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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋu |
2004.03.01 New York Times – Update 2004.03.01 1500 Yᵊru•shâ•laꞋyim Time – It’s not often that I agree with the Vatican, but in this case, as New York Times columnist William Safire writes (New York Times, 2004.03.01), the Vatican got it right.
“What are the dramatic purposes of this depiction of cruelty and pain? First, shock; the audience I sat in gasped at the first tearing of flesh. Next, pity at the sight of prolonged suffering. And finally, outrage: who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?
“Not Pontius Pilate, the Roman in charge; he and his kindly wife are sympathetic characters. Nor is King Herod shown to be at fault.
“The villains at whom the audience's outrage is directed are the actors playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers. This is the essence of the medieval "passion play," preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as "Christ killers."
“Much of the hatred is based on a line in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the Roman governor washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus, when the crowd cries, "His blood be on us, and on our children."
“Though unreported in the Gospels of Mark, Luke or John, that line in Matthew – embraced with furious glee by anti-Semites through the ages — is right there in the Διαθηκη Καινη (NT). Gibson and his screenwriter didn't make it up, nor did they misrepresent the apostle's account of the Roman governor's queasiness at the injustice.
“But biblical times are not these times. This inflammatory line in Matthew — and the millenniums of persecution, scapegoating and ultimately mass murder that flowed partly from its malign repetition — was finally addressed by the Catholic Church in the decades after the defeat of Naziism.
“In 1965's historic Second Vatican Council, during the papacy of Paul VI, the church decided that while some Jewish leaders and their followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, ‘still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.’"
The Vatican is right about this. It is impossible to emphasize enough that history thoroughly documents that it was the Tzᵊdoq•imꞋ, not Pᵊrush•imꞋ (the forebears of today’s Jews), who perpetrated this despicable injustice. Moreover, the curse must also have come true. The Tzᵊdoq•imꞋ priests are no more! But blaming it on the innocent Pᵊrush•imꞋ is pure and simple miso-Judaism.
Update 2004.03.01 1100 Yᵊru•shâ•laꞋyim Time – The number of scholars concerned about the intrinsic miso-Judaism in Mel Gibson’s movie is rising as they see the movie. Notably, the scholars most knowledgeable about Jews and Judaism are the ones setting off the alarm bells while the more ignorant and dyed-in-the-wool Christian evangelists who are entirely clueless about Jews or Judaism are the only ones claiming that the movie isn’t miso-Judaic. The latest scholars to voice concern are Geza Vermes, former professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University and “Columbia University professor Ari Goldman, currently a visiting fellow at Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, [who] declared that [for a Jew,] ‘to watch this movie is to feel the hand of Mel Gibson pointed right at your face’ ” (Jerusalem Post, 2004.02.29).
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