How far did the Gibson apple fall from the tree?

[Bereta_Eder]

*racist alert*

I wonder if racists are anti-semites too? Most of the time they are...

[Alone Wolf]

Well, I see that the right to free speech is in good hands.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


That's a presupposition that allows you to prove, what you have already assumed.

You assume that the Bible seeks to convert Jews. How would they do so by demonising them?

The bible was and is used to convert people includinmg jews to christianity. As such it can be considered advertising or propaganda.

[LoneWolf]

The people who put Jesus into the hands of the Romans were Jewish. So was he. How can there be any debate about that?
Certainly there is no basis to blame mordern Jewish people for that. It is just a historical fact.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by LoneWolf
The people who put Jesus into the hands of the Romans were Jewish. So was he. How can there be any debate about that?

1. There is considerable argument that the gospels had been adultered by Romans in the first few centuries A.D. to paint a negative view of the Jews whil white-washing the Roman involvement.

2. Then again, find me anything the corroborates the events described in the gospels. It could be a great deal of fiction, as the notion that Pharisees would be persecuting any of the messianic figures/cults is problematic in itself.

[Imran Siddiqui]

the notion that Pharisees would be persecuting any of the messianic figures/cults is problematic in itself.

Why? It seems quite normal for them to do so, acutlaly.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Ben: btw, great picture change...one of the best Mariah's I've seen

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

the notion that Pharisees would be persecuting any of the messianic figures/cults is problematic in itself.

Why? It seems quite normal for them to do so, acutlaly.

Only if you accept the Biblical caricature of them as being accurate. Hyram Maccoby, among other scholars, has pointed out the depiction of the Pharisees as ultra-conservative pit bulls who jealously guarded their power is almost certainly false and was a notion conjured up in the first two centuries AD. In fact, the Pharisees were the sect of the people who preached Mosaic Law, while the Saducees were the aristocrats who favored Hellenism. The Pharisees were actively protecting the messianic cults of Judea from Saducee persecution.

"The third reform is the Pharisaic Reformation. To understand the Pharisees, we must compare them to their chief opponents, the Sadducees. While the Pharisees were the party of the masses and often poor themselves, the Sadducees represented the party of aristocrats and often were themselves rich. The leaders of the Sadducees were the highborn priests of the Jerusalem Temple, while those of the Pharisees were the rabbis and scholars, the latter known as "scribes." Sadduceeism centered in the Temple; Phariseeism revolved around the synagogues scattered throughout the land (Mk. 5:17). The main activity of the Temple was the sacrificing of animals as burnt offerings; that of the synagogues was to conduct prayer and to read the Bible (Mt. 23).

The Pharisees believed in the hereafter. There would come a time, so they taught, when the dead would be resurrected from their graves (Acts 23:6f.). Along with this, they believed in the immortality of the soul and the awarding of rewards and punishments in the next world. (Sounds almost Christian, doesn't it?) To the Sadducees, such doctrines were ridiculous, for they had no basis at all in the Five Books of Moses.

The Pharisees also had their own way of interpreting the Bible. Their view was that God had given Moses not only the Written Law but an Oral Law as well, so that by clever exegesis the Oral Law could be discovered.

An example: The Pentateuch has the famous punishment dictum: "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, hand for a hand, foot for a foot" (Ex. 21:24). The Pharisees abolished this harsh practice. They substituted for physical mutilation the requirement that the offender pay to the injured party a money compensation. To justify such a substitution, they reinterpreted another passage from the Pentateuch: "Ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer that is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death" (Nu. 35:31). Their argument stressed the word "life." Where life had been taken, there could be no money compensation; but if the injury involved an eye or a tooth or a hand or a foot, then money could be substituted.

Here's another illustration demonstrating that their method of exegesis led to reform. The Jewish dietary laws forbid the eating of milk and meat at the same meal. This is supposedly the meaning of the verse "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" (Ex. 34:26). Now I ask you, how does "seethe" come to mean "eat," how does "kid" mean "meat" of any kind, and how does "its mother's milk" mean milk of any kind? Yet by resorting to such a tortuous interpretation, they were able to arrive at their predetermined reform.

Incidentally, it's most interesting to note that this law actually derives from one of the three sets of Ten Commandments we have been given-this being the tenth commandment of what is known as the Ritual Set, for it is quite different from the other two sets, one of which is found in Deuteronomy and the other in Exodus 20.

When every allowance has been made for its flaws, there remains in Phariseeism a great appealing residue. When new legislation is derived from scholarly interpretation rather than priestly fiat, prestige shifts from the priest to the scribe, from the privileged to the unprivileged, from the few to the many.

Their often convoluted way of interpretation also helped progress. New situations and new needs could be met much more quickly. Nearly all of the Pharisaic reforms involved the meeting of new conditions. To the Pharisees also must be traced the Jewish concern for education. It was a Pharisaic maxim that "the learned bastard takes precedence over the ignorant high priest."

Such oft-quoted and admired passages in the New Testament, the Christian Bible, are: "Blessed are the meek," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Blessed are the merciful," and "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you"-all these come from the Pharisees.

It is Phariseeism that has come down the centuries, reflecting itself in the rabbinical Judaism of today. The Pharisees were also the spiritual fathers of both Christianity and Islam."

[Shi Huangdi]

Gibson has repeatedly stated he does not hold Jews accountable for killing Jesus. Rather, he says he holds himself accountable, as all of mankind is. Mankind's sin is what made the passion nessecary.

Gibson backs this up with imagery in the movie: Gibson's one role in the play he is the one personally driving the nails into Jesus.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It would seem natural that a power group would want to protect its power and these cults would usurp that. A messiah would only hurt them.

[MrFun]

This is JUST a movie!

[Edan]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Jewish leaders... therefore 'the' Jews is good enough. It'd be like saying 'America' or some Americans were involved in Vietnam. It's a silly distinction. And also involved and probably responsible to a large extent.

They wouldn't. Why would the Romans want one religious sect to kill people of another religious sect? That just creates chaos which was decidedly un-Roman. If the Romans were the ones responsible for killing Jesus then it was because Jesus was becoming too much of a rabble rouser... that order thing again.

Huh, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, aren't you?

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Gibson has repeatedly stated he does not hold Jews accountable for killing Jesus. Rather, he says he holds himself accountable, as all of mankind is. Mankind's sin is what made the passion nessecary.

Gibson backs this up with imagery in the movie: Gibson's one role in the play he is the one personally driving the nails into Jesus.

That's really interesting.


I don't think the movie itself will be any more or less antisemitic than the Bible. People will just interpret it differently.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Huh, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, aren't you?

Why is it any different? Can't the Romans and Jews both kill Jesus? If Jesus was a rabble rouser wouldn't that threaten BOTH the Romans and Jews?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It would seem natural that a power group would want to protect its power and these cults would usurp that. A messiah would only hurt them.

Yet the Pharisees were known to have protected messianic cults from attempts at persecution by the Saducees. So whether or not it would seem "natural" to you, it wasn't the historical case as far as we know.

The notion that the Pharisees would hand over a troublemaker to the Romans for punishment, of all things, is absurd. This is simply not something the conservative, anti-Roman believers in Mosaic Law would do to another Jew. It would be abhorrent to them.