The recent detente between Christianity and Judaism was hard-won. While it would be foolish to claim that there haven't been instances of anti-semitism, leading to some incredibly ugly hate-filled speech, and outright acts of harassment's and violence, in the United States, Judeo-Christian relations over the past ten years have been pretty good when compared with some European countries. The fact that many Christians feel that the Jews are the chosen people of God (even though many believe that they will convert to Christianity, come the end of the world) was a wedge allowing a bit of tolerance to sneak into some of the more mainstream sects (like Catholicism)

The Christian Bible actually contains Jewish holy texts, the so-called "Old Testament". Jesus was, after all, part of the Israeli community of antiquity, and he was raised by Jewish parents in a Jewish community, and his teachings were an outgrowth of that ancient tradition. However, some parts of the New Testament are quite intentionally and extremely anti-semitic ( like the curse about Jesus's blood being on the hands the Jews' ancestors).

This, in itself doesn't have to be a problem for modern Christianity; there are plenty of other passages that today's followers of Jesus no longer follow. (No Western country actually cuts the hands off of convicted thieves, for example. And what do those crusading to preserve the sanctity of marriage think of this passage?).

Given that so much of the bible is inconsistently observed, it doesn't seem like too much to ask for modern Christians to sort of, well, not emphasize those particular anti-Semitic passages in their teachings. So, while the holy book of Christianity contains some pretty bad stuff, today's modern Christian need not be anti-semitic in order to practice his or her faith.

That said, Mr. Gibson is almost certainly not a big fan of the Jewish people. Most people would agree that the life and teachings of Jesus should be represented in cinema, but to focus solely on the last 12 hours of his life is a very deliberate redaction of the Bible by someone with an obvious axe to grind. To make a film that so blatantly fetishizes the torture and execution of Christ in such an extreme way, is asking its audience to be outraged. And since the Romans are so explicitly absolved, who's left in the film to become outraged at?

While many Christian teachers outline the importance of his suffering, it's really the resurrection of Jesus that gets the limelight, because that is the fundamental linchpin on which Christianity turns. If it wasn't for the resurrection story, it's quite possible that the Jesus movement may not have been as successful as it has. After all, thousands of his fellow Jews were tortured and murdered by the Roman authorities; and as horrendous as their suffering was, it's very rarely mentioned in the same breath as the suffering of Jesus because his followers don't believe that anyone but Jesus ever came back to life.

In the end, the best one can expect from Christianity is that its followers pay more attention to what Jesus said and less attention to the horror-show propaganda of a 21st century hate-monger.

-B. C. Silvia
-3/3/2004