1) Gibson has expressly disavowed anti-Semitism, as recently as the past week, on the Diane Sawyer show.
Uhhh...Your point is?
2) It's disingenuous to simultaneously bring up the wacky beliefs of Hutton Gibson, an 85-year-old man who is, putting it charitably, an autodidact, and say, "but of course we don't attribute those views to his son."
Clearly she believes that the acorn didn't fall as far from the tree as it claims, and she should have, to be ingenuous, said so instead of implying it. But it is Gibson's movie she discusses in detail, not the father. It's pretty inevitable that the wildly anti-Semitic views of the guy who raised Gibson, who made this movie, will be discussed, btw.
3) The fact that Jesus was publicly executed by the method of crucifixion can only mean that Rome wanted him dead: This is the meat of the argument...
....This is what the Gospels say. If anyone has a quarrel with this, their quarrel is with the Gospels, not Gibson.
She says a great deal more than you acknowledge. Samples:
"We already knew that Gibson's efforts to be "as truthful as possible" (his own words in the Times) would be frustrated by the best sources that he had to draw on, namely, the Gospels themselves. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, whose texts were composed in Greek between 70 C.E. and 100 C.E., differ significantly on matters of fact. In Mark, Jesus's last meal is a Passover seder; in John, Jesus is dead before the seder begins. Mark and Matthew feature two night "trials" before a full Jewish court, and a dramatic charge of "blasphemy" from the high priest. Luke has only a single trial, early in the morning, and no high priest. John lacks this Jewish trial scene entirely. The release of Barabbas is a "Roman custom" in Mark, a "Jewish custom" in John. Between the four evangelists, Jesus speaks three different last lines from the cross. And the resurrection stories vary even more.."
and
"That script--and, on the evidence, the film--presents neither a true rendition of the Gospel stories nor a historically accurate account of what could have happened in Jerusalem, on Passover, when Pilate was prefect and Caiaphas was high priest..."
and
"Gibson has continued to speak earnestly of his film as "conforming" to the New Testament. Unless he ditched the script with which he was working as late as March, wrote an almost entirely new one, re-assembled his cast, re-shot his movie, and then edited it in time to be screened in June, this statement, too, must be false. Six pages of our report lay out for him exactly those places where he not only misreads but actually contravenes material given in the Gospels. And his historical mistakes, no less profound, are spelled out for him there, too.
I don't expect an atheist to know the Bible, and am not at all surprised that the author's viewpoint. Perhaps if pressed she would disavow the miracles and the Resurrection, as well.
Oh look, an atheist can't know history, if it's a history of religion! Unless faith is required to study the history of religion (you're not claiming that, surely), that's a generically stupid point. Is it the one you're making?
As it happens, this particular atheist is admittedly no historian and has little interest in the Christian Bible or any other one, though not in anti-Semitism. I'm just reading secondary sources...like you and Fredriksen...
You seem to be presenting yourself as superior in scriptural sophistication as it applies to the last twelve hours of Jesus's life to the Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University and the author of a published (Vintage) historical study of the last twelve hours of Jesus's life. That's so immoderately nervy of you that it almost makes me wonder if faith shouldn't be an actual disqualification for being taken seriously on the subject of the study of religious history! Though my guess is that Fredriksen is religious, too.
BTW, do you personally believe, literally, in miracles and the resurrection of Christ, Cobe? I'm assuming so, from the contemptuous crack you made when conjecturing that perhaps Fredriksen didn't. (Again implying, bizarrely, that if someone doesn't believe in miracles, etc, they couldn't be good historians. If I caught your drift.) |
