Warbler said:

TheBoost said:

It's because of that history of violence that things like Vatican II or the American Council of Bishops are so defensive about the meaning of the Passion Play and so specific about how it is performed.

so let me get this straight, Vatican II and the American Council of Bishops have a problem with putting on the Passion play as exactly as written in the Bible itself? The Book they believe to be the word of God?

There are the words and there are ways of presenting them and they have problems with some of the presentation styles of the past which put all blame on the Jews and let the Romans and humanity in general off the hook.

Judea was under occupation and while they would have put a 'false prophet' to death under their laws they couldn't because of the terms of the occupation. In the story they get around this by taking him to Pilate who 'reluctantly' puts Jesus to death (historically Pilate had very little reluctance to killing Jews especially Jews creating a bit of a stir, this detail seems to have been dropped in to make the new cult more palatable to the Romans who later adopted it as their state religion and had an interest in keeping that slant on the story).

The Gospels tell of many Jews and non Jews who didn't want Jesus killed or even punished, some actually trying to relieve his suffering.

There is a tendency in story telling in general to make the perceived villains look 'other' and the perceived 'heroes' look like 'one of us'.

Traditionally this has been done by placing all the stereotypical ethnic markers of Jews on the 'bad Jews' and to Christianise the 'good Jews' (by making them look less like the stereotype of a Jew).

To their credit the Catholic Church has seen the dangers in this (all be it very very late in the day) unfortunately Gibson hasn't.