I haven’t followed much of the controversy or the hype about Mel Gibson’s new film on the Passion. What I’ve seen has basically been on the Corner or over at Andrew Sullivan’s site. But today I read a piece by Paula Fredriksen in the latest issue of the New Republic. It’s not on the web (yet?). I found it to be an astounding — if sometimes clunky — read. Some of it I’m sure is old news to folks who know their New Testament well or to people who’ve followed the whole Jews-as-Christ-Killers “issue.” But that ain’t me.

I also didn’t know that Gibson’s father is a real hardcore guy who doesn’t merely reject Vatican II (not that a big deal among many of the Catholics I know) but he thinks Vatican II was the result of a conspiracy between Jews and Freemasons. And — oh yeah — he thinks the Holocaust never happened.

While all of that is interesting it still amounts to guilt-by-association and there’s no evidence that Mel shares his dad’s views.

Still, the New Republic piece suggests Gibson does have a lot to answer for. He claims time and again that he’s simply sticking to the “historical record.” Frederiksen offers some interesting stuff I didn’t know about how mixed the historical record really is. There are major — and often irreconcilable — differences among the various versions of Jesus’ death in the Gospels. More important, Gibson relies on the writings of Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich as a “historical” source. But Emmerich, born in 1774, was one of several Nuns who claimed to see visions of the Passion. To use her visions — not her “research” mind you, but her visions — as a historical source isn’t any more legitimate than using Elijah Muhammed’s visions for a film about Mohammed’s life.

Among the long list of apparent errors in Gibson’s script — according to Fredriksen — is his much-hyped use of apparently authentic Latin, when Greek would have been the language of choice. She also has a fascinating discussion of how crucifixion was employed solely by the Romans and there is little reason to believe that if “the Jews” wanted Jesus dead that he would have been crucified.

For the record, Ms. Fredriksen was a member of a group of sholars who were shown a copy of the script. She’s identified as “the Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University and the author of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews (Vintage), a historical study of the last twelve hours of Jesus’s life.” There’s a lot of tick-tock about how she got the scrip and how Gibson’s lawyers threatened sue and so on too. Anyway, if it’s up on the web I’ll let you know.