It's been an interesting decade of sorts where the style of trashing the divinity of Jesus (whether or not he climbed down off the cross and married Mary Magdeline, then moving to France), questioning the method of crucifixion, or challenging the validity of the Holy Bible, has been very much in vogue and been running rampant. And when someone like Mel Gibson puts together a film with a more traditional point of view about Christ's crucifixion bearing more historical accuracy than any done prior, it is Mel who gets crucified.
I bring up this issue because the BBC has seen fit to slap together a series called The Passion which shows Jesus crucified in, of all things, a foetal position. This is done obviously to bring Our Savior down a few 
notches to make Him look less divine and more...human. Their official reason is, they claim, "new historical evidence" that shows he did not die in the traditional way. And what is this "new historical evidence?" "Lengthy research," claims Simon Elliot (a producer of the show), which includes a crucified skeleton found in Jerusalem in 1968. He went on further to say that there were many ways prisoners were crucified by the Romans back then.
notches to make Him look less divine and more...human. Their official reason is, they claim, "new historical evidence" that shows he did not die in the traditional way. And what is this "new historical evidence?" "Lengthy research," claims Simon Elliot (a producer of the show), which includes a crucified skeleton found in Jerusalem in 1968. He went on further to say that there were many ways prisoners were crucified by the Romans back then. Well, there were certainly many forms of execution by the Romans, who seemed to take great pleasure in creating misery in clever ways. One involved being put in a large bag filled with rats and hung on a post. But crucifixion is crucifixion: to be nailed to a wooden cross with arms extended, right side up or upside down! Otherwise what is the point of the horizontal crossbeam? This attempt to make us believe that Jesus was nailed to a post by his arms above his head and not his hands outstretched is itself an attempt to deny history. The Bible itself is an historical document containing four Gospels which go into details about the crucifixion. And in their attempt to humanize Jesus, the BBC ignores the most important and common historical documents available.
But the deicide doesn't stop there. Mary, mother of Jesus, is played as an angry woman, while Pilate, Caiaphas, and Judas are portrayed with much sympathy, reasoning that history has not been fair to them. After all, Bart Ehrman would say that anytime history is written by the winners it must be suspect.
To me the secular fundamentalists are at it again. They don't want Jesus or anyone else telling them how to behave or with whom they can have sex, so they chip away at the divinity of Jesus sliver by sliver or log by log until their own non-christian beliefs become the mainstream....
Read all about this travesty in the Daily Mail.
(Hat tip to Culture Wire)
As some of you may have noticed, the title of this post was changed from "Taking Jesus Down...One Story At A Time" to the current title.
ReplyDeleteI did this because I felt so stupid at the realization that, of course, no one can take Jesus down. He won the battle at Calvary and defeated Satan. Now Satan only has the power to steal our joy...unless you voluntarily give up your faith.