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The Burden of the Passion

Robert H. Gundry
It is mildly amusing to see scholars who in their own quests of the historical Jesus
pick and choose from among the four Gospels criticize Mel Gibson for doing the same
in "The Passion of the Christ." It is less amusing to see scholars accuse Gibson of
reading the Gospels through the contra Iudaeos tradition when these scholars
themselves read his movie through that same tradition. Of course, they think the
movie gives them good reason to do so. But Gibson likewise thinks the Gospels give
him good reason to read them thus. Is it correct, then, to interpret "The Passion of
the Christ" as laying a burden of guilt on the Jewish people?

The persecutions that Jews have endured throughout the centuries make that
interpretation of the movie understandable, and the interpretation contains an
element of truth but neither the whole truth nor the fundamental truth. Yes, the
movie portrays Jewish leaders as responsible for Jesus' arrest and as hauling him to
Pontius Pilate and demanding Jesus' crucifixion. Yes, the movie portrays a Jewish
mob as joining in the demand. On the other hand, the rabbis' own Talmud accepts
Jewish responsibility for Jesus' death by changing crucifixion into stoning, a Jewish
rather than Roman method of execution, followed by a hanging of the corpse (b.
Sanh. 43a, 67a; y. Sanh. 7:16). Moreover, the Apostle Paul, an outstandingly
earnest Jew prior to his Christian conversion, blamed the Jews for Jesus' death (1
Thess 2:14-16, a passage sometimes disputed but usually considered genuinely
Pauline); and it is hard to imagine why according to his own account (Gal 1:13, 23;
Phil 3:6, passages universally accepted as authentic) Paul persecuted the church
"exceedingly" and "zealously," were it not for Jewish complicity in the death of the
one in whom Christians believed. Paul's writing before the Jewish rebellion against
Rome in 66-73 CE undercuts the view that to distance themselves from the Jews,
Christians started blaming them unhistorically for Jesus' death not till after that
rebellion.

Though Satan moves among the jeering Jews in Gibson's movie, other Jews-not
Simon of Cyrene and Jesus' mother and disciples alone-sympathize with Jesus. And
Satan moves not only among Jesus' Jewish enemies but also among the Roman
soldiers as they beat Jesus mercilessly. Someone will say, however, that Gibson
portrays the Romans and those Jews alike as cardboard characters; that is to say, he
caricatures them. Precisely the point! They are Satan's tools, for human beings
would not commit such horrors apart from demonic influence. Even disbelievers in
Satan must sometimes wonder at the mystery of human evil.

As for Pilate, he is known from outside the New Testament to have been cruel. But
we also know from outside the New Testament that he yielded to Jewish pressure on
at least one occasion earlier than Jesus' trial (Josephus, Antiquities 18.55-59; War
2.169-74). Pilate's position was precarious; for in the past, complaints by Jewish
leaders against a predecessor, Archelaus, had led to Rome's deposing that
predecessor (Josephus, Antiquities 17.342-44; cf. Strabo 16.2.46), and Pilate himself
had complaints lodged against him (Philo, Embassy 299-305; Josephus, Antiquities
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18.85-89), the latter of which led to his own deposition. So he had reason to get the
jitters and cave in. And since he did cave in despite his belief in Jesus' innocence (all
the foregoing and following according to the movie and the Gospels, of course), he
himself does not look innocent in the least. Rather, he looks all the more guilty for
giving Jesus over to crucifixion against his better judgment. Because of his knowing
injustice and the Roman soldiers' unspeakable brutality, Gentiles share with Jews an
equal burden of guilt.

But in this movie neither the Gentiles nor the Jews do the fundamental burden-
bearing. Jesus does. The quotation of Isaiah 53 in the opening frame provides the
interpretive key to the whole movie. This quotation reads in part that the Servant of
the LORD "was crushed for our iniquities" and that "by his wounds we are healed."
To the contrary, Satan tells Jesus in the opening scene that "one man" cannot "bear
the whole burden of sin. . . . It is far too heavy." Will Jesus succeed in doing what
Satan told him nobody can do? Here is the question the movie seeks to answer. At
bottom it is not a question of how much or little blame for Jesus' death rests on the
backs of Jews or of Gentiles, whether past or present. It is a question of Jesus' ability
to bear the sins of all humanity on his own back in order that human beings may be
unburdened of their sins.

In this light, the nearly interminable beating of Jesus does not have the look of
gratuitous violence in the sadomasochistic mode. Not at all! Its very length and
brutality are designed to test the ability of Jesus to carry "the whole burden of sin"
and prove Satan wrong. Unbelievers may not like this theology. It may disgust them.
But believers or not, reviewers only expose their theological insensitivity to call the
violence inflicted on Jesus "gratuitous." "The Passion of the Christ" gives us to
understand that it is the forgiveness of sins made possible by the violence which is
gratuitous, not the violence itself. And the palpable exhaustion of the Romans who
beat Jesus stands for the exhaustion of all human guilt on his body. As an old gospel
song puts it, "Jesus paid it all."

Right among Jesus' closest disciples there is guilt to be paid for. They forsake him.
Three times Peter denies him. Under Satan's influence Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus.
Gibson's portrayal of Judas and Satan displays special sophistication. The Gospel of
Matthew has Judas throw back to the chief priests the thirty pieces of blood money
they had given him for the betrayal, but does not have them throw it to him at the
time of bargain. But in a fine artistic touch Gibson does have them do so to form
bookends out of a throwing to and a throwing back. In each throwing the coins
scatter on the floor; and Judas's scooping them up when they are thrown to him
betrays his greed in the betraying of Jesus for a paltry sum. But boyish demons drive
Judas to suicide, so that Satan holds aloft the soul of Judas as a trophy in the form
of a warty, hairy baby-albino to represent disembodiment and hideous to represent
Satan's disfigurement of a human being who had been made in God's image
(compare and contrast El Greco's portrayal of the departing soul of the godly Count
Orgaz).

Satan has a comeuppance too. When Jesus dies having successfully borne the weight
of the whole world's sin, Satan collapses on the site of Jesus' death-and shrieks.
Why? Because that is what demons do when exorcised, when cast out. Shortly
before his passion Jesus said, "Now is the prince of this world cast out." Exorcistic
language if there ever was such! Satan has had his/her day; but thanks to Jesus'
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burden-bearing, that day is over.

The treatment of Herod Antipas, to whom Pilate sent Jesus and who sent Jesus back
to Pilate, exhibits Gibson's artistry-and homework as well-at its most subtle and
thorough. The drunken feast that Jesus' entry interrupts recalls the drunken feast at
which the severed head of Jesus' forerunner, John the Baptist, was served to Herod
on a platter. Herod's wife Herodias is present here as she was present there. But
Herod wears a woman's wig and mascara. Why this womanish portrayal of him
despite his heterosexual marriage? Well, it was Herodias who manipulated Herod
against his will to have John the Baptist beheaded. To represent her dominance over
Herod, Gibson makes him effeminate. There is more. On his way to Jerusalem some
Pharisees had said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." But
Jesus answered, "Go tell that fox for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and
performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. . . . It
is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem" (Luke 13:31-33). The
Greek word behind "fox" is feminine, so that Jesus is calling Herod a vixen, a female
fox-not an animal to be afraid of or to run away from. Gibson matches Herod to
Jesus' slur.

"The Passion of the Christ" opens with Jesus standing beside a tree in a garden called
Gethsemane. Not as in the Gospels, Gibson puts a temptation of Jesus in that garden
and by this means recollects for us the original temptation beside a tree in another
garden, the one called Eden. A succumbing to that original temptation led to
expulsion, debarment from the tree of life, and death. Jesus' resistance of
temptation so as to bear the heavy burden of humanity's sin on another tree, the
cross, opened the way back to the tree of life, eternal life.

Lest theologically superficial reviews of this movie, whether critical or supportive,
contribute to an anti-Semitic misuse of it, let us all treat it more perceptively than
some have thus far been equipped or disposed to do.

Robert H. Gundry
Scholar-in-Residence and Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Greek
Westmont College, Santa Barbara CA.