Moriarty reviewed The Passion over on AICN; unlike most of the Passion reviews on AICN, his was fairly negative. I note his review not because of that directly, but because of some of the replies to the review:
“Most movies that are made in Hollywood are anti-white? Hollywood is controlled by jews. Most Hollywood movies have British and German villains. Blacks are overrepresented on TV. They’re either seen as the “victim” or superior to Whites. Blacks are NEVER portrayed negatviely, whereas whites are always the villains. Clearly this is anti-white racism at the hands of Hollywood jews.”
And:
“Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate and betrayed by the Jewish people… Sorry to say but thats basically what you get when you look at the different books of the Bible. The Romans may have done the crucifying, but the Jewish people ultimately turned their backs on Him. Oh and as for Moriarty talking about how Pilate was softened because of when the books were written so as to not anger the Roman occupiers… well yeah I saw that History Channel documentary too about 4 weeks ago….. Just because its on television deosn’t make it true, that was a small group of historians conjecture about the crucifixion. Bottom line, if you’re Christain you already know this story, and are just glad that someone made a high-quality version of it to help explain one small bit of our faith to others. If the details are hard to swallow, well history is a bitch sometimes….”
Those are only two replies out of quite a few. Most of them are thoughtful, interesting, and not racist or anti-Semitic. But it’s the two guys out of a hundred who will take the movie as affirmation of their racism that I worry about.
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A friend of mine read “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” by Anne Catherine Emmerich (the book Gibson’s movie is based on). His take was that it does explicitly blame the Jews for all time
Incidentally, that’s one of the reasons that the books is not considered particularly helpful in most Christian circles. The book of Revelations makes it clear that the Jews are still part of God’s plan and purpose after the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus.
You know, if more people spent time actually pursuing and understanding their faith, rather than casting aspersions based on half-formed theology, the world would be a simpler place.
Ah, well.