My apologies if this has already been covered -- I'm afraid I had neither the time nor the patience to wade through the many Passion threads we already have!

Has anyone been following the "Scholarly Smackdown" between Jesus scholars John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III on Beliefnet?

It seems even Witherington is getting a little critical of Gibson now:

... I do agree in part with your complaint about the portrait of Pilate in Gibson's movie. It portrays him as weak and too wishy-washy. I much prefer the portrayal of Rod Steiger in Zeferelli's Jesus of Nazareth.

... Sticking with the Gibson portrayal for a moment, what especially skews the account, in my judgment, is the amplification of the role of Mrs. Pilate. She is depicted as a compassionate person who even doantes cloths so Mary and Mary Magdalene can sop up the blood of Jesus after he is flogged. This creates the impression that that Pilate and his wife were good and fair-minded folks, which is far from the historical truth.

So let me be plain—I think there are some real and troubling historical distortions in this movie. The one that bothers me perhaps the most is that each Gospel account devotes exactly one verse to the flagellation of Jesus; they do not emphasize it or highlight the fact. It's almost mentioned in passing. The enormous amplification of this to an unbearable extent in the movie is way beyond what poetic license should allow. For me, this is especially egregious since it is not the flagellation that produces the atonement for sins, but rather the death of Christ on the cross. In the movie, this somehow manages to be less gruesome than the flagellation. It seems an odd strategy to amplify the violence beyond biblical proportions in order to exalt the Prince of Peace!

To read the entire debate so far, click HERE.

Here is the previous thread on it (brief as it is).

It's astonishing to me how lacking in historical perspective Witherington's criticism seems to be. He talks as if the Evangelists wrote the Gospels and then Mel Gibson made this movie. So the Gospels, first-century documents in a notably non-descriptive literary tradition, devote one verse each to the scourging at the pillar. A little more ink (and paint) has been spilled in the intervening centuries on the subject of what it meant to be scourged by the Romans. Historians and archaeologists, apologists and spiritual writers, artists and poets have all addressed the topic far beyond those terse canonical lines, originally written to a generation that still knew perfectly well what a Roman scourging looked like.

Incidentally, it occurs to me that this Witherington seems to be the same guy who made false statements about Aramaic and the James ossuary that my bud Jimmy Akin had to correct in this article.

Thanks for the link, Darrel -- I had forgotten we had an entire thread devoted to the smackdown (such as it is, as you say).

SDG wrote:
: It's astonishing to me how lacking in historical perspective Witherington's
: criticism seems to be. He talks as if the Evangelists wrote the Gospels
: and then Mel Gibson made this movie.

Perhaps. I think he still has a point, though, even if he didn't make it very well.

: Incidentally, it occurs to me that this Witherington seems to be the same
: guy who made false statements about Aramaic and the James ossuary
: that my bud Jimmy Akin had to correct in this article.

Ah, I only skimmed the first few paragraphs of Akin's article, but I too remember reading Witherington's declaration that the inscription on the ossuary may force more traditionally-minded Christians to rethink what sort of "brother" James was, and thinking, "Uh, dude, why WOULD it? There is nothing on this ossuary that isn't already in the New Testament. If Orthodox and Catholic tradition can call James the 'brother of the Lord' as his colleague and presumably-fellow-speaker-of-Aramaic Saint Paul did, while also believing in the ever-virginity of Mary, then why would they change their tradition over THIS? This ossuary adds nothing new to the discussion at all." (A few Orthodox I know have also found it chuckleworthy that so much fuss is being made over this 'bone box' which may or may not have THAT James's name on it, when they believe they have the ACTUAL BONES of the James in question.)

QUOTE

Uh, dude, why WOULD it? There is nothing on this ossuary that isn't already in the New Testament.

Well, no, it MAY tell us more than that. "James, the brother of Jesus, the son of Joseph" MIGHT mean "James, the brother of Jesus bar-Joseph," in which case it tells us nothing more. But it also might mean "James, the brother of Jesus AND the son of Joseph," in which case it tells us that Jesus's brother James is the son of someone named Joseph, quite possibly Jesus' foster father. In that case, for traditionally minded Christians, the ossuary would tend to support the earliest belief that Jesus' brethren were sons of Joseph from an earlier marriage over the hypothesis of Jerome that they were cousins of some sort.

Ah, fair point. Though even THAT, as you point out, is hardly a conclusive interpretation of the inscription -- indeed, if Jesus can be referred to as "the son of Joseph", then one wonders if one would even be obliged to read it to mean that JAMES was "literally" the son of Joseph.

Crossan revisited: I just got back from speaking to my church's youth group about The Passion of the Christ, and I mentioned to them in the course of my talk Crossan's complaint that the film never established why such a nice guy would be a threat to anyone or why they would want to have him killed. And I asked the group (mostly urban teenagers) if they could think of anything in the film that pointed to why they wanted Jesus put to death. And darned if one kid in the back didn't raise his hand and cite the trial scene and the charge of blasphemy (which of course also provided a recap of every other scandalous or controversial aspect of Jesus' ministry). "How does it feel to be smarter than John Dominic Crossan?" I asked him.