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The Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations

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Facts, Faith, and Film-Making:

Jesus’ Passion and Its Portrayal

A Study Guide for Viewers and Reviewers

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I. What’s The Fuss?

You are about to see a Passion play or a film about the Passion or to hear the story read publicly, perhaps even in church.  Maybe you have just had one of these experiences.  What will you make of the story?  How will you respond?  What will your reaction be to what you see and hear?

Your reaction is important.  The Passion was first told in order to evoke a personal, even spiritual, response.  It is meant to confront you with the truth about God, who in love and justice acts to save the creation that has fallen away from God’s ways.  As part of that creation, you are invited to identify with the story and its characters, and to carry its meaning into your own life.  Your response will depend in part on how different characters are portrayed, what emotions you feel, and what you believe to be true at the end of the presentation.  These factors will be very strongly influenced by the filmmaker or playwright, who faces many challenges in telling the Passion story.

One major challenge is the fact that our sources—the gospels--come from a time two generations after the events they portray.  This time lag accounts for differences between the circumstances of Jesus’ time and those shown in the gospel narratives.  In the years just before the gospels were written, in 66-70 ce,  Roman armies suppressed a Jewish revolt by destroying Jerusalem.  The gospel writers later interpreted this to mean that God had vindicated Jesus and his message and punished the city where he had been rejected. 

When the gospel writers focus on the meaning of the story for their own times, what can get lost is the original setting of the story of a Jew who inspired hope in some Jews, stirred fear in others, and was executed by a powerful foreign ruler.  The complexities of a Jewish community with many strands of belief and practice – in some ways like the variety of today’s Protestants – are buried under the strong theme of accepting or rejecting Jesus that dominates the gospels’ perspectives.

That theme became even stronger in the centuries after the gospels were written, when early Christian theologians framed the new faith in terms that are explicitly anti-Jewish.  Taking their cue from certain New Testament contours, these writers portrayed unbelieving Jews as the enemies of God and the opposite of Christians.  Their “teaching of contempt” has influenced Christian theology down to our own times.

It is only in the last half-century that this teaching of contempt has been repudiated by many Christian churches, which no longer accept it as the framework either for teaching what Christianity is or for understanding Judaism and the Jews in any age.  They have expressed remorse over the violence that Jews have suffered because of it.  But because the gospels continue to reflect 1st-century settings of conflict and opposition, it is especially challenging to portray them in this new spirit.  And the challenge is greatest where the opposition appears greatest – in the Passion.

	Viewing Hint	Ask yourself what you think about who killed Jesus, and why they did it.  How did you form your ideas about this?  How important are these ideas for you?  When you see or hear a Passion portrayal, how will you assess its meaning?

II. Whose Story Is It?

From Jesus’ own century we have only the four gospel accounts in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) for the story of his betrayal, arrest, trial, condemnation, and crucifixion.  They are sparsely told, with little detail.  John’s whole account uses fewer than the 700 words of a typical op-ed piece in your morning newspaper.  There is no description of the cross or the size of the crowd or the number of soldiers in the detail that executed Jesus.  These all have to be supplied.

What some call the “fixed points” of the story are few:

ü      Jesus is arrested with involvement by Jewish leaders

ü      Jesus is accused by Jewish leaders

ü      Peter denies knowing Jesus

ü      Pontius Pilate examines Jesus

ü      Pilate releases Barabbas

ü      Jesus is condemned

ü      Jesus is crucified with two others who are political revolutionaries

ü      Soldiers divide Jesus’ garments

ü      Jesus dies on a cross under the charge, “King of the Jews”

This leaves a good bit of “free space” to fill in details, and the gospel writers began the process with some scenes that have become very familiar.  Judas’ regret and suicide, Pilate’s hand-washing, Herod’s part in judging Jesus, Jesus’ words to the “daughters of Jerusalem,” Pilate’s debate with Jesus over kingship and truth – none of these was told by more than one gospel writer.

Some of these details may be historical, but the individual gospel writers included them because they clearly suited a purpose.  When Luke said that “Herod and Pilate became friends” on the day Jesus shuttled between them, it emphasized Jesus’ peacemaking power, for “they had been enemies.”  Matthew recorded the crowd as invoking Jesus’ blood on themselves and their children because it made the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ce into a fulfillment of that curse.  John is explicit about why the soldiers had to cast lots for an undivided tunic: it fulfilled a scriptural image from the Psalms.

Another significant challenge, then, for anyone portraying the Passion is to provide the filler that makes for a complete and compelling story.  To do so, one may choose from among individual gospel accounts, combine them together, draw on tradition or legend, make informed guesses, even use reports from moderns who claim to have seen the Passion in a vision.  But no one can escape these decisions.  And when producers and directors make their choices, their own purposes become part of the story they are portraying.

	Viewing Hint	Read one or more gospel accounts, noting what is emphasized and what is downplayed. In viewing a portrayal, ask:  Which gospel is favored?  What parts come from other sources?  What choices were made here, for what purpose?

III. Who Is Responsible For Jesus’ Death?

	Viewing Hint	Is Pontius Pilate shown as the absolute tyrant that he was?  Does the high priest, Caiaphas, defer realistically to Pilate?  Is Jesus’ death related to his life as a devoted Jew?  Is it in any way shown to be your fault or responsibility?

IV. How Is The Story Told?

Above when we asked “what’s the fuss,” we said that your reaction to the Passion is important. Producers and directors of the Passion story face the challenge of shaping your reaction in very basic ways:  holding your attention, developing characters, advancing the plot, building tension and resolving it – in short, all the things that make a good story.  In doing so, they use lighting, costumes, the music score, camera angles, editing, and all the other technical aspects of film or stage.

They also work with the standard idioms of their style.  A romantic director will cultivate sympathy and build complex, endearing characters.  An epic director will set everything on a large stage with all of history in view.  An action director will clearly mark the heroes and the villains and keep the action moving without much pause for analysis or subtlety.  Different styles and techniques will lead you to identify with different characters and to understand the main characters in different ways.  The challenge of the Passion is to portray it in a style that is compatible with its essential message. 

	Viewing Hint	How much time is given to each part of the story?  What is told in slow detail, and what is quickly passed by? Where does the director focus your attention?  Does the style of this portrayal emphasize conflict or reconciliation?

V. What’s The Point?

1.  How you respond to a Passion portrayal is affected by many factors.  Your awareness and alertness to them will make you more conscious of your responses and your choices.

2.  What any Passion portrayal shows is part fact, part faith, and part film-making (or stagecraft).  It is important not to get them confused.

3.  The issue goes beyond our own personal reactions in an era when some people mine the Passion story for antisemitic purposes and to characterize their negative view of the State of Israel.  We dare not let it be said of our generation that hatred and conflict increased because we “knew not what we did.”