February 17, 2004
by Michael A. Hoffman II
Copyright 2004 by revisionisthistory.org
This column is a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't proposition. Millions now believe that Mel Gibson is a courageous Christian upholding the Gospel of Christ in his forthcoming movie "The Passion of the Christ." For these star-struck fans any hard truth about Mel will be dismissed.
This writer will also be up against the old newsroom alibi of the Establishment media, "I must be doing something right because I'm attacked by both sides." In other words, the Gibson camp can point to criticism from the Wiesenthal Center and the ADL, as well as Hoffman the anti-Talmudist and make the same point in their own defense.
Mel's fans have succumbed to the dialectic: they imagine that anyone heavily criticized by Judaic pressure groups "must be on our side." The fact is, the strategy of the contemporary Pharisees is to attack, attack, attack until they totally dictate the contents of the offending art work in question. The slightest resistance is met with implacable opposition by these totalitarians.
Because Gibson has resisted some of their demands (a disclaimer at the end of the movie referring to "250,000 crucified Jews," for example), it does not signify that he hasn't compromised with their diabolic tyranny and allowed them to "shape" his movie. He has -- he's cut the passage from Matthew 27 about the blood of Jesus being on those Jews who demanded His death.
I have never been much of an enthusiast for Mr. Gibson's movies, with the exception of Braveheart, and even that film was marred by his having made the noble King Edward I into a villain. His rendition of Hamlet was noteworthy, but most of the rest of his output is an extension of either the sewage and mind candy of Hollywood (the bathroom joke-laden, anti-white "Lethal Weapon" series; the morbid and gruesome "Signs"); or of its terminal incapacity to respect historical truth, as for example "The Patriot" with its lies about English officers and troops. Gibson's retarded reply to the criticisms of historians concerning "The Patriot" was, "It's only a movie."
I gave Mr. Gibson the benefit of the doubt after I came into contact with a traditional Catholic member of his inner circle who, last year, assured me with dogmatic certainty that Gibson would never fold or compromise and that "The Passion of Christ" would confront the enemies of God as never before. I now know this to be untrue and it is my fault that I heeded this person's faulty counsel.
There are two parts to Gibson's current public relations, his movie "The Passion of the Christ," and his interviews and speeches concerning it. Both are influential in molding public opinion. In the course of his prolific interviews, Gibson has concocted a scandalous, politically-correct, false gospel.
The most pernicious of all his maxims is that we're all equally guilty of Jesus' death:
"The line about Jesus' blood being on anyone has been removed, something Gibson says he did to return the focus to the film's story of faith, love and forgiveness. 'It's one little passage, and I believe it,' says Gibson, 'but I don't and never have believed it refers to Jews, and implicates them in any sort of curse. It's directed at all of us, all men who were there, and all that came after. His blood is on us, and that's what Jesus wanted." (Source: Detroit Free Press, Feb. 17, 2004).
The problem with Gibson and some traditional Catholics like him is that they have a greater familiarity with the "private revelations" of 18th century "mystic" nuns than they have with the New Testament.
Yes, all human sin crucified Christ, not only the sins of the majority of the Jews who rejected him or of their leadership who ordered him killed. But there are degrees of culpability. On behalf of the Roman soldiers, Jesus pleaded from the cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Many other nations and peoples fall into that category of invincible ignorance.
It is the height of folly to claim that John the Evangelist or Peter were just as much at fault as Judas or Caiaphas for the murder of Christ. If it weren't for Caiaphas and Judas and the mob of Jews who stood before Pilate howling for Christ's blood, Jesus would not have been crucified. They knew He was Israel's Messiah and killed Him anyway; that is a cosmic transgression and the Church has traditionally declared it as such.
"Ah," you say, "but Christ had to die, so the Jewish leaders and the Jewish mob were only doing God's will and this confirms Mel's point."
It may confirm Mel's point but it doesn't confirm God's point. Mel's fallacious position was most prominently advanced by Nikos Kazantzakis in the novel upon which the movie, "The Last Temptation of Christ" was based. Kazantzakis depicted Judas as a kind of secret co-conspirator with Christ in bringing about His inevitable crucifixion.
Humanistic theories like this one are enthralling to those who are more or less Biblically illiterate. But Christ has answered those who seek to reduce his murder to existentialist, shades-of-gray ambiguity:
"It is necessary that offenses come; but woe to that man through whom the offense comes." (Matthew 18:7).
The Church has traditionally singled out Caiaphas, Judas and their ilk for special opprobrium, a tradition which "Catholic traditionalist" Gibson rejects, at least in public.
Moreover, the killers of Christ proceeded to found a new creed, the Talmudic religion of Judaism, thereby institutionalizing hatred for Christ and Christians and fanning the embers of this hate across the centuries (cf. for example, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, "Letter to Yemen").
In one of the most astonishing retardisms to emanate from the lips of a Hollywood script writer, Gibson's co-screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald claims: "If there are any villains in the piece, it's the devil and evil, who are unwittingly assisted by the Pharisees (the Jewish sect that controlled the temple). To my knowledge there aren't any Pharisees still around." (Source: Detroit Free Press, Feb. 17).
Judaism is the continuation of the beliefs of the Pharisees: "The Talmud, beginning with the Mishnah, is the chief Scripture of the religion of Judaism." (Source: "Rabbinic Judaism" by Rabbi Jacob Neusner and William Green).
The Mishnah contains the Pharisees' previously "oral Torah" or "traditions of the elders" which Christ repeatedly condemned in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as nullifying the law of God:
"This 'Oral Torah' had been transmitted faithfully by the leaders of each generation to their successors...to the men of the Great Assembly, to the leaders of the Pharisees, and finally to the earliest rabbis. The earliest rabbis saw themselves, as noted, as heirs to the Pharisees." (Source: Robert Goldenberg, article "Talmud," in the book, "Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts").
This business that "we're all equally evil" is humanism, not the Gospel of Christ. It's a convenient way for Mel to get himself off the hook and keep his Hollywood career prospects alive in what Rachel Abramowitz candidly terms, "the heavily Jewish entertainment industry."
Here is the next bit of Gibson's humanistic "love everybody no matter what" pop psychology masquerading as Christianity:
"Still, if he's publicly combative, Gibson appears to have been stewing privately. In his own fashion, he's made concessions -- for instance, taking out the line from the Gospel of Matthew, long used to suggest Jewish culpability: ``His blood be on us, and upon our children.''
``I even put in another scene in it because of it . . . where he says, `It's been said that you should hate your enemies, but I'm telling you, you have to love everybody . . . even those who've hurt you. . . . You have to love everybody no matter what, and pray for them.' And that's what I'm engaging in,'' Gibson said. (Source: Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 15, 2004).
Again, Gibson's Biblical illiteracy is on display. We are indeed enjoined to love and forgive OUR enemies, but there is no such injunction to love and forgive GOD's enemies, nor would we have any right to do so:
"But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." Matthew 23: 13-15.
Why didn't Gibson, the supposed follower of Jesus, speak to Sawyer and Abramowitz concerning the Wiesenthal Center's Rabbi Marvin Hier and ADL honcho Abe Foxman's "greater damnation" and status as "children of hell," instead of in terms of we're-all-in-this-together, feel-good platitudes?
It seems the New Testament got it wrong: "For ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men." (1 Thessalonians 2:14-15).
The Gospel according to Mel has re-written the Bible to read: "For ye have also suffered like things because of your own sins and you Christians have both killed the Lord Jesus Christ and the prophets and you are persecuting yourselves and you please not God and are contrary to all men."
Gibson is yet another mentally-tormented, double-minded "conservative" and he is obviously being advised by neocon (or I should say Zioncon) "theologians," and it shows. Yes, he briefly brought up the Talmud with Diane Sawyer but if he can't get basic Bible doctrines right, I cringe to think how he might frame his approach to the Talmud, very likely with some sort of schizophrenic groveling that mixes faint criticism with "love and respect..." ad nauseum.
And since Gibson self-censored his self-styled "Holy Ghost-inspired" movie, cutting the key passage from Matthew 27:24-25, he has made a mockery of that inspiration.
Let us recall the real reason why Gibson deleted that passage from Matthew. It's not because he actually believes the false gospel he's promoting to the public. His theological cover story conceals a hidden rationale. The truth is, he's scared to death.
In remarks quoted in "The New Yorker" last September (and not challenged by Gibson), Mel cited his decision to cut a scene in which Caiaphas says "his blood be on us and on our children": "I wanted it in,' he said. 'My brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. But, man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house. They'd come to kill me." (Source: The New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2003).
Mel is even more frightened now of being assassinated than he was last autumn. He didn't dare tell Miz Sawyer on national television what he told the reporter from the "New Yorker" last September.
In that case he ought to stay away from claiming to represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:14-16).
Please don't quote in Mel's defense the old "fear of the Jews" alibi (John 20:19). The apostles experienced that fear before Pentecost, not afterward. "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7).
Those who run around wearing their "faith in Jesus" on their sleeves, while shamelessly compromising with the Caiaphases of our time, in order to save their own hides from privation and persecution, are an all too familiar sight these days; part of a spectacle that brings enormous discredit upon the Gospel. In the words of Emily Dickinson, "...they talk of Hallowed things aloud -- and embarrass my dog."
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