Looking at the similarities and not being pleased

“I was just stunned when I heard Gibson say this week that he was unaware of the harsh anti-Jewish stereotypes in Emmerich’s book,” Rudin said. On Wednesday morning, Rudin said he was comparing the film, which he has seen twice, with sections of Emmerich’s “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Here’s one example. There’s this whole brutal scene in the movie in which Jesus’ captors hang him over a bridge by chains and then yank him back up again,” Rudin said. “That’s nowhere in the New Testament. Where did it come from?”

The scene is nearly identical to one in Emmerich’s book, where she describes a Jewish group, the Pharisees, egging on a mixed group of Romans and Jews to heighten Jesus’ suffering.

Gibson’s co-screenwriter, Benedict Fitzgerald, sparked some of this new criticism by claiming in recent interviews that he believes the Pharisees played a major role in Jesus’ death.

Emmerich’s book, which was based on visions she claimed to have had, largely blames the Pharisees. But the Bible does not.

“The only role the Bible says the Pharisees have in the passion of Jesus is, in one case they try to warn him that there’s a plot against his life,” said Eugene Fisher, the spokesman on interfaith relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C.