Take me to the Pilate

After much hesitation, I finally gave in and saw Mel Gibsons, The Passion of the Christ. By now, everyone knows that this film has been the target of an extraordinary campaign of attempted censorship on the part of the Anti-Defamation League. I have to say, after watching this interpretation of possibly the most historical event ever known to man, I was not put off by it at all. I agree that it is quite an aggressively Christian movie, but that can't come as a surprise, as the director himself is just that, a devout Christian. There is nothing in The Passion regarding the Jewish leaders of the time and their treatment of Christ that does not come from the New Testament itself, which Christians regard as divinely inspired. (In fact, it has been verified and the key events are confirmed by the Jewish Talmud.) Gibson invents nothing, embellishes nothing, does nothing to suggest that all Jews rejected Christ or sought his death. The Passion limits the time frame to Jesus' last 18 hours of life, it doesn't take on the notion that the Jews didn't accept their Messiah (I think this would have changed a lot of peoples opinions of the film, if it had). It has always been suggested (even when I was in school) that Christians have sometimes been contorted to lay the responsibility for Jesus' execution at the feet of the Jewish people, a contortion that has long fueled the fires of anti-Semitism. The film Gibson has made, however, is reviving an ancient and divisive argument: who really killed Jesus? This set me wondering too, so I looked it up. As a matter of history, the Roman Empire did; as a matter of theology, the sins of the world drove Jesus to the cross, and the Catholic Church holds that Christians themselves bear "the gravest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus." Many Jewish leaders and theologians feared the film, with its portraits of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas leading an angry mob and of Pilate as a reluctant, sympathetic executioner,that it could reverse 40 years of work explaining the common bonds between Judaism and Christianity. Gibson has vehemently defended the film against charges of anti-Semitism, saying he does not believe in blood guilt and citing the church teaching that the transgressions and failings of all mankind led to the Passion, not just the sins of the Jewish people. "So it's not singling them out and saying, 'They did it.' That's not so," Gibson told the Global Catholic Network. "We're all culpable. I don't want to lynch any Jews...I love them. I pray for them." WWJD? indeed!