Red Rag

I haven’t seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ve taken a casual interest in the debates about its alleged antisemitism, so I was interested to read Miranda Devine’s review of the film. She argues that the Romans come out of the film looking almost universally cruel, whereas the Jews exhibited both good and evil traits.

However, I was struck by her dismissal of early criticism of the film:

According to the New Yorker magazine, the scholars demanded 18 pages of changes, including that the two men crucified with Christ be described as “insurgents”, and not robbers. Much furore appears to have been whipped up by Christians whose ideological hatred of conservatives such as Gibson in their churches has overwhelmed their faith.

Eighteen pages of suggested changes, and she picks this to demonstrate that the critics were driven by a hatred of Gibson’s politics?

It’s pretty much a matter of historical record that the two sinners crucified beside Jesus were not mere petty crooks. Crucifixion is a time-consuming, expensive, and public punishment. It wouldn’t have been used to execute “robbers”, because it simply wouldn’t have been worth the effort. Insurrectionists, on the other hand, would almost certainly have been crucified. At a time when the Jews were becoming increasingly unhappy with their situation, the Romans would have killed suspected rebels in the most excruciatingly painful (and public) way possible.

It’s likely that Jesus himself was crucified because he was considered a political threat. That’s why the Jewish leaders tried to trap him into claiming he was the King of the Jews. There was plenty of circumstancial evidence, too — Jesus was forever speechifying about the new Kingdom that would follow the current one, he took his followers into the desert to do who-knows-what kind of training, and it is believed that his closest companions included a former member of the Sicarii (a group known for assassinating political leaders). I’m not saying that Jesus was a revolutionary, just that there was enough evidence for the Romans to be concerned, and ultimately to crucify him for claiming sovereignty over the Jews.

Maybe the critics do hate Gibson, but the example offered by Devine shows that they wanted the film to reflect the best available history of Jesus. She should be thanking them for their help.