WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON GOOD FRIDAY?

MEL GIBSON AND THE GOSPELS

ATLANTA, Ga. - March 17, 2005 - While millions of U.S. Christians will observe Good Friday on March 25 with a variety of Passion devotionals, an Atlanta author points out that the piety of the day has diminished.

Noel Griese, who writes about Passion devotionals in a new edition of the book Mel Gibson used to script much of his "Passion of the Christ" movie, notes that up until the 1960s, many businesses closed from noon to 3:00 p.m. in recognition of events that occurred two millennia ago. The devout filled churches for services, which often involved Passion Plays, Stations of the Cross and other observances.

Griese relates the history of Passion devotionals in his introduction to a new edition of "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," an 1833 work in which German author Clemens Brentano related the visions of a 19th-century nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, regarding the Last Supper, Passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Mel Gibson used the book to fill in many of the scenes in his 2004 Passion movie, newly re-released to theaters this Lent.

"Had Mel Gibson relied solely on the accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Acts of the Apostles, he would perhaps have had only two or three minutes of film," said Griese. "The visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich gave him many of the details that permitted him to create what is perhaps the most dramatic Passion Play yet produced."

Griese's introduction to the new edition of "The Dolorous Passion" links more than 40 scenes in the Gibson movie to the 19th-century German classic. Anvil Publishers issued the new English edition with his introduction on Feb. 9 (Ash Wednesday).

"People who saw the movie will recall Judas hanging himself over the carcass of a flyblown dead animal," Griese notes. "In the New Testament, only the Gospel of Matthew says Judas hanged himself, and it does not describe the locale. In Acts of the Apostles, a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, Judas is said to have met his end when his insides burst out. Gibson takes his cue for Judas hanging himself from Matthew, but his details of the locale are from Emmerich and Brentano."
Another example: one of the thieves crucified with Jesus is named Gesmas in the Gibson movie. The thieves, while not named in the Bible, have variously over time been identified in apocryphal material as Dismas and Cestas, Dumachus and Titus, Joca and Matha and Nismus and Zustin. Only Emmerich and Gibson identify the "bad thief" as Gesmas.

Similarly, the Roman centurion Abenadar in the movie, the 'right-hand man' for procurator Pontius Pilate, is an extrabiblical figure drawn straight from The Dolorous Passion. Griese, a student of religious mysticism and the author of 16 books, says of Abenadar, "According to Emmerich, he was converted to Christianity as a result of his presence at the crucifixion. She says he took the Christian name Ctesiphon, and became an evangelist."

Emmerich and Gibson place Abenadar at the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate, the scourging and crucifixion. While Griese has found no record of Abenadar prior to publication of "The Dolorous Passion," there is a historical record of a first-century Ctesiphon, he says. "This Ctesiphon accompanied the apostle James the Greater into Spain, where he helped to evangelize the Spanish at Verga. After James was martyred in Jerusalem, Ctesiphon reportedly took his body back to Spain."
"The Dolorous Passion" was first published in Germany in 1833. To write it, Clemens Brentano sat beside the sickbed of ailing nun Emmerich daily from 1818 on, recording the spectacular visions she experienced up to her death in 1824.

Brentano, a friend of Germany's greatest author, Johann Goethe, and the Brothers Grimm of fairy tale fame, was a well educated author of poetry and plays who first gained fame as a collector and editor of German folk songs. Emmerich, whose visions he recorded, was a nun whose convent was closed in 1811 by Napoleon Bonparte's brother Jerome Bonaparte, the king of Westphalia. In addition to being a religious ecstatic, she was a stigmatic and an inediac (lived on water and communion wafers). She is currently a Catholic Church candidate for sainthood.

Brentano worked on his notes for nine years after Emmerich died in 1824 before publishing them as "The Dolorous Passion." The book soon outsold even Goethe in Germany and became an international best-seller. However, it was all but forgotten until Gibson resurrected it to script his Passion movie.

 

Printed with permission from Anvil Publishers.