Yuck

Movie Review | 'The Passion of the Christ': Good and Evil Locked in Violent Showdown: "'The Passion of the Christ' is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it."

I won't repost such a picture here, but one of the stills posted with this review is just disgusting. I can't believe this movie has an "R" rating, what with all the talk about its extreme, graphic violence.

I haven't seen it (obviously -- it's not out until later), and I don't intend to, what with the controversy about anti-Semitism and, perhaps more so, because I think it would make me vomit. I nearly got sick the first time I saw the spinal tap scene in "The Exorcist," so I couldn't subject myself to this.

Plus it would likely be a frustrating experience for me. The elements of anti-Semitism that may or may not be in the movie (according to the review, the most egregious part was cut) probably arise from long-standing misunderstandings of the Gospels.

I may get myself into trouble here, but I don't believe in taking the Bible literally. In fact, I learned in Catholic school (that is, post-Vatican II Catholic school, the kind Mel Gibson probably shuns) that the Bible should be read in the context of the time it was written. How else is it possible to explain all the contradictions between the accounts and with the historical record? And saying that the influence of human writers played no part in composing these books makes it difficult to square the Gospel of Matthew, which focuses on showing Jesus as the fulfillment of Israelite prophecies and in line with tradition, with the Gospel of Luke, which portrays Jesus essentially as a socialist.

Odds are, the Pharisees were not Jesus' enemies. My high school theology textbook said that the real Pharisees had many of the same ideas as Jesus. And lest we forget, Jesus was not a Christian. Neither were his followers until St. Paul convinced the council to let Gentiles join the movement, well after Jesus' death. Even then, I doubt they considered themselves no longer Jewish.

According to history, Pilate was a ruthless governor who probably had no moral qualms about executing a rabble-rouser. There were many militaristic messianic movements around the time Jesus lived that sought to overthrow Roman rule, and to the Romans, participants were surely seen as rebels and the leaders as dangerous. In their defense, it's unlikely the Romans treated Jesus much worse than the hundreds of other people they executed, especially for a supposed crime that might be called traitorous. Just today I read that there are people out there who would pay to see Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein executed on television, so don't think retribution has died out.

The Gospels were written to curry favor with certain audiences. They weren't written until long after the events described happened, so they're hardly a primary source for history. They have value as sources for religious truth, but not facts - not any more than the many movie star Jesuses resemble the real deal.