Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ will appeal to fundamentalist Christians who, for one reason or another, mistakenly understand every word of the Bible as the  “Word of God.”  Gibson, overwhelming viewers with his myopic focus on the crucifixion, is, although a Catholic, similarly caught up in other-worldly biblical literalism. 

 The Gospel of Matthew is the written basis for much of the suffering that the Jewish people have endured throughout the centuries.  One of the main issues in biblical studies is Matthew’s editing of the Gospel of Mark, specifically Mt. 27.25.  Matthew, writing towards the end of the first century, is the source of the fiction that the Jewish people (or nation, Greek laos) are responsible for the crucifixion.  In the text, after Pilate absolves himself – “I am innocent (Greek afthos) of this man’s blood.  See to it yourselves”--Matthew adds the words: “In response (Greek apokritheis), all the people said, [Smear] his blood upon us and our children!”  Only Matthew of the four traditional gospel writers adds these words.

The New Testament has one other instance of such a curse . In Acts 18.6, the author of Luke-Acts puts similar words into the mouth of Jesus: “[Smear] your blood upon your [own] heads.  I am innocent (Greek katharos).”   The curse is Hebraic: “And David said to him, [smear] your blood upon your own head, for your mouth has spoken (Greek apekrithi) against you, saying I have slain the anointed (Christos) of the Lord”(2 Kings 1.16 (LXX) = 2 Sam.1.16). This passage is almost certainly the source of Matthew’s editing, and therefore undermines the historicity of such a real confession on the part of Jerusalem Jews.

In the movie, the offending words of Mt. 27.25 are spoken in Aramaic.  Gibson reluctantly deleted the English subtitle for these words. 

The Passion of Christ, however, should never have been produced.  It is based on bibilical documents which are neither historical nor factual yet are treated as such.  Much of it is non-biblical.  For those who consider the Bible as the infallible “Word of God,” the movie will do little more than strengthen what in reality is an untenable position.

What really happened?  Let’s be honest. We don’t know any more than Matthew did. The movie, to use British English, is “bloody literal and bloody awful.”

          Edward Kale, former campus minister at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, is a graduate of Yale Divinity School, and did his Ph.D. studies in New Testament at Durham University, England.