"mel" wrote in message om...
you wrote "At issue for me is that the text does not detail the extent of
Jesus'
physical punishment at the hands of Romans or Jews."

Ask yourself why you feel the need to be so critical.

Hmm...I doubt anyone here is that interested in my emotional needs.
But since you ask, I would say I'm no different from most people who
have brains in this regard. Perhaps we differ in our critical
conclusions: I will not, on that basis however, ask you to review in
public your "need" to be critical or uncritical (isn't that far
worse?), allegorical, medieval, or whatever. I don't want to know
about your "need" at all when it comes to that, and I find your
question oddly inappropriate.

Note also that I was critical in my original post of two things: Mel
Gibson's movie, and your allegories of the table scene. If you find my
being critical--in the healthy, reasoned existence sense--about those
two things then you should get a thicker skin, or keep your opinions
to yourself.

In this one sentence
you've reduced the suffering of Jesus to something that was probably not
that bad.... as if the flogging was merely a spanking and there may have
been a gentle placement of a person on a cross to hang in the elements and
die from exposure.

I fail to see how I accomplished what you parody. Did I mention a
spanking? And PLEASE tell me that was unintentional irony, otherwise
your seriocomedic post appeals to the same sadomasochistic tendencies
I accuse the film of.

The text was written at a time when the average person
knew exactly what the results of a flogging looked like. Had stood and
looked at a person being crucified.

Was this an issue?

Then you make it a point to state it
was the Jews and Romans who did this.....
You want to know who killed Jesus? Nobody. No one took his life. It was
given.

Thank you, but I can't claim it as my point, really. Nor was it an
issue in my post. In fact, I can't even claim to have said what you
claim I said. *I* never "made it a point to state" anything about who
killed Jesus. I did say uncritical viewers could easily be led to
making incorrect conclusions based on the movie.

You apparently feel that turning this into a "I can witness better
than you can" will somehow alleviate my criticisms of Gibson's movie
and your allegories--which you pretty much ignore.

Are you trying to argue with me that Christians historically have not
blamed Jews or Romans for Jesus' death? Even without getting into a
simple Aristotelian distinction of causation, what stuns me most is
that you continue to misread my post and make straw-man fallacies.
This is the second one (spanking the first). I seems no wonder, given
how poorly you read my post, that I find your reading of the Gospels
likewise flawed.

So again, I ask you to consider *my* position: while Gibson's
portrayal of Jesus' punishment is not impossible (since the text just
doesn't say), I do not get the impression from reading the text that
Jesus was beaten as badly as the movie depicts. Why, then, would
someone depict it that way? I conclude it's for the same reasons
medieval Catholics liked to gaze on the bloody images of Jesus and the
saints. It's a sadomasochistic reversion and I can't recommend it.

You have yet to point out any flaw in this reasoning. Instead, you
resort to parody. Fine. Let us assume a spectrum of possible readings
of the Gospels, one in which the Romans deliver a mild spanking, the
other in which Jesus is beaten to a bloody pulp to the sexual leering
of his Roman tormentors--to the point that it would be unlikely for
the stigmata and spear scar to hold any distinction from his flogging
scars. OK, now think: if the text allows for that whole spectrum, why
would anyone choose to dwell on the latter reading? It is perverse.
Whether it happened or not is not something you can resolve based upon
the text. So your choice to depict, dwell, and lovingly gaze on it is
the choice that needs defending. I have not been able to come to any
other conclusion than that it is perverse.

If you believe Jesus was merely a man then Whodunit would be a valid
question. I suspect however, if that is the belief you subscribe to, then
finding an answer to the whodunit question would have no ability to spark
any sort of hatred....anti-Semitic or otherwise.

You've lost me here. Can you clarify? I don't see how Jesus' divinity
affects the validity of any question about the agent of his death. The
one is not related to the other, regardless the position you take.
Then you say that finding a causal agent "would have no ability to
spark any sort of hatred...anti-Semitic or otherwise." Something must
be missing. You can't have asserted what you did and mean it. Have you
read any history of the past 2000 years? No, there must be some typo,
or I'm misreading you in some way (sic, in hoc noster capietur,
profabor). Please clarify.

But if you believe he was more..... Who isn't nearly as important as Why.

This may be your question, and it's not a bad one per se, but it has
nothing to do with my post and my observations. I think I'll stick to
them before veering away.

That one question totally changes one's perspective. This new perspective
allows you to watch this movie and see the effort by Satan to break Jesus'
will to try to keep him from continuing with the salvation of man

I disagree. The perspective you speak of does not, I trust, remove all
critical acumen from your brain, nor make you into an idiot who
slavishly accepts everything a Hollywood star of violent action movies
throws at you. It does not, most of all, require you to imagine this
movie's depiction of Satan as anything close to reality, let alone
close the the text. Satan in this movie is about as non-biblical as
you can get--although the argument could be made that she (!) is
fairly medieval-Catholic.

Mel, if you're a paleo-Catholic, I don't mean to offend you, but we
disagree on fundamental assumptions of how to read a text.

I'm game if you want to engage the text, but otherwise I fear this
will just be another "sed ego credo..." spiel.

Regards,
H.