I wrote this in February of 2004 when The Passion of the Christ first came out. It appeared in The Heretic, an online magazine I used to run at that time.

Spoiler warning: Jesus dies.

To say I’m not a Jesus freak is a bit of an understatement. I’m an atheist, and like most atheists, religious dramas do not pull on my heartstrings. In fact, most of them are downright laughable to me. They’re laughable because it seems that filmmakers often get an ego the size of the god they are portraying when they take on these Biblical epics, and Mel Gibson is no different. Being a member of the Catholic Traditionalist sect of Catholicism, he comes off as a bit of a zealot whenever he speaks about his faith, and his father has shown in recent weeks how anti-Semitic this group can be. Proving that there is no such thing as bad publicity, however, “The Passion of the Christ” made $117.5 million in its first five days.

I ended it watching it as well, just because I knew damn well that all my theist friends would be curious as to what I thought of it, since I consider myself both a movie buff and a heretic. I tried to not let my bias get in the way of my critique, however. The violence didn’t offend me like so many claimed it should because, in case you weren’t aware, scourgings and crucifixions weren’t pretty. I watched it all very carefully, and I really didn’t see it as anti-Semitic either, at least any more than it was anti-Roman Empire. (Technically, the entire New Testament is anti-Semitic, considering the Jews do not believe in any of it.) That wasn’t my problem with it. My problem had to do with the following statements made by Gibson in an interview before the film’s release in which he claims that “The Passion” is the most accurate movie ever made about the death of Christ…

“I don’t think other films have tapped into the real force of this story. I mean, have you seen any of the others? They are either inaccurate in their history, or they suffer from bad music or bad hair. This film will show the passion of Jesus Christ just the way it happened. It’s like traveling back in time and watching the events unfold exactly as they occurred…We’ve done the research. I’m telling the story as the Bible tells it. I think the story, as it really happened, speaks for itself. The Gospel is a complete script, and that’s what we’re filming.”

My question to Mel, then, is why were you so concerned with frivolous things such as bad music and bad hair and not with Jesus’ ethnicity, or the ethnicity of everyone in the story for that matter? You go through all the trouble of writing the script in its original languages (Latin and Aramaic), both of which are now dead, yet you refuse to acknowledge that their skin got a little sun? In fact, there were only three noticeable representatives in the entire film – two blacks, and both simply extras, and Simon, the man who helped carry the cross, looked a bit Middle Eastern. Other than that, everyone else was as white as freshly baked bread, yet the entire story takes place in the Middle East, where most of the white people you’ll find are our own American-born troops. This color-blind depiction of Jesus is nothing new, so why are you advertising this movie as if it brings something unique to the table?

What is new to the story is Gibson’s addition of the devil to several scenes in the form of a pale cloaked figure, a snake, and small children. While I do agree that little kids often act like the spawn of Satan, aren’t we supposed to be watching an exact translation of the Gospels? As far as my memory serves, the only time the devil appears to Jesus is when he is in the desert fasting, yet he pops up all over the place in this movie. He exercised quite a bit of “artistic” license, actually, adding scenes of Jesus’ childhood and teenage years, and his fleshing out of Pilate’s character and his wife. It seems to me that if your mission, as he says it was, was to tell the story exactly as it was supposed to be told, you shouldn’t be playing god with the details.

Of course, one would have to fuck around with the details of the Gospels to get one fluid story out the four to begin with, considering Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John contradict themselves so many times throughout their depictions of Jesus’ life that we’re still debating what really happened to this day. This is where my main beef with “The Passion” comes into play. I may be an atheist, but I sadly know the Bible better than most Christians. I knew the minute I read that Gibson claimed he was making an “accurate” film about the Gospels that I could disprove that statement within minutes utilizing my favorite online companion, The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, and a little close reading. Here are seven main differences between the movie and the Scripture, followed by some other minor details…

1. When Jesus is arrested in the film, the high priests ask him if he ever said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and later mock him with the same statement when he is on the cross, asking him to use this supposed power to come down from the cross. According to John 2:19-21, Jesus did in fact say that he would do this, but in Mark 14:57-58, it says the he, in fact, did not, and anyone who claims that he did was lying.

2. Mel chose to show the popular image of Judas throwing his silver back at the priests and hanging himself in guilt. This is accurate according to Matthew 27:5, but is not according to Acts 1:18. In this passage, Judas purchased a field with the silver. He then tripped and fell, his innards bursting forth from his stomach, and he died as a result.

3. When Jesus faces Pilate in the movie, he has a clever retort for everything he asks, much like he does in John 18:33-38. Yet in Matthew 27:12-14, he says nothing to Pilate at all, and Pilate marvels at his silence. That’s quite the difference in character there.

4. Gibson chose to include Simon helping Jesus carry the cross, which is in Matthew 27:32, Mark 15:21, and Luke 23:26, but is not even mentioned in John. In John 19:17, he actually bears the cross completely by himself. At least he got three out of four Gospel writers to agree with him on that one.

5. He chose yet another popular image by including the salvation of one of the two thieves crucified next to Jesus. In Luke 23:39-42, Jesus hears his repentance and invites him to heaven, while in Mark 15:32 and Matthew 27:44, both thieves revile Jesus along with the Romans.

6. This is probably my favorite one. Matthew 27:46, Luke 23:46, and John 19:30 all list completely different last words for Jesus. All three are spoken by Jesus in the film before he dies, but according to the book, it was either “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” or “It is finished,” not all three.

7. For dramatic effect, Mel tossed in the earth quaking after Jesus’ last breath, which is mentioned in Matthew 27:52-53, but no where else in the Gospels. In fact, Matthew goes on to say that, “the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many,” yet I don’t recall seeing any of the undead in the film, although that may have made this movie a hell of a lot more memorable. “The Passion 2: Jesus vs. The Zombies.” Does anyone know if George Romero is available?

There are also some minor detail contradictions worth mentioning, such as all four Gospels listing four different groups that Peter denied knowing Jesus to. (It is unclear which Gibson chose in his version.) Jesus in “The Passion” clearly states to the high priests that he is the Son of God, as he does in Mark 14:62, but in Matthew 26:63-64, he says this quite indirectly. When Jesus is mocked by the Roman soldiers, they dress him in a scarlet robe in the film, as they do in Matthew 27:28, but this robe is purple in Mark 15:17 and John 19:2. The sign above Jesus’ head on the cross reads “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” according to Gibson’s version and John 19:19, but Matthew 27:37, Mark 15:26, and Luke 23:38 all have slightly different, but not terribly contrasting, translations. Mary and the women with her were at Jesus’ feet in the film and in John 19:25, yet they were “afar off” in Matthew 27:55, Mark 15:40, and Luke 23:49. Not mentioned in the movie, but also worth noting, is that the Gospels cannot even agree on when he was crucified. In Mark 15:25, it was the third hour, but in John 19:14-16, it was sometime after the sixth hour.

But enough particulars. Many would argue that it is not these details, but the message that counts. If that is true, then why are there hundreds of religions based upon the same book? Because each one disagrees slightly on the details of the Bible, and many believe that all the others are going to burn in hell because of these slight differences. That sounds pretty serious to me.

Nevertheless, let’s get back to the matter at hand. My main point is that you cannot make an accurate film based on a book that is far from accurate in itself. If Mel Gibson had done half the research I did in writing this piece, he may have realized that himself, but that’s what we call blind faith, folks. You read what you want to read, hear what you want to hear, and believe what you want to believe. Just have more sense than to believe in this archaic garbage.

Is the direction well done? Sure. Is the score powerful? Absolutely. Is the acting decent? Yeah, but how much effort did it really take Caviezel to scream out in pain every few minutes? It’s not like he had a hell of a lot to say or do in between beatings. Hell, I’d be screaming out in pain every few minutes too if I had to work with Mel Gibson. I think Gibson’s success with this movie relies on the fact that most people just don’t have the balls to say that they didn’t like a movie about Jesus Christ, and much like the Catholic Church, he is confident that the imagery presented will guilt most people into belief…or at least into shelling out eight bucks. Those Catholics may not know much about history, but they certainly know how to make a profit. Just look at the Vatican.