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Philippe Antonello

'The Holy Ghost was working
through me on this film,' Gibson has said of his work on 'The Passion.' 'I
was just directing traffic'

Who Killed Jesus?

Mel Gibson's powerful but troubling new movie, 'The Passion
of the Christ,' is reviving one of the most explosive questions ever. What
history tells us about Jesus' last hours, the world in which he lived,
anti-Semitism, Scripture and the nature of faith itself.

By Jon Meacham

Feb. 16 issue - It is night, in a quiet, nearly deserted
garden in Jerusalem. A figure is praying; his friends sleep a short distance
away. We are in the last hours of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, in the spring
of roughly the year 30, at the time of the Jewish feast of Passover. The
country—first-century Judea, the early 21st's Israel—is part of the Roman
Empire. The prefect, Pontius Pilate, is Caesar's ranking representative in the
province, a place riven with fierce religious disputes. Jesus comes from
Galilee, a kind of backwater; as a Jewish healer and teacher, he has attracted
great notice in the years, months and days leading up to this hour.

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His popularity
seemed to be surging among at least some of the thousands of pilgrims gathered
in the city for Passover. Crowds cheered him, proclaiming him the Messiah, which
to first-century Jewish ears meant he was the "king of the Jews" who heralded
the coming of the Kingdom of God, a time in which the yoke of Roman rule would
be thrown off, ushering in an age of light for Israel. Hungry for liberation and
deliverance, some of those in the teeming city were apparently flocking to
Jesus, threatening to upset the delicate balance of power in Jerusalem.

The priests responsible for the Temple had an
understanding with the Romans: the Jewish establishment would do what it could
to keep the peace, or else Pilate would strike. And so the high priest,
Caiaphas, dispatches a party to arrest Jesus. Guided by Judas, they find him in
Gethsemane. In the language of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, there
is this exchange: "Whom do you seek?" Jesus asks. "Jesus of Nazareth." The
answer comes quickly. "I am he."

FROM MSN ENTERTAINMENT

Movies: The Passion of the
Christ

Thus
begins the final chapter of the most influential story in Western history. For
Christians, the Passion—from the Latin passus, the word means "having
suffered" or "having undergone"—is the very heart of their faith. Down the ages,
however, when read without critical perspective and a proper sense of history,
the Christian narratives have sometimes been contorted to lay the responsibility
for Jesus' execution at the feet of the Jewish people, a contortion that has
long fueled the fires of anti-Semitism.

LIVE TALK

Join Jon
Meacham on Thurs. Feb. 12 at noon ET to discuss why The
Passion still fascinates so many people and infuriates so many
others. Submit questions anytime.

Enter your City and
State

Enter
Question

CLICK SUBMIT TO ENTER YOUR QUESTION AND BE DIRECTED TO THE
CHAT
PAGE

Into this perennially explosive debate comes a
controversial new movie directed by Mel Gibson, "The Passion of the Christ," a
powerful and troubling work about Jesus' last hours. "The Holy Ghost was working
through me on this film," Gibson has said. The movie, which is to be released on
Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday, is already provoking a pitched battle between those who
think the film unfairly blames the Jewish people for Jesus' death and those who
are instead focused on Gibson's emotional depiction of Jesus' torment. "It is as
it was," the aged Pope John Paul II is said to have remarked after seeing the
film, and Billy Graham was so moved by a screening that he wept. One can see why
these supremely gifted pastors were impressed, for Gibson obviously reveres the
Christ of faith, and much of his movie is a literal-minded rendering of the most
dramatic passages scattered through the four Gospels.

But the Bible can be a problematic source. Though
countless believers take it as the immutable word of God, Scripture is not
always a faithful record of historical events; the Bible is the product of human
authors who were writing in particular times and places with particular points
to make and visions to advance. And the roots of Christian anti-Semitism lie in
overly literal readings—which are, in fact, misreadings—of many New Testament
texts. When the Gospel authors implicated "the Jews" in Jesus' passion, they did
not mean all Jewish people then alive, much less those then unborn. The writers
had a very specific group in mind: the Temple elite that believed Jesus might
provoke Pilate.

Gibson is an ultraconservative Roman Catholic, a
traditionalist who does not acknowledge many of the reforms of the Second
Vatican Council (1962-1965). He favors the Latin mass, does not eat meat on
Fridays and adheres to an unusually strict interpretation of Scripture and
doctrine—a hard-line creed he grew up with and rediscovered about a dozen years
ago. "He began meditating on the passion and the death of Jesus," James
Caviezel, the actor who plays Jesus in "The Passion," told NEWSWEEK. "In doing
so, he said the wounds of Christ healed his wounds. And I think the film
expresses that." Gibson set out to stick to the Gospels and has made virtually
no nod to critical analysis or context. As an artist, of course, he has the
right to make any movie he wants, and many audiences will find the story vivid
and familiar.

Audio
Interview

Actor James Caviezel on:

•
Fans
approaching Mel Gibson

•
The
hardest part about making the film

•
Learning
to speak Aramaic

•
Going
numb from the cold

•
What
he is doing next

Getty
Images

The
film Gibson has made, however, is reviving an ancient and divisive argument: who
really killed Jesus? As a matter of history, the Roman Empire did; as a matter
of theology, the sins of the world drove Jesus to the cross, and the Catholic
Church holds that Christians themselves bear "the gravest responsibility for the
torments inflicted upon Jesus." Yet for nearly 2,000 years, some Christians have
persecuted the Jewish people on the ground that they were responsible for the
death of the first-century prophet who has come to be seen as the Christ. Now,
four decades after the Second Vatican Council repudiated the idea that the
Jewish people were guilty of "deicide," many Jewish leaders and theologians fear
the movie, with its portraits of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas leading an
angry mob and of Pilate as a reluctant, sympathetic executioner, may slow or
even reverse 40 years of work explaining the common bonds between Judaism and
Christianity. Gibson has vehemently defended the film against charges of
anti-Semitism, saying he does not believe in blood guilt and citing the church
teaching that the transgressions and failings of all mankind led to the
Passion—not just the sins of the Jewish people. "So it's not singling them out
and saying, 'They did it.' That's not so," Gibson told the Global Catholic
Network in January. "We're all culpable. I don't want to lynch any Jews... I
love them. I pray for them."

The fight about God, meanwhile, has been good for Mammon:
Gibson has made what is likely to be the most watched Passion play in history.
Prerelease sales are roaring along. Evangelical congregations are buying out
showings, and religious leaders are urging believers to come out in the film's
opening days because of the commercial and marketing significance of initial
box-office numbers. The surprising alliance between Gibson, as a traditionalist
Catholic, and evangelical Protestants seems born out of a common belief that the
larger secular world—including the mainstream media—is essentially hostile to
Christianity. Finding a global celebrity like the Oscar-winning Gibson in their
camp was an unexpected gift. "The Passion of the Christ," Billy Graham has said,
is "a lifetime of sermons in one movie."

Shot in italy, financed by Gibson, the $25 million film
is tightly focused on Jesus' final 12 hours. In the movie there are some
flashbacks giving a hint—but only a hint—of context, with episodes touching on
Jesus' childhood, the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the Sermon on the Mount,
the Last Supper. The characters speak Aramaic and Latin, and the movie is
subtitled in Eng-lish, which turns it into a kind of artifact, as though the
action is unfolding at a slight remove. To tell his story, Gibson has
amalgamated the four Gospel accounts and was reportedly inspired by the visions
of two nuns: Mary of Agreda (1602-1665) of Spain and Anne Catherine Emmerich
(1774-1824) of France; Emmerich experienced the stigmata on her head, hands,
feet and chest—wounds imitating Jesus'. The two nuns were creatures of their
time, offering mystical testimony that included allusions to the alleged blood
guilt of the Jewish people.

The arrest, the scourging and the Crucifixion are
depicted in harsh, explicit detail in the R-rated movie. One of Jesus' eyes is
swollen shut from his first beating as he is dragged from Gethsemane; the Roman
torture, the long path to Golgotha bearing the wooden cross, and the nailing of
Jesus' hands and feet to the beams are filmed unsparingly. The effect of the
violence is at first shocking, then numbing, and finally reaches a point where
many viewers may spend as much time clinically wondering how any man could have
survived such beatings as they do sympathizing with his plight. There are tender
scenes with Mary, Jesus' mother, and Mary Magdalene. "It is accomplished," Jesus
says from the cross. His mother, watching her brutally tortured son die,
murmurs, "Amen."

Continued   Pages 1 |
2 |
3 |
4

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