Actor-director Mel Gibson is keeping mum about whether he intends to cut or keep one of the most controversial scenes in his upcoming film about Christ’s final hours — that of a Jewish high priest declaring a blood curse on Jews for the death of Jesus.
The New York Times, citing an unnamed “close associate” of Gibson, reported on Wednesday that he has decided to delete the scene from the film “The Passion of the Christ,” before it is released in North American theaters on Feb. 25.
A spokesman for the Hollywood star, who directed, co-wrote, produced and put $25 million of his own money into the film, declined to comment on the report.
“It would be irresponsible of me to talk about a work in progress,” publicist Alan Nierob told Reuters. Nierob said the scene in question was absent from an early cut he saw.
But a version of the film screened last month in Orlando, Florida, for 4,500 evangelical Christian pastors, included the scene, in which a Jewish mob demands Christ’s crucifixion and the Jewish high priest Caiaphas declares, “His blood be on us and be on our children” when the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, condemns Jesus to death.
Jewish leaders have warned that this passage, taken from the Gospel of Matthew 27:25, was often highlighted in the Passion Plays that flourished in the Middle Ages and helped spark centuries of anti-Semitism.
The Catholic Church repudiated the anti-Semitic reading of the Gospels at the Second Vatican Council in 1965, stressing Christ’s death was part of his divine mission and absolving Jews of responsibility for it.
Fears about anti-SemitismThe Anti-Defamation League has said it was especially concerned over that scene, urging Gibson to remove it from the film and to add a postscript imploring audiences “not to let the film turn some toward the passion of hate.”
Gibson has said his film is meant to inspire “faith, hope, love and forgiveness” rather than to incite hatred.
Responding in writing to a letter last month from ADL director Abraham Foxman, Gibson did not specifically address appeals for changes in the film. Instead he wrote, “It is my deepest belief ... that all who ever breathe life on this Earth are children of God and my most binding obligation to them, as a brother in this waking world, is to love them.”
Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, interfaith consultant for the ADL, said he was concerned about the impression the film will make, not on devout Christians, but on “all those people on the periphery of faith ... or who may carry some level of hatred or xenophobia against the Jews and use this film about the Passion to harden their hearts.”
Even without the scene of the blood curse, Bretton-Granatoor said there was ample material he saw in the movie to reinforce a negative image of Jews.
The R-rated film, with dialogue in Hebrew, Latin and the ancient language of Aramaic, depicts Jesus being savagely beaten by Jewish authorities and Roman guards. The Jewish high priest strikes Jesus and spits on him, and the figure of Satan appears alongside Jewish authorities rather than Pilate, who actually sentences Jesus to death, according to those who saw the Orlando screening.
Bretton-Granatoor said many of the gory details of the crucifixion depicted in the film do not come from the four Gospels on which Gibson has the film is based. Instead, they appear to be drawn from the writings of a 19th-century Catholic nun by the name of Anne Catherine Emmerich.
He said that whenever the camera pans away from “the unremitting, unrelenting brutality” that dominates the film, ”it cuts away to a group of Jews who look like they’re enjoying an afternoon’s entertainment.”