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Next we consider the question, "Is the movie anti-Semitic?
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines anti-Semitism as, "hostility toward or
discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group." If
Gibson's portrayal of the Jews fits this description, then he and his film
are guilty. If not, then the charges are unfair. We return to our reviewers
for their take on this question. Hornaday says first that the Jewishness of
Jesus and his followers " is a fact either elided or ignored by The Passion
of Christ." She then criticizes the film for presenting the Roman
authorities as "essentially doing the bidding of the Jewish leaders, who
most biblical scholars agree served more as intermediaries between the
Jewish community and its far more powerful Roman conquerors." According to Hornaday, "The Jewish leaders and their rabble are depicted as grotesque and
monstrous throughout the movie, whereas the Roman guards, at first gleefully
sadistic, are allowed more nuance by the end."
Sullivan is less severe in judging the movie to be anti-Semitic, but he
does find stereotypical portrayals of Jews in the film. He notes the
haggling over money between a Jewish priest and Judas as well as a few
"classic hook-nosed Jews of Nazi imagery, hissing and plotting and
fulminating against the Christ." Sullivan curiously states, "Pilate and his
wife are portrayed as saints forced by politics and the Jewish elders to
kill a man they know is innocent." Cohen laments that "the cause of the
violence-its origins-was not the Romans, who were actually in charge, but
stereotypical Jews who, in their clever ways, manipulated even Pontius
Pilate, about the only complex figure in the entire movie." The USCCB
review, overall marked by the style and tone of a carefully measured
committee report, calls the portrayal of Pilate "overly sympathetic" and
chides the movie for presenting Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin as "almost
monolithically malevolent."
From these comments it might seem to a person who has not seen this movie
that if it isn't guilty of anti-Semitism, it certainly comes close to it.
Thankfully, because I have seen the movie, I am in a position to address
these remarks, which, in my judgment, are quite misleading. First, it needs
to be said that some of the negative comments apply to the Gospels
themselves and not simply to Gibson's portrayal, so the criticism should be
leveled first and foremost at the evangelists and their texts. Ann Hornaday
reveals her bias when she lists as one of the "troubling assumptions" of
Gibson's film, the "treating [of] the Bible's four Gospels as literal
eyewitness accounts of Jesus' arrest, torture and crucifixion…" Ms. Hornaday
might be surprised to learn that Gibson isn't the only Christian who treats
the Gospels as such! Though there are certain differences among them, the
Catholic Church accepts all four Gospels in this way. The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, quoting the Vatican II document Dei Verbum, has this to say
about The written Gospels:
The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the
many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written
form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of
the churches, the while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such
a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus (CCC, # 126).
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