GIBSON'S GOAL IN PASSION...Hatred of Jews or edication of Christians?
sobran.com
March 2, 2004
by Joe Sobran
Mel Gibson's movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST has
been greeted by some remarkable expressions of hatred for
Christianity -- all in the name of fighting
anti-Semitism, of course. By now it would take a whole
book to deal with them thoroughly, but the prize for
venom goes to columnist William Safire of the NEW YORK
TIMES, who blames the Holocaust on Christ.
After the standard rundown of the Gospels, medieval
Passion plays, and the "sadism" of Gibson's film, Safire
quotes Christ himself in Matthew 10:34: "I have come to
bring not peace, but a sword."
Get it? Christ preached hatred and violence. If you
connect the dots, his teaching ultimately bore fruit in
millennia of anti-Semitism, culminating in Hitler's mass
murders of Jews.
Of course Safire, who seems to be writing for people
who don't know the New Testament too well, doesn't
mention that Christ is speaking metaphorically, as the
rest of the passage immediately makes clear: "For I have
come to set son against father, daughter against mother,
daughter-in-law against mother-in-law; and a man's foes
will be those of his own house." That is, Christ's truth
will divide people even from their closest relatives. As
it often still does.
Safire overlooks an even more famous metaphor of the
sword, though Jesus speaks it in the new film: "He who
lives by the sword will die by the sword."
Jews like Safire can't shake the obsessive belief
that they are the victims of hatred, even when they're
spreading hatred themselves. Among Jewish writers during
the present controversy, only David Klinghoffer, writing
in the LOS ANGELES TIMES, has been candid enough to
mention that the TALMUD proudly gives the Jews "credit"
for killing Jesus.
The TALMUD's account is historically incredible, but
it shows that the notion that some Jews played their part
in killing Christ isn't just a fiction of the Gospels.
The TALMUD doesn't even mention the Romans' role in the
story, whereas the Apostles' Creed doesn't mention the
Jewish role: it merely says that Christ "suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried." If the
early Church was so eager to blame the Jews, it muffed
its big chance.
Moving along to the WASHINGTON POST, we find
columnist Richard Cohen charging that Gibson's film is
"anti-Semitic, maybe not purposely so but in the way
portions of the New Testament are -- an assignment of
blame that culminated in the Holocaust."
Cohen doesn't quite reach the heights of slander
Safire has set; in fact, it's a standard Jewish
anti-Christian calumny -- a "hoary canard," to use
another regular cliche. As history, it's naive in the
extreme; if the Gospels were going to "culminate in the
Holocaust," they should have done so when Europe was
still Christian, not under the pagan Nazi regime, which
left something to be desired in the way of Christian
piety and ethics.
The attempt to link Christianity to Nazism has
become a heavy industry, culminating, if you will, in
recent books smearing Pope Pius XII and the entire
Catholic Church from New Testament times to 1965 -- when,
we are falsely told, the Second Vatican Council
"reversed" a teaching the Church had never in fact
taught. Little did the bishops of 1965 imagine that their
goodwill gestures toward Jews would soon be used to
vilify their predecessors.
Lately we've witnessed a somewhat new kind of
vilification: the calumnious prediction. Jews -- not all,
but not a few, either -- have said flatly that Gibson's
movie "will," not "may," incite anti-Jewish violence.
They were saying this for months, while the film was
still in production.
Well, the movie has been an astounding success.
Millions of Christians have seen it, yet not even one
violent incident has been reported in or near the
theaters. Not even one! The Christians have been behaving
like -- well, like Christians. Is anyone surprised? Of
course not.
Yet, at the urging of some rabid rabbis, the New
York Police Department has assigned its Hate Crimes Unit
to attend the movie and nab law-breaking Christian bigots
who are "pushed over the edge" by the story of the
Crucifixion. Arrests so far: zero.
If Gibson's aim is what he says it is, namely, to
bring Christ's Passion home to millions, he has scored a
huge triumph. If his goal is what his Jewish enemies say
it is, namely, to cause the persecution of Jews, he has
fizzled miserably.
"Hate," anyone? |
