Tag Archives: Judaism

Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ

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A PACIFIST HIJACKING

 

The Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today was the very last day that Netflix would make available (according to my sources, could be wrong)Mel Gibson‘s The Passion Of The Christ. I have heard the worst and best that this movie had to offer. Was it going to be anti-semitic kinda like Gibson’s tendencies? Was it going to be heartwrenching and moving, taking me closer to the Almighty? The point of the violence, well the point of all movies, television, and visual media like them (YouTube videos,etc.) is to move us emotionally from one place to where the director wants us. When The Passion first came out, it was all about EMOTION EMOTION EMOTION. Isn’t it sad how Jesus was beaten, and bruised, and crucified for our sins?

Well, I would have been saddened if I had not been familiar with the story of the crucifixion. The problem is not the movie The Passion of The Christ itself, but the bad theology of the Cross that American civil religion has. American civil religion wants us to only talk about the Crucifixion during Eastertide, and really, some churches can’t even do that much during Holy Week. So I finally overcame my fear and watched this movie all the way through, and this is what I have to say. This is movie is not anti-Semitic, in fact, it went out of its way to have Jewish leaders have a vibrant debate about Jesus’ claims. The Roman Empire for the first 15 minutes were invisible, but after that, they were pretty prominent, and though a little to cheery of interpretation for my tastes (no mention of Roman polytheism with little mention of oppression, etc), I felt the depiction was okay.

The theology of the movie was left to be desired. The demonic baby held by satan was unnecessary, and while the Evil one definitely plays a role in Christian atonement theories, because this film was biased toward Substitutionary Atonement, the devil’s role was somewhat diminished from the classical/Christus Victor view. I was not moved by the violence or gory white body of Gibson’s Jesus; I was much more touched by Jesus’ teachings, to love our enemies, and forgive those who persecute us, the idea that eye for and eye, tooth for a tooth was not to be given over for the ethic of enemy love.

Anti-violence can be found in the Christus Victor atonement theory, the idea that the Son of God overcomes sin, disobedience, Satan, and death in one deed paints a beautiful picture of just how much God loves us. I really believe that a film like “The Victory Of Jesus of Nazareth” would work. For more on this view, I recommend a recent video series by evangelical preacher Greg Boyd: Penal Substitution Vs Christus Victor.

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RodtRDH

Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter, Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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Joel, It’d Behoove Us To Stop Seeing Jesus As White! #TheBible @History

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Image originally taken from the cartoon The Boondocks and Brian Kanowsky.com

“It’s not an accident that the Jesus in this History Channel special is white and speaks with a fine British accent. After all, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of actors of MIddle Eastern descent available to play these roles. That was a decision made by the producers of this program because they need ratings, they need to sell ad space, and the best way to do that is to portray Jesus, and all the other BIble heroes, in a way that is comfortable for the audience.”

[....]

“Without having visited your church, I feel pretty safe in assuming that if your church is located in the United States (or the West in general) and your congregation is predominately white, then all the images of Jesus that occupy your church are also white.

This may not be the sort of overt racism of the KKK. Obviously it’s not. But it’s still racism. It’s racism domesticated, racism coated in a veneer of pseudo-innonence and naiveté.”- Zach Hunt, The American Jesus, “Everybody in the Bible was White?”

Now, Joel suggested that it would behoove us critics to not criticize this the Nazi Helmet Channel’s latest contribution to American Civil Religion (at least until we have seen it)*. This is not about the academics involved, Joel, this has nothing to do with them. This has to do with the cultural production of Jesus as a white man over and over again, and the historical figures in the Bible as White white white. If these people are all seen as white, God is and will always be viewed as white. And when God is persistently seen as one the side of the victors of history, then God endorses oppression, and I am not down with that. Sorry, and neither is Jesus! Because Jesus was Jewish, his ancestors were Jewish, they lived in the Ancient Near East (east to where?), but white privelege and supremacy would have us to forget this.

“Some may ask what the point of all this is, though frankly, it ought to be obvious. So long as our culture pictures Adam, Eve, Moses, Jesus, Mary, the Apostles, and even God “himself” as fair-skinned, despite the obvious preposterousness of such representations, we will continue to plant the seeds of racial supremacy in the hearts and minds of millions. After all, to believe that divinity is white like you leads one to easily assume that others are somehow less complete, less than human. If God supposedly made man in his image, and God is always portrayed as a bearded white guy (kinda like Santa without the suit), how big a leap is it — especially for children whose introduction to religion is always nine-tenths forced propaganda anyway — to assume that persons of color are somehow not full and equal “children of God?”- Tim Wise

For more on the history of white Jesus and U.S. American racism, I would suggest my book review of The Color of Christ by Paul Harvey and Edward J Blum.

*This phrase has been editted to more accurately reflect the post linked.

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RodtRDH

Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter, Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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Yom Kippur: Scapegoats And Nonviolent Politics

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Azazel (Supernatural)

Azazel (Supernatural) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For observant Jews, The Day of Atonement has reasoning behind its history found in the pages of Leviticus, chapter 16. There are two animals, one is a bull who is to be sacrificed on the altar for the sins of the people, while the other one is exiled from the camp, and the community’s sins leaving with it. In mainline and evangelical communities, the idea of social sin has been lost, that and along with a lack of knowledge of the First Testament, the meaning of scapegoats are lost on us.

A modern interpretation of Azazel as a Satanic...

A modern interpretation of Azazel as a Satanic, goatlike demon, from Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal (Paris,1825). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This goat in Jewish mythology and the writings of the Mishnah (scholars say starting around the 2nd Temple era), represents Azazel, (“a goat that departs”), a leader of angels that rebel much like some stories of satan. Here we have a religion where every year, the ritual life of a community is centered on the victim. The story of the victim told and told year after year decenters our stories of the victors of history so that the losers have a voice. May the words of the Pharisee and apostle Paul for us “to remember the poor” as he has come to our minds. May we remember the words of the rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth whom Christians call the Messiah, that there will be a day when the goats (who still participate in the scapegoating mechanism) will be separated from the sheep (those who obey God to fight against scapegoating) expose our violent ways.

Mazel Tov!

For more sources concerning this view, please see S. Mark Heim’s Saved From Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross

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RodtRDH

Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter, Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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Hurtado’s LORD JESUS CHRIST: Chapter One

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Cover of "Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to ...

This post is a continuation of my reading of Larry Hurtado‘s LORD JESUS CHRIST: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity: see my initial impression here, Hurtado on Historical Criticism.

LWH’s significant quote that hints at his thesis, before he actually gives it, is

““To come clean, I confess to being guilty of the Christian faith (though, Christians being what we are, not every one will be satisfied with my version of Christian faith!). But I do not believe that the religious validity of a Christian christological conviction necessarily rests upon the time or manner of its appearance in history. [...] I do not think it is necessary for Jesus to have though and spoken of himself in the same terms that his followers thought and spoke of him in the decades subsequent to his crucifixion in order for the convictions of these followers to be treated as valid by Christians today.”

Lord Jesus Christ, page 9″

Later in this post, I will briefly discuss whether theology returns in this work, but for now, I will talk about Chapter One’s premise. First, and I side with LWH in this, is that Hurtado bases his study using evidence of early Jewish monotheist PRAXIS over and against the use of just texts. I find this approach refreshing. There is a trend in theological and religious studies to study everyday practices of communities, and Hurtado’s work, in biblical studies, points to this trend. Hurtado takes on Crispin Fletcher-Louis who contends that ancient Jews were more than willing to worship human figures alongside YHWH (see his “Worship of Divine Humanity” in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism). One of the texts Fletcher-Louis relies on is Sirach 50:1-21,arguing that the Jewish congregation is actually worshipping the high priest Simon II. Upon reading this passage, it’s obvious to even lay leaders that the Most High is receiving devotion, while Simon II leads them in that worship.

Hurtado’s point of prioritizing praxis over discourse (in this case, letters, sacred texts, and other writing) is proved of much use.

Other factors that Hurtado studies is the life of Jesus and the relevance thereof to the early Jesus movement as well as Jewish apologetic stances against Roman imperial polytheism.

The other factor that Hurtado adds is the religious experience via revelation. At this point, his study of a history of Jesus-Devotion crosses over from Biblical studies and historical criticism to religious studies and does a sidewinder into theology! I understand the critique (and much needed) of social scientific analysis as seeing religious experience as purely being drawn from the traumatic, but looking at religious experience as a ‘direct’ and ‘creative force’ geared toward the purpose of ‘creative transformation’ within a particular religious setting is a very theological opinion, one that presupposes a personal God. Hurtado remains silent on whether or not these direct revelations still happen or not, but for the early church, these events did happen.

Up next: Chapter Two on the apostle Paul

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RodtRDH

Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter, Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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On Zizek, Theology, Women, and Anti-Judaism

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Slavoj Zizek in Athens, 4 October 2007

The Power of the Woman and the truth about Blindspots in A Marxist Continental Philosopher

“As the religion of genealogy, of the succession of generations, Judaism is the patriarchal religion par excellence.”-Slajov Zizek

First, I must give Zizek credit for trying to make in-roads in his latest post at ABC Religion And Ethics [linked here] to portray the religion of Islam more historically accurate. Even though his reading of Islamic states and their politics could face the critique of those familiar with Edward Said’s ORIENTALISM, “Here we can see how the best and the worst are combined in Islam. It is precisely because Islam lacks an inherent principle of institutionalization that it has proven so vulnerable to being co-opted by state power,” as if the Occident did not have states co-opting religion themselves (I am sure Zizek knows a little European church history). For the moment, I’ll lay aside my resistance to Zizek labeling Christianity as “a religion of the book” rather than a “religion of the Word” (huge difference in my opinion).

Instead, I want to carry this conversation into the realms of Christology and Judaism, which are inextricably linked forever and always. Zizek, in this blog post, as he does in his books and articles, argues that

“In Christianity, when the Son dies on the cross, the Father also dies (as Hegel maintained) – which is to say, the patriarchal order as such dies. Hence, the advent of the Holy Spirit introduces a post-paternal/familial community.”

Frederiek DePoorte in, “The End of God’s Transcendence: On Incarnation in the work of Slajov Zizek,” notes that in Scripture, God is personal, and by transcendent, it means that God is “Other than nature.” God is the Holy One Being who becomes Nothing in Zizek’s view. Zizek understands the Jewish God to be far too personal, far too involved in the matters of existence with Ya’s jealous rage at disobedience. (from ON BELIEF, cited by DePoorte). YHWH is a God of excess, “According to Žižek’s logic, one can thus conclude that, while Judaism is the religion of desire, Christianity is the religion of love.”

I find this trend highly problematic; Judaism represents everything that Christianity is not, Jesus is viewed as a political liberator outside of his 2nd Temple Jewish historical context. Zizek (who’s an atheist) reminds me of the fellow Christian I stayed up until 3am Central Standard time on Twitter arguing with. The Jews represent the Legalistic oppressors, while Jesus is freedom from patriarchy and a life guided by rules.

Amy Jill-Levine, in THE MISUNDERSTOOD JEW: THE CHURCH AND THE SCANDAL OF THE JEWISH JESUS, notes that Christian’s anti-Judaism has popularized the notion of a monolithic Judaism (yeah, ever read arguments against the New Perspective on Paul? I rest my case), one that oppressed the poor and women; that’s because it’s easier to preach Jesus stood up to the Jews rather than “a few Pharisees from Jerusalem” (pages 124-125). Levine is concerned (and I share this with her) that historical facts and context have become irrelevant in the name of identity politics and reader-response interpretations of Jewish sacred texts. Even if we ignore Zizek’s claims about Judaism, and just go with his claims about Jesus, where Jesus is stripped any notion of transcendence and the miraculous, Levine, who is Jewish, says that scholars and Christian skeptics still have run into a problem of making a distinction between Jesus and say, Hillel (120).

This is why I believe theologically that the Resurrection is just as equally important as the Incarnation, Ministry, and Death; we have Jesus who is introduced by angels who appear to two Jewish women, who in turn announce the Gospel (God’s Victory Speech) to the male disciples. YHWH choses these Mary’s to be the first two apostles. Zizek’s reading of Islam can be helpful here, for now Jews, Christians and Muslims have common ground by which to have dialogue; in Judaism and Christianity, God directly reveals Godself to women to instruct me on how to live their lives, while in Islam, it is indirectly by an angel.

“This should be emphasised: a woman possesses a knowledge about the Truth which precedes even the Prophet’s knowledge”-Zizek on Islam

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RodtRDH

Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter, Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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