How acuarate is mel's movie actualy. I know the basics of it as the message of the crucifiction is from the new testament, but isn't some of it(such as Satan and the demons all around) based off a vision a nun had I believe in the eighteen hundereds?

Also, Christ was crucified on a cross right? I mean that's the way the execution was back then for "crucifiction". But a woman has told me it was actualy on a stake and not a cross. Is that true?

BTW, The movie is a blessing from God I believe!!!!!

-- Jason (Enchanted fire@aol.com), March 07, 2004

Answers

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

Ok then, please explain why it's "historicly" right but not "biblicaly" right. How was he crucified too?

-- Jason (Enchanted fir@aol.com), March 07, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

Whether the movie is accurate is a trivial question, IMO. For one thing, it is rather unanswerable. The Gospels themselves give sparse details. You could write a hundred Passion plays, all completely faithful to the text of the Gospels, but very different from each other.

As far as the movie being a blessing from God, well, I dunno. Just like every piece of religious art, you can pick at it for some legitimate reasons without being a blasphemer. I thought that Stephanie Zacharek of Salon magazine wrote a somewhat insightful review with a number of negative points. Some things I resonate with her on:

"He's made the first true Jesusploitation flick, a picture that, despite its self-righteous air of grave religiosity, is barely spiritual at all. Instead, it's the most macho movie about Jesus ever made, one that catalogs his physical suffering in a businesslike visual database of flayed flesh and spurting blood."

"If we flinch from the sight of nails tearing through flesh or the sound of human bones cracking, we're automatically denigrating the magnitude of Jesus' sacrifice. "Are you man enough to take it?" is Gibson's relentless unspoken demand, and the answer had better be yes."

"Gibson has turned that suffering into a kind of cinematic laundry list. The images are so relentless they become numbing; paradoxically, as the details pile up, they become more of an abstraction than concrete proof of anything... We're left with a fairly clinical understanding of the pain Jesus endured, but there's no spiritual glow to the mystery of his sacrifice; if it's there, it's caked in so much dried blood that we have no sense of it."

"It's a 'My faith's bigger than yours' approach."

She also wrote something else interesting, which I'll only paraphrase. She muses that Gibson clearly conceives of religious belief as an "endurance test." She wonders whether this is an essential part of Catholicism, thinking back on her "faithful Catholic girl-hood days" when the quality of one's faith was indeed defined in terms of "being able to take the heat."

That's an unfortunate perception, but I think she has a point. There is something very wrong with Gibson's approach of, "Can you take the heat?" and especially with his tying the answer to that question to our character.

Frankly, faith is NOT an endurance test, in the sense of being "macho". On the contrary, you know when someone has true faith *not* by their endurance but by whether their faith becomes the very air they breathe. One does not endure their faith; they live and thrive by it; it excites them and gives them enegery. Faith helps us endure the world (although its rightful end is not this but salvation).

-- anon (ymous@god.bless), March 07, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

Mel Gibson is a film-maker, not an evangelist. Movie scripts depend upon tension and development of a dramatic idea. It couldn't be worked out better in any other style, without making it a LIFE of Christ. That would be a much harder screenplay to encapsulate. He's given us the most dramatic moments of Christ's life, not the Holy Gospel distilled into a shooting script. If it were done in such a way, there would be little dramatic tension to work out until--the last twelve hours of Christ's life.

We also have to admit the necessity Gibson has, of authentic settings and portrayals to give his movie visual power. You can't tell the viewers everything a movie is about. You must show it in pictures. The medium demands much more than a narrative in print does. It must lead the audience from one scene into the next one; without allowing dramatic tension to flag. Gibson succeeded by showing us mob scenes, nervous tension everywhere and one central figure-- CHRIST-- placed in a situation where there was no escape and no sympathy from the tormentors around Him.

It's absurd to see today's critics demanding less hatred, no anger, nothing too abusive. --Fight fair, Christians! Don't show so many of Christ's enemies together in one place! ''This isn't Spain, after all!'' ( Line from A Man For All Seasons).

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), March 07, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

"You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers." (O Brother, Where Art Thou)

-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), March 07, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

I think the hype about Mel Gibson's movie is dying down, but you are still going to get some who won't let it go - just one more thing to pick on.

Personally, I think it best to just ignore these folks - unless, of course, you sense a sincere inquiry about Jesus, the crucifixion, church, or Bible.

Those who want to see the suffering of Jesus, will see that and be touched by it, moved by it, renewed by His suffering.

Those who go to see this movie to find fault with it will find that. I no longer discuss the movie with those who just want to attack Catholics or Christians. It is a no-win situation.

-- MaryLu (mlc327@juno.com), March 07, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

I couldn't be happier with the film, and at this point if someone doesn't get it, then they just don't get it. There's nothing more anyone could say or do that would make people see what's in it that's to be had that's of so much value. It doesn't have to even be a picture-perfect portrayal; it comes well close enough to home to get the point across.

Think about it. A couple of years ago, if someone had said this:

"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if someone in Hollywood underwent some sort of conversion experience, and decided to take his influence and creativity and order it towards a flick that promoted the Faith?"

...there would have been instant and universal agreement among good people.

It actually happened.

-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), March 07, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

Is your woman friend who said Christ died on a Stake a Jehovah's Witness? This is one of their peculiar beliefs, that Jesus died on a torture stake and not on the cross. It is utter nonsense, like so many of their beliefs it seems to pulled out of thin air. If you want you can actully make a case from their bible (New World Translation) that it must have been cross. I won't bother making that case unless someone wants it.

Dano

-- Dan Garon (boethius61@yahoo.com), March 08, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

Gibson ought to be ashamed. The Passion is nearing 120 million dollars for just a second week; and not even filmed in a living language! I figure to see it again at least once or twice. Multiply by what--- 60-70 million other repeat customers, maybe threepeats. Mel will have a huge operating budget for his next few films; he might stick to Latin & Aramaic, too. Wouldn't you?

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), March 08, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

--

Sorry-- I meant $220 millions. Mere difference of a hundred mil. (What was that tag-line some years ago? ''May The Force be with you?'')

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), March 08, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

"And also with you."

-- (ubuibme@nomail.com), March 08, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

Yes, the movie was pretty accurate as far as the crucifixion was concerned. see: Crucifixion in Antiquity

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), March 08, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

I'm not sure if she is a Jehova witness Dano. It is someone at my work I talk to every so often. I told her I was a Catholic. One of her statements was "At least you have God in your life)

Where in the world would a Jehova Witness get an idea like that. Wasn't crucifiction back them on woodend crosses?

-- Jason (Enchanted fire5@aol.com), March 10, 2004.

Response to How Acuarate is "The Passion"???

"The Passion" Isn't Anti-Semitic, Says Vatican Aide

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), March 12, 2004.

Cross or Stake, does it make a difference?. The main thing is that Christ was killed by the Romans according to Roman law and custom. His death was the cause of our salvation and reconciliation with His Father. And that's what is important. Now, without being ax expert on such things, I consulted a Greek- Spanish Dictionary and when I looked for the word CRUZ (cross) it gave me the word STAUROS. Then I looked at the word STAUROS in the Greek section and it gave me the following definitions: CRUZ (cross), POSTE (pole), PALO (wooden post). So the same Greek word is used for Cross and Stake. But why would someone choose one word over the other? Just a personal interpretation? Wouldn't it be better to see what kind of instrument did the Romans would use to put people to death? History tells us they used different kinds of CROSSES. Found the following on the Internet:

Undoubtedly, one of the cruelest and most humiliating forms of punishment in the ancient world was, according to ancient sources, crucifixion. The Jewish historian Josephus best described it following the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 66-70 as "the most wretched of deaths."1 Whereas in Seneca's Epistle 101 to Lucilius, he argues that suicide is preferable to the cruel fate of being put on the cross.

This form of state terror was widespread across the Roman Empire which included Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. It originated several centuries before the Common Era and continued into the fourth century AD when the practice was discontinued by Constantine, the emperor of Rome. While its origins are obscured in antiquity, it is clear that this form of capital punishment lasted for around 800 years and tens if not hundreds of thousands of individuals were subject to this cruel and humiliating death. Mass executions in which hundreds and thousands died – such as the well known crucifixion of 6,000 followers of Spartacus as part, of a victory celebration along the Appian Way in 71 BCE – appear in the literature"

Notice that the ancient authors don't speak of stakes but of CROSSES.

It would seem then that the correct word in case of Jesus' death would be CROSS and not stake.

As far as I know the different Christian Churches through the ages have called the act of killing Christ CRUCIFIXION.

Where did the Jehovah Witnesses get the idea that it has to be called STAKEFIXION?

Enrique

-- Enrique Ortiz (eaortiz@yahoo.com), March 13, 2004.

Furthermore the VULGATE transaltes de passage of Mt 27 as follows:

31 et postquam inluserunt ei exuerunt eum clamydem et induerunt eum vestimentis eius et duxerunt eum ut crucifigerent 32 exeuntes autem invenerunt hominem cyreneum nomine Simonem hunc angariaverunt ut tolleret crucem eius 33 et venerunt in locum qui dicitur Golgotha quod est Calvariae locus 34 et dederunt ei vinum bibere cum felle mixtum et cum gustasset noluit bibere 35 postquam autem crucifixerunt eum diviserunt vestimenta eius sortem mittentes 36 et sedentes servabant eum (Mt 27, 31-36)

Notice the words used by St, Jerome in his transaltion:

CRUCIFIGERENT CRUCEM EIUS CRUCIFIXERUNT

Now St. Jerome lived in the III- IV century (closer to the facts narrated in the Gospels than any of us)and he spoke Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Who could better translate the Greek text of the NT? Why did he choose the words capitalized above if they were not the most correct to translate STAUROS?

Enrique

-- Enrique Ortiz (eaortiz@yahoo.com), March 13, 2004.

Sorry, in rereading my post today I realized the mistake I made: St. Jerome did not live in the III - IV Centuries, It was in the IV - V Centuries.

Enrique

-- Enrique Ortiz (eaortiz@yahoo.com), March 19, 2004.

"The Passion" Is a great way to teach people about Jesus. Well Stauros means : Tree of life or the tree that thay used for Jesus not a stake!

May the Lord Jesus be with you all, Stauros

-- Stauros Shalom Gibson (fish4ever4000@yahoo.com), April 03, 2004.