The Gospel Untruth

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Last week the conservative Right in the United States demonstrated its considerable muscle when CBS Television bowed to pressure from outraged Republicans and decided to cancel its controversial TV miniseries about Ronald Reagan. By contrast, American Jews--long accused of controlling the world-- can't stop a movie from coming out that says they killed God.

Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of Christ" brings to the big screen the New Testament allegation that Jews are possessed of such dark power that they orchestrated the murder of the Creator, something that even Satan was too weak to achieve. Incredibly, many high-profile American Jews have rushed to Gibson's defense, most notably radio host Michael Medved who defends the film because "Gibson emphasizes the Hebraic identity of the Man from Nazareth, a welcome change from the Nordic Messiahs in many previous films."

But I question whether the fact that Gibson's Jesus has dark skin and a big nose is enough to offset the portrayal of Jews as sadistic, deity-murdering devils. But whether or not "The Passion" will excite anti-Semitism, the film should be opposed because it is a lie. Not the innocent, harmless fiction of the Star Wars variety. No, this is analogous to a movie being based on Thomas of Monmouth's "Life of the Martyr William from Norwich" which began the blood libel back in the 12th century.

The argument that the Jews, rather than the Romans, killed Jesus, rests on one central, absurd premise, namely that Pontius Pilate tried to save Jesus's life but the Jews demanded that he be executed.

"Pilate said to [the Jews], 'Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?' They all said, 'Let him be crucified.'... so Pilate took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.' And all the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children'" (Matthew 27:22).

These verses are cheap forgeries, contradicted by all serious history of the time and by other verses in the New Testament itself. Pilate was known to be one of the cruelest Roman proconsuls ever. He killed thousands of people on an absolute whim. Philo wrote that Pilate was an "unbending and recklessly hard character. Corruptibility, violence, robberies, ill treatment of the people, grievances, continuous executions without even the form of a trial, endless and intolerable cruelties" were what he was famous for.

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