RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] The Passion

["Ross, Matthew" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> I don't know who the Pharisees were.  Were they the Jewish 
> leadership at
> the time?  Can anyone elaborate on the idea above?  Thanks.

Pardon my spelling on the names here, I don't have time to look up the proper spellings right now.

In simple terms, they were the conservative party of the Sanhedron, which was the religious government of the Jews, or at least what was left of it after the Romans conquered them. The liberal party was the Sadusees.

There were radical followers of Jesus at the time who did expect him to overthrow the Romans and set up an earthly kingdom. Jesus explained (repeatedly) how they had misread what his kingdom would be, yet there were plenty who were too despirate for the Roman's removal to listen. Despite the fact that Jesus was not setting up an earthly kingdom, these radicals were sufficient cause for the Pharisees arguments.

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Now to some minor points, having read through this thread. Jesus said several things on the cross, some heard by different groups, and totalling 7 recorded statements. Keep in mind, as History vs. Hollywood pointed out, the Gospels were written down about 30-40 years afterwards, because people expected the second coming to be in their lifetimes, and didn't see the need to write it down until then. I disagree with the comment that it was because they realized they were dying off though, the historical indications are that they were written down for prosletizing. Matthew was written to Jewish audiences, Mark is almost blantantly a book of sermon notes in the way it was written, and Luke and John have their target audiences in their writing style.

Of the "historical inaccuracies" I heard was Pilate being compassionate vs. his historical cruelty. This was, quite frankly, stupid - viewing a historical figure as if he were a flat character like you might read in a childrens book. Just because his tendency was towards cruelty doesn't mean that was his personality or how he handled every situation. One of the points made by Scripture in this was that even Pilate couldn't see reason to crucify him, but noteably did it anyway after pushing the blame off onto the Jews.

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And my review:
I have to say, I'm not usually very emotional about movies that are intended to be emotional. I've cried 2 times for fictional characters, once when I was rather young, for Tom when Jerry tricked him into smashing a vase his mother sent him, for Aeris when she died in FF7. The latter was when I was having a rather bad bout of depression before I had medication. In good spirits I went to this movie, and I still left in tears. It is by far the most powerful scene I've ever seen. Not just the cruelty, though that was sufficient, but from the realization of what it meant. As was pointed out in the Gibson interview, it was all of our sins that caused that. I didn't like the artistic license Gibson took by representing the devil in physical form, but otherwise I was quite satisfied with the movie's accuracy. I loved the final scene where Jesus got up from his grave and walked away, with the hole in his hand. I would love to see the whole story of the Gospels put on this way in a series of movies, though I doubt Gibson will do that.

I agree that it's not meant for children. There were children in the theatre when I went, and I can't imagine what their parents were thinking bringing them there.

By the way, what were they thinking in Columbia there? The first screen when you enter had our 7:00 showing of the movie, and right below the "Passion" sign, was a poster for movie coming soon with the exact same color scheme, labled "Dawn of the Dead".

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