This week in the New Yorker (Mel Gibson interview)

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In his forthcoming film, "The Passion," "I didn't want to see Jesus looking really pretty. I wanted to mess up one of his eyes, destroy it," Mel Gibson tells Peter J. Boyer in "The Jesus War," in the September 15, 2003, issue of The New Yorker. "Violence," writes Boyer, who has seen an early, unfinished version of the movie, "is Gibson's natural film language, and his Jesus is unsparingly pummelled, flayed, kicked, and otherwise smitten from first to last." Gibson's retelling of the final week in the life of Jesus has already attracted tremendous controversy over its depiction of the role of the Jews in Christ's death, a dispute in which, Boyer writes, "the familiar advocates have reflexively assumed their familiar stations, even though the dramatic form at issue—the Christian Passion play—is so obscure in the secular age that many Americans, perhaps most, would not likely be able to describe it." Gibson tells Boyer that he has included subtitles in his film, which is performed in Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic, to make it clear that some of the Jews portrayed in the movie are sympathetic figures. "You've just got to have them," he says, referring to the subtitles. "I mean, I didn't think so, but so many people say things to me like 'Why aren't there more sympathetic Jews in the crowd?' Well, they're there." Gibson adds, "It's just amazing to me how one-eyed some people are about this thing. I mean, it's like a veil comes down and they just can't see it. For instance, did you know that one of the priests helps take his body down from the Cross? It's there! Nobody sees it. They can only view it from one eye."

Gibson originally shot a scene, based on Saint Matthew's Gospel, that pictured Caiaphas, a Jewish high priest, calling down a curse on the Jews for killing Jesus, but he has chosen not to include it. "I wanted it in," he says. "My brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. It happened; it was said, but man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house, they'd come kill me." Criticism of Gibson's film began early; it grew after an ad-hoc group of interfaith scholars received a copy of the script anonymously in the mail and issued a critique of it. "I didn't realize it would be so vicious," Gibson says of the criticism. "The acts against the film started early. As soon as I announced I was doing it, it was 'This is a dangerous thing.' There is a vehement anti-Christian sentiment out there, and they don't want it. It's vicious. I mean, I think we're just a little part of it, we're just the meat in the sandwich here." On another occasion, Gibson tells a group of evangelicals he has brought to see the film that "the L.A. Times, it's an anti-Christian publication, as is the New York Times." Of Frank Rich, who wrote in the Times that Gibson was using "p.r. spin to defend a Holocaust denier," Gibson says, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick....I want to kill his dog." Paul Lauer, Gibson's marketing director, who overheard Gibson saying this, tells Boyer, "The thing you have to understand is that the distance between Mel's heart and his mouth is greater than the distance between his imagination and his mouth. He is an artist, and he says these things, and his creative energy kicks in, and he comes out with these imaginative, wild things." It is Gibson's father who has been accused of being a Holocaust denier, a charge Gibson rejects. Gibson says, "I don't want to be dissing my father. He never denied the Holocaust; he just said there were fewer than six million. I don't want to have them dissing my father. I mean, he's my father."

Gibson's commitment to his faith, which has also inspired him to build a church near his home in California that celebrates the Tridentine Latin Mass rejected by Vatican reformers in the nineteen-sixties, reëmerged during his mid-thirties, he explains. "You can get pretty wounded along the way, and I was kind of out there. I got to a very desperate place. Very desperate. Kind of jump-out-of-a-window desperate. And I didn't want to hang around here, but I didn't want to check out. The other side was kind of scary. And I don't like heights, anyway. But when you get to the point where you don't want to live, and you don't want to die—it's a desperate, horrible place to be. And I just hit my knees. And I had to use the Passion of Christ and wounds to heal my wounds. And I've just been meditating on it for twelve years." Speaking of his own Traditionalist worship, he tells Boyer, "Believe me, every other type of everything is easier than what I do." The brouhaha over his film, Gibson points out, has had a curious effect: "Inadvertently," he says, "all the problems and the conflicts and stuff—this is some of the best marketing and publicity I have ever seen."

Gibson had one thing in mind when he made this film. He was going to do something like Zaferrelli did when he made his Jesus movie, after an auto accident I think, as an act of piety. This is what artists do, they do relgious art.

Now he has gone far beyond that. Not only has he "outed"as infidels the
scholars attached to the bishops' council,he has gone on the offensive and called a spade a spade. Nothing since the scandals has do clearly shown the bright line between fidelity and infidelity as his filming of this passion play. It has been like pouring holy water on people possessed by demons.

What you say is right on the money. There are a hundred ironies in all this--not least of which is that Gibson is a Catholic traditionalist who is doing more to forge a common bond with other Christians than all the dialoguing of the past forty years by bishops and other clergy. He is clearly being used by God in some powerful and mysterious way, creating in his art a pulpit to galvanize a dispirited Christianity.

One of the best defenders of Catholicism is Phil Jenkins, an EX-Catholic. So it may be that instead of the old vertical distinctions between Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, we have a horizontal line between liberals and conservatives, so the we have more in common with Protestant evangelicals than with progressive Catholics. I think this goes back a long way.
Talleyrand was a Catholic bishop but John Wesley was certainly more in tune with St. Alphonsus.

Gibson originally shot a scene, based on Saint Matthew's Gospel, that pictured Caiaphas, a Jewish high priest, calling down a curse on the Jews for killing Jesus

Does anyone know what he's talking about here?

Mt. 26:63-66 says, "But Jesus was silent. And the high priest said to him, 'I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.' Jesus said to him, 'You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.' Then the high priest tore his robes and said, 'He has uttered blasphemy. Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?' They answered, 'He deserves death.'" (RSV)

Then in Mt. 27:24-25, "... (Pilate) took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.' And all the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!' "

So I assume Mel is using "based on" in the typical Hollywood sense, meaning "significantly different from the cited source."

Any ideas? The discussion of this movie suggests that as they work on it, it's less and less like the Gospels.

Different ways of looking at the same text, I guess. To me, "the high priest calling down a curse on the Jewish people" and "the assembled crowd cursing themselves and their descendants" are not exactly the same thing, and the mindset of the reader influences what he or she sees in the text.

I admit I'm just kibbitzing because of the spectacle; I don't watch violent films, and there's not much chance I'll see this one.

I wonder if Gibson will include the fact that Caiaphas was appointed to his job by the Romans. The gospel writers wimped out on that point.

Jesus states that Pilate's authority came from God, however, he omits the fact that, since Caiaphas was appointed by the Romans, then his authority must have come from God too.

The politics were a little more complex than that. Caiphas and the Sadducees represented the hellenized Jews and the Greeks who were large landowners in Judaea. But as, the Pharisses had more support among the people, the Sadducees could not, as Josephus says, do anything without them. The Procurator and the Rome were there for the tribute and would not do anything that would slow the cash flow. But the gospel writers cut to the chase. The "Jews," i.e. the leadership wanted Jesus dead and found the easy way was to use the Romans. The Creed is quite definite in placing the historic responsibility. It says: "suffered under Pontius Pilate."

Caiphas came from a family of priests. His sons also became high priests. I have no doubt he paid for his office--which was how the system worked and how a proconsul like Pilate would have made his fortune. There is a probability Caiphas also had connections in Rome and had leverage over Pilate. It is not necessarily true that his appointment indicated he was Pilate's tool.

In any case, what is your point--that the Gospels are wrong and you are right and that the Christian faith is based on false premises about Jewish involvement in the death of Jesus? Don't you think this is kind of arrogant, suggesting to Christians that their holy texts are mistaken and that Gibson ought to have consulted with modern scholars before making his movie? This is absurd. He's a Christian, not a humanist scholar with a vested interest in undermining the New Testament.

As for Jesus's comment that Pilate's authority came from God--I'm sure the same could have been said of Caiphas, as you say. But so what? While authority comes from God, the way such authority is wielded--whether justly or unjustly--is a matter of an individual's judgment. Pilate and Caiphas still would have been obliged to act justly. They did not.

This is a reference to the line, "His blood on us and on our children." Actually, the film adheres very closely to the Gospels. Gibson toned it down a bit--taking into consideration the volatility of the material and the need to consider modern sensibilities--while at the same time he heightened our awareness of the human suffering of Jesus which necessarily was obscured by so brief a narrative. It is one thing for a Jew like Matthew to censure fellow Jews, but it is another for a contemporary Christian who inhabits a different world.

"Jesus states that Pilate's authority came from God, however, he omits the fact that, since Caiaphas was appointed by the Romans, then his authority must have come from God too."

The Gospel writers do not wimp out on this fact at all - St. John clearly ascribes the charism of prophecy to Caiphas in virtue of his holding the high priestly office:

John 11,49 "But one of them, named Caiphas, being the high priest that year, said to them: You know nothing.
50 Neither do you consider that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.
51 And this he spoke not of himself: but being the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation."

God can speak through the holders of ecclesiastical office in spite of them being corrupt gutter-snipes like Caiphas, and in spite of them lacking cognisance of the full import of their words. The infallibility of the Popes is built on exactly this principle and there have been some who behaved more like Caiphas than Cephas.

But the gospel writers cut to the chase. The "Jews," i.e. the leadership wanted Jesus dead and found the easy way was to use the Romans.

Let us say that something like this were to happen in Iraq in 2003. Paul Bremer has a job that is vaguely analogous to that of Pilate. Let us say Bremer were to appoint an Iraqi to the job of Minister of Law Enforcement but require that this person get Bremer's approval before executing anyone.

Let us say (hypothetically) that this Iraqi minister came to Bremer one day and said that a certain individual was guilty of a crime and deserved execution. Bremer looked into the matter and it appeared to him that the man was innocent, but a mob suddenly appeared and began chanting for the man's death, so Bremer acquiesced and executed the man.

Who would be held responsible for that execution? The Iraqi people or Bremer?

Bremer, of course, would be held responsible. The same should be said of Pilate. As the offical in command, Pilate should be held accountable for the death of Jesus, not the Jews.

But the fact remains that Caiaphas was a Roman appointee. And, if we accept Jesus' statement that the Romans obtained their power from God, (John 19:11) then Caiaphas, being a Roman appointee, also obtained his power from God.

Therefore, God ordained that Jesus die. No one else did.

As for Jesus's comment that Pilate's authority came from God--I'm sure the same could have been said of Caiphas, as you say. But so what? While authority comes from God, the way such authority is wielded--whether justly or unjustly--is a matter of an individual's judgment. Pilate and Caiphas still would have been obliged to act justly. They did not.

According to Paul, the Romans never acted unjustly:

Romans 13:1-3

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

Since Caiaphas was a Roman-appointed ruler, he was not a terror to good works but only to evil. Jesus, then, must have deserved to die. (according to Paul)

The parallel is inexact. The "crime" for which Jesus was punished was that of claiming to be king of the Jews. He was delivered up to the Romans by those who, if his claim was correct, by people who owed their fealty to him. The best that can be said for Caiphas was that he was trying to spare the people from an uprising that would result in the killing of many Jews by the Romans. Better that one man die than the many. And, again, the ultimate responsibility historically is Pilate's. Theologically, we are all responsible for infidelity to Christ. But look at the story: betrayed by one of the Twelve, denied by another, and deserted by the rest.
Denounced by the leaders of the nation and turned over for execution by the aliens who ruled their land by force. That is the story that Gibson tells. All the characters are Jews,except the Romans. As for those who were with him? His mother and a few women and a brave dissenter from the Jewish council. Still all Jews. If we look at the Hebrew Scripture we find they treated the prophets poorly,were always suspicious of them. Now, once more, they rejectd one as a false prophet. A family tragedy.

The Gospel writers do not wimp out on this fact at all - St. John clearly ascribes the charism of prophecy to Caiphas in virtue of his holding the high priestly office:

They most assuredly DID wimp out on the point that Caiaphas was a Roman appointee:

John 19:11 Jesus answered (to Pilate), Thou couldest have no power [at all] against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

Apparently, when he says "he that delivered me," he is referring to Caiaphas. Naturally, the gospel writers could not mention that Caiaphas was a Roman appointee, because, if we take that fact into account, then Caiaphas is just as ordained of God as Pilate. Therefore, Caiaphas is not guilty of more or less sin than Pilate.

The gospel writers obviously wanted to shift the guilt for the death of Jesus from the Romans to the Jews because they did not want to insult their Roman masters. If you notice, in the gospels, Jesus directs all of his insults and cursing at the Pharisees, who did not have any official power. He never insults the High Priest and he never, NEVER insults the Romans.

If we look at the Hebrew Scripture we find they treated the prophets poorly,were always suspicious of them.

The Jews preserved the writings of the prophets. They copied their words so meticulously over centuries that ancient texts that have been found are remarkably similar to the ones we have today.

Some of the prophets ran afoul of jealous kings but the Jews generally considered those kings to be evil and revered the memory of the prophets.

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