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Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?

The interfaith community would not have been comforted by the news that Mel Gibson was basing his movie upon the Gospels, even if he weren't a Traditionalist Catholic. On the contrary, using the Gospels as the source would be cause for alarm; it is held that the Gospels, read alone, contain potentially dangerous teachings, particularly as they pertain to the role of Jews in the Crucifixion.

“One cannot assume that by simply conforming to the New Testament, that antisemitism will not be promoted,” a group of Catholic ecumenist scholars declared, regarding Gibson's film. “After all, for centuries sermons and passion plays based on the New Testament have incited Christian animosity and violence toward Jews.”

All of the above is quoted from, The Jesus War, by Peter J. Boyer.

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of you own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out.

They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the utmost.
(I Thessalonians 2:14-16)

For example, the above verse might be considered by some to be one of the most anti-Semitic verses in the New Testament.

But read it carefully and note the following:

1. Paul, himself a Pharisee of the Jews (Acts 26:5), addresses early believers in northern Greece - some of whom were Jewish, who are supposed to “immitate” the faith of Jewish believers.
    
2. There were many congregations, or “churches”, in Judea before the war with Rome in 67-70 AD that destroyed Jerusalem, the Temple and began the Diaspora of Jewish people worldwide that continues in part to the present.
    
3. The main point relates that the Gentile and Jewish believers in Greece have experienced the same kind of perseution as have their brethren in Judea. In other words, both have suffered the same persecution for their faith at the respective hands of their own countrymen. Thus, “Jews” here refers to certain individuals and not to the Jewish people as a nation. To Paul, there is no “distinction between Jew and Greek” (Romans 10:12) on issues of salvation or judgment. Jewish persecution of believers is not treated in a manner any different from Gentile persecution of believers, except that...
    
4. Historically, these same individual leaders of the Jewish people were also the ones who killed Jesus, which is what He predicted in John 15:18-16:4. In these verse Jesus points out that the real enemy is “the world” and not per se the Jews or Romans who killed Him. The world is the present materialistic order of things that oppresses all mankind. This spiritual darkness includes governments, economic systems, religious systems, and socio-cultural issues of bias, power, and hate, which are due to Satan’s rulership of the world. Yet, it was, and is, for these human enemies that Jesus purposely surrendered Himself to torture and crucifixion so that they might inherit eternal blessings. (John 14:30-31)
    
5. Even though God has established abiding covenants of promise with the Jewish people, through whom all nations may be saved, they can displease Him when they oppose His purposes. (Ephesians 2:11-14) This was true, whether it was rejecting the prophets He sent to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, or when Jewish persons hindered the spread of the gospel of a Jewish messiah to all nations. Directly to the point of this web site, The Passion of the Christ may reasonably be considered Mel Gibson’s effort to spread the gospel story to all nations in an artistic manner all his own - whether you agree with him about it or not.
    
6. “But wrath has come upon them to the utmost”. What does this mean?
   As a result of not recognizing that Jesus was God’s promised Messiah and Son, the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people were scattered over the face of the earth, where they have suffered repeated persecution until He should return. (Matthew 21:43; 23:37-39) When Jesus returns, He will restore the kingdom of Israel as the head of a worldwide commonwealth of peace, prosperity, and justice. (Acts 3:19-21; Isaiah 2:1-4) He will complete the regathering of His people Israel from the anciently prophesied dispersion to “the four corners of the earth” as opposed to the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities recorded in history prior to New Testament times. (Isaiah 11:1-12)
    
7. Just because Jesus prophesied the Jewish people would be scattered and suffer abusive discrimination and worse at the hands of the nations, does not mean that He approves of or condones such treatment of the Jewish, or any people. (Matthew 18:7-11) He taught His disciples to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors - not hate them, despise them, subjugate them, or drive them into ghettos and incinerators. (Matthew 5:44-48)

Go to our article on :

The Miraculous Restoration of Israel

So, is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?

We don’t think so. It is a topic that we would like to discuss in greater depth elsewhere at a later date, but for now, let’s return to the question:

Is the best answer to rewrite the gospel, or to better understand it?

We think that everyone would benefit from learning to differentiate the values, behaviors, and beliefs presented in the New Testament documents from their human, non-biblical application in history. By claiming apostolic traditions and/or authority to interpret scripture in the Roman Catholic and/or other Orthodox (usually as official state churches) evolved into human institutions that, in addition to promoting a unified social order and some good deeds, used their political power to force others into compliance with their interpreted, and not necessarily biblical, vision of doctrinal truth and justice.

As a result of this institutionally human disconnect with the Bible, history records pernicious evils perpetrated in the name of, or at least in complicity with, Jesus and the gospels. Objectively, therefore, a rational person should not honestly place a direct cause and effect relationship between the literal reading of New Testament and historical horrors like anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Papal wars, the Spanish Inquisition, and other bloody repressions of other religious expressions, including many groups who also claimed to be Christian. These evils came about from an intentional abuse of, or from an ignorant misapplication, of New Testament teachings.

Go to a summary of the Gospel.

Does The Passion of the Christ accurately portray the gospels accounts of Jesus’ last hours?

There are various reports referenced on these web pages from folks who have seen the unfinished film. Their observations speak for themselves.

From our perspective, there could be a serious problem in the fact that The Passion of the Christ’s script is not based solely on the Gospels, or even the New Testament.. Seamlessly intertwined with the biblical narrative are important perspectives of content and emotionally charged details that were taken from the ecstatic visions of two Catholic nuns who lived some 1800 years after Jesus’ death. (Click here for more information about Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), whose diary and description of her visions are collected in a book titled The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Click here for more information about Mary of Agreda, who wrote the second book Mel used, The Mystical City of God.)

Using Emmerich’s descriptions of her visions (some of her writing is considered anti-Semitic) as source material for the movie’s scripting is a far more important consideration for historical accuracy than the fact that Greek was more likely to be spoken by the Romans serving in the eastern empire than Latin. Many who would be happiest with the concept of a movie literally based on the gospels might be quite upset to learn that the graphic detail and staging were sourced from the visions of a Catholic nun and mystic experienced and recorded in the 1800’s. Are the English subtitles of the gospel subverted by the powerful graphic messages of the nun’s visions?

How is the average viewer to know where the gospel ends and the visions begin? Most Americans are biblically illiterate.

Perhaps this or other biblically themed movies might inspire a few folks to read the original stories in the Bible. Allowing for individual exceptions, we do not think that most viewers reactions to a Bible movie is to grab for the book! In this regard, Mel Gibson is absolutely correct when he says that the Bible is written for anyone to read. You don’t need a Ph.D., and we do hope that many will prove our expectations wrong and read the gospel accounts for themselves.

That’s not to say that there is no place for scholarship. Just for starts, the Bible is a translated book, for example. How does one accurately translate old languages into modern ones? How and what were the meanings of words and phrases used in the original texts, passed down?

The answer requires responsible scholarship possessing both critical and believing perspectives. The books of the Bible were composed over thousands of years in a number of different cultural contexts; therefore, it should surprise no one that there are disagreements between scholars within a particular academic discipline, not to mention that several disciplines are involved in biblical studies!

In one of her articles, scholar Paula Fredriksen summarizes the issue of relying on ecstatic visions for script details in The Passion of the Christ when Mel Gibson claims almost strict adherence to the gospel accounts:

To depict a first-century event by drawing on visionary writings composed almost two millennia later makes no sense at all: one might as well try to reconstruct ancient armor by peering at Bruegel. And while Aramaic was indeed the daily language of ancient Jews in Galilee and Judea, Latin would scarcely have figured at all. When the Jewish high priest and the Roman prefect spoke to each other, they would have used Greek, which was the English of antiquity. And Pilate's troops, employees of Rome, were not "Romans." They were Greek-speaking local gentiles on the imperial payroll. Gibson's pious evocations of historicity rang more than a little hollow. How much homework had he actually done?

Those four of us have posted a review of these events on the Boston College web site. We have also posted there an analysis of the mystical writings of Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), one of the visionary nuns whose writings Gibson used for his script. Emmerich wrote in her diary that she had "seen" the high priest ordering the cross to be made in the courtyard of the Temple itself. The high priest's servants, in her visions, bribe Jerusalem's population to assemble in the Temple at night to demand Jesus’ death; they even tip the Roman executioners. Emmerich's Pilate criticizes the high priests for their physical abuse of Jesus, but finally he consents to crucify him, because he fears that the high priest wants to start a revolt against Rome. And so on.

Emmerich was not writing history. She was having visions. But--as The Wall Street Journal, the film's unofficial web site, and numerous news articles since have all mentioned--Gibson used Emmerich's fantasies for his supposedly "historical" script.

(Quotes taken from the article, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GIBSON. Mad Mel, by Paula Fredriksen)

Related Articles

THE DOLOROUS PASSION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
By ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH [A free, web version of the book used in the movie.]

The Gospel Untruth
By Shmuley Boteach, Nov. 12, 2003

Mel Gibson's movie the The Passion brings to the big screen the New Testament allegation that Jews are possessed of such dark power that they orchestrated the murder of the Creator, something that even Satan was too weak to achieve. The same Jews who couldn't drive the Romans out of their homeland, and who were being massacred by legionnaires in their thousands, took a break from their revolt against Caesar and decided to slaughter the supreme Source of all existence. Whoa. Now that's an allegation.

Hymn to a Savage God
By John Dominic Crossan 

Mel Gibson uses a 'hidden script' based on visions of a German nun in making his film. Sister Anne Emmerich was an Augustinian nun and mystic who lived from 1774 to 1824 in Germany. Her life was one of poverty, hardship, and suffering, with its final decade spent bed-ridden in constant pain. During the last Lent of her life, she experienced visionary meditations on Jesus' passion, recorded by the poet Klemens Brentano and published in 1833.

Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ': Most offensive film ever made
By Elizabeth Farah, August 27, 2003
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Are they saying that the Gospels fuel hatred? If they are, they hit the nail right on its head. The Gospels have always fueled hatred against Christians as Jesus Christ very clearly forewarned they would. One would think Jesus' message and mission of truth, love and mercy would inspire all men to a perpetual state of warm and fuzzy mutual affection. But if you actually read Jesus' words, He will disabuse you of that notion in an instant.
 

The Passion of the Christ
By Peter T. Chattaway, Christianity Today, 02/25/04

Lethal Suffering: The Passion underlines Christ's humanity like no film before.
(Links to other articles follows it on that site.)

But The Passion also dwells, at considerable length, on the physical pain inflicted on Jesus. Has Gibson found a way to baptize, as it were, the sadistic or masochistic impulses of his other films? Is it possible he is indulging himself under the cover of religious piety?

At times it does seem so. Much has been made of The Passion's adherence to Scripture, but in the rough cut shown to pastors and ministry leaders a month before the film's release, it was clear that Gibson often goes beyond the text. Jesus, played with inspiring sincerity by James Caviezel (Frequency, The Thin Red Line), is not even out of Gethsemane yet when the Temple guards knock him about and hang him over a bridge by his chains, swelling shut his right eye. During scenes like this, you cannot help wondering whether Gibson, as the one who conceived and directed all this simulated torture, is more complicit in the horrors on display than he would like to admit.
 

'The Passion': What's Not in the Bible?
By the Beliefnet Staff

Because scripture is silent on certain details, Mel Gibson drew from extrabiblical sources to craft his 'Passion.'

But because scripture is silent on certain details of the Passion, several scenes in the movie aren't found in the Bible. Many of Gibson's additions are quite plausible embellishments of brief biblical mentions. Some came from other religious sources, like the visions of the mystic nun Sister Anne Emmerich. And a few scenes, apparently, are inventions--often artistically daring ones.
 

The Passion of the Christ, By Mike Gendron

Many questions are being asked about Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ. Is it biblically accurate? How much Roman Catholic theology is embedded in the film? What gospel, if any, does it communicate? Does it bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ?

A question that demands an answer is this: "Why are evangelicals promoting a movie produced by a man who has been deceived by Roman Catholicism and is now deceiving others?" Gibson delivers a lethal message that blurs the lines separating the truth of Christianity with the errors of a sacramental gospel.
 

What's Catholic About 'The Passion'? A Lot
By Jennifer Waters

The Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, and Catholic mystics' visions shape Mel Gibson's work.

What's in "The Passion of the Christ" that's not in the Bible? Mel Gibson has said that while drawing most heavily from the Gospels, he also based his movie on extra-biblical sources, many of which fuel his Catholic faith. Scenes corresponding to the Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, and visions of Catholic mystics appear in the film.
 

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