Religious scholars from throughout the UCLA community widely agreed Thursday that the violence portrayed in the hugely successful “The Passion of the Christ” was over-exaggerated and furthered misdirected anti-Semitic behavior.
It is a movie about controversy that has awoken many people from their moral sleep.
UCLA’s Office of Residential Life presented “Why ‘The Passion?’” a panel discussion on the film’s impact on our culture Thursday night.
The panelists, John Book, director of Campus Crusade for Christ, Professor Scott Bartchy, director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Religion, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of UCLA Hillel and Hisham Mahmoud, a graduate student in Arabic and Islamic studies, spoke to an audience of almost 200 people.
The panelists discussed their response to the film, particularly of Jesus’s crucifixion scene, and the film’s impact on our culture.
“The fundamental question here is not who killed Jesus, but what killed Jesus,” Bartchy said. “It was a military dictatorship and brutality (that killed Jesus). We cannot blame a certain group of people.”
The panel discussed the controversy over the film’s potential anti-Semitic ideas. All the panelists agreed that Jews were not to blame, though they believed that was the intent of director Mel Gibson.
“There is a presence of a new world where I am in it and where I can go into a mosque and come out with my religion intact, and that is a great world,” Seidler-Feller said.
“But Mel Gibson is against this new world. There is a new world that we need to move forward, but Gibson has taken us back,” he said.
Seidler-Feller saw the film as a fundamentalist work that did not speak the whole truth in its text. He believed that the violence in the film was not historical and did not follow the New Testament in the Bible.
Bartchy further said that it was Gibson’s intent to portray Jesus as greatly beaten and that the extreme violence was typical of Gibson’s past in films such as “Braveheart” and “Lethal Weapon.”
“There is nothing in the New Testament that shows Jesus being beaten. What we see here, in the end, is that Jesus is Braveheart,” he said.
Though Mahmoud agreed with Bartchy that the violence in “The Passion” was overexaggerated, he believes that there are some positives in the film’s impact.
“It has brought religion to the forefront and I am for that. Though it is a historical inaccuracy, it brought the discussion of religion to people’s attention,” he said.
“The Passion” is consistent with the gospel accounts with some additives that were not found in the New Testament, but watching the film was a “deeply moving and spiritual experience,” Book said.
At the second half of the panel discussion, there was a question-and-answer session. Questions surrounded the concept of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, the question of whether he is considered a God, and how the film’s depiction of these concepts was adequate.
But this half of the discussion also brought more controversy than UCLA’s security staff anticipated.
There were two outbursts from two members of the audience. The first declared that Jesus was not crucified because he had a look-alike person on the cross while Jesus stood in the back, laughing.
Moderator Professor Robert Maniquis quelled this outburst by drawing attention away from the person to another audience member who actually had a question for the panel.
Bartchy later addressed these beliefs as incorrect because though it may be plausible, the study of history looked to what could have happen based on facts and records found.
The second outburst came from a person who accused the panelists of causing genocide to the Native Americans and the Muslims, as well as forcing their teachings in Asia.
The second audience member was escorted out to be arrested. But Seidler-Feller said the arrest was not necessary. He followed this with a reading from the Bible that talked about people of all religions walking together.
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