The Errors

ABCNEWS.com : Jesus Scholars Find Fault in Gibson's 'Passion': "Mel Gibson's portrayal of the final 12 hours of Jesus in his film 'The Passion of the Christ' has been hailed as the gospel truth by some believers, but many scholars complain that it is riddled with historical errors.

Their complaints range from inaccuracies about hairstyles and clothes to a lack of gospel context in the film which has raised a furor among Jewish groups who fear its graphic depiction of the crucifixion will fan anti-Jewish violence."

Here's a good review of some of what I was talking about earlier. Near the end of the article, it reports Gibson said "the experts canceled each other out" and so he made many decisions himself. I don't know what experts he talked to. Must be those experts in literal interpretations and, most especially, church tradition.

Many times I've been told Jesus probably didn't carry a whole cross but just a crossbeam. Also, I've heard many times that Pontius Pilate was brutal, not introspective. This isn't the first time I've heard that Greek was the lingua franca of the region (it's what the Gospels were written in, you know), not Latin. These and other theories/facts are pretty well agreed upon.

It's easy to see where some of the mistakes come from. Jesus has long hair? What pictures of "Jesus" have you ever seen in which he has short hair? It was a popular way for early Hellenistic Christians to depict him, but in the last, oh, several hundred years it's been hard to imagine Jesus visiting the barber. It's a tradition that Gibson couldn't break away from, even in his quest for "realism."

Same goes for Jesus' loincloth. I wonder if a lack of loincloth would have tipped the MPAA over the NC-17 edge.

And of course, from other reviews I've read, it seems at least some of it isn't based necessarily on the Gospels but on the traditional Stations of the Cross. The Catholic Church actually revised these several years ago to be more in line with what happens in the Gospels, but the traditional 14 still persist. I don't believe, for example, that Veronica (from vera icon, or true icon, referring to the famed veil relic) makes an appearance in any of the Passion stories.

Stuff like that irks me because Mel Gibson is promoting this as the most realistic as possible depiction of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life. Telling people that, combined with the impact of the visuals, is bound to perpetuate myths for many years to come. And I agree with the scholar in the article that the story lacks context. Fine job, trying to be so faithful to the Gospels but cutting most of them out.

Of course, the Gospels themselves don't really answer all the questions people have about Jesus. What happened between when he was 12 and when he was 30? Did he have siblings? Why in the world did he go to Jerusalem that fateful week? I'm sorry, but I can't think Jesus was quite so deterministic as to believe he had no choice, nor do I think it's likely he was so fatalistic as to be sure he would die there. Those statements he makes predicting his own death seem like the sort of thing written into the Gospels that fit a little too perfectly.
Who knows what really happened? The most we can do is know what didn't happen, and Gibson's version of events seems to fall into that category.

But of course, maybe illuminating theology is a bit too much to ask of a movie. Unfortunately, people may not view it with that in mind.