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I hope his film succeeds and I wish him success. However, having seen a few of the outtakes, and having a good historical knowledge of the ancient world, the Bible and a vivid imagination, combined with a weak stomach, I doubt if I will see it.

A really graphic depiction of Christ's passion is something most Americans, regardless of religious orientation, might find difficult to watch and definitely not for young children.

I HOPE his film doesn't follow the current politically correct canard of blaming Christ's execution on the Roman government's view of him as a dangerous radical. They had more important things to be concerned about than a wandering preacher and religious prophet - the Palestinian area was full of them and Christ's teachings were the least threatening to the Roman state.

Christ was directly executed for a number of reasons. The
Jewish religious hierarchy viewed his infleunce with the masses as a religious reformer as a dangerous threat to their own lucrative positions and lifestyles.

Judea was a hot bed of prior difficutlies for the Roman state. Unlike almost every other group of people the Romans conquered, the Jews alone refused to become assimilated and Romanized and the strength of the Roman state lay in its ability to incorporate conquered populations into its political and military system rathe than exclude them (most of the legions involved in suppressing the later Jewish Revolt were actually recruited in Spain).

Despite attempts by the Roman government to woo the Jewish population by making allowances such as keeping the sheilds of their legionnaries and the images of their standards covered in Jerusalem due to the Jewish opposition to graven images, the hostility between conquerors and conquered was exacerbated by the unbridgable theological gulf between monotheism, an essentially exclusive religious belief, and Paganism, which commonly practised incorporation of other people's gods into one's own Pantheon.

Pilate had recently had his fingers rapped by the central government in Rome over creating some disturbances in Judea by actions viewed as insensitive to Jewish public opinion.
Consequently, he was not in any mood to take any action that might unnecessarily aggrevate the Jewish establishemnt and create any other causes for concern by his bosses back home who just wanted the province run quietly and securely, with the taxes rolling in. (Due to its geogrpahic location, Judea was a strategic province - its possession was essential to control the eatern Mediterranean and the trade routes Roman merchants relied upon with the east.)

Consequently, Pilate reluctantly consented to the execution of Christ at the demands of the Jewish religious hierarchy, but not before trying a bait and switch with Barabbas,a genuine criminal and threat to public safety, trying to get Herod to deal with the situation, and finally trying to satisfy Christ's accusers by having Him flogged instead of crucified.

From a purely theological perspective, while the above were the MECHANICAL reasons for Christ's death, the real causative agent was the need to redeem mankind - us - from our own vile natures and evil sins.