Gibson's controversial film coincides closely with ancient Jewish
writings.
By David Klinghoffer
January 1, 2004
Mel Gibson's
forthcoming movie about the death of Jesus, "The Passion," has created an angry
standoff between the filmmaker and Jewish critics who charge him with
anti-Semitism. It's a controversy that will continue to affect relations between
Christians and Jews unless some way to cool it can be found. One possible
cooling agent is an honest look at how ancient Jewish sources portrayed the
Crucifixion.
According to those who have seen a rough cut, Gibson's film
depicts the death of Christ as occurring at the hands of the Romans but at the
instigation of Jewish leaders, the priests of the Jerusalem Temple. The
Anti-Defamation League charges that this recklessly stirs anti-Jewish hatred and
demands that the film be edited to eliminate any suggestion of Jewish
deicide.
But like the Christian Gospels that form the basis of Gibson's
screenplay, Jewish tradition acknowledges that our leaders in 1st century
Palestine played a role in Jesus' execution. If Gibson is an anti-Semite, so is
the Talmud and so is the greatest Jewish sage of the past 1,000 years,
Maimonides.
We will never know for certain what happened in Roman
Palestine around the year 30, but we do know what Jews who lived soon afterward
said about Jesus' execution.
The Talmud was compiled in about the year
500, drawing on rabbinic material that had been transmitted orally for
centuries. From the 16th century on, the text was censored and passages about
Jesus and his execution were erased to evade Christian wrath. But the full text
was preserved in older manuscripts, and today the censored parts may be found in
minuscule type, as an appendix at the back of some Talmud editions.
A
relevant example comes from the Talmudic division known as Sanhedrin, which
deals with procedures of the Jewish high court: "On the eve of Passover they
hung Jesus of Nazareth. And the herald went out before him for 40 days [saying,
'Jesus] goes forth to be stoned, because he has practiced magic, enticed and led
astray Israel. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and declare
concerning him.' And they found nothing in his favor."
The passage
indicates that Jesus' fate was entirely in the hands of the Jewish court. The
last two of the three items on Jesus' rap sheet, that he "enticed and led
astray" fellow Jews, are terms from Jewish biblical law for an individual who
influenced others to serve false gods, a crime punishable by being stoned, then
hung on a wooden gallows. In the Mishnah, the rabbinic work on which the Talmud
is based, compiled about the year 200, Rabbi Eliezer explains that anyone who
was stoned to death would then be hung by his hands from two pieces of wood
shaped like a capital letter T — in other words, a cross (Sanhedrin
6:4).
These texts convey religious beliefs, not necessarily historical
facts. The Talmud elsewhere agrees with the Gospel of John that Jews at the time
of the Crucifixion did not have the power to carry out the death penalty. Also,
other Talmudic passages place Jesus 100 years before or after his actual
lifetime. Some Jewish apologists argue that these must therefore deal with a
different Jesus of Nazareth. But this is not how the most authoritative rabbinic
interpreters, medieval sages like Nachmanides, Rashi and the Tosaphists, saw the
matter.
Maimonides, writing in 12th century Egypt, made clear that the
Talmud's Jesus is the one who founded Christianity. In his great summation of
Jewish law and belief, the Mishneh Torah, he wrote of "Jesus of Nazareth, who
imagined that he was the Messiah, but was put to death by the court." In his
"Epistle to Yemen," Maimonides states that "Jesus of Nazareth … interpreted the
Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment.
The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his
reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him."
It's unfair of Jewish critics to defame Gibson for saying what the
Talmud and Maimonides say, and what many historians say. Oddly, one of the
scholars who has most vigorously denounced Gibson — Paula Fredriksen, a
professor of religious studies at Boston University — is the author of a
meticulously researched book, "Jesus of Nazareth," that suggests it was the high
priests who informed on Jesus to the Roman authorities.
Would it have
been better if Gibson never undertook to make this movie in exactly the way he
did? Maybe, but trying to intimidate him into fundamentally reworking it was
never a realistic or worthy goal. The best option now is to acknowledge that
other sources besides the Gospels confirm the involvement of Jewish leaders in
Jesus' death and clear the anger from the air. Considering that Gibson's
portrayal coincides closely with traditional Jewish belief, it seems that
leaving him alone is the decent as well as the Jewish thing to do.
David Klinghoffer is a columnist for the Jewish Forward and author of the
"The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism" (Doubleday, 2003)
and the upcoming "Why the Jews Rejected Christ: In Search of the Turning Point
in Western History."
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