The Passion - A Review of Biblical Issues

[qos]

I enjoyed this article, from The Seattle Times, about some of the biblical issues behind Gibson's film. The reporter quotes professors from several of the seminaries in the area, and I think they have valuable insights about issues that aren't obvious to a lay person.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001863907_gospels24m.html

I found the conclusion especially pertinent:

The Gospels, Wall said, "don't serve historical ends. They serve theological, religious ends." In that sense, he believes Gibson's "Passion" serves the same purpose the Gospels do.

In interviews, Gibson has said he was depressed, almost suicidal and spiritually empty several years ago. He said he found hope by focusing on the sacrifice of Jesus.

Gibson's "Passion," then, according to Wall, can be understood as a "retelling of the Passion story that makes sense of his own spiritual experiences. And that's exactly right. I think that's what the churches had in mind for these particular stories — that they be interpreted in a way that makes sense of (each person's) own deeply spiritual experiences."

The problem, of course, is that the audiences who see this movie won't necessarily be aware that a film director - like any storyteller - shapes the material by selectivity, and the camera always lies by omission and controls through focus and direction. Despite our media-saturated culture, we are not a media-savvy people. People will look at this movie and think they are seeing "the truth" -- not stopping to consider that truth, especially in a case like this, is far too complex to be set out in a single, neat package -- even if that "neat package" is a major motion picture produced and directed by a highly talented and devout individual.

Comments

[ex-mommybir.livejournal.com]

These well-educated scholars seem to have forgotten that the early Church did, in fact, produce "Gospel harmonies" in which all four accounts were melded into one continuous narrative--off the top of my head, I recall one by Efrem of Syria--and that Christian writers have done so ever since in commenting on the Passion and reflecting on it. The scholarly method of coping with the Scriptures is a good one, but it's fairly new and by no means universal or the only possible way.

[qos.livejournal.com]

You make a good point. There is no "one best way." And I had forgotten about the early gospel harmonies. Clearly my personal biases are showing here.

But I do think that when reading (or watching) such harmonized works there needs to be an awareness that producing a harmony is by no means as simple as listing all the scenes and shoehorning them into a single narrative. There are significant differences in the theology of the four gospel writers, and in the way they present their material, that gets lost in a harmonized version.

[ex-mommybir.livejournal.com]

I think it's good, indeed, that biblical scholarship has made us more aware of the four evangelists as not merely historians but as theologians, each with his (or her) own agenda. It has taken me years of private reading of the Scriptures to begin to see that for myself, and to be aware not only of Jesus but of Matthew's perspective on Jesus, of Matthew's concerns (to pick one example) as I read that Gospel.

I think the question that needs to be asked is, Why do writers/filmmakers who need to pick a specific framework for retelling the Gospel narrative so often pick *John's* chronology over that of the Synoptics? Dorothy Sayers did the same in her brilliant series of radio plays, The Man Born to Be King.

[queenofhalves]

john's account is sort of the most literary -- all the symbols line up neatly. it also tends to be the favorite gospel of many christians, probably for similiar reasons -- it's the most consistent and coherent.