omeone at Icon had clearly leaked our report to Zenit--"a pre-emptive, ad hominem attack," Fisher observed to the USCCB, "to discredit the scholarship of the group." Icon's lawyers focused on the Bishops Conference. Mark Chopko, general counsel for the USCCB, finally sent a formal letter to the scholars on June 9 in which he repeated Icon's assertion that we had obtained the screenplay without permission. Chopko also relayed what has since become an official trope of the Icon spin: "The draft of the screenplay is not what the final film will contain."
These two assertions--that the script was purloined, and that the final film is quite different from the script--have been endlessly repeated in numerous follow-up stories in Reuters, the New York Daily News, and elsewhere. NewsMax.com even had the chutzpah to insinuate that the scholars had leaked their own "supposedly confidential report" to the news media. And disinformation likewise abounds. The Religion News Service claimed that the "group of scholars ... has withdrawn its criticisms." We have not. We stand by them. The report in Reuters suggested that the film's potential anti-Semitism concerned the Jews, while the violation of church teaching concerned the Catholics. This, too, is false. The Catholics feel even greater urgency about its anti-Semitism, because the ethical issue for them is so clear. Jews are the objects of anti-Semitism, but Catholics and other Christians, inspired by Gibson's movie, could well become its agents. (Indeed, on the evidence of the anti-Semitic hate mail that we have all received since being named as critics of Gibson's screenplay, this response is already in play.)
Gibson has continued to speak earnestly of his film as "conforming" to the New Testament. Unless he ditched the script with which he was working as late as March, wrote an almost entirely new one, re-assembled his cast, re- shot his movie, and then edited it in time to be screened in June, this statement, too, must be false. Six pages of our report lay out for him exactly those places where he not only misreads but actually contravenes material given in the Gospels. And his historical mistakes, no less profound, are spelled out for him there, too.
In light of Gibson's and Icon's contact with Fisher prior to receiving our report, their first assertion--that we were working with a stolen script-- is at least disingenuous. Gibson himself may not have formally "authorized" our reviewing his screenplay. But he certainly knew what we were doing. He had cleared Fulco to function as the point man. And, through Fisher, he had been in contact with us. Also, the initial condition of confidentiality could only have come from his side. Icon did not decide that the script had been "stolen" until they learned of our response and did not like it.
The second assertion of Gibson's company--that the film, which of course we have not seen, does not follow the screenplay, which we have seen--also seems simply false. A rough cut already existed before March 7, when the Journal's reporter viewed it. Shortly thereafter, on March 25, Fulco--who is well positioned to know--stated plainly that "the film follows the script quite faithfully." And Gibson's and Icon's knowledge that we were reviewing the screenplay counts against their second claim also. Gibson had asked Fisher on April 24 to communicate on his behalf with our group. Why would he be so concerned with our evaluation if he knew that what we were evaluating bore so little resemblance to his actual film?
Finally, details of the film as reviewed by the insider-fan on June 26 conform exactly, alas, to what we had seen in the script. Satan inciting the executioners at their task; "a vicious riot of frenzied hatred between Romans and Jews with the Savior [en route to Golgotha] on the ground in the middle of it getting it from both sides"; the post-crucifixion Mary-and- Jesus pietà--no such scenes exist in the Gospels. But they are all in the screenplay that we saw.
That script--and, on the evidence, the film--presents neither a true rendition of the Gospel stories nor a historically accurate account of what could have happened in Jerusalem, on Passover, when Pilate was prefect and Caiaphas was high priest. Instead Gibson will apparently release what Christopher Noxon, in his article for the Times, had correctly described already in March: "a big-budget dramatization of key points of traditionalist theology." The true historical framing of Gibson's script is neither early first-century Judea (where Jesus of Nazareth died) nor the late first-century Mediterranean diaspora (where the evangelists composed their Gospels). It is post-medieval Roman Catholic Europe. Fulco could have spared himself a lot of trouble and just put the entire script into Latin. Not pagan Roman Latin, but Christian Roman Latin. For that is the true language of Gibson's story.
What happens now? Chopko, the USCCB general counsel, formally notified Icon of the bishops' regrets "that this situation has occurred, and offer our apologies." On June 11, the USCCB issued a statement clarifying its official relationship to our report. The bishops knew what we were doing (Fisher, an officer for this group, had informed them), but the plenum group had not "established, authorized, reviewed, or approved the report written by its members." This is absolutely true. Fisher, together with Korn, had convened us. We worked as independent scholars, though four of us also have formal connections with the USCCB.
Those four of us have posted a review of these events on the Boston College website. We have also posted there an analysis of the mystical writings of Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), one of the visionary nuns whose writings Gibson used for his script. Emmerich wrote in her diary that she had "seen" the high priest ordering the cross to be made in the courtyard of the Temple itself. The high priest's servants, in her visions, bribe Jerusalem's population to assemble in the Temple at night to demand Jesus's death; they even tip the Roman executioners. Emmerich's Pilate criticizes the high priests for their physical abuse of Jesus, but finally he consents to crucify him, because he fears that the high priest wants to start a revolt against Rome. And so on.
Emmerich was not writing history. She was having visions. But--as The Wall Street Journal, the film's unofficial website, and numerous news articles since have all mentioned--Gibson used Emmerich's fantasies for his supposedly "historical" script. Since the Boston College posting has brought this piece of the story forward, Paul Lauer, Icon's director of marketing, has denied that Gibson used Emmerich's writings. But he had: the nun's lurid images figured prominently in the version of the screenplay that we read and that Gibson was concerned about as recently as April 24.
Icon's publicist, Alan Nierob, has spun the communications from the USCCB as if the bishops had recanted the project entirely. They have not. Both Chopko and the conference affirm the USCCB's commitment to reviewing the film. The conference's statement of June 11 closes by referring to the importance and the sensitivity of dramatizations of the Passion. It directs readers to its own published guidelines for such, "reminding Catholics that the correct presentation of the Gospel accounts of the Passion and death of Jesus Christ do not support anti-Semitism."
Monsignor Francis Maniscalo, the memo's author, concludes by naming further publications assembled by the bishops. These instruct the church on the Shoah, on Catholic remembrance of the Holocaust, and on Catholic preaching about Jews and Judaism. "The Conference," Maniscalo closes, "reserves its right to review and comment on this and all other films." Hutton Gibson might disregard these men as the servants of Freemasons and Jews, but his son will doubtless be hearing from them again. I hope that they bring to their eventual review of this unfortunate film the full weight of their unique moral authority.
Steve McEveety, the Icon producer, has reiterated that Gibson's film "has not even been completed." The release date seems set for next spring. That still gives Gibson lots of time to work on it, and to address its most egregious aspects. Compelled by whatever combination of individual temperament and commercial self-interest to repudiate the scholars' report, he can still avail himself of it.
The prognosis does not look good. While he has continued to insist upon his personal piety and his commitment to historical truth-telling, Gibson has just executed what looks like a very cynical marketing end-run. As The Washington Times reported on July 7, Gibson "is shopping his film to a more receptive audience: evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews." Orthodox Jews, I can say with authority, tend to know next to nothing about the Gospels (unless, of course, they are scholars of the field). Conservative Catholics are Gibson's set-point to begin with. But evangelical Christians, in my experience, know their Scriptures very, very well. Their biblical literacy may yet cause Icon's spinmeisters to stumble. I certainly hope so.
Anti-Semitism is not the problem in America that it is in the rest of the world. (The hateful e-mails that we have received have been balanced by others, from church leaders of inter-faith efforts across the country, expressing their support and their concern.) But I shudder to think how The Passion will play once its subtitles shift from English to Polish, or Spanish, or French, or Russian. When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much higher authority than professors and bishops to answer to.
Paula Fredriksen is the Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University and the author of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews (Vintage), a historical study of the last twelve hours of Jesus's life.
Copyright 2003, The New Republic
-- Michael Pugliese