Endnote 17 – Jesus in the Movies

Franco Zeffirelli, Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus, trans. Willis J. Egan, S.J. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 6–7. Even when Jesus chases the money changers out of the Temple, Zeffirelli accentuates the awe and respect with which Jesus esteems this central symbol of the Jewish faith: When Jesus looks up at the Temple ceiling, the following point-of-view shot is identical to one that Zeffirelli used earlier, when Jesus was 12 years old and his father Joseph instructed him in the sacrifice of lambs (although, according to Luke 2:24 [cf. Leviticus 12:8], Joseph and Mary could not afford lambs and so sacrificed doves instead).