When Jesus identifies his betrayer in the movie, Judas resists. “I will not,” he says through gritted teeth to Jesus, who is holding a piece of bread to Judas’ mouth. “I will not betray you.” Jesus leans in closer and says, “do it quickly,” as he inserts the bread into Judas’ mouth. When Peter tries to prevent Judas from leaving, Jesus orders him to let Judas go.
To judge from the controversy sparked by early screenings of Russell Crowe’s Noah, Hollywood directors walk on thin ice when they start tinkering with the details of the Bible for the sake of a movie.
Son of God, a movie about the life of Jesus Christ, has met with a better reception from Christians in part because producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey worked assiduously to enlist the support of religious leaders and denominations through events such as private screenings of The Bible, the History Channel miniseries that gave rise to the new movie.
“Roma and I are praying that this movie will be a blessing for the church,” Burnett said in a promotional video for the movie. “We sincerely hope it will lead to many having a deeper relationship with Christ.” In an earlier interview about the miniseries, Downey acknowledged that they “breathed creative expansion” while portraying the Bible stories. At the same time, they turned to prominent pastors such as Joel Osteen and Rick Warren for theological advice.
The “creative expansion” resulted in some decisions at odds with mainstream Christians throughout the history of the church. It’s not simply that Burnett and Downey changed the story (there is a long tradition in Christian writing of expanding or abridging biblical stories to make a given point, such as the Old English poemGenesis B’s sympathetic portrait of Eve). Son of God gives oxygen to a claim that early church leaders denounced as historically and theologically false because it contradicts the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life. The movie’s portrayal of Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples creates the impression that Jesus ordered Judas to betray him.
They aren’t the first to do that. An ancient Gnostic sect known as the Cainites honored traditional villains such as Cain and Judas, praising the latter as the closest confidant of Jesus, according to the second-century church father Irenaeus of Lyons.
“They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion,” Irenaeus wrote in his book Against Heresies. “They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.”
That Cainite text made international headlines when the National Geographic Society unveiled a translation of the text, finding that it “challenges one of the most firmly rooted beliefs in Christian tradition.” The “Gospel of Judas” manuscript dates to 280 A.D., according to a researcher commissioned by the National Geographic Society, and was written in Coptic, the Egyptian language of the time.
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