Giantrobo

If whites alive today claim no responsibility for slavery that happened "Over a hundred years ago"....and rightly so. Why should they feel responsible?

Then Jews today or anyone else who would make a big deal out of this issue -SHOULD NOT- be worried about the death of ONE MAN......some 2,000 years ago.


Mel is wrong to cater to Jewish groups... just like he would wrong to cater to Black groups, gay groups, women's groups, or any other special interest group.

Again, I love how many seem to be ok with censorship in this particular case......

scroll2b

"and rightly so?"

Giantrobo, I don't personally feel responsible for U.S. slavery, no, but I certainly am embarrassed as hell about it. It's unbelievable to me, actually......

Scot1458

No I am not.

Luther pulled out 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the others but this was what...1500 years after Christ?

Sure not every memeber of the concil voted the same way, but there was never a cannonized book that was in, then out.

My statement is accurate.

Scot1458

It's me who said it.....

Scot1458

double post

Scot1458

And no man who wrote down history had an agenda or was watched under the carefull eye of a....let's say "persuasive" King or Overloard....

movielib

I know. He said he couldn't have said it better than you and I said he could have said it better than you by saying "anecdotes" instead of "antidotes." Follow?

movielib

OK, one more try. You said, and I quote: "None of the Apocrypha has ever been considered cannon."

I showed that the Catholics included it in the canon in the 4th century and reaffirmed it in the 15th century and it is still part of the Catholic canon today. Furthermore, the Coptic, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches also consider the Apocrypha to be canon.

Those that don't include the Apocrypha in their canon: Proestants and Jews. Are they the only ones who count in "never considered it canon"? They were never in for the Jews. For the Protestants, Luther pulled them out when he broke with Catholicism.

elias

Genesis too? Noah's arc etc.? Or are you referring to the New Testament?

elias

I'll just point to a recent post to this thread (as of my writing) to illustrate what I'm referring to:

The original post of this thread talked about the reaction of Jewish groups to the film and the "softening" of story through reference to Matthew 27:25 being excluded from the film. People starting crying censorship immediately, despite the fact that that particular line was never included in the film, let alone removed to cater to Jews. The original article posted does not say a single frame or line of dialogue has been added or removed as a result of the Jewish reaction. Yet still the cries of censorship go up. Don't get me wrong, I'm as anti-censorship as they come, but Mel hasn't been censored!

pro-bassoonist

Maybe you should re-read the first paragraph of the original post which indicates that Gibson has been forced to "make some changes" under heavy fire from Jewish leaders and other critics!!

The fact that someone has been forced to "make changes" altering the original premise of the project is by all means "censorship"!!!!!

Censorship does not cinstitue the removal of only one line of text (though if someone is forced to change even a single word from the original concept in my book that is censorship)!!


****
Director Mel Gibson, under heavy fire from Jewish groups for his $25 million movie on the death of Jesus, has "softened the story" and made changes to make "The Passion" more palatable to critics, according to a spokesman. Scheduled for release next year during Lent, "The Passion" has some Jewish groups nervous it will resurrect old beliefs that Jews were responsible for the death of the Christian savior.

Supermallet

Um, yes, that was the argument made in my last point. For many political reasons, the Jews did hand Christ to the Romans. However, this does not implicate every Jew at the time, nor should it implicate Jews now. Unfortunately, as I have experienced first hand, Jews are still blamed for someone who died over 2,000 years ago.

First of all, it's funny that you try to refute my argument, which is based on Roman historical records of the period, and in the same paragraph make a claim that can only be substantiated by faith. I wasn't trying to get the Jews of the time off the hook for Christ's death. I was trying to put it in a more accurately documented historical perspective than is provided by the Bible. The fact is, the best that historical sources can provide is that Jesus did exist. However, they can tell us quite a bit about the situations of the Romans and the Jews in the time period, which helps to put the events in the Bible (whether they are true or not) in historical perspective. To say that "nobody really knows what happened" in regards to Jesus IS true, while to talk about the period in history, the Roman and Jewish political situation, IS also true and valid. And, it is "anecdote," not "antidote." An anecdote is a story, an antidote is a cure for poison or some other externally administered malady.

Quote:

And throwing out the Apocrypha is a red herring if I have ever seen one. None of the Apocrypha has ever been considered cannon.

No, it's not a red herring. There have been many books that attest to actions taken by Jesus Christ that don't agree with the canonized books, but the fact is, the books that were canonized didn't become so until hundreds of years after the events these books are describing. So if you really want to talk about censorship, it's in abundance in the Catholic canonized New Testament. And as movielib pointed out, it IS canon for many Christian religious groups. Its relevance therefore holds.

Quote:

And your point on "contradictory, ambiguous, or otherwise baffling passages" is a bit misleading. Do they exist, sure they do, but there aren't "many", most of them are translation errors most notably numbers from the OT.

The Old Testament (which the Christians believe in) is rife with contradiction and ambiguity, starting with the fact that there are two stories about the creation of the world in Genesis. The individual gospels in the New Testament also disagree with each other on many occasions. I have taken courses on these subjects, you can't tell me they don't exist, or that they're simply translation errors. They are not.

To respond to others:

The Jews never said that every Arab was a terrorist. That's a flat out lie.

Also, I don't care what Mel Gibson puts in his movie. I was simply providing points to show WHY the Jews would be upset about it. I arguing that he SHOULD change. I am simply saying that a) there's a reason for Jews to be mad, and b) perhaps the uproar in here is a bit over the top, because he hasn't even finished cutting the movie yet.

I think my people took my original post as support of the Jews. It is not. Nor is it a cry of censorship. I was simply making points, the facts of which could affect the discussion.

Scot1458

I see your argument and can give you some merit. To Protesants and others, the "extra" books are Apcrypha, but they have always been and are still in the books. I myself though I am a Prot, consider them Cannon. (I've had many a argument with funds on this point...)

However the Gospel according to St. Thomas, or the Ascension of the Apostles has ever been considered cannon.

Josh-da-man

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it is my understanding that most of the concerns of this film stirring up anti-Semitic sentiment do not apply to the United States, but how the film will play in certain countries overseas.

majorjoe23

Mel hasn't been forced to do anything. He came under heavy fire and buckled for fear of too much backlash. What would happen if he didn't make the change? Would he go to jail? He could have released the film as is, but decided to make changes so the film would be more palatable to a wider audience.

There has been no force, pressure sure, but this is his film, he's the producer, if he doesn't want to make the changes, he doesn't have to.

inri222

http://netscape.eonline.com/News/Ite...0.html?eol.tkr

Mel's Film Stirs More "Passion"

by Joal Ryan
Aug 12, 2003, 5:30 PM PT

Is Mel Gibson 's film about the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus "the truth" or the potential catalyst for "turn[ing] back the clock on decades of positive progress" between Jews and Christians?

As the Hollywood hyphenate's new film, The Passion, makes the sneak-peek rounds, there is little middle ground among viewers. They're either shocked or awed.

On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League, the hate-group watchdog organization, officially positioned itself among The Passion's critics.

"Sadly, the film contains many of the dangerous teachings that Christians and Jews have worked for so many years to counter," said the ADL's Rabbi Eugene Korn in a statement.

Korn saw the film at an invite-only screening last Friday in Houston. About 50 other religious leaders were in attendance.

On the same day, some 3,000 miles away, in Anaheim, California, about 30,000 devotees of the Harvest Crusades, a Christian fest, watched a four-and-a-half-minute preview highlighting Gibson's bloody and graphic depiction of the Crucifixion.

Dan Walker told the Los Angeles Times he had no reservations about allowing his four young children to watch the scenes. "It's the truth," Walker said.

The ADL begs to differ, calling on Gibson to "modify" his film until it is "historically accurate, theologically sound and free of any anti-Semitic message," per a statement from the group's national director, Abraham H. Foxman.

For now, Gibson, who Oscar'd for directing and coproducing the life story of 13th century Scottish warrior William Wallace in Braveheart, is standing firm.

"Neither he nor his film are inspired by anti-Semitism," publicist Alan Nierob told the Associated Press.

The statement echoes one released by Gibson in June after taking heat for months from both Jewish and Catholic leaders, their concerns as much fueled by a script that its makers say wasn't the final version, as by comments by Gibson's father, Hutton, in the New York Times Magazine.

In that March article, Hutton Gibson had strong word for the Second Vatican Council, a historic, 1962-65 convening of the Catholic Church's bishops that ruled Jews as a group were not to be blamed for Jesus' death. The elder Gibson charged that it was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews," and cast doubt on the events of Holocaust. "Go ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," Hutton Gibson said. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, 6 million?"

His famous son, currently building a traditionalist Catholic Church, maintains his movie is "meant to inspire not offend."

The $25 million film, financed, directed and cowritten by Gibson, doesn't yet have a release date, or a studio home. The star's agents tell the L.A. Times the movie may skip the usual distribution route and find its way into theaters with the backing of a single theater chain.

Angel Eyes' Jim Caviezel stars as Jesus, with Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene.

While the ADL has been quick to issue its thumbs down, others have been just as quick to leap to its defense.

A sampling of the early buzz:

* "It is an awesome artifact, an overpowering work...The moral of this Christian story--of Mel Gibson's film--is that we all killed Jesus--Jew and Gentile alike--and tortured him, and we do so every day," civil-rights activist David Horowitz wrote on his Website, FrontPageMagazine.com.
* "Some of the bad guys are Jewish, some of the really bad guys are Roman, and virtually all of the good guys are Jewish," conservative commentator/film critic Michael Medved told the Los Angeles Times, hailing The Passion as "the finest Hollywood adaptation ever of a biblical story."
* "I thought it was incredible...I actually thought they'd taken a camera and put it in the scene 2,000 years ago," the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of National Association of Evangelicals, said in the Houston Chronicle.
* "You can quote me--Mel Gibson's The Passion is not anti-Semitic," Hollywood's top lobbyist Jack Valenti, of the Motion Picture Association, told Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd. "...I found it genuinely moving, serious, a compelling tale."

And while the ADL charges Gibson's film portrays Jews as "enemies of God and the locus of evil," Valenti has a different take: "The villains are the Roman soldiers."

SpinnerX

Your posts have become increasingly anti-Semitic as this thread wears on. First you question the veracity of the myriad eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, now you're just resorting to blatant lies and racist propoganda, and you're the one complaining about bias? The blatant anti-Semitism that's been cropping up in this thread is shocking.

And just to echo majorjoe23's comments, Gibson has not been forced to make whatever changes he's made to his film. If you're going to invoke the word censorship, then at least qualify that by admitting that it is self-censorship. Gibson made a choice. He has not been censored.

chanster

You do not have to believe it as a document of the times, but you can believe it is the story of how the Judeo-Chrisitian religion was created and what it represents. I don't believe in the creation story. I don't believe in lots of its stories, but I view them as stories designed to teach morals and create a religious framework.

Kudama

How come no one made such a stir when they replaced the story Dagon with the splinter religious mandate of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

The worshippers of pop culture gods are such a bunch of squeaky wheels!
Settle down. If a well placed flood or thunderclap doesn't deter Mel, yer squawkin' won't.

chanster

No. Censorship is the removal of something after it has been finished or going in without the director's consent and removing something. By all accounts, Mel has not finished editing The Passion, nor do "jewish groups" have the ability to censor his work. They have the right to be upset by something and create a big enough stink that Mel feel he needs to change it.

But arguing with a person who believes that all jews believe Arabs/Palestinians are terrorists really isn't worth it.

movielib

Where's my SCOT translator? Venusian, I need you!

The "official" Apocrypha contains the books that the Catholics and the rest I mentioned consider canonical. (And dude! it's canon, not cannon!) They are the Books of Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (sometimes called Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch (plus additions to Esther and Daniel). Note that these are all Jewish works from before the alleged time of Jesus. They were not included in the Jewish canon because it was decided nothing belonged in there that was written after about 400 BCE (unfortunately they didn't realize Daniel and maybe some others should have also been excluded on that basis).

The books you're talking about (such as the Gospel of Thomas) are Christian works, some of them certainly Gnostic. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them. Speaking loosely, they may be called apocryphal but they are not part of The Apocrypha.

chanster

This is a cannon

This is canon

movielib

Thank you.

Scot1458

Non Catholics regard the Gospel of St. Thomas, the Ascension of the Apostles, and other "gnostic" works in equal regards to the Catholic included books you mentioned.

I in my original comment of this subject was refering to the prior rather than the later.


We could talk all day on this subject, but instead I"ll leave it by making the remark that Jews have alot more to worry about than Christians being "mad" at them..when was the last time a Jew was killed be some male Christians between the ages of 18-49? I'm sure they have more important things to worry about, and the ADL should focus on the attitude of ceritan European counties and the wave of anti-semitism that has esculated. Again, I don't see many Christians carrying signs that read "Death to the Zionists!"

sdcrym

This sentence caught me off guard. It took me a minute to back up and figure out what was going on.