Word: aitkens
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...harmonizes the four gospels into one account, so there’s a stripping away of a lot of the detail,” says Aitken. In addition to the four gospels, Gibson drew upon the writings of a sixteenth century nun who had visions about the Passion gospel. This is problematic, Aitken says, because, “it locates the movie in late medieval Catholic theology...
...dreaded going to see it,” Aitken concedes. “I thought it was a highly manipulative movie, and really far distant from the gospels...
...Aitken agrees with film critics and scholars that Gibson is simply inaccurate in some cases—inaccuracies a non-scholar or specialist may never recognize. An expert in early Christian studies, with emphasis on Hellenistic and Roman contexts, Aitken points out many errors in the film. “The movie focuses only on the torturing of Jesus by excluding the Last Supper, the rehabilitation of Peter and the discovery of the empty tomb...
...Aitken highlights historical errors as well; for example, despite the extreme unlikelihood that Jesus would have spoken any Latin, he converses with Pontius Pilate fluently in the film. Greek, which was spoken commonly in Jerusalem at the time, is completely absent. Additionally, Gibson misrepresents the ethnic make-up of Jerusalem and greatly heightens the role of the so-called “Jewish mob,” which calls for Jesus’s death. According to Aitken, Gibson also fictionally contextualizes Judas’s story, adding a scene of his harassment by a group of morphing, devil-like...
This skewing of the narrative has led critics to label The Passion anti-Semitic, and Aitken concurs. As the passion narratives were written during the Christian church’s nascent stages, she explains, they were in part an attempt to “unify a given community and define one group against another.” Thus, it is impossible to “put modern labels” on the complicated racial and ethnic makeup of first century Jerusalem, she says...