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Originally Posted by LeCercleRouge
Anti-Semitism. First off, what is a Semite? A Semitic race is anyone in the Middle East who speaks (or spoke) Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew or Arabic. How in Hell could Gibson’s film be against all of these diverse races and ethnicities? But for the sake of this argument let us re-define Anti-Semitism in a post-holocaust vernacular as being or espousing violence or intolerance solely against Jews. The Passion of the Christ is not ‘virulently anti-Semitic” because it portrays not a single Disciple as holding anger, hatred, or intolerant views against his*fellow* Jews, nor does it encourage, portray, or espouse the use of violence against Jews. There is plenty of violence in the film directed against the Christ, but the violence does not achieve the political ends of the Elders, but instead the violence strengthens the sole teaching of the Christ, which is to love your enemies. Further more, those who do harbor anti-Jewish sentiments will not be able to use the Passion as propaganda because…
A) No Moslems are in the movie,
B) No Palestine either
C) No revenge killings or suicide bombings
D) No disciples scream for vengeance or blood
E) Jesus says to love your enemies
F) Jesus doesn’t stay dead
G) The Passion is a movie of Christian faith
H) God forgives everyone at the end
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Well, I think it's a little simplistic to dismiss anti-semitism on these grounds if only because historically almost every major Christian religion has (at one time or another) blamed Jews for killing Jesus, and really Hitler is only the latest installment of a widespread intolerance and general hatred of Jews that stretches back into prehistory.
I don't want to bust out the technicalities, but "Semitic" really refers to the "other" western family of languages (Proto-Indo European being the main family), it also relates to the speakers of those languages, Arabic, Hebrew, are the big ones, Aramaic is sort of a dilaect of Hebrew and there are some other ancient ones I know of (Phoneican, maybe?) However, the word "anti-Semitic" specifically refers to a prejudice against Jews.
All that having been said I agree with your overarching point, that the movie is not anti-semitic. Everyone in the movie except for the Romans are Jewish...including Jesus. In addition to this in the text of the Gospels (I don't have the reference, perhaps you can help me out
LeCercleRouge) and in the movie there is a depiction of at least a few of the priests who step forward and say that the whole group of people who brought Jesus in are mad for doing it...etc. Although these people are in the minority it's an important detail...it's not:
The Jews killed Jesus.
Properly:
Evil People Who Happened to be Jewish Killed Jesus.
It's an important distinction to make. These Jewish leaders were bad people...bore out by the fact that not too long after Jesus was crucified they managed to piss off the Romans so bad that the Romans scattered them away from Israel for almost 2000 years.