The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #67101   Message #1124886
Posted By: Nerd
26-Feb-04 - 10:56 PM
Thread Name: BS: Mel's Dad... no Holocaust...
Subject: RE: BS: Mel's Dad... no Holocaust...
Here's the problem I have with your logic from the get-go, LH:

"If all Mel Gibson has done is to depict factually what is already in the Bible, he is not attacking Jews."

How does one depict something factually? It is either factual or it isn't. You presumably mean depict accurately what is in the bible. But the bible does not contain only facts.

You yourself begin with a series of "facts" drawn from the bible, such as:

"The Roman governor, Pilate, interviewed Jesus. He investigated the situation as best he could. His conclusions were that Jesus had committed no crimes against anyone and was an innocent man. He suggested to the Jewish clergy that Jesus should not be executed. They went berserk."

Are these actually facts though? Nobody knows. It certainly does not sound like the Pontius Pilate known as a ruthless tyrant from other records, who would as soon crucify an innocent Hebrew as a guilty one.

Remember, the gospels were written after Jesus's death by people who did not know him and were not there. The synoptic Gospels were based on Mark's account, which was probably put together out of sermons Mark heard from Peter.

The goal of a sermon is to prosletyze and prove ideological points, not to depict history accurately. Since Christianity began essentially as a sect of Judaism (that is a group of Jews following Jesus) it would be necessary for the gospel writers (and Peter at the outset) to show how they differed from other Jews, how the Jewish religion should really only be a stepping-stone to the true faith. In other words, it is quite possible that Peter preached that those Jews who did not follow Jesus were to be reviled. That would make Mark, and the gospels that followed it, based on anti-semitic ideology, not on fact.

If Mel Gibson accurately depicts anti-semitic passages from the bible, is he attacking Jews? I think he is. He may not see it as an attack, because he is convinced that every word of the bible is literally true. I don't believe that, so I think Mel may be, at the very least, the vehicle for anti-semitism.