When Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ, it stirred up questions about his possible antisemitism — he has not repudiated his father’s Holocaust denial, and some critics say the film reaffirms old antisemitic imagery.
Now it seems Gibson has blurted out what he really thinks about The Jews, after being arrested for drunk driving. The original version of the police report into the incident (pdf) says he “blurted out a barrage of antisemitic remarks”:
S/Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-semitic remarks about “fucking Jews.” S/Gibson yelled out, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” S/Gibson then asked [the arresting Deputy], “Are you a Jew.”
The report was censored by the Deputy’s superior, on the grounds that it would be too inflammatory and might incite antisemitic sentiment in the community. Gibson, once he sobered up, tried to distance himself from his remarks:
I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said.
And so you should be, Mel, but thanks for letting us know what you really think.
In vino veritas, as they say.
On the upside, lefties will probably embrace him again.
in vino veritas is a terrible insult to any drunk. Lies come just as easily with a bellyfull of grog.
If there’s anything such a police statement demonstrates, it’s not the truthful power of drink, it’s the pointlessness of the terms ‘Judeo-Christian’ when placed together.
The Right seem to think that they can wipe their deeply ingrained anti-semitism off onto any passing leftist.
As the bibulous utterances of Catholic Conservative Gibson reveal, that stain of anti-semitism goes all the way to the bone.
Intelligent Jews also know that the latterday embrace by the nutbag Right of Israel has much to do with the Christian Right’s crazy notion of bringing on the End Days.
Thus the Right and Zionists both play the game “Spot the Useful Idiot” while pretending to embrace in amity.
Pathetic.
Gibson was castigated over Passion of the Christ for its anti-Jewish stance. He denied the film was anti-Jewish, but his latest remarks reveals that he is, and that therefore these sentiments probably carried over into the film.
I disagree with the term “anti-Semitic” because it denotes a racial character to the Jews, when in fact they are not a race. It is a confusion fostered by Zionists.
Judaism is a faith, not a race. While there are some Semitic Jews, there are far more Semitic Palestinians. The bulk of Jews in Israel are of European descent. These are Ashkenazis, and they are known to treat the Sephardic Jews as second-class citizens. So technically these Ashkenazi Jews could be called anti-Semitic.
The word “Semite”, however, also denotes a descendant of Shem, and thus belies its Biblical derivation. Therefore it is not a proper racial category.
Historically, the persecution of Jews has been carried out by Christians, principally based on the doctrine derived from the Gospel of Matthew that the Jews were responsible for bringing Jesus to trial. By basing his film on the gospel of Matthew, Gibson is simply perpetuating the story upon which anti-Jewish sentiments are based. What is not clear is whether Gibson is anti-Zionist.
As many of you would be aware, I don’t believe that Jesus was an historical character, and I regard the gospels as total fiction. If Jews were to grasp the sigificance of this argument, they might be in a position to drastically reduce one of the root causes of their persecution.
Gibson is not a “Catholic Conservative.” He is a renegade Tridentinist. Not even conservative Catholics properly so-called - say, Opus Dei Ultramontanists - subscribe to the heretical American protestant notion of end times - much less that they can be “brought on.” Anti-semitism fluctuates throughout the ages vis-a-vis the political spectrum. Right now, most of the hatred directed at Jews emanates from Islam and the nutbag Western left.
Yes, lest anyone forget the anti-Semitism is exclusively of Christian origin, there’s Mad Mel on the piss with a timely and politically awkward reminder.
But sure, blame the (Semitic) Arabs. Frankly, the only anti-Semitic comments Ive ever seen on this blog are from pro-Israeli, anti-Arab racists.
Who mentioned Arabs?
“Tridentinist” refers, of course, to the Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church in 16th-century Trieste. To be a “tridentinist” mainly refers to ritual and not doctrine.
There are many forms of Christian nuttiness. Wouldn’t the world be a duller place if all Christian nuts adhered to the same menu of nuttiness?
On the upside, lefties will probably embrace him again.
… and yet, this post was by a lefty who clearly hasn’t embraced him. If you’re going to smear people, at least try to seem like you’re sane.
Silkworm is wrong, though. Antisemitism is certainly a form of racism. Those who hate Muslims are beginning to slide into a similar racialised bigotry, too.
“Tridentine” is an adjective applicable to the Ecumenical Council in 16th-century TRENT.
A Tridentinist is not merely a ritualist but someone whose whole Mystical Body theology of the Church is at radical variance with modern ecclesiology. Their ideas on ecumenism and soteriology (theology of salvation) are stubbornly, radically, anti-modern. They don’t want to conserve, they want to restore.
Far from being one of them, Gibson probably wouldn’t acknowledge that right-wing American “end time” pentecostalists are even bona fide Christians.
Sadly for sane Rob, Islam isn’t a race but similarracialisedbigotryism will have to do.
I don’t think it’ll catch on.
Until a generation ago all orthodox Roman Cathollics were Tridentinists. Tridentinists wanted the RC Church to remain on that course. Now they feel themselves compelled to be reactionary.
They want the Church to be the way it was — a conservative stance.
Thanks for the post, Robert. I have been thinking about this all morning. Looking back over his career it’s clear that Gibson has a longstanding obsession with Apocalypse whicdh makes him a perfect match with the Rapture Ready crew.
Islam isn’t a race
No more than Judaism is, but that doesn’t mean antisemitism isn’t a form of racism.
There’s actually no such word as “Tridentinist”, I’m afraid, C.L.
It would be quite wrong to think either that all Catholics were politically and/or religiously conservative before Vatican II or that those two things necessarily go together (though they often do). The integrists who hark back to an imagined pre-Vatican II consensus among Catholics are best seen as a sect - often schismatic - like Mel Gibson’s father who if I remember correctly is a Sedevacantist - a bizarre group of sectarian tendencies who believe that Pius XII was the last legitimate Pope. Like all tiny splinter groups, nuttiness and distasteful prejudices abound among these folks. So in a strict sense, it’s wrong to call Gibson Senior a Catholic at all. I believe Mel Gibson is, though, but of a very conservative stripe.
Silkworm is most definitely right.
Antisemitism is a term invented by Zionists, and Robert is (consciously or unconsciously) carrying out a Zionist agenda.
There’s actually no such word as “Tridentinist�, I’m afraid, C.L.
Don’t be afraid, Mark. It’s a thread neologism. Like TEH.
Always good to learn something from TEH UNIVERSITY OF TEH INTERNETS, C.L.
Sedevacantist! Thanks for that wonderful word Mark.
To Google “Mel Gibson” and “sedevacantist” is to peer into an frankincense-laced miasma of obscurantism, chiliasm and disinformation.
Mel is quoted as calling himself “an old-fashioned Catholic”.
But he seems to be making his eschatology up as he goes along, with one eye on the box office and the upwardly-mobile yearnings of America’s “Rapture ready”.
His antipathy to Jews, however, seems sincere enough.
Yes, Katz, there’s definitely a bit of marketing savvy in Gibson’s cosying up to the Rapture Ready.
“Antisemitism is a term invented by Zionists, and Robert is (consciously or unconsciously) carrying out a Zionist agenda.”
“Anti-semitism” was certainly a term first used by German Jews in the mid-nineteenth century to describe the racially-based animus against them, in a time when theories of racial “purity” and “tainted” threats thereto were beginning to take hold in Europe. I don’t know whether it originated with Zionists but it’s subsequent application - particularly in reference to the Holocaust - can surely have no-one in any doubt about it’s meaning which is “hatred of Jews.” It originated as a characterisation of a specific race-based hatred and I think that whether or not Jews are actually “a race” is pretty much secondary to the unmistakable historical context of the term.
The notion of “race” in the nineteenth century was much broader than current notions. One could speak unembarrassedly of “the Irish race” or even “the Australian race” [whites] as if there were some elemental relationship between soil and human potential. As notions of “blood” and “survival of the fittest” seeped into public discourse, these ideas didn’t compete with each other, but rather buttressed each other, even though they were contradictory.
It seems that people needed to explain the world in terms of difference, and were willing to accept a wide range of explanations to satisfy that need. Anti-semitism was just one of the most virulent of these nineteenth-century ideas.
Much the same thing applies among Christian denominations. They spent centuries slaughtering and persecuting each other, but have lately united against a much stronger common threat of secularism.
Thus, Catholics are willing to blink at the “Rapture Ready” and not even engage with their doctrinal rivals in open and frank debate.
This is a bit mystifying for us secularists who cop a huge barrage from many religious fronts, but when the big picture is taken into account, it is a hopeful sign.
Christians have stopped engaging with each other because they’re scared of us.
Some Catholics, Katz. You can find some quite robust criticism of that sort of eschatology on some conservative Catholic websites. If you’re going to start characterising “Christian denominations” in terms of “persecuting each other”, I think you’re obliged in fairness to recognise that you’re indulging in a lot of generalising.
Don’t think so Mark.
The persecution I referred to happened in the past. The spread of formal toleration began in the eighteenth century and spread throughout the Christian world during the nineteenth century.
I believe you’ll find very few important examples of inter-denominational toleration before the mid-seventeenth century. Hence my generalisation on this point accurately states the relationship between Christian denominations at least until that point in time.
I’m unaware of the robust debates to which you refer. I’m gratified to hear they are taking place, but find it rather strange that the heavy lifting is being done by these fringe groups and not by, let us say, the Pope or the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney.
Aren’t these at least as important doctrinal issues as (say) whether chaps wearing rainbow sashes are suitable recipients of the Host?
It wasn’t clear to me where you were drawing the line, Katz, but I still think you’re missing something if you don’t take into account the eirenecist and humanist elements in Christianity in the early 16th century. Trent was an important milestone here on the Catholic side in setting these back, as was Luther’s intransigence on the Protestant side, but it would be wrong to suggest that there weren’t voices for toleration (albeit in a very different context) that were around at the same time as the Reformation and indeed produced by similar causes.
I suspect also you’ve got the Pope a bit wrong here, but I think you’re right about His Eminence Dr Pell.
Yes indeed.
Pockets of heterodoxy sprang up in different places and different times all over Europe. It is a very hopeful sign for the human spirit that hierarchy and strict orthodoxy were challenged time and again until the modern era, despite the lengthening record of the dire consequences for those who found themselves on the wrong side of the debate.
What has His Holiness said on the interesting topic of Rapture?
Nothing, I’m sure, Katz, but if you read either of the books on him by John Allen, who’s a very well respected journo at the American progressive Catholic rag, the National Catholic Reporter, in his former incarnation as Cardinal Ratzinger, Bennie did his best to explain away or minimise JP2’s nutty urges towards apocalypticism. Or you can read the man himself - his theological stuff on time and history is interesting.
I’d suggest this:
[link]
One of the reasons why there’d be little comment from leading European Catholics on Rapture stuff is that the latter is largely confined to the so-called “Anglosphere” which is rather a black mark against it given that its champions are often lauding it as the domain of rationality, etc.
Maybe God is an Englishman. Or at least an Anglophone.
And maybe heaven has a dictation test like the old Immigration Restriction Act.
Oh, c’mon, C.L. — he’s one of yours. Suck it up.
Gibson’s comments are pathological, but no more so (and, in fact, far less so) than the kinds of statements that are found in the Arab press on a daily basis, or, more seriously, the various edicts that have been issued by our very own Grand Mufti Down Under.
Both Gibson and the Mufti are now on the public record as saying that the “Jews are the cause of all wars”. However, the Mufti goes much further in arguing that the Jews are also behind the promotion of sodomy and global espionage.
I can’t say for sure if Gibson supports his father’s holocaust denial, but he can take comfort in the knowledge that one Taj el-Din al-Hilaly will be standing right beside him whenever he does.
But of course, al-Hilaly is one of the Great Brown Oppressed, so his pathologies are perfectly “understandable”.
Topic too erudition-dependent for you, Pav?
[Comment submitted for deleto-master Rob’s amusement].
I’m sure Gibson’s pathology is perfectly ‘understandable’ - if you want to go there.
Sure, I’ll go “there”. But you first.
“I don’t believe that Jesus was an historical character”
Now that’s a statement of faith. Lonely way out there silkworm?
Yes,
GodTEH ATHEIST HIVE MIND only knows where all those references in Roman and Jewish historians came from. How did they get roped into the conspiracy?Katz, Wikipedia has a good article on Sedevacantism.
[link]
And one group of sedevacantists have taken the unusual step of electing a rival Pope, Lucian Pulvermacher, now known as “Pius XIII”. So they’ve gone from being Sedevacantists to Conclavists. Unfortunately the website of the “true catholic church” is no longer up, but you can read about the Australian connection to these shenanigans here:
[link]
Perhaps the website disappeared because of this scandal:
One magazine found a total of 16 people claiming to be Pope:
[link]
No, Steve, I mean I really don’t want to go there. If you want to do the dirty work then be my guest.
Yeh, duh. Me like
monnmonnalittle tiny words.Like ‘He’s one of yours. Suck it up.’
Come on Silkworm, there’s loads of primary Roman and Aramaic language source evidence that a man (now called) Jesus existed.
He was elevated into a deity by early Christians for quite sensible political reasons, since the Multitheist Romans just weren’t digging the “Jesus as man” schema, and the whole organisation was going nowhere without Rome onboard. Even today, Jesus remains a man-prophet outside Romanised-Christian circles.
Later, in the first - but no means the last - documented case of “social whitening”, our Semitic Jesus became that Caucasian bloke, shipped out to dark-skinned people when inferiority complex development became a major export industry. (…You know, maybe Islam was actually on to something with the “no images of the Lord” concept).
Ok, so Im rambling…. but my point is, you can be lively and provocative atheist-about-town in far more historically credible and interesting ways than outright denial of multiple, independent primary sources.
Thanks Mark.
Freemasonry. Swinging pendulums. Tribulation. Rapture.
So many entertaining by-ways on the path to Salvation.
Do the 72 virgins promised to the fragmented jihadist seem to be outrageous promises in this Boschian Garden of Improbable Delights?
I’m firmly agnostic on the historical Jesus. Skeptical arguments against Josephus and Tacitus as strong support for a historical Jesus seem reasonably valid, and my understanding of the Aramaic documents is that they provide strong support for the existence of a reforming Judaic movement called The Way with similar Essene-influenced teachings, but not for one overwhelmingly important individual preacher. Mind you, I don’t think one can prove the gospel stories are a folkloric conflation of several preachers of The Way, either.
However: just think, in our own well-documented times, how many witty epigrams from other pens end up being misattributed to either Wilde or Churchill simply because they are the names people know. And those are just amusing little remarks that don’t get grasped as ideology: how many people still believe that Iraqi soldiers ripped prematurely-delivered infants out of incubators in the invasion of Kuwait?
Well, I don’t know if my testimony is going to be of any value, but me and the historical Jesus go way back. He did some of the grog catering at a brilliant wedding I went to, and he’s an ace mountaineer.
Projection is the reason christian reactionaries keep calling lefties anti semitic.
The religious right has always housed this sort of vermin, whereas even the most stridently anti israel lefties are participating in an argument based on israel’s conduct, not the mere fact of people’s jewishness.
CL is a pedant about the conflation of ‘racism’ and ‘anti islamic hatred’, so his abuse of the entirely incorrect term ‘anti semitic’ to describe those of us, such as Hannah Arendt, who don’t think much of Zion, is sprawling and beneath him.
Anti arab sentiments, as found on most right wing sites, could equally be labelled anti semitic. Both usages being of course incorrect.
Initial use of the term was a response to real anti semitism- the expressed view that semitic peoples were inferior to aryan peoples.
Given the right contains large numbers of muslim arab haters, as well as significant numbers of Mel Gibson types who hate jews as ‘the christ killers’, they should really be wearing the lable with pride.
And as for Mel, well, he’s coming a cropper in Fiji too according to the weekend Age, where his purchase of an ‘uninhabited’ island is being challenged.
Zion= Zionism. Though on its current conduct Zion itself isn’t acquitting itself well anyway.
Some time I’ll whip up a mini-essay showing that Jesus never existed. It is sure to please all sides. Heh.
I have been told many times by believers that I cannot prove Jesus never existed, and of course they are correct. One cannot prove a negative. I challenge anyone to prove that unicorns do not exist. It is logically impossible. The correct approach is to examine the sources critically, especially Josephus, and judge whether they are fraudulent or truthful accounts. In this post-modern world, whether one accepts their truthfulness or otherwise is usually an expression of one’s religious viewpoint.
There are only three authors who supposedly mention Jesus - Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius. A fourth author, Justus of Tiberias, would be expected to have mentioned Jesus, but he didn’t.
Getting back on topic, this morning’s papers are leading with the demand by Jewish groups to have Mel Gibson banned from Hollywood. (As if Jewish groups had any control over Hollywood!) I think the Jewish groups should be demanding that the gospel of Matthew be excised from the Christian Bible as this is the original source of anti-Jewish prejudice.
Philo never mentioned Jesus either, silkworm. If you’re counting and all.
I disagree Silkworm, jew-hatred has its origins in the hearts of men.
While I quibble with the right over it’s abuse of ‘anti semitism’, pure jew-hatred should be stomped on the same as pure muslim/black/white et al hatred.
Turning it into an anti christian spiel is in my view apologia for what is in fact just straight out nasty prejudice.
Much as many muslims and jews find moderate interpretations of their texts, so too do christians.
silkworm accepts the unverified word of someone who accuses Gibson of anti-semitism as gospel, but rejects topical evidence and two thousand years of scholarship on Jesus as fabrication.
The fact that gibson has unequivically apologised to all and sundry, and stated that whatever he said while stupidly and blindly drunk was not necessarily reflective of his views. But his critics want to, unforgivingly, slam ‘anti-semite’ against his name anyway, but why?
To discredit the movie he made about Christ’s passion, which, despite some mystical catholic allusions, was quite accurate to the texts, and, far from being anti-semitic, reflected the attitude of the day, amongst the people who wanted Jesus to be executed, and happened to be in Israel, and therefore predominently Jewish. If the Jewish people who who shouted ‘crucify him’ make the film anti-semitic, then I guess the producer will have to wear it, but since Christ himself said he surrendered himself and gave his life willingly, not because anyone forced him to die, or had power over his life, I guess we should look at the text and understand that it wasn’t the Jews who crucified Christ, but Christ who gave his life for the sin of the whole world, including you and I.
What a perfectly logical religion! No wonder people don’t get confused and start reading things that aren’t there … NOT
Two thousand years of scholarship?! Bwahahahaha, what like the suppresion of Pagan writings like Celsus by the Church? You Christians are far too credulous, that’s all. As for why believe Mel Gibson is an antisemite, it isn’t just his film, it’s also his father, the 19th csntury mystic nun he follows and in vino veritas
Of course, Jason, if you understood the text and the context you’d be NOT be confused. You’d also understand what Christ meant when he said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know NOT what they do!’, therby, personally attaching blame to no one, and setting the precident for us all.
Zarquon, the question was the evidence of Jesus’ existence.
I’ve only just got around to reading this thread, but what’s this supposed to mean, CL? Weren’t you just objecting, when you were moderated on another thread, to charges like this? Or is hypocrisy just one of your tactics?
Say, did you notice this is a lefty site? Did you notice that lefties here are condemning Gibson?
Once again, CL, wild proclamations against all evidence. The mark of an ideologue.
It’s very difficult to come up with a convincing hypothesis as to where the Christian Church came from if Jesus never existed. Occam’s razor is useful here.
Well, Mark, Occam was a Catholic. So it figures that he made up his Razor just so you would cite it. He’s in on the conspiracy.
Heh.
Just don’t tell anyone about his descent from Mary Magdalene, Jason. You’ll give the secret away!
It’s difficult to come up with a convincing hypothesis as to where the Church of Scientology came from if Xenu didn’t exist.
It’s difficult to come up with a convincing hypothesis as to where the Mormon Church came from if the Angel Moroni didn’t exist.
It’s difficult to come up with a convincing hypothesis as to where Heaven’s Gate came from if the mothership behind comet Hale-Bopp didn’t exist.
=”I’ve only just got around to reading this thread, but what’s this supposed to mean, CL? Weren’t you just objecting, when you were moderated on another thread, to charges like this? Or is hypocrisy just one of your tactics?”=
Yes he was being extraordinarily dishonest. He stated bluntly that he had never made such a statement, so I withdrew my allegation, then found this, then he merely provided a link to an image of an anti semitic poster at Tim Blair’s.
My fault, I got sucked in by the dog whistle culture of the right. Say it 1000 ways without, quite, saying it.
And another:
FaceLift,
I can assure you (and anyone else) that blowing 0.1 or so doesn’t make one “blindly drunk”. Even as I tpye thsi snetnece I can sitll get my
pintpoint acroos, depsite the fact I’m probly aobve that levl of intoximication…Er, that is to say, he was’t sufficiently pissed for him or you to be able to simply attribute his comments to inebriation.
Not that I give a flying what he thinks about Jews or anyone else, for what it’s worth.
Religious belief/faith does tend to distort people’s views of reality, doesn’t it. When are folks gonna get their heads around the fact that they’re human beings first, and god-followers second, and that they should treat and speak of other human beings with that realisation in mind?
Nice try, weathergirl. I predicted the left would embrace Mel. And I was right.
This is not comparable to your false charges of “racism” in the other thread - which you instigated for reasons of crass and underhanded censorship.
Nice try, armaniac. Your accusation against me: that I “have a “misleading tendency to accuse people who are not fans of zionism [who are these people, by the way?] of hating all people of semitic racial origin.”
This was made in a thread whose origins pre-date this one. Some “tendency.”
Anyway, when asked to provide evidence of this “tendency” you chickened out and withdrew the charge. You then stumbled upon my Gibson prediction - which was actually proved correct - and in your mind this is tantamount to my “tendency to accuse people who are not fans of zionism of hating all people of semitic racial origin.”
No wonder you conveniently forgot to link to my two subsequent comments above - which kind of spoil your story.
I’ll accept your withdrawal anyway - albeit with “significant doubts.”
I note also that Weathergirl has apologised in the other thread.
Right now, most of the hatred directed at Jews emanates from Islam and the nutbag Western left.
I gladly repeat the assertion.
Still don’t really understand how this is meant to counteract Weathergirl’s Orwellianism in the other thread. Hers was a personal accusation. What people say about broad movements or institutions - “Islam”, the “Christian Right”, “the left”, “RWDBS” etc - is quite another. Indeed, it is by reference to such categories that we are able to debate pathologies in society and culture. Bogus Soviet accusations against a person - whose recourse to self-defence is removed via censorship - is something else entirely.
Something disgraceful, in fact.
It matters what he thinks about Jews (or anything else) when he makes a hugely influential movie that millions of people around the world go to see.
I don’t care how drunk he was. People don’t say things when they’re pissed that they weren’t thinking when they were sober.
If you really believe, Facelift, that what one says when drunk is ever ‘not necessarily reflective of one’s views’ (it might be exaggerated or said more openly, perhaps, but it’s rarely if ever substantively different), then I can only conclude that you’ve not had much experience with alcohol yourself. If that’s so, then good for you, but I wouldn’t go round making pronouncements about its effects unless you’ve felt them for yourself.
I thought the scariest thing about that story was that he still had three-quarters of a bottle of tequila left.
On the subject itself, I’m inclined to agree with Miss Cat.
Maybe we should just get politicians drunk then, and they’ll tell us the truth more often, PC. I have, in pre-Christian days, been drunk to the point of not knowing what I was doing, and like Gibson, regretting both my actions and my words, which would never have been uttered had I been sober. Hence my comments. I don’t think alcohol is anything like the truth tool you’re implying here. Many wives of perpetually drunken husbands will testify to this, I’m sure.
C.L., if you follow the link you posted to Tim Blair’s blog then to Comrade Landeryou’s, the latter writes:
I’m sorry, but I don’t find the ISO or DSP to have anything much to do with my politics. And I doubt the Lebanese-Australian people protesting necessarily constitute “The Left”. It’s the problem with all these silly ideological slanging matches - too much conflation and elision.
For that matter, it’s also quite wrong to imply that everyone at a protest agrees with every single sign. I’ve certainly been at lots of protests where I wouldn’t have endorsed the sentiments written on some.
I think Gibson’s utterances were absolutely disgraceful.
Incidentally, his attempts to intimidate the cop and boasting about his power aren’t pretty either.
Pavlov’s Cat: “…It matters what he thinks about Jews (or anything else) when he makes a hugely influential movie that millions of people around the world go to see.”
Guess it depends what “matters” means. Making a movie is just a speech act. As such, it should be given its customary freedoms. Does it need to be vetted by some committee or other, and ‘approved,’ so that we know in advance what to think about it before we see it? Or might we just see (or choose not to see) the movie, and interpret it as we will, as grown-ups.
btw, (and I’m sorry to nit-pick here, but it’s true) the movie was not ‘hugely influential’ until after the fact, that is, upon its release. At the time of its making, it was a pet project: a religious costume drama performed entirely in dead languages. Vegas odds on such a creature earning hundreds of millions of dollars (viz., becoming ‘hugely influential’) woulda been in the long-shot category, at the time — as in fact they were. Goes to show there are always surprises, even among the shrewdest gamblin’ men.
I think a few reasonably complex things could be said about this whole kerfuffle, but parsing the complexity of the issue would have to be done with care, so as not to appear to be giving aid and sustenance to anti-semitism (which of course must always be loudly condemned) through a casual reading.
In regard to some other comments on this thread by the Jesus-denialists, it’s about the weakest anti-Christian or atheist argument possible. If you don’t believe Jesus was God, then that’s fine by me. But silly attempts to deny historical fact are only going to lead to your own credibility being called into question.
I fail to understand how spouting nonsense or giving offence is a good strategy for winning friends and influencing people, or for that matter why atheists would seek to “convert” others.
Fair enough — but allegedly Gibson’s blood alcohol was only 0.12, which hardly gets him to the point where he wouldn’t have known what he was doing.
I too, though also in the distant past, have on occasion been more than a little bit undtidy, though unfortunately I always knew only too well what I was doing. I too often later regretted my words, words I would not have uttered sober — but I regretted them precisely because they expressed my real thoughts, not because they didn’t.
J-P-Z, I think we’re at cross-purposes here a bit; when I said Gibson’s attitude ‘matters’ I was replying to something further up the thread and using it in that earlier context. I don’t see how a movie could be influential until after it was released, and that was what I meant. And I was certainly not advocating any form of censorship.
I haven’t seen Gibson’s movie, but I suspect from what I’ve read, and what others have told me, is that the harm it does might relate to its quite negative theology. Lauding suffering is not really in the Catholic tradition, or perhaps more accurately, should not be central to the Catholic tradition, and it gives a very unbalanced account of Jesus’ life by concentrating only on the passion narrative. That’s where I’m sure FaceLift would disagree with me, because he’d have some sort of atonement Christology, but anyway, that’s my take.
The only thing that tempted me to go see it was the Latin dialogue.
My review if you’re interested, Mark.
Thanks, C.L., a good review.
I’m not trying to downplay the significance or extent of Jesus’ suffering, nor for that matter am I blind to the importance of the penitential and ascetic aspects of the Catholic tradition, but I do think that the film (at least in terms of what I’ve read and been told) runs the risk of over-emphasing those aspects to the degree that it distorts a meaningful Christology.
Incidentally, on your St Stephen’s anecdote, I remember being at mass there a long time ago and seeing a homeless rather smelly bloke that respectable types were taking care not to be near chucking a $5 note into the collection plate while at that time about $2 was customary.
Liturgy’s taken a turn for the better there in the last few years. But Dr Bathersby’s homilies are never going to match Dr Rush’s
Haven’t seen it either, C.L., but I like the bit about the ergonomic furniture.
I wonder if Cardinal Pell is reconsidering his desire to have Gibson re-enact the crucifixion in the streets of Sydney when Benny visits in 08?
Are you going to disallow discussion of the non-existence of Jesus because you find it offensive? Would you find discussion of the non-existence of God as offensive?
If Jesus-denialism is “silly” or “weak”, how can it be offensive?
What do atheism or Jesus-denialism have to do with conversion?
Who said anything about disallowing it, silkworm? Mark was just expressing his opinion that it’s going to offend some people.
Well, if you’re an atheist why should you care less whether or not Jesus existed? The fact that you have to go to extreme lengths to discredit a religion by making dumbassed claims about history suggests that you do, and that you want to persuade others. Why bother if that’s not the case?
I might add that if you’re wanting to counterpose atheism as a rationalist position to religion as mythical or ideological, denying something that is historically demonstrable by all the accepted canons of historical method and evidence is a pretty bad way to go about making your point.
Sorry, Silkworm, but — speaking as a disinterested (but not uninterested) and cheerful non-Christian — all you’ve ever convinced me of is that you are completely obsessed by Jesus. This is not a great argument for your case.
If you don’t believe in his existence, and you’re not trying for conversion to your point of view, what’s to discuss?
Well, you know the best trick Jesus ever pulled was convincing people he didn’t exist.
As for Mel’s blood alcohol level: pathetic.
The extended form of words I spieled out is the actual definition of anti semitism, which I believed was a charge I had seen leveled at the left by CL.
When I realised I was being played in a game of semantics, seeing links to articles about ‘the left’s anti semitism’ on CLs site and the comments above tying the left to vicious hatred of jews themselves, I decided that the substance of my statement was correct, that CL was trying to have it both ways, and I reinstated my original opinion.
A wasteful game, no doubt annoying to other posters, that ended up, in substance, exactly where it started.
For my part, I don’t understand how anybody can read Landeryous Blog - quite apart from the content. It’s like living directly across from the fire station.
Mel’s a dope. I condemn his comments - Just making sure i don’t get caught up in the ultra-left throng which is apparently massing as we speak.
“It’s very difficult to come up with a convincing hypothesis as to where the Christian Church came from if Jesus never existed. Occam’s razor is useful here.”
Drat! Mark beat me to it.
Given that the life of Jesus Christ is the basic (in Bourdieu’s language) “discursive myth” of the Christian religion, and given that the Christian church did come into being during the lifetime of people who would have been his contemporaries, it seems intuitively reasonable to me to assume that this discursive myth would not have had the power it did to influence those contemporaries’ beliefs and actions if it did not have a basis in fact. One can take this position whilst remaining suitably sceptical about specific Gospel episodes such as the miracles and the resurrection, and the general claim about Christ’s divinity.
Incidentally, Redfern’s Catholics seem to be giving George Pell and his man in the local church some curry. [link]
Can Catholic LPers and visitors enlighten lapsed Protestants like myself on “the Spanish-based Neocatechumenal Way” and the reasons why the last Pope, Archbishop Pell and the National Civic Council seem enthusiastic about it?
I might add that one-quarter of a bottle of tequila contains slightly less alcohol than the full bottle of 13% by volume chardonnay which I consumed half an hour before recording 0.029 on the breath test machine at my local. And I wasn’t drinking slowly…