In a 15-page article titled "The Jesus Wars," Boyer explains how an allegedly official body of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was anything but an authorized group representing the bishops, who had to issue a statement denying any connection with the group of self-identified scholars.

Most media accounts, however, continue to identify the group as associated with the USCCB.

Moreover, Boyer’s meticulous reporting makes clear that the movie’s alleged anti-Semitic content was not the prime reason for the scholars’ attack - it is instead an assault on the accuracy of the Holy Bible, specifically the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The genesis of the group is startling.

Boyer traces the beginnings of the controversy back to a badly flawed New York Times story by free-lance journalist Christopher Noxon last March 9 in which Gibson’s 85-year-old father, Hutton, is described as a adherent of the Traditionalist Catholic movement, which dissents from much of the work of the Vatican II council.

Mel Gibson is also a traditionalist who will attend only the Latin Tridentine Mass and has built a church where that Mass is celebrated, the story said.

Progressives vs. Tradition

As it turns out, Noxon's family owns property near Gibson's Malibu church, a fact that apparently sparked his interest in covering the story. Noxon tells NewsMax, however, that his father, a member of the area's local homeowner association, did not oppose Gibson's building of the church. In fact, he voted for its approval.

In his story Noxon implied that Gibson’s film, then being filmed in Italy, might, as the New Yorker said, "serve as a propaganda vehicle" for Gibson’s Traditionalist views. (And the New York Times might start printing the truth. Or might not.)

Writes Boyer: "The Times story caught the attention of a group of activists, scholars and clerics who make up what is known as the interfaith community" – a group of eggheads he describes as "progressives," deeply involved in the interfaith movement.

These people, Boyer notes, were anything but comforted that "Mel Gibson was basing his movie upon the Gospels, even if he weren’t a Traditionalist Catholic."

Therein lies the root of the whole controversy. In their great wisdom and scholarship these "progressives" have concluded that the Gospels, which Christians believe were inspired by the Holy Spirit and the authentic word of God, cannot be trusted.

Moreover, when read by non-scholars they could be construed as being anti-Semitic – a strange idea considering that they were written by Jews about Jesus, who was Jewish, and their fellow apostles, who were also Jewish, and the earliest adherents of Christianity, who were overwhelmingly Jewish.

"One cannot assume that by simply conforming to the New Testament, that anti-semitism will not be promoted," the scholars said in a statement.

This is where it gets interesting. Having read the Times' screed, a leading member of the so-called interfaith community, Eugene Fisher, discussed the film with an old friend, Abraham Foxman, the head of Anti-Defamation League, now one of the sternest critics of "The Passion."

Foxman, Boyer reports, had even written to Gibson seeking assurances that the picture "would not give rise to the old canard of charging Jews with deicide and to anti-Semitism."

It was at this point that the group of scholars became an organization.

So Helpful, So Modern

"Fisher and Foxman agreed to convene a small ad hoc group of like-minded colleagues, and to offer their help to Gibson in making his film conform to contemporary doctrine."

Contemporary doctrine, it appears, is that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not write the Four Gospels. "We do not know who wrote the Gospels," says Duke University’s E.P. Sanders.

Airily dismissing 2000 years of Christian doctrine and tradition that the Bible is the authentic word of God, Sanders holds what Boyer describes as "the consensus view, that the Gospels were written anonymously by early Church teachers and were later assigned to the four evangelists saints, perhaps to bestow legitimacy."

Sic semper inerrancy.

Sanders, like most investigators of historical Jesus, believes that the Jewish high priests wanted Jesus dead because He drove the money changers out of the temple. But not all these alleged investigators agree on this.

One of the more extreme views is held by professor Paula Frederickson, described by Catholic League president William Donohue as a "demagogue" and another vehement critic of Gibson.

According to Boyer, Frederickson’s own personal gospel proclaims that it was all Pilate’s fault – he feared Jesus was too popular and wanted to kill him in order to warn the Jews against rebelling against Roman rule.

After vainly trying to get their hands on a script of "The Passion," the scholars mysteriously acquired a stolen copy of an early script. Hah! they discovered - it was just what they suspected – based on those four discredited Gospels and filled with unflattering descriptions of the Jews of that era.

By the way, this was a very preliminary script, and most of the descriptive parts to which the scholars objected had long since been ignored during the filming.

One member of the group, Sister Mary Boys of New York’s left-leaning Union Theological Seminary, told the anti-Catholic Los Angeles Times that her group was worried that the film, which was nowhere near completed at the time, would somehow incite anti-Semitism.

Rabbi Eugene Korn, a colleague of Foxman at ADL, warned Gibson that if he didn’t respond to the scholars' group the "controversy will certainly heat up."

Pseudointellectual Dishonesty

The "scholars" were now using anti-Semitism as their line of attack and glossing over their real concern that Gibson had dared to rely on the Gospels they had in their great wisdom discredited.

When a colleague of Gibson ripped into Fisher he quickly backpedaled on the claims of anti-Semitism and called them "absolutely untrue."

Gibson simply ignored the scholars’ demand that the film be redone. "We believe that the steps needed to correct these difficulties will require major revisions," a report sent to Gibson’s Icon Productions stated.

If this demand smacked of arrogance and censorship, Frederickson went it one better on the hubris scale.

According to Boyer, she insisted that "The Passion" relied on an "uninformed" reading of the Gospels, as well as the writings of two nuns who bore the stigmata. She then pronounced a charge akin to excommunication in the rarefied atmosphere of academia: "He doesn’t even have a Ph.D on his staff," she sniffed.

Gibson’s reaction to all of this was vintage Braveheart. Scholars, he told Boyer, always mess around with the Gospels.

"Judas is always some kind of friend of some kind of freedom fighter named Barabbas. You know what I mean?" He called this "revisionist bulls**t … and that’s what these academics are into … it’s like they were more or less saying I have no right to interpret the Gospels myself because I don’t have a bunch of letters after my name."

Gibson's Advice to Egghead Perverts

The Gospels, Gibson told Boyer, are for children and old people and those in between and "not necessarily for academics. Just get an academic on board if you want to pervert something," he said.

After the media falsely reported that the group of scholars had been appointed by the USCCB – an impression Fisher, the associate director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs, gave when he used a USCCB letterhead in writing to Icon, the bishops responded. They declared, "Neither the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, nor by other committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, established this group, or authorized, reviewed or approved the report issued by its members."

At this point Braveheart had had enough.

A sleazy column by New York Times arts and entertainment editor Frank Rich set him reaching for his claymore. "I want to kill him," he fumed to Boyer. "I want his intestines on a stick … I want to kill his dog."

It was these lines, of course, that attracted the most attention among those in the media who reported details of Boyer’s article. Nobody seems to have noticed the fascinating background Boyer had provided.

Even though their attacks on "The Passion" are based on cries of anti-Semitism, the majority of the critics, including Fisher and Foxman, admit that the movie is not anti-Semitic.

But they say that by relying on the Gospels as their sources, Gibson’s film might (or might not) create feelings of anti-Semitism among some viewers. This ignores the reality that only those already harboring anti-Semitic thoughts could be so affected by a rendering of Holy Scripture.

No rational person, for example, ever charged that Gibson’s previous films "The Patriot" and "Braveheart" would spark hatred of the British, nor has anyone suggested that "The Passion" might inflame anti-Italian feelings by depicting the role played by the Romans in brutally torturing and crucifying Christ.

What They're Really Trying to Censor

It has apparently not occurred to Foxman and other Jewish critics that they have been conned into providing cover for the members of the committee they helped to create, by making the phony charge of anti-Semitism while the scholars’ real objection is to the use of the Gospels as the film’s source.

Said Gibson: "I wanted to be true to the Gospels. That has never been done." And that’s what the fuss is really all about.

Wrote Father Michael Reilly in NewsMax.com: "Some of Mel Gibson's biggest critics are Catholic theologians. Believe it or not, they are ‘accusing’ him of following the Gospel accounts of Jesus' passion too closely. In other words, Gibson hasn't consulted them to receive their guidance and direction in understanding the Gospels."

Reilly continued: "According to some theologians, the Gospels are theological diatribes thoroughly lacking in historical value and accuracy. Some theologians believe that the Gospels were written long after Christ's passion and therefore are more reflective of the community than they are of the actual events.

"Interestingly, one of the main reasons for their later dating of the Gospels centers around the Jews. When Jesus lambastes the Pharisees in the Gospels, this is supposedly representative of a hostility that did not exist between Christians and Jews before 85 A.D., when the Christians were expelled from the synagogues.

"I suppose these theologians discount the martyrdom of St. Stephen in 36 A.D. and the persecution of Christians carried out by St. Paul before his conversion. The earliest and most reliable sources available indicate that the Gospels were written by the apostles and apostolic men not long after the events took place.

"St. Irenaeus, instructed by St. Polycarp, the disciple of John the Apostle, informs us that Matthew wrote his Gospel before the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in 64 A.D. and that Mark and Luke wrote at the time of their martyrdom. Modern theologians know better?

"Ultimately nearly everything we know about Jesus has been handed down by the four evangelists. If we don't believe what they wrote, why would we call ourselves Christian?"

Another aspect of Boyer's report that has not gotten any attention is Gibson’s explanation of why he insisted that the film’s dialogue be in Aramaic and Latin, a decision that has been widely criticized.

Gibson explained that he wanted to avoid having 2,000-year-old biblical characters speaking perfect modern or even King James English. "I’ve always wanted to make a Viking movie," he told Boyer, explaining that having the fearsome Viking invaders of England, bent on murder and rape, mouthing lines such as "Oh fair Maiden" or "I want to die with my sword in my hand" would be silly.

"If they come with low, guttural German they are frightening. They are terrifying. They’re like demons from the sea. So that’s what the language thing did for me. I took something away from you – you had to depend on the image."

Gibson has now relented, however, and agreed to include subtitles.

It is worth noting that many prominent American Jews, such as David Horowitz, Matt Drudge, Orthodox Jewish author David Klinghoffer and Michael Medved, have praised "The Passion" and denounced claims that it is anti-Semitic.

Editor's note:
James Hirsen’s "Tales from the Left Coast" - Find out the real story behind Mel Gibson`s "The Passion," and more!

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