Blockbuster About Jesus Raises Passions
The famous actor-director Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ has finally gone on general release after months of debate. Watched with enormous interest in the USA, the film caused some cinemas to assume the air of churches. Millions of Christians have queued to watch this important work about Jesus (peace be upon him), the corner stone of their beliefs.
One of the aspects most concentrated on by film critics is the way that this film is not pure “entertainment,” unlike classic Hollywood movies. On the contrary, there are suffering and even torture in a great many scenes. Christians believe that Jesus was killed by the Romans by being crucified, and Mel Gibson shows what a dreadful form of torture crucifixion and the cruelty that went before it were.
The Jewish Reaction
The greatest reaction to Mel Gibson’s film came from Jews, and is indeed still doing so. Why is that? The answer to that question lies in the history of Christianity as described in the Bible.
According to the Bible, Jesus is the savior whom the Jews had been awaiting for centuries, in other words the Messiah. When he began to preach his message, however, he both called on the Jewish people to believe in God and also criticized the hypocrisy of various men of religion who enjoyed great prestige among the Jews. For that reason, although a large part of the Jewish people came to love Jesus, the men of religion in question had enormous hostility towards him and decided to set a trap to kill him. Eventually they decided to complain to the Romans, who ruled Palestine at the time. Appearing before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, they told him Jesus claimed to be a king whereas their
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