‘The Passion’ a quick sellout on the bookshelf

Propelled by the runaway buzz for Mel Gibson’s controversial upcoming film, a book featuring graphic photos from “The Passion of the Christ” has sold out of its substantial first printing.

Tyndale House Publishers is struggling to keep up with demand for the coffee-table book featuring photographs from the movie, which dramatizes Jesus Christ’s final hours.

In its first full week of sales, 150,000 copies of “The Passion” were sold, said Dan Balow, an executive director for the Illinois-based publisher. This week, “The Passion,” which includes a short foreword by Gibson, made Amazon.com’s list of the Top 10 fastest-moving books.

“We’ve just been astounded,” Balow said, noting that the numbers shot up after Diane Sawyer’s prime-time interview with Gibson on Monday. Churches and Christian ministries have been ordering copies of the book in bulk.

The book follows a growing trend of titles officially tied to film releases, but few have seen a reaction of this magnitude, particularly before the movie’s release. “The Passion” goes into a second printing today and a third next week. By then, about 250,000 copies are expected to be in print in several languages.

In the last few weeks, advance screenings of the film, which opens Feb. 25, have been deeply polarizing. Critics have charged that the movie is gratuitously graphic and anti-Semitic, while others say it may reinforce the messages of Christianity. Gibson, who financed the film himself, has denied that “The Passion” implies that Jews are responsible for killing Jesus.

Tyndale has not received any complaints about the book, Balow said. The book features photographs taken on the set in Italy and passages from Tyndale’s New Living Translation of the Bible.

It includes intense images of James Caviezel, the actor who portrays Jesus, being flogged with a whip by a sneering soldier. Other images portray Jesus’ suffering on the cross.

Gibson doesn’t address charges of anti-Semitism in the foreword.

He writes that he hopes the movie helps “many more people recognize the power of His love.”