Mel Gibson's Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and its Implications

by Zev Garber

Overview

Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, was released on Ash Wednesday, February 24, 2004 to capacity audiences in theatres and auditoriums across the U.S. and other countries. Prior to the film's release, a groundswell of controversy filled the airwaves and media outlets. Some religious groups protested the film, while others embraced it. Mel Gibson focuses on the Passion not the life nor resurrection of Christ. By doing so, he leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story familiar to Christians and consequently he adds non-biblical gruesome details foreign to the Gospels. Mel Gibson's Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications exposes the flaws of Gibson's cinematic Christ and lays out assertively and persuasively the rationale of Jews and Christians in how to grasp and comprehend the passion and execution of the Christian savior known scripturally as the "King of the Jews."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557534057
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	02/14/2006
Series:	Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Zev Garber is professor and chair of Jewish Studies at Los Angeles Valley College. Garber has served as visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside and as president of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. He is editor-in-chief of Studies in the Shoah series and co-editor of Shofar.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Section 1: Reflections on the Film
1 Review of The Passion of the Christ, by Irving Greenberg
2 Gibson at the Crossroads, by Penny Wheeler
3 Gibson’s Passion, by Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan
4 Where Are the Flies? Where Is the Smoke? The Real and Super-Real in Mel Gibson’s The Passion, by Bruce Zuckerman
5 How Austrians Viewed The Passion of the Christ, by Klaus Hödl
6 Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and the “Via Media", by Richard Holdredge
Section 2: Scriptural Jesus and Gibson’s Passion
7 The Quest of the Historical Jesus Revisited: Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, by Peter Haas
8 The Jewish Jesus: A Partisan’s Imagination, by Zev Garber
9 History, Archaeology, and Mel Gibson’s Passion, by Gordon D. Young
10 Where Is the History in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ?, by S. Scott Bartchy
11 Reflections on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, by Louis H. Feldman
12 Crucifixion in Rabbinic Context: Juridical or Theological?, by Jacob Neusner
Section 3: Diversity and Dialogue
13 Dramatizing the Passion: From Oberammergau to Gibson, by Gordon R. Mork
14 Deicide Déjà vu: Mel Gibson’s Film The Passion— An Attack on Forty Years of Jewish-Christian Dialogue, by Samuel Edelman and Carol Edelman
15 Gibson’s Passion: The Challenges for Catholics, by John T. Pawlikowski
16 Gibson’s Passion on a Catholic Campus, by Richard Libowitz
17 Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: A Protestant Perspective, by James F. Moore
18 Jewish “Officialdom” and The Passion of the Christ: Who Said What and What Did They Say?, by Steven Leonard Jacobs
19 A View from the Pew on Gibson’s Passion, by Stuart D. Robertson
20 The Passion of the Christ and Congregational Interfaith Relations, by Joseph A. Edelheit
Bibliography
Contributors
Index