The Passion and the gospels

Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of Christ has already aroused a great deal of controversy.

Gibson, associated with such successful films as Brave Heart, is a traditional Catholic who has sunk a great deal of his own money into this new film. Traditionally the Church held the Jewish people responsible for the death of Christ – and Jewish communities often feared for their lives during Holy Week.

This accusation of deicide was decisively rejected by the Vatican in the 1960s.

Nevertheless, Christians still have to tread with great caution in this highly sensitive and fraught area. Three things need to be borne in mind.

First, Jesus was charged and executed by the Romans, probably as a threat to political order. Pilate was a cruel tyrant whom Rome removed from office a few years after the crucifixion for being overly tyrannical, even by Rome’s cruel standards. It is unlikely then that a group of Jewish leaders could have blackmailed Pilate into doing their will.

Secondly, the gospels were written up after the split between the early Christian community and the synagogue.

There was fierce polemic between the two groups which is probably reflected in the gospels. The gospels vary in their emphasis on the responsibility of some Jewish people for the death of Jesus but the gospels of Matthew and John need to be treated with particular care. Throughout John’s gospel there is a rather menacing reference to ‘The Jews’, in a vague and allembracing sense. At Matthew 27, 25 the Jewish people as a whole are reported as saying to Pilate ‘His blood be on us and on our children’. All this sort of thing needs to be treated with great circumspection.

Thirdly, the events which led up to the crucifixion of Jesus are the proper study of historical scholarship and those findings, if there is a consensus, must be respected.

If some Jews had a role in the run-up to the death of Jesus, it is clear from the gospels that it was the temple authorities – not the Pharisees, for example, to whom Jesus was in some respects quite close, or at least close to some of them.

When watching this film, or engaged in the controversy surrounding it, it will be important to bear these points in mind.

Rt Revd Richard Harries

The Passion of the Christ opens in cinemas on March 26th