More Articles on *The Passion*

The Passion is at least producing an interesting set of articles on the broad issues it raises.  Like the following:

The Real Problem with "Passion" by Amy-Jill Levine, on Beliefnet.com. On the scholarly discussion over the film. She points to some troubling aspects of Gibson's behavior prior to the movie's release.

Gibson's Gospel by James Shapiro, on Beliefnet.com.  The author of a book on the famous passion play at Oberammergau, Germany, discusses Gibson's movie in the context of the controversies over passion plays.

The Passion of Christ in the World Religions (02/26/04) by Juan Cole discusses some eceumenical issues surrounding the film:

Interestingly, the Koran, the holy book of Islam, denies that the Jews were responsible for Jesus's death (4:154-159). It appears that some Jews of the ancient Arabian city of Medinah were disappointed when they learned that the Prophet Muhammad had accepted Jesus as a prophet of God, and had put this decision down by observing that he wasn't much of a prophet if the Jews had managed to kill him. The Koran replies to this boast (surely by some jerk in the Medinan Jewish quarter) by saying, "They did not kill him, and they did not crucify him, it only appeared to them so." What exactly the Koran meant by this phrase has been debated ever since. A lot of Muslims have adopted the rather absurd belief that Jesus was not crucified, but rather a body double took his place. (This is like something out of the fiction of Argentinean fabulist Jorge Luis Borges). Those Muslims who accepted Jesus' death on the cross (and nothing else in the Koran denies it) interpret the verse as saying it was God's will that Jesus be sacrificed, and so it was not the Jews' doing. Any way you look at it, though, the Koran explicitly relieves Jews of any responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion and death. In this it displays a more admirable sentiment than some passages of the Gospels, and certainly than the bizarre far-rightwing Catholic cult in which Mel Gibson was raised, which appears to involve Holocaust denial, and which deeply influenced his sanguinary film.