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For those with high speed Internet access, a trailer for Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion" can be downloaded here. For the three people who may not know, it's a depiction of the last 12 hours in the life of Christ that is written completely in Aramaic and Latin, though Gibson recently caved to producers insistence that it have English subtitles.
So, you'd think that since he was insisting on Aramaic and Latin that he was going for historical accuracy. If so, you probably haven't seen BRAVEHEART or THE PATRIOT. Just in the one minute trailer you can spot the following errors:
1- Jesus would have carried the cross-beam (the patibulum), not the entire cross. The cross pole was stationary and too heavy for a man to carry; the cross beam was torture enough and was raised onto the pole (stipes) in an excruciating (the root of excruciating is crucifixion) maneuver. (Films that got this right include the miniseries JESUS OF NAZARETH [imo, the best film depiction of Jesus from a Christian perspective] and JESUS OF MONTREAL [imo, the best film depiction of Jesus from a humanist perspective].)
2- As the Shroud of Turin got right even if Rembrandt didn't, Romans drove spikes through the wrists, not the hands.
3- Why is there not a non-lightskinned face in ancient Jerusalem? There would have been more Arabs, Africans, and Meditteraneans than caucasians there any day of the week.
4- Was there a snake in the Gospels that I missed? (It's not Satan as "she" is played by a woman in this production, and that's another thing...)
5- Pilate pronounces "ecce homo" (behold, the man) as "etch-hay omo", which is correct if you're Nietzsche or a post Vulgate priest, but a first century Roman would have pronounced it "eck-kay omo", though more likely he'd have spoken koine Greek if addressing Jews or other non Romans
There are more, but you get the jist. While I admit to thinking of Gibson as a homophobic tool and self important ideologue, I'd think he'd at least have the decency to give some phonologists and historians an extra paycheck to ensure accuracy. Maybe when Quentin Tarantino gets around to doing the life of Jesus we'll have the definitive version.
