Clergy and Educators

The Passion of the Christ:
Biblical, Historical, and Theological Considerations

Part I: Biblical Considerations
Introduction
Text study
Part II: Historical Considerations
Christian art
Passion plays
Part III: Theological Considerations
On Gibson
On suffering
On the death of Jesus
On antisemitism
Final comments

In keeping with its Mission Statement to "disarm religious hatred and establish models of interfaith understanding," the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies recently presented two related programs to Jewish and Christian clergy and educators, the first in anticipation of and the second in reaction to the Ash Wednesday release of Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ.

On February 5, 2004 at Woodbrook Baptist Church, the ICJS Jewish & Christian Educators Study Group met in an all-day session to study "Dramatizations of the Death of Jesus: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Considera-tions." In their introduction to this program, the ICJS scholars explained that there is a link between the way the Church understands the Crucifixion of Jesus and the way in which the Church teaches about Jews and Juda-ism. The stated goal of the day's study, therefore, was to set Gibson's portrayal of Christ's Crucifixion within the broader genre of the Passion play so that participants could gain a better understanding of what Gibson is doing in The Passion of the Christ.

Then, on March 3, 2004 at Grace United Methodist Church, the Institute held a half-day colloquium for cler-gy, educators, and laypeople who had seen the movie and heard a panel discussion at a special screening at the Senator Theater the day before the film's official opening. The colloquium, entitled "The Passion of the Christ: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Considera-tions," was designed to explore the depictions of Jesus' death in the Gospels and to examine how Gibson reflected the intentions of the Gospel texts in his own interpretation.

What follows is a report that combines the highlights of both programs. It is our hope that visitors to this Web site will benefit from the opportunity to read about these important presentations.

Part I: Biblical Considerations

Introduction:

Dr. Rosann M. Catalano, the ICJS Roman Catholic schol-ar, began the presentations with an overview of the gospel genre in which she made the following points:

• A gospel is principally a theological document, not a biography or a history, although some history can be intuited from it. A gospel is an interpreta-tion of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is intended to teach us -- in light of that account of his life, death, and rising to new life -- who God is, what it means to be human, and how we are to live.
• The canonical Gospels are theological documents addressed to specific communities. The depiction of the Crucifixion in each Gospel, therefore, addresses specific questions with which each community was struggling.
• The Gospels are post-resurrection documents written after the destruction of the Second Temple (scholars date the writing of the Gospels between 75 and 120 C.E.). Because the Gospels were written after the destruction of the Temple, they look back through that destruction and the chaos and confusion of Jewish life in the first century to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
• There are four canonical Gospels, four different stories that cannot be made into a single story because each conflicts with the other three. Any dramatization of the Passion of Jesus -- in a play or a film -- creates a fifth story, another gospel. By definition, such a dramatization is an interpre-tation of an existing interpretation.
• The Gospels reflect several layers of develop-ment. They also reflect the tensions that existed between the only two Jewish sects that remained after the destruction of the Temple -- proto-rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. These tensions arose because both groups were vying
  for the same thing: determining which of them
  was the legitimate heir of biblical Israel.
• Not very much ink is devoted in any of the Gospels to the dying of Jesus. Most of the gospel story is about Jesus' life. What does it teach us that Mel Gibson devotes almost two hours to a very small part of a much larger story?

Text study:

Following this introduction, participants broke into small groups to study the texts of the Passion narratives in the four Gospels. Each group, which consisted of both Jews and Christians, studied a single narrative, guided by the following questions:

According to your Gospel Passion account:

• What are the charges brought against Jesus?
• Who is responsible for Jesus' death?
• What does Jesus say at the moment of his death?
• What happens immediately after Jesus' death?
• What does the Gospel writer want to convey about the meaning and significance of Jesus' death?

How does the text characterize

• the high priest, Caiaphas?
• other Jewish religious leaders?
• the Jewish people in general?
• the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate?
• the King of Judea, Herod?

Below are the answers to some of these questions taken from the March 3 colloquium, along with some conclu-sions drawn by ICJS scholars and participants in the colloquium.

What are the charges brought against Jesus?
Mark: (1) Jesus said he would destroy the Temple; (2) in response to the high priest's question, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One," Jesus says, "I AM," which the high priest declares to be blasphemy; (3) Jesus is charged with being king of the Jews.
Matthew: The charges in Matthew's account are the same as the ones in Mark, although Jesus does not respond to the high priest's question by saying "I AM" in Matthew's version of events.
Luke: (1) When asked if he is the Son of God, Jesus responds, "You say that I am"; (2) Jesus is accused of perverting the nation, forbidding the people to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he is the Messiah, a king (king of the Jews); (3) Jesus is accused of stirring up the people by his teaching.
John: (1) Pilate is told that Jesus is a criminal; (2) Jesus is charged with claiming to be the king of the Jews, thereby setting himself against the emperor; (3) Jesus is charged with claiming to be the Son of God.

Conclusion: The only charges that all four narratives have in common are those of kingship (Messiah) and be-ing the Son of God.

Defined narrowly, who is responsible for Jesus' death?
Mark: Pilate and the Roman soldiers
Matthew: Pilate and the Roman soldiers
Luke: Pilate, an unidentified "they" who led Jesus away and laid the cross on him, and the Roman soldiers
John: Pilate, the chief priests who hand Jesus over, an unidentified "they," and the Roman soldiers

Defined more broadly, how does Jesus come into the hands of Rome to be crucified (who is responsible)?
Mark: With the exception of the women who had come with him to Jerusalem, everyone is responsible for Jesus' death: Judas, the chief priests, Pilate, the Roman sol-diers, even God (Jesus asks, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?").
Matthew: the chief priests and the elders
Luke: the assembly of the elders of the people, the chief priests, the scribes, the people
John: the chief priests, Caiaphas, and the Jews

Conclusions: When the question of responsibility for Jesus' death is defined narrowly and asked across the four Gospels, Pilate and the Roman soldiers are the cul-prits. When the question is defined broadly, all four Evangelists want to implicate the chief priests, the el-ders, the scribes, and the Jewish people. In the broadest possible reading, moreover, it is clear that Jesus makes decisions about the particular role he wishes to play and the way he chooses to live that im-plicate him in his own death. We learn nothing of Jesus' decisions and choices from Gibson's film because it shows so little of his life.

Commentary: Even in the narrowest reading of the texts, Jesus does not defend himself, but in this he is simply following Jewish law, according to which testi-mony against oneself is inadmissible. Jesus had no obligation to cooperate with the authorities. Yet there are different ways to read Jesus' silence, depending on which Gospel is under review: He was following Jewish law, he was hanging tough, he had nothing to say, he said nothing because Pilate had no power of his own to do anything.

What does Jesus say at the moment of his death?
Mark: At the moment of his death, Jesus gives a loud cry. Shortly before that he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1).
Matthew: Matthew's account is the same as Mark's.
Luke: "Father, into your hands I commend my spir-it" (Psalm 31:5).
John: "It is finished."

Conclusion: The growing significance within Christian communities of Jesus' life and his relationship with God is reflected theologically in the move from "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" in the earliest Gospel to "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" to "It is finished." This theological development is lost in Gibson's film because Gibson has Jesus say all these things.

What does the Gospel writer want to convey about the meaning and significance of Jesus' death?
Mark: By the tearing of the curtain of the Temple, the Evangelist shows that God is available to everyone. (In Gibson's film, it is not only the curtain of the Temple that is torn in two but the Temple itself, portrayed as a sign of God's great anger: The place that had been the locus of God's presence was destroyed.)
Matthew: Jesus' death is proof that he was the Messiah and that scripture has been fulfilled. In addition, the event has cosmic importance: The earth shakes, the rocks are split, the tombs are opened and many bodies of the saints are raised (after Jesus' resurrection those who are raised come out of the tombs, enter the city, and appear to the living). These events would indicate that following Jesus' crucifixion, the line between life and death has become porous.
Luke: In his words to the good thief, Jesus opens the door to eternal life.
John: The scripture is completed, the task Jesus was given by God is completed, and Jesus voluntarily gives himself over to the Father. There is no happenstance in this story; this is God's story.

Conclusion: The slice of Jesus' story that Gibson shows in his film is so narrow that it is impossible to discern all the important implications that can be gotten from the four Gospels.

Part II: Historical Considerations

The Crucifixion in Christian art of the Middle Ages:

This portion of the program was included only in the all-day session presented to the Jewish & Christian Educators Study Group. Developments in the depiction of the Crucifixion in Christian art were illustrated with a number of slides and commentary delivered by Chris Leighton, ICJS executive director.

In the Gospels themselves, Jesus' Passion is portrayed without blood and with almost no emphasis on his suf-fering. This bloodless Passion and the fact that early depictions of the Crucifixion draw primarily from the Gos-pel of John explain why, in early representations, Jesus' eyes are open and he is not shown to be suffering. Later on, when the Crucifixion becomes an integral part of Christian prayers and devotions, there is a shift in the way it is represented: The pain Jesus experiences and the suffering he undergoes are clearly apparent.

When the devotional context of the Crucifixion, which makes certain important demands on the viewer, is transferred to a movie theater, the whole dynamic of the Crucifixion changes: It becomes merely entertain-ment. Looking at the suffering and death of Jesus divorced from the context of the life that preceded it and the resurrection that follows it leaches Jesus' death of its meaning.

Passion plays:

This segment of the program was also limited to the February session. It was presented by Rabbi Charles L. Arian, ICJS Jewish scholar.

Passion plays, which originated during the Middle Ages, grew out of the Good Friday ritual. These dramatiza-tions, and Good Friday itself, were dreaded by Jews because they inspired Christians to commit violence against anyone who was Jewish.

The discussion of the Passion play genre centered around the problems inherent in this kind of dramati-zation:

• Passion plays are, by definition, a harmonization of the Gospels and are, therefore, like Gibson's film, a fifth gospel, an interpretation of an interpretation.
• Dramatic presentation requires a filling-in of the details in terms of staging, costumes, choreog-raphy, music, and casting (e.g., Do Jesus and
  the disciples look like the rest of the Jews in the play?).
• Passion plays often replicate the deicide charge
  in Matt. 27:25: "Then the people as a whole answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!'" (Note that, under pressure from his critics, Mel Gibson took this line out of the sub-titles in his film, but he did not remove it from the Aramaic spoken by the actors. The question must be asked: When The Passion of the Christ is im-ported to other areas of the world, including the Middle East, how will it be subtitled at this point?)
• Passion plays often reinforce the "teaching of contempt" [a phrase originated by Jules Isaac] toward Judaism and the Jewish people.
• Dramatization requires making choices, and those responsible for the dramatization should acknowl-edge that choices have been made.

Part III: Theological Considerations

The material presented in this section derives for the most part from the March program and largely expresses the views of the ICJS scholars, although some of the points were made by colloquium participants.

Questions:

This portion of the program began with each group of participants being asked to raise two questions about the interplay between the Gibson movie and the Gospel texts. What follows are some of the questions generated by the groups, which were then addressed by the ICJS scholars in a plenary discussion.

• Does the film cause more harm than good?
• What does the film accomplish?
• What kind of person was Jesus? Was he a faithful Jew?
• How do you get across the notion that there is more than one way to talk about atonement?
• As a clergyperson, would you recommend to the members of your congregation that they see the film? Why? Would you recommend that they not see the film? Why not? Would you attach any conditions to seeing or not seeing the film?
• Who is it that is feeling guilty about the death of Jesus after seeing the film -- Jews or Christians?
• Why do Jews find Gibson's portrayal to be threatening?
• What is the source of evil that people feel watching this film?
• What is behind the way in which Gibson framed
  his project?
• What can we know objectively about why Jesus was crucified?
• Why do some Christians see redemption in the brutality of the suffering portrayed? How does
  the brutality relate to Christian belief?
• How can we benefit from the contrast between the horrible suffering and the gracious love portrayed in the film?

Responses:

On Gibson:

Mel Gibson has the right to make the movie he wants to make. The problems lie not in the film itself but in the claims that Gibson makes about it: He claims that his movie is a representation of what happened, that in making it he was absolutely faithful to the Gospel texts, and that his movie is entirely free of interpretation. But by combining pieces from all four Gospels -- not to mention including material that appears in none of the canonical Gospels -- Gibson has in fact created a fifth "Gospel." In addition, it is not possible to make a movie that is totally free of interpretation. To cite one small example, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark refer to a "crowd" calling for Jesus' crucifixion, but how many people are there in a "crowd"? To make a movie that is as "faithful to the text" as possible, it is better to make a movie of one Gospel.

Gibson is in a struggle with modernity. By his own admission, he is not a Roman Catholic but part of a movement whose adherents believe that the Roman Catholic Church lost its soul at the Second Vatican Council. Gibson recognizes none of the post-Vatican II popes and none of the Roman Catholic teachings that have been propagated since the end of the Council, including documents that relate to the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people. Moreover, Gibson is in the throes of being "born again." He had discovered that with wealth and fame he could have anything he wanted, so he became addicted to every-thing. When he realized that his life was empty, he returned to the unsophisticated piety of his father. What is expressed in The Passion of the Christ is a pre-Vatican II piety, which is only one reaction among many to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. More significantly, however, while a pre-Vatican II piety is not bad or wrong in itself, it is not in keeping with the current teaching of the Church, and that renders such piety problematic.

In The Passion of the Christ Gibson has also tapped into an anti-intellectualism with regard to religion. He be-lieves that people should be able to pick up the Bible, read it, and understand it; he feels there ought not to be any ambiguities. While it is true that the Word of God is accessible, it is also true that the one who reads and/ or hears it must work at understanding it.

On suffering:

There are a number of problems inherent in the way that Gibson deals with suffering. It is important to assess the response to suffering evoked by The Passion of the Christ. Do we see that Jesus suffers and respond that he died for us and took away our sins, and all we must do is to believe in him? Or is our response, first, an acknowledgment of the suffering of Jesus and of the suffering of many others in our world, and then a recognition that in view of such suffering we must be moved to do whatever we can to help repair a broken world?

Gibson's portrayal of Jesus' suffering is theologically dangerous on several counts. It is a denial of Jesus' humanity to depict his suffering as qualitatively different from that of other human beings who have suffered horribly. Moreover, Jesus is cruelly tortured in this film, but he does not respond to that torture in the way that we know victims of torture respond to their suffering. After an unbelievably brutal scourging, Jesus rises manfully and defiantly to his feet in trademark Gibson fashion. Real victims of torture, however, are not manly and defiant; they are demeaned and humiliated, and if they can think at all, it is only of some way to get the punishment to stop. Jesus' response to brutality in Gib-son's film is again a denial of his humanity. But if Gibson had portrayed Jesus responding in a truly human way to the savagery of those who were beating him, movie-goers would be so filled with repugnance that they would be unable to sit through the ordeal.

We have discovered that people, and especially children, who have been exposed to massive suffering are brutal-ized by it. The experience of suffering does not ennoble them, neither does it sensitize them to the suffering of others. In the wake of the Shoah (the Holocaust), the whole dynamic of redemptive suffering has been pro-foundly challenged. But, in any event, there is no dynamic of redemptive suffering, no transformation of character played out in The Passion of the Christ.

Does Gibson's film suggest that there is no redemption without violence?

On the death of Jesus:

Gibson's film locks the viewer into a relationship with the dying Jesus, eliminating the rest of the world. But the world is not supposed to fall away; it's not supposed to just be "me and the dying Jesus." We must not become so absorbed in the cross that we forget the world.

If we are to understand in a non-triumphalist manner the declaration that Jesus takes away the sin(s) of the world, we need to regard the way in which we partici-pate in Christ's dying. The operative verb is in the present tense: Christ takes away the sin of the world. Taking away the sin of the world is now the respon-sibility of the body of Christ, the church. The church must die to its self-absorption and blindness to its own sin if it is to see the brokenness of the world and take away the sin of the world.

The materials that were created to promote The Passion of the Christ include the slogan, "Dying was his reason for living." But dying was not Jesus' reason for living; dying was the consequence of how he lived. God vindi-cated Jesus not because he was crucified but because he was a righteous man. If one lives a life modeled on Jesus' life, one will suffer. If the church lives its life modeled on Jesus' life, the church will suffer. But suffer-ing and death are not the last word. The last word is to be raised by God to new life.

On antisemitism:

When the Crucifixion is framed theologically as something that God wanted, one would expect that the complicity of the earthly participants would be diminished. Yet the Gospels make it appear that the Jews, as opposed to the Romans, were in control of everything that was go-ing on. Gibson's film heightens that perception by an order of magnitude.

Christians who believe sincerely that all humanity is responsible for the death of Jesus have great difficulty recognizing and understanding how thoroughly antise-mitic -- or, more accurately, anti-Judaic -- Gibson's film is. It would be better for Christians to focus on the ways in which they are complicitous in structures that per-petuate evil and suffering in the world, and to refrain from laying the blame on other people.

Final comments:

The Passion of the Christ is not a good movie. It does not educate, entertain, or transform the viewer. At best, seeing this film and moviegoers' reactions to it is an interesting sociological experience. There seems to be no neutral reaction: Viewers are either repulsed or enthralled by this film.

There is no reason for people to see The Passion of the Christ unless they are religious professionals, who need to see the movie to be in a position to answer questions about it. It would also be extremely helpful if religious professionals who do go to see the film have the opportunity to participate in a discussion following the screening.

Gibson's movie has got people talking, reading the Gos-pels, and, in some cases, even comparing what is in the Christian New Testament with what is in the Talmud. But something even more important is happening in terms of interfaith dialogue. Interreligious dialogue in America is often reduced to the lowest common denominator: Differences between people of different faiths are taken not to matter. But The Passion of the Christ has shed a powerful light on the divisions between different kinds of Christians. It has also shown how important it is for Christians to be able to talk to other Christians who are not like them.

Which leads to the question that every Christian needs to ask himself or herself: Is Jesus' story only about us, about making us feel grateful to God for what God did for us in Jesus? Or does Jesus' story obligate us to think about people who are not Christians and about how we are supposed to live in relation to the other? After this film, are others now a "we," or are others a "they" who just don't get it?

Janis Koch, ICJS Associate Scholar

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