corrente

First, let's hear from Mel Gibson's dad. (After all, as Mel said, "The man never lied to me.") From New York Daily News, Tracy Connor reports:

A week before Mel Gibson's movie about Jesus Christ hits theaters, his father has gone on an explosive rant against Jews - claiming they fabricated the Holocaust and are conspiring to take over the world.

"They're after one world religion and one world government," Hutton Gibson, 85, said in a radio interview that will air Monday night.

"That's why they've attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine."

Hutton Gibson spoke Monday to Steve Feuerstein of "Speak Your Piece!" on WSNR (620 AM), a show syndicated by Talkline, the largest syndicator of Jewish programming.

"They claimed that there were 6.2 million in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 - therefore he must have killed 6 million of them," he said. "They simply got up and left! They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles."

He said the Germans did not have enough gas to cremate 6 million people and that the concentration camps were just "work camps."

"It's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is," he said.

Gibson reserved most of his vitriol for Judaism, asking: "Is the Jew still actively anti-Christian? He is, for by being a Jew, he is anti-everyone else."

Mel Gibson's spokesman, Alan Nierob, had no comment on the elder Gibson's tirade.

Right.

It may be that Gibson's commercial retelling of Christ's Passion isn't anti-semitic. But if that's so, then how come all the incidents that don't occur in the Bible do occur in an 1833 book by an anti-semitic nun that Gibson acknolwedges reading? David Crumm of the Detroit Free Press reports:

In a nationally televised interview this week, Gibson said he based his violent portrayal of Jesus' torture and crucifixion on the Bible. He acknowledged that he has read Anne Catherine Emmerich's 1833 book about Jesus death, but said he was unaware of anti-Jewish references in it.

However, on several network TV news shows this week, Gibson's critics are planning to respond that his comments seem deceptive. In fact, they say, the movie depicts scene after scene paralleling the incendiary book, which contains dozens of hateful depictions of Jews.

John Dominic Crossan, a Catholic Bible scholar and author based in Florida, said Wednesday that he has made a fresh analysis of the film, which he has seen, in light of Emmerich's book and plans to be one of the leading voices criticizing "The Passion of the Christ." ...

Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser to the American Jewish Committee, said he also planned to speak out on the Fox News Network on Wednesday night. .... Rudin said he was comparing the film, which he has seen twice, with sections of Emmerich's "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

"Here's one example. There's this whole brutal scene in the movie in which Jesus' captors hang him over a bridge by chains and then yank him back up again," Rudin said. "That's nowhere in the New Testament. Where did it come from?"

The scene is nearly identical to one in Emmerich's book, where she describes a Jewish group, the Pharisees, egging on a mixed group of Romans and Jews to heighten Jesus' suffering.

One dramatic touch after another in Gibson's film parallels not the Bible, but Emmerich, say Rudin and Crossan.

In fact, many common portrayals of Jesus' suffering aren't clearly contained in the Bible. Three of the four gospels, for instance, say that it was another man who carried Jesus' cross. And the entire description of Jesus' scourging amounts to a few words in the ancient Greek texts of the gospels.

In contrast, Emmerich provides page after page of scenes involving Jesus' flowing blood, torn skin and the hovering presence of bloodthirsty Jews. At one point, her account says Jesus' suffering, "far from exciting a feeling of compassion in the hard-hearted Jews, simply filled them with disgust and increased their rage. Pity was, indeed, a feeling unknown in their cruel breasts."

Crossan, Rudin and Fisher all said they have been hesitant until recently to criticize Gibson. Their new concern, they say, was sparked mainly by Gibson's own claims about the film.

Hmmm....