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Post by jelly belly girl on Mar 3, 2004 8:12:32 GMT -5
Have you seen it?
Do you plan to?
Is there enough hype over this movie? And especially with this woman having a heart attack... Like Bret has said, it wasn't the movie, it was the XL tub of popcorn...
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Post by Bret Walker on Mar 3, 2004 10:23:17 GMT -5
Haven't seen it but I definitely want to. Thing is, despite the fact that Mel Gibson has everyone believing it's an accurate depiction of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life, I have some issues (based on what I've seen in the media):
1. Pontious Pilate, despite the story of the washing of the hands, was a brutal dictator who crucified Jews regularly, and would not have sought the crowd's approval to have Jesus crucified, or bent to their whim (as he answered to Rome, not the Jews). Such a display of weakness would have meant professional suicide to a Roman Protectorate. As it was, Rome condemned him for his brutality publically, and he committed suicide four years later.
2. Mary Magdalene was NOT a prostitute. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that she is. But the Catholic church asserted that she was the prostitute that Jesus saved from stoning, and because of that her name was tarnished by the church. In the 1960's, the Roman Catholic Church issued an appology for having wrongly stated that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, but by then the minds of their followers had been set.
3. The scene where Jesus' left hand is nailed to the cross is a powerful image. But crucifictions did not use nails in the hands, but rather the wrists. Feel the flesh between your middle finger and your ring finger, in the middle of the palm of your hand. There is nothing solid holding that nail in; it would rip right out of his hand rather than support the weight of his body.
4. Jesus did not carry the entire cross to his crucifiction, but only the crossbeam. The crossbeam itself is about 75-100 lbs, and a man scourged and beaten to within an inch of his life as Jesus had would barely be able to carry that. That is why he fell so often (anyone who attends the Stages of the Cross knows about these incidents of falling) on his journey to Golgotha. Gibson depicts Jesus carrying the entire cross, which at that time would have weighed upwards of 250-300 lbs.
Other than this, it's an admirable effort. I'm just very afraid that people will read it verbatim and I don't think it's all that accurate.
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Post by JasonDC on Mar 10, 2004 11:53:55 GMT -5
Archeologically speaking, there's no evidence that the crucified were nailed through thier hands, but neither is there evidence that they were nailed through the wrist. The idea came about in the 70s I think when some scientist was doing research on crucifixons and practiced on corpses. He found the bodies would fall to the ground if they were nailed through the hands. But no wrist bones or hand bones from crucified bodies have survived to tell us either way. Theologians will say the reason Jesus was nailed through the hand is because it's much more painful then being nailed through the wrist. There's still a chance that his wrists were tied to the cross, as I'm told is often the way he is depicted in Catholic paintings and statues. Also, there's evidence that crosses from that time were constructed with a fifth appendage that went under the subjects backside to make thier posture awkward. This might have also given the person enough support the be nailed through the hands.
As for the movie, all this little stuff is interesting, but what's stricking, I'm told, is the complete abscence of any talk about love, pity, beatitude, forgiveness. That is, anything that could be considered Jesus' teaching. I imagine it's trying unsuccessfully to accomplish what Grunwald did on a single canvas. Only this moive cost a whole lot of money. I wonder how much of the major profts the picture has generated will go towards any cause that Christians consider thier own. Do we really need to spend so much money-- money that would be better spent on feeding, clothing, and healing the needy-- just to confirm Christians in what they already believe?
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Post by JasonDC on Mar 10, 2004 11:58:22 GMT -5
Oh, and Bret... is there a little hidden meaning behind spelling crucifixion "crucifiction"?
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Post by Bret Walker on Mar 10, 2004 14:11:01 GMT -5
Whoops, my Freudian slip is showing  |
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