‘Christ’ and the gospel truth

When Mel Gibson set out to produce a cinematic re-creation of the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” he said he was determined to hew closely to the biblical accounts found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

“I thought it was absolutely necessary to adhere as faithfully as possible to those four Gospels,” Gibson told students at a recent pre-screening at Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian campus. “That is, after all, what Christians base their faith on, these four testimonies of the evangelists.”

While Gibson has largely succeeded in his efforts to tell the “gospel truth” -- at least in a literal sense -- it’s important to note that the Gospel writers themselves are not believed to have been eyewitnesses to the greatest story every told.

Jesus is believed to have been crucified around 32 CE (common era). Mark, the earliest Gospel, is believed to have been written around the time the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Matthew and Luke were probably written in the mid-80s, and John in the early to mid-90s. In fact, the oldest writings in the Christian canon are not the Gospels, but the letters of the Apostle Paul. The earliest was his first epistle to the Thessalonians, written around the year 51 CE.

The Gospel writers engaged in what today is called “spin.” They went easy on the Romans and came down hard on “the Jews,” meaning not themselves but other Jews with whom they were fighting to define their faith.

Why the minimization of the role of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, in the Gospel accounts? Scholars said that the Gospels were written during a time when Imperial Rome was supreme. Nascent Christianity was in no position to either challenge or speak freely. While few deny that high priests were deeply complicit in Jesus’ death, both the Scriptures and non-Christian historians from the Roman era say it was Pilate’s call in the end. This is not apparent in Gibson’s film.

Still, in “The Passion of the Christ,” which opens today at 2,800 theaters across the country, we hear the words of Jesus, chapter and verse, which have echoed through the ages and altered the course of human history.

At moments, Gibson’s use of cinematic metaphor goes beyond chapter and verse and conveys larger truths. At other points, though, the movie offers scenes that would have been unrecognizable to the Gospel authors.

In one, Jesus as a carpenter builds a table that looks like a miniature altar. In another, Judas, Jesus’ betrayer, stumbles near the carcass of a donkey. Was it the same donkey that only days earlier carried Jesus triumphantly into Jerusalem as adoring crowds hailed him as Messiah amid shouts of hosannas?

At least one scene in the movie was influenced by a 19th century Augustinian nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, according to an account in the New Yorker. As a poor farm girl, Emmerich had pious visions and joined a convent. Eventually she experienced ecstasies and developed stigmata. Her life was chronicled by Clemens Brentano in a book published in 1824, which Gibson read. Gibson included one of Emmerich’s visions in his film. In it, Mary, the mother of Jesus, kneeling on the hard stones of Pilate’s courtyard, mops up her son’s blood.

Gibson and co-writer Benedict Fitzgerald take more liberties with the lines of Caiphas, the Jewish high priest, and Pilate. Caiphas emerges as a priest of unmitigated gall and avarice and Pilate far more benign than the Gospels suggest.

The film is not anti-Semitic. But, like the Gospels, it is open to an anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic reading.

In Gibson’s film, it is Caiphas who leads the crowd in demanding that Pilate release Barabbas, a crazed criminal, in place of Jesus. It is Caiphas who is the first to shout, “Crucify him!” Neither is supported by the Gospel accounts. The film portrays a priest as taunting Jesus on the cross and saying, “If you are the Messiah, come down from the cross.” The Bible does not identify Jesus’ tormentor as a priest. In another scene, one of the prisoners being crucified next to Jesus reprimands the priest as Jesus asks God to forgive. “Listen,” the prisoner tells the priest, “He prays for you!”

Yet, even here, Caiphas’ and Pilate’s moral failures, and Machiavellian manipulations that lead relentlessly to a bloody and brutal execution of Jesus, are generally true to the Gospel themes if not to the letter.

Asked at the Christian university if he believed the Bible is the “word of God, the Gospel,” Gibson replied without hesitation. “Yeah, I believe. I mean I must. I must. Every single word of it.”

But are the Gospels the gospel truth? Not as they have been misinterpreted over the ages.

For two millenniums, New Testament accounts of the death of Jesus, known as the Passion Narratives, have inspired the faithful and provoked persecution of Jews. In the 2,000-year history of Christianity, they have been a beacon pointing the way to selfless giving and love -- and, tragically, have been distorted into a warrant for the evil designs of hate.

Did Gibson miss an opportunity to build on the hard-won insights of the post-Holocaust church, including its deeper understanding of the social and political context in which the Gospels were written? Yes and no. Much will depend on the perceptions of those who view the film.

Jesus, whose success as a preacher could be attributed in part to his effective storytelling, often spoke in parables. Those who had insight would get the message.

When Jesus told Nicodemus he must be born anew, Jesus was speaking of belief. But Nicodemus was a literalist. “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” he asked. Nicodemus didn’t get it.

For those who see “The Passion of the Christ,” the question is: How will they get it?

Many Christians no doubt will see a story of God’s love and forgiveness writ large in the sacrificial blood of an unjustly suffering savior. Many will examine their own failings and resolve to love their neighbors as themselves, a commandment repeated by Jesus, who himself was quoting Hebrew Scripture. Jews, whose perception of Christianity was shaped not by an enlightened post-Holocaust church but by the ashes of Auschwitz, will likely be deeply troubled. Since the film adheres closely to the Gospel themes, even as some of its characters stray far from the words attributed to them in the Bible, few minds are likely to be changed.

In a sense, the film takes new understandings of the Gospels into account, particularly those who know that when the Gospel writers were referring to “the Jews,” they weren’t talking about all Jews for all time, but limiting their disdain to a Jewish religious elite.

In the film, Gibson makes the point that not all Jews were out to crucify the Christ. During a star chamber session before the Jewish high priests led by Caiphas, one priest protests, “This entire proceeding is an outrage.” A moment later he calls the trial “a travesty ... a beastly travesty.”

As Jesus bears his cross to Golgotha, the place of his crucifixion, a Jewish woman cries out, “Help him! He’s a holy man!” Simon, who is ordered to help Jesus bear his cross, screams out at the Roman guards who are whipping Jesus and to those in the crowd who spit upon him, “Stop this. Leave him alone!” At Golgotha, Simon is dismissed by a Roman soldier with the words, “Leave, you Jew!”

But in Gibson’s film such themes softening Jewish complicity in the death of Jesus may be too subtle. Gibson might repeat Jesus’ question, “Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?”

What about those who fail to see these asides? Those mitigating scenes are overpowered by the bold relief in which Gibson portrays the Jewish priests, who are frequently accompanied by Satan. The face of the hooded evil one, pallid and menacing as a silent scream, lurks in the shadows of the garden of Gethsemane as the Jewish temple police move in on Jesus. In Pilate’s court as Jews demand Jesus’ crucifixion, the very same Satan slides effortlessly through the clamoring mob and becomes the backdrop, the alter ego, of the Jewish high priests. A maggot crawls up his nose.

This is Gibson’s, not the Gospels’ take, on the presence of evil as the terrible events unfolded. There is no explicit mention of Satan in the Passion Narratives.

In another scene, a flashback before Jesus’ arrest, Jesus draws a line in the sand. On one side are the Jewish priests. On the other is Jesus and a woman caught in adultery. She has been thrown to the ground. It is the Bible scene in which Jesus says those who are without sin should cast the first stone.

Pilate was never a good guy in the Gospel accounts. But in Gibson’s film he comes off as inept and weak -- even a sympathetic character -- in the face of the plotting temple priests. At least five times, Pilate protests that Jesus is innocent. From the first time Jesus is presented to him by the priests after a preliminary beating at the hands of their own police, Pilate demands, “Do you always punish your prisoners before they’re judged?” At another point he tells the crowd, “It is you who want to crucify him, not us.”

In the end, those in the audience will be guided by their own understanding. As “The Passion of the Christ” opens today, on Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian penitential season of Lent, the question remains: What happens when the theater lights come back up and those in the audience, Christian believers, curious seekers and skeptics, file out?

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Staff writer Larry B. Stammer covers religion issues for The Times.