Mel Gibson’s Passion Play

Home > Magazines > Bible Review > December 2003

“His blood be on us and our children.” This single, chilling line from the Gospel of Matthew (27:25) has caused more bloodshed than any other verse in the Bible. Matthew’s invidious portrayal of “the Jews” clamoring for Jesus’ blood provided the impetus for centuries of anti-Semitism, pogroms, and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. As Stephen J. Patterson shows in the preceding article, the Gospels’ portrayal of “the Jews” as bloodthirsty has more to do with making Pilate and the Romans look good than it does with historical accuracy. It was the Romans, not “the Jews,” […]

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Footnotes

See “Jesus in Italy,” BAR 29:01.

The choice of languages has also raised some eyebrows. Whereas Aramaic was commonly spoken in first-century Palestine, Latin was not. Pilate and the other Romans would more likely have spoken Greek, the lingua franca of the eastern Roman empire.