The Passion of the Christ

I just have no respect for Heston as an actor. He's a ham at best & a bad actor usually. :shrug:

The blood & gore was very lifelike, so given the context of the story it fit perfectly.
 
Gonz said:
I'd haver to imagine with your distaste for the subject matter you went in not wanting to like it. They imagery was overwhelming don't you think? The truthfulnes in the savagery? The use of color?
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Okay, I thought the imagery frequently overwhelmed the subject matter, the idea of doing it in aramaic (sp?) pure pretentiousness, and we've seen any number of movies that try to accurately portray the savageness of the times over recent years. The cinematography was quite good in spots. I have no "distate" for the subject matter, all religions are equally erroneous in my eyes. I don't believe the story actually happened, but then I don't believe Ethan Hunt dangled from cables in a secure room in CIA headquarters either. I didn't find it gripping as entertainment (and there have been movies that tell the same story in a much more engaging fashion) and I thought it was so wrapped up in itself as a movie and an event that it sometimes missed telling the story. What I said was that you got something out of it that I didn't. Hell, if everyone got the same things out of each movie, all movies would be the same. How boring would that be.

Gonz said:
I just have no respect for Heston as an actor. He's a ham at best & a bad actor usually.

The blood & gore was very lifelike, so given the context of the story it fit perfectly.
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We agree on both of those although I'm not certain the blood and gore is always necessary to tell the story. Gibson kind of fell in love with that stuff in Braveheart, so I pretty much expected it here.
 
i just saw this movie for the first time ... or should i say, i basically sat with my face hidden in my pillow for most of the movie. it was just too much for me to watch.
 
kuulani said:
i just saw this movie for the first time ... or should i say, i basically sat with my face hidden in my pillow for most of the movie. it was just too much for me to watch.
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Why?...I mean you had to let out a little laugh every now and then watching it.

I'd feel bad and overwhelmed if the movie actually had a plot, and a purpose beside zealous devotion to one's prefered ideology.

The movie was nothing more than a hack job by a man using his audience's emotions and sympathy into feeling bad for the "messiah"....and to get them to regain faith in his beliefs.

By the 50th time I saw Jesus's face all bloody it just became laughable instead of torturing. By the 150th I saw Jesus's face all bloody it just got annoying.
 
chcr said:
Sorry, it was 2000 years ago. I question the existence at all. It is certainly possible, but the story seems a very unlikely to me. More likely the biblical "Jesus" was a composite, rather like Robin Hood 1500 years later. I guess it's one of the hazards of not believing the basic premise, you start questioning the other accepted "facts." I personally find the whole business impossible to believe.
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So I guess you flunked foreign history too, like I did huh?

btw I thought the movie sucked.
I do however believe Jesus was a real person, and that he died by crucification.
 
So you just didn't believe um when they taught about any of the oldies, like Jesus, Mohamed, Genghis Can, Nero, Sun Yat-sen....
 
catocom said:
So you just didn't believe um when they taught about any of the oldies, like Jesus, Mohamed, Genghis Can, Nero, Sun Yat-sen....
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Most likely the Jesus one is all he has a big problem with. *poke2*

The only "foreign history" I ever had to take was when we studied about New England... :lloyd:
 
catocom said:
So you just didn't believe um when they taught about any of the oldies, like Jesus, Mohamed, Genghis Can, Nero, Sun Yat-sen....
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Some history is verifiable, some is not.:shrug: Nero was certainly an emperor of Rome, records are quite complete on that score. Records of births and deaths among the jews are a bit more problematic. I don't doubt that there were any number of middle aged men named Yeshua at the time, it was a fairly popular name. The anecdotal stories surrounding him, Genghis Kahn, Mohammed, etc. are very like the ones surrounding Arthur, Robin Hood and many others. Unless you accept the bible blindly (which you already know I don't) the actual historical evidence is quite sketchy at best. For instance, the Romans were famous for keeping accurate if somewhat biased records, yet ther is no specific Roman record you can point to and say, "This is where they crucified Jesus." In point of fact, the only crucifiable offenses at that time in the Roman Empire were insurrection or being a rebellious slave. As I say, it just seems more likely to me that the life attributed to Jesus by the bible is probably an amalgam of several people who lived and died around the same time. Same with Mohammed, Kublai and Genghis Kahn, etc...


SnP said:
Most likely the Jesus one is all he has a big problem with.
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Not really. And I don't have a problem with it, I simply don't accept it. I'm hardly the only one. :shrug:
 
There are the writings. The "bible was made up I guess just "partly" of them.
I wasn't referring to the "Bible" as history, in this particular thread. ;)

It seems the Chinese have some pretty good documentation, even from way
back before Jesus, and they even make mention of him, I think.
 
I think you are referring to the Chinese Gnostics:

Mo-ni Jiao is a little know Chinese religion which came in from the West. Literally, the name means the teachings of Mo-ni. The original writings of this religion were written in Syriac in the third century AD, except for one, which was written in Middle Persian. The original Syriac-Aramaic writings dealt with Jewish concepts, portraying Jesus, or Jesus the Messiah, as the person who awakens Adam and Eve to the source of the light within them, and tries to keep them from following the will of the evil Jewish god of greed and having children. But even in the first Persian writings, the religion of Mo-ni was already being adapted to the Zoroastrian religion, and the evil god of creation in the book of Genesis becomes identified with the Zoroastrian god of greed, Az, and further with Ahriman, the devil himself.
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Link

Seriously, I didn't just make this stuff up to piss you guys off. These thoughts have been around about as long as christianity (we could even argue about when christianity actually began, I'm sure we don't agree on that ;) ). Frankly, I've been arguing them for over thirty years and by now it's really rare that someone comes up with an argument that I haven't heard before (keep trying though, you never know). SnP thinks I dismiss them out of hand, but the fact is that when someone presents one that's new to me I research it as best I can and then draw my own conclusion. The simple fact is that you believe, and you have your reasons and evidence acceptable to you. I do not believe and I have my reasons and evidence that's acceptable to me. Of course we each believe the other's evidence to be inaccurate at best, but that's only natural. Believe what you want to, I do. :D
 
it doesn't piss me off ;) I'm open-minded enough to learn. :D
Not necessarily that I agree with all of it, but I like to hear All the differing
perspectives.

What's you're thoughts on the dead sea scrolls?
 
Sorry Cat, but these foolish people actually expect me to work part of the time (well, I think they actually expect it all of the time) so I couldn'tget back to you right away. ;)

Re the Dead Sea Scrolls: What an incredible archeological find. I suspect that a lot of nomadic or traveling tribes carried their important texts in this manner at that time. Just dumb luck that these guys lost or left theirs in one of the very few places where it would have a chance to last this long. My first reaction is what in the world happened to these people to make them leave such a valuable thing behind? Think of the work that was involved in copying these scrolls. You couldn't just run on down to Kinkos. :D These were hand copied and I don't think that there were probably that many of them around (although at least one of them was an accounting scroll wasn't it?). I like to imagine them being set upon by Arab or Persian bandits and hiding the scrolls so the heathens wouldn't get them. :shrug: Fanciful, I'll grant you. I find both similarities and the differences of the scrolls to the same books in the Jewish Bible to be fascinating. I've always wondered why it wasn't complete. I mean one would assume there was a complete set of scrolls at one time. I wonder if we didn't find them all. Are some of them still buried. Maybe my fanciful bandits found and ransomed some of them.

Of course, I don't see it as evidence for or against a deity, although it certainly proves the Jews believed in one (we already knew that, didn't we?). What do you think (about the scrolls)?
 
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