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Every version of the Passion story deviates fundamentally from the New Testament, which contains four divergent Gospels rather than one conflated version. The Gospels also emphasize the life before and the resurrection after the death. The life/death/resurrection proportions, judged by the number of chapters devoted to each part, vary -- from a 13:2:1 ratio in Mark to 25:2:1 in Matthew -- but a Gospel never sums it all up as Passion.

Making a Passion film, therefore, involves choices that reveal prejudices. If Jesus is scourged in Mark, Matthew and John, but not in Luke, which option will you choose and why? Or to take an even more explosive example, when the Gospel has a "crowd" demanding Jesus’ crucifixion from Pilate, how many extras will you hire? How many is a "crowd" and how do you decide that number? The term is, of course, always relative to the situation ("two’s company, three’s a crowd"). What is the identity purpose and number of that "crowd" before Pilate?

When you read the Gospels you can leave the "crowd" vague and indeterminate in your mind, but viewers of The Passion of the Christ see a crowd that fills the Jerusalem streets and the theater screen. How did Mel Gibson know that? From the Gospels?

Reread the account in Mark 11-14 and then 15:0-9. Remember that Mark is not only the earliest of the four Gospels but is almost certainly the source for Matthew and Luke and possibly even for John. Follow the story’s narrative logic, whether you consider it a historical event or a Markan parable. Think about the identity, purpose and size of that crowd demanding Jesus’ crucifixion before Pilate.

Identity: The film does not begin at the start of Holy Week, on Palm Sunday, with Jesus’ antitriumphal entry into Jerusalem -- as happens, for example, in the classic Oberammergau Passion play. The film omits, therefore, the accounts of those days from Sunday morning to Thursday evening. On every one of those days, the Jewish "crowd" is described as directly supporting and indirectly protecting Jesus against the high-priestly authority which opposes him, according to Mark’s Gospel.

On Sunday "many people [polloi] spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ (11:8-10). On Monday, after the temple incident, "the chief priests and the scribes . . . kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd [pas ho ochlos] was spellbound by his teaching" (11:18). On Tuesday, after Jesus’ praise for John the Baptist, "they were afraid of the crowd [ochlon], for all regarded John as truly a prophet" (11:32). Later, "the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders . . . realized that he had told this parable [of the evil tenants] against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd [ochlon]. So they left him and went away"(12:12). Still later that same day, "the large crowd [polus ochlos] was listening to him with delight" (12:37).

Finally on Wednesday, "the chief priests and the scribes were looking for away to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people [tou laou].’" That, of course, is why the services of Judas and a secret nighttime move are required to arrest Jesus -- the point where the Gibson film begins. But if Mark 11-14 emphatically insists on that pro-Jesus "crowd," whence comes the anti-Jesus "crowd" in Mark 15? Is Mark writing about some different "crowd"?

Purpose: Mark says, first, that Pilate had established an open Passover amnesty: "At the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked" (158). It was open because they and not the governor chose the individual to be released Next, Mark notes that "a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection" (15:7). They were, in other words, Jewish freedom fighters (like the Scottish hero of Braveheart or the American hero of The Patriot -- both Gibson films). Naturally, therefore, "the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom" (15:8).

That Markan sequence is very clear. The "crowd" comes up to request freedom for Barabbas; they come, that is, for Barabbas and not against Jesus. Confronted with the undesirable possibility of Barabbas’s release, Pilate offers them Jesus instead. Of course he would offer freedom for the nonviolent Jesus rather than the violent Barabbas. We know Pilate’s view because, while he arrested Barabbas’s followers (two of whom died beside Jesus), he did not arrest Jesus’ disciples. Those were appropriately different administrative responses to two leaders who opposed Roman law and order one by violent rebellion, the other by nonviolent resistance. So, therefore, "he answered them, ‘Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"’ (15:9). Maybe Pilate thought Jesus innocent, but more likely he simply knew he was a lesser threat than Barabbas.

In other words, for Mark there are two "crowds." There is a general and presumably much larger pro-Jesus "crowd" throughout 11-14 and a particular and presumably much smaller and directly pro-Barabbas and only indirectly anti-Jesus "crowd’ in 15:6-9.

Size: Granted that purpose, and whether we take Mark’s Barabbas-Jesus story as fictional or factual, parabolical or historical, how big should we imagine his "crowd" to be? How many people were in it -- granted, of course, that crowd-size is always relative, How many is a crowd in the Oval Office? Maybe 15? How many is a crowd at the Super Bowl? Maybe 75,000?

At Passover, thousands of Jews concentrated in a rather small area in and around the temple to celebrate, while under Roman rule, their deliverance from ancient Egyptian bondage. From an imperial viewpoint, the atmosphere was that of a tinderbox, the toleration for disturbance was zero, and the governor was in residence to ensure order. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, "about three thousand" died during one Passover riot in 4 BCE and "upwards of thirty thousand perished" in another one around 50 CE.

Two contemporary Jewish authors portray Pilate with characteristics that flatly contradict the equivalent ones in the Gospels. One is his method of dispensing justice, the method of handling crowds.

The philosopher Philo’s On the Embassy to Gaius describes Pilate as "a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate." It speaks of "his corruption. and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity" Pilate was "exceedingly angry and . . . at all times a man of most ferocious passions." Pilate is Philo’s posterboy for a bad governor.

The historian Josephus records, in both The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, that an unarmed crowd came before Pilate’s tribunal at coastal Caesarea to demand that he remove from Jerusalem the pagan images on his military standards. He surrounded the crowd with soldiers "three deep," and people were saved from slaughter only by a willingness for martyrdom. But the next time they tried the same nonviolent resistance, Pilate infiltrated them with soldiers dressed "In Jewish garments, under which they carried clubs," and "many of them actually were slain on the spot, while some withdrew disabled by blows."

Finally according to Jewish Antiquities , the Syrian governor, Vitellius, removed Pilate from office and sent him back to defend himself before the emperor Tiberius in Rome. You can probably guess for what offense. His soldiers attacked a Samaritan crowd on Mount Garizim. The high priest Caiaphas, by the way, was removed from office at the same time, and that ended his ten-year collaboration with Pilate, a collaboration ultimately judged unwise even by Roman imperial interests.

The purpose of the Markan crowd was to request amnesty for one whom they may have considered a heroic freedom-fighter but whom Pilate considered a murderous bandit. In that situation, the members of the crowd could themselves easily have been arrested as Barabbas’s sympathizers if not his actual followers. Recall, for example, that Joseph of Arimathea needed "courage" even to request the dead body of Jesus from Pilate, in Mark 15:43 (only). That "crowd" needed to appear peaceful, respectful and very, very polite.

When I put together the dangerous context of Passover, the volatile character of Pilate, and the hazardous purpose of the request, my best historical reconstruction images a Markan "crowd" [ochlos] of definitely fewer than a dozen people. But it is also absolutely clear that, as later Gospel writers copy their Markan source, they both change the purpose and expend the size of that original (very small) crowd.

Change of Purpose: Notice how both Luke and John retell Mark so that in their accounts the crowd comes up against Jesus rather than for Barabbas. In Luke, the Markan sequence is reversed so that "the chief priests and the crowds" (ochlous) in 23:4 or "the chief priest and the rulers and the people [laon]" in 23:13 are already there accusing Jesus. "Then they all shouted out together ‘Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us’ (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again but they kept shouting, ‘Crucify, crucify him!"’ (23:18-21).

Similarly, in John, Pilate himself raises the issue of amnesty "‘But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?’ They shouted in reply ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a bandit" (18:39-40). You could scarcely tell from those changes that the crowd came up originally for Barabbas and not against Jesus and only became anti-Jesus when Pilate tried to switch prisoners on them.

Increase in Size: The process of expansion is seen most clearly in Matthew. He starts by accepting Mark’s "crowd" (oclos) in 27:15, but it becomes "crowds" (ochlous) by 27:25. Then he reverts to the "crowd" in 21:24 but again expands it exponentially to "all the people [laos]" in 27:25. John changes all those options to "the Jews" (18:31, 36, 38;19:7). Those expansions, however, must be understood to mean: all the Jewish (John) people (Matthew and Luke)in that very small crowd (Mark).

It is not enough to assert even truthfully that one is not anti-Semitic or that one’s film is not anti-Semitic. It is necessary to ask whether what one says or does serves to cauterize the continuing venom of anti-Semitism. I did not expect Gibson to be an exegete, but I did want him to respect the Gospels, to ponder their inspired multiplicity and, before homogenizing them into a single story, to consider what their canonical diversity might tell him about the will of his God. Further, I expect any conscientious Christian who knows how stories about the Passion of Jesus became, across two millennia, a seedbed for both theological anti-Judaism and ethnic anti-Semitism, to proceed here with infinite care -- not with political correctness but with thoughtful accuracy.

In my judgment, The Passion of the Christ portrays the identity, purpose and size of that "crowd" before Pilate with careless irresponsibility at best and depraved indifference at worst.

The Buddha once remarked that understanding his instruction is like "trying to catch a poisonous snake in the wild": it’s all too easy to get bitten. Among Christian teachings, none are more treacherous than those about Jesus’ Passion (from the Latin paulo, "suffering"). Theological ideas have teeth. In The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson ventures out into the wild and gets bitten.

Buoyed by controversy, the film will become the most watched Passion play in history, and so its strengths and flaws -- The Passion has plenty of both -- will have a breathtakingly broad audience. The critics are deeply divided:

some have hailed it as a masterpiece comparable to the works of Dante (First Things), while others have labeled it "obscene" (Boston Globe), "almost sadistic" (Los Angeles Times) and "a sickening death trip" (New Yorker).

Worries about the film’s anti-Judaism arose first, as many recalled the sordid history of Christian pogroms against Jews, and the ways Christian Passion plays have often provoked and helped justify violence against so-called Christ-killers. Hitler himself after attending the renowned Passion play in Oberammergau, Germany, declared the production a "convincing portrayal of the menace of Jewry" and a "precious tool" for his war on Judaism.

But concerns about the film’s graphic and gory depictions of torture soon arose as well. Most moviegoers will never see a more violent movie than this one (that it is rated "R" and not "NC-17" is indefensible), with its sadistic soldiers and pools of blood.

To explore these two concerns -- anti-Judaism and excessive violence -- I want to zero in on two of the film’s key aspects: the portrait of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, and the sequence in which Jesus is flogged and flayed. Like miniatures, these features point to the film’s larger problems, which are finally theological.

Gibson has both the will and the ingenuity to imagine an extrabiblical scene in which Pilate and his wife, Claudia, privately confer. The troubled procurator laments how imperial life, with its endless cycle of repression and rebellion, pulls him into shadows where "truth" is obscure. The scene invites us to understand Pilate at a man caught up in the larger, rougher forces of his time.

All this raises the question: couldn’t Gibson have done the same for Caiaphas? There are good biblical and historical grounds for doing so. The biblical grounds are found in John 11. There, immediately after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, "the chief priests and the Pharisees" call a meeting of the Sanhedrin and ask, What are we to do?. . . If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation."

Pilate has his troubled tale to tell, but so do the members of the Sanhedrin, and their fears about the Roman threat to their temple and their people -- which they are, after all, charged to protect -- form the basis of Caiaphas’s proposal: "It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed."

Gibson fails to include this episode in his film, and he also fails to imagine a scene that elaborates on it, as he does in the case of Pilate. So Caiaphas’s circumstances, fears and motives remain obscure; in him, we can only see the blank face of evil.

The same is true of the bloodthirsty Jewish crowds in Pilate’s courtyard and along the way to Golgotha (scenes which both Catholic and Protestant guidelines for Passion plays strongly discourage) Without more insight, these clamoring figures can only be caricatures -- and when it comes to Passion plays, Christian caricatures of Jews are only too chillingly familiar.

The first snakebite, then, is that Jesus’ Jewish opponents in the film are villains, pure and simple. The purely villainous Jew has been a cliché in Christian anti-Jewish art for centuries. Gibson’s portrait of Calaphas, and of the Jews who follow his lead, is amnesiac and irresponsible filmmaking. Every Passion play is an exercise in historical and liturgical memory and with respect to historical anti-Judaism, it ought to be an exercise in Christian repentance too.

By omitting the key scene from John 11, Gibson also passes by one of the most interesting theological themes in the New Testament Passion narratives, and his film suffers for it. For immediately after Caiaphas’s proposal, John writes that the high priest, however unwittingly, has prophesied correctly. What appears as a Machiavellian proposal (that "one man die for the people") is also God’s good news for humankind that "one man die for the people," indeed, and that this man die, as John goes onto say, "not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God."

In other words, for John the very plot to kill Jesus is an unconscious prophecy revealing the divine work of salvation. God transforms even the apparent enemy’s plan into a proclamation of God’s graceful rescue. The sword is not thrown into outer darkness but preserved, and remade into a ploughshare.

This is a kind of deep divine irony and the Gospels’ narratives brim with it. Those supposed to follow Jesus -- his disciples -- in fact betray and desert him. Those supposed to be enemies -- religious and imperial authorities -- in fact unwittingly follow him. When the Roman soldiers robe and crown Jesus as "King of the Jews," their mockery is an ironic, unconscious form of truth-telling. And when they crucify him, the paradigmatic and ubiquitous instrument of death in their day -- the Roman cross -- is transformed into what is, for Christians, the paradigmatic symbol of abundant life.

Gibson is alert to divine irony at times in The Passion. For example, he visually links Pilate’s hand-washing to the hand-washing before the Last Supper, suggesting that what Pilate thinks is an act of disavowal is, deeply and ironically, the preparation for the eucharistic sacrifice at the cross.

Gibson also imagines a scene in which the initially reluctant Simon of Cyrene agrees to help Jesus carry his cross, but only after making clear that he, Simon, is an "innocent man" carrying the cross of a criminal. Simon has it exactly wrong, of course -- or, better, he unwittingly has it exactly right, but reversed. Jesus is the one true "innocent man," carrying every cross, everywhere.

But when it comes to portraying Jesus’ most ardent opponents --Caiaphas and the angry Jewish crowds most of all, but also the Roman soldiers -- Gibson’s feel for God’s secret reversals eludes him. His vision flattens out, and the snake bites a second time. Instead of a richly ironic story in which even Jesus’ enemies are caught up in the symphony of grace, we get a Manichean morality play, in which evil is not so much transformed by God’s love as merely beaten by it.

The Passion narratives themselves, thanks be to God, are far more interesting, and far more hopeful. After all, the cross is the great Christian symbol of suffering and death transfigured into abundant life, not of suffering and death merely outdone by a valiant hero.

Heroism in a violent world is, of course, at the center of Braveheart, the 1995 film Gibson directed and starred in, playing a 13th-century freedom fighter. The Jesus of The Passion plays a role similar to the hero of Braveheart.

Fundamentally The Passion is a cinematic Stations of the Cross. Mary -- hauntingly played by Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern, whose performance carries the film -- serves as the viewers’ guide to the stations. At three key junctures in Jesus’ ordeal he and his mother come face-to-face: at the Sanhedrin trial, at the public flogging and after Jesus falls on the road to Golgotha. She does not want to see her son brutalized, but she nevertheless looks on, with a blend of incomprehension and intimacy.

The most violent sequence begins when Roman torturers, following Pilate’s orders, shackle Jesus to a low pillar. "My heart is ready Father," he prays (Psalm 108), and the blows begin. First they flog Jesus with canes, bringing him to his knees. This, it seems, is enough. But then Jesus turns and sees his mother.

At the sight of his mother something happens. As if gathering strength from her, Jesus stands again. The soldiers are incredulous; this Galilean is stronger than the others. Only then, with Jesus back on his feet, does the sadist-in-chief order his men to switch from canes to whips tipped with metal and glass, and the flaying begins.

What is going on here? The crucial clue, I think, is in the film’s opening Gethsemane scene, where Gibson rather daringly inserts a satanic figure who tempts Jesus to abandon his mission. "No one man," Satan purrs, "can carry the burden of all sin. It is far too heavy." Thus the challenge is announced, and Gibson’s Jesus, hero of heroes, must rise to meet it. Mary will help him. The sin of the world is very, very heavy and so the handsome Son of God must be very, very brave, and very, very strong.

Gibson is convinced that the greater the torment, the greater the portion of sin’s burden is carried and the greater the shepherd’s love for his sheep. So he sets out to overwhelm us with a dark kind of awe. Caning, he decides, is not enough. Jesus must be flayed. And so on. The film’s scenes of graphic violence, far from being extraneous or merely fetishistic on Gibson’s part, are essential to his theological point of view.

Gibson did not invent this particular atonement equation, but he has given it a stunning, consistent presentation. The problem is this: Jesus’ suffering in The Passion, precisely because it is so severe and apparently exceptional, virtually eclipses suffering everywhere else. The snake bites once more, this time with respect to the meaning of the Passion itself.

Jesus’ flayed and bloody body, so graphically destroyed on screen, and finally so distinct from the relatively unscathed bodies of the thieves crucified alongside him, will for most of us stand out above all other suffering bodies we have ever seen. The film effectively exalts Jesus as the one sufferer above all others. But this exaltation, to my mind, is a reversal of the true meaning of the Passion of Jesus Christ.

"Christ crucified" is not the Hero, not the strongest man. On the contrary he is the weakest man, the least of these. There is his strength. He is not the greatest sufferer, famed above all others. He is, finally the anonymous sufferer, in radical solidarity with every sufferer everywhere. There is his proper fame. As the Son of God, he suffers and dies with sinners, forgotten and alone, disappearing into the thousands of Jews and others crucified under a brutal, violent, imperial regime. So he continues, even today, wherever agonies are borne among the human family.

The trouble with The Passion is that it proclaims a Braveheart Christianity. The Christ of the New Testament, by contrast, has a heart not so much brave as broken – "broken for you," Christians recall.