt of an ass, being proclaimed the Son of David (i.e., King) by some portion of the Jewish populace. How likely is it that the same populace would turn on him only days later and not only call for his execution but ask that a notorious leader of rebellion named Jesus Barabbas (to find his full name you have to read the textual apparatus to a good edition of the Greek New Testament) be set free in place of this man whom many had regarded as their Messiah, the anointed king who would lead them from bondage? If the Jewish populace was hostile to potential Messiahs, this might make sense. There was plenty of reason to be wary, since already so many had tried to fulfill prophecy, and failed. But they must have known that, if they killed every man who came along attempting to fulfill prophecy, no one would ever fulfill prophecy, so at worst I think a Messiah who was at all credible (through his reputation as a prophet or miracle worker, which Jesus obviously already had) could expect the populace in Jerusalem to stand on the sidelines, ready to join him if it appeared he was on the verge of success. A Roman with half a brain was aware of this fact, as well! It is unlikely that the Jewish masses would request that such a man be crucified. On the other hand, a Roman procurator would not wait for the Jewish multitude to ask him to crucify a man who was believed to be attempting to fulfill Messianic prophecies. He would crucify him straightaway as an example to the multitude and every other potential Messiah. He certainly would never do what the gospels, taken in their entirety and completely at face value, claim he did: offer the Jewish multitude a choice between Jesus of Nazareth, whom he regarded as an innocent man, and Jesus Barabbas, who was caught mounting an insurrection. Pilate could not well report back to his Emperor that he had executed an innocent man and in the process set free a man he and everyone else knew to be bent on open rebellion. Had he done that, he could expect to wake one morning with a subtle hint from the emperor that if he didn't find a way to die, someone else would devise one for him. Jesus thought he was the Messiah, and a lot of Jews believed him. This made him dangerous to the Romans and to any Jew, such as the High Priest, who was forced to deal with them. It was an uncomfortable, reluctant alliance. The Jewish priesthood was no more enamored of their Roman overlords than the masses were, but even more than the masses of invisible faces, these well-known leaders could not afford to risk everything on any prospective Messiah who came along, and there were quite a few. If they were ever to throw their weight behind a possible Messiah, the time had to be right, because with Rome they knew there would be no second chance. It appears simply that Caiaphas doubted this was either the right time or the real Messiah. What is unquestionable is that even if you take the gospels at face-value, Jesus' behavior was very suspicious, and would have led to his execution by the Roman authorities. He had entered the city and been proclaimed King, which was virtually a declaration of war. He had caused a commotion in the temple, and then retreated into the hills, only to return periodically during the day and then retreat once again into the hills by night. He had been apprehended, finally, while hiding out with a small band of armed followers (perhaps betrayed by one who had concluded that he was not the Messiah, after all, since he was taking no decisive action). Jesus' behavior was that of a man who wanted trouble, even if he wasn't quite sure of the time and place and manner of trouble he was supposed to cause. Caiaphas could not have saved Jesus if he had wanted to. The Pontius Pilate of other sources appears to have been the kind of man who relished torture and murder, not a troubled man of conscience as the gospels portray. He lost his post, indeed, some years later, after what was regarded by Rome as an unjustified massacre. It should tell us something that the Romans thought him too brutal to be trusted with his post. It is exceedingly unlikely that he shrunk from killing Jesus. The conclusion is obvious: Romans killed Jesus in the same manner as they used with all lower class rebels, and the Jews who felt they had no choice in the matter reluctantly went along rather than throw their lives away on a rebel leader who had clearly failed. The inscription on Jesus' cross read something like "Jesus the Nazarite, King of the Jews," which was just the derisive touch the Roman procurator wanted, to convince every Jew that this was going to be the fate of anyone who even allowed himself to be lavished with the trappings of Kingship. Roman authority over restive populations was always maintained through terror, and this was a tool Pilate was known for using too carelessly, not with too much reluctance. If all this is true, you may ask, why do the gospels universally agree that the Jews were to blame and the Romans tried to free him and then washed their hands of his blood? It is obviously hard to say with certainty, but consider this: by the time the gospels as we know them were probably in broad circulation, it had become clear that very few Jews were ever going to convert to the new religion of Christianity. The fertile ground was that being plowed and sown by Paul, whose famous letter was addressed to the congregation in Rome, and the rest of whose letters addressed gentile cities and regions of the Roman empire outside of Palestine. Allusions in the gospels suggest that Jews were telling stories about Jesus that were potentially damaging to the budding religion: that he hadn't been resurrected but his body had simply been stolen and the guards bribed to look the other way, making the foundation of Christianity a hoax. There was already a rivalry between the two sects that prefigured a thousand years and more of alternating periods of tense coexistence and bloody purges. Christianity joined the fray early, attempting to paint Jesus as the savior of all mankind, despite his own statements to the contrary. There is no shortage of stories emphasized in the gospels to make gentiles of faith seem more worthy than Jews of little faith (the Samaritan woman who was willing to settle for scraps from the "table" of faith in God and Jesus, the centurion who said "truly this is the son of God," the centurion whose son Jesus raised from the dead). It would therefore only have been an added touch to make the Jews responsible for his death, thus rendering gentiles even more worthy of being God's "chosen" than his actual "chosen." Those stories are given prominence while other passages with a completely different message are deemphasized or conveniently left out of most of the gospels, as when Jesus said "Go not to the cities of gentiles or of Samaria; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" or when he said that he had not come "but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel", much less when he said "It is not meet to take the children's (i.e. Jews') bread and cast it to the dogs (i.e. gentiles like the Samaritans)." I therefore conclude that Jesus was a Jewish nationalist, a rabbi, a healer, and, after the execution of John the Baptist, the most obvious candidate at the time for the dubious, risky title of Messiah, which he accepted with some apparent reluctance because to wear the badge too openly and too early meant certain death. He tried to win sufficient following to challenge the Romans, and probably envisioned (like several candidates for the title of Messiah about whom we know something) that he was supposed to act simply as a catalyst for something God himself was going to carry to fruition; well-known passages in the Old Testament admonished Jews not to worry when their enemies outnumbered them or had much better equipment; they were to trust to their faith in God that he would carry them to victory even when it seemed impossible). When Jesus had been captured, beaten, and crucified, two gospels agree that one of the last things he said was "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" To me, that is more poignant than any of the story that is told of the man who was God, because, as hard as it is to imagine final despair in the heart of a God, it is easy to see it in the heart of a man. I see Jesus as a simple man who thought he was the Messiah. Only at the end did he realize he was not, and despaired. It is a tragic story, and one that can inform all of us, regardless of our faith: like the human Jesus, we never know the whole truth, never have certainty, except perhaps when it is the certainty of our own impending doom. In the end, Jesus the Nazarite could not help but concede that what he had thought would happen was not going to happen, that he wasn't what he thought he was, and that he was truly going to die alone. That is the tragic essence of humanity. If we can't agree about anything else, I suspect everyone after seeing this movie will agree on that. Modified: 09/10/2004 |
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