Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh has made a movie about Jesus, THE MESSIAH. It is his feature film directorial debut, and was shown at the Religion Today Film Festival 18 October 2007, in Rome, Italy. This is a festival sponsored by the Roman Catholic Vatican and the movie won an award for generating interfaith dialogue. I have not seen the movie, but researched it and used the interview of the filmmaker by Lara Setrakian, which is posted on abcnews.com.
Nader's Arian Jesus. How anthropologists think Jesus looked.
I shall refer to the filmmaker as Nader, because the last name is hard to pronounce and cumbersome to spell. Nader was born in Iran, educated in the U.S. and has spent the last two decades living in both the U.S. and Iran. See a short biography.
THE MESSIAH (or the festival title JESUS, THE SPIRIT OF GOD, Iran, 2007), is being trumpeted as the answer to Mel Gibson's PASSION OF THE CHRIST. That it is not.
It is a depiction of Jesus from the perspective of Nader's interpretation of the Koran (Qur'an), and what he thinks he knows about Christianity. The plot of the movie is, as is Jesus in the Koran, a rewrite of New Testament teachings and, therefore, most Christians will dismiss it immediately as blasphemous.
To start with, the movie follows the writings in the Koran, which state that Jesus was not the Son of God, and that he was not crucified. I have read some of the Koran, and it is my understanding that Muslims do believe in angels, especially Gabriel and Michael, and the virgin birth, but in the movie Mary gives birth alone under an olive tree, not in a Bethlehem stable under a bright Eastern star. However, in some of the portions of the Koran I have read, some of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are distorted in the Koran, at least in the English translation that I have.
They honor Mary and revere Jesus, always muttering, "Blessings be upon his name," each time they say the name of Jesus, just as they do when they say the names of Abraham, Moses, Mohammed, and esteemed Old Testament prophets. They believe Jesus was a prophet, but Mohammed was the greatest prophet of all.
Muslims consider Jesus to be the last great Jewish prophet. According to Nader, Jesus was not crucified. It never happened because Jesus was, " A beautiful man, a beautiful prophet. Why should he be bloodied that way?"
Muslims believe Jesus descended into Heaven, but he was still alive and it was during the Last Supper, which matches the movies' plot. The Koran says the one who betrayed Jesus was crucified instead and, according to Nader, Muslims assume that someone was Judas Iscariot.
Nader has a point about Jesus being a "beautiful person," but he is completely ignoring the Christian scriptures and what is known historically about crucifixions under Roman law. That law was absolute in all things and every prelate, including Pontius Pilot, was bound to follow that law. Even if Jesus was a homosexual, as some have alleged, that would not have been just cause for crucifixion under Roman law. Sexuality was not a problem under Roman law, or in Roman society in general.
Also, the Romans worshipped many gods, and it is doubtful they were concerned about the god the Jews worshipped. They were, however, concerned about keeping the civil peace, and the Jews were upset and close to rioting over an insignificant carpenter from Nazareth, who supposedly claimed he was the son of the Jewish god.
That in itself was not a problem, but it led to a bigger problem. If the claim turned out to be true that would make him the Jewish Messiah, and would mean trouble. The Jews believed the Messiah's purpose was to free them from Roman rule as Moses had freed the people from Egypt, and the Messiah would be the King of the Jews.
Thus, King Herod could have instigated against Jesus with the charge that Jesus was proclaiming himself King of the Jews, an act of treason. Herod could have been behind the mob action against Jesus. Here, Gibson would have been portraying the situation fairly accurately.
Pilot would have been bound by Roman law to order the crucifixion on the grounds of a conspiracy to overthrow King Herod. A charge for which Jesus had no defense because his disciples fled when confronted by the violent mob.
According to the New Testament, "King of the Jews" was on the sign hung above Jesus' head on the cross, the reason for the crown of thorns, and the mockery of the crowd. Treason is always a serious charge in any country, usually demanding the death penalty. So, it is not difficult to conclude that Jesus was crucified because he was branded a traitor against King Herod and, therefore, Rome.
Was the crucifixion God's plan? Only God knows. If not, why didn't God rescue Jesus? Even Jesus asked God why he was forsaken.
There was a professor at Boston University School of Theology, whose name I can't remember at the moment, who drew an analogy that has always stayed with me: If I get in my car and drive well over the speed limit, lose control of my car, go off the highway and hit a tree, should I cry to God because he didn't move the tree?
Most of us know the motor vehicle laws where we live. Most of us know God's laws through study of scriptures, and at least rudimentary scientific laws that govern the universe through the study of science. Jesus lived in a world torn between God's laws and Caesar's laws, as all of us still do.
He even admonished, "Render unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's." In the end, Jesus was rendered unto Caesar. I think theological answer is that God did not intervene, because God would not break the established order of His universe, even for his own Son.
According to the New Testament, "King of the Jews" was on the sign hung above Jesus' head on the cross, the reason for the crown of thorns, and the mockery of the crowds. Treason is always a serious charge in any country, usually demanding the death penalty. So, it is not difficult to conclude that Jesus was crucified because he was branded a traitor against King Herod and, therefore, Rome.
Now, I know some of my Christian readers may rip me apart about some of this. Some of my Muslim readers may do the same, but before they do, especially Khalid, please try to understand I am writing to try and assist my readers in understanding this clash of these religions.
Nader also bases some of his movie on The Gospel of Barnabas, which was left out of the Christian writings assembled into what is now the New Testament (or, at least mostly so) at Roman Emperor Constantine's Nicene Council (or Council of Nicea) 312 A.D., the sole purpose of which was to unify the various divisions about doctrine within Christianity. Constantine ordered a compilation of certain Christian writings to bring union out of derision, whereby he could justify his decree that all his subjects (pagans) convert to Christianity.
That act legalized Christianity as a religion in the Roman Empire, thus stopping the persecution and killing of those living under Roman rule on the basis of their being a follower of Jesus (e.g., traitors), and provided one statement to which all Christians would be required to swear, The Nicene Creed.
The Nicene / Nicean Creed affirms the Trinity - God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, all in one. The Barnabas Gospel, or at least what is evidently left of it and can be read or downloaded at barnabas.net, does not support the Trinity. Barnabas knew Jesus, traveled with Paul, but split with him because of those who were, ". . . preaching most impious doctrine, calling Jesus son of God, repudiating the circumcision ordained of God forever, and permitting every unclean meat: among whom also Paul hath been deceived."
In other words, Barnabas was among the Jewish Christians based in Jerusalem, and Paul was not, although he was a Jewish Rabbi. The Jerusalem group, headed by Peter, required the keeping of Kosher laws. Paul tried to enter the Jerusalem group, but was snubbed, so he discarded the Kosher laws and directed his mission toward the gentiles, i.e., pagans. Paul's power base was the pagans and his mission was to convert them, as was Constantine's.
The movie, if ever shown in the U.S., will definitely generate a dialogue, but it may not be a constructive one. It will be adapted into a television series to be shown on Iranian TV later this year, and will probably prove to be popular there as few Iranians have read the Judeo - Christian Bible, as few Christians have read the Koran.
Personally, it struck me that outside the Iranian connection, my bio reads much like Nader's, albeit they are approximately 20 years apart. I was born 23 December, and I, too, received a B.A. in English (mine in English Literature) from American University. I lived and taught school in Virginia for about 10 years, my youngest daughter being born there. I attended and taught in film school, but at the University of Southern California, having received a M.A. in Communication at the University of Central Florida with a thesis relating to the communicative power of film.
I was acquainted with the late Syrian - born producer / director Moustapha Akkah who was killed along with his adult daughter in the suicide bombing of an Amman, Jordan, hotel in September 2005. His daughter graduated from Southern Cal (USC), but after I had left there.
I agree with Nader when he says, "The misunderstanding of the past three decades really burns my heart. There's so much misunderstanding about Islam today. . . . I thought, we should work on talking through something that's much more dear to us than other things. I thought that, through art, you could do a lot more than with the politics."
He states that, "One of those key missing links, that would bind the chain together, is Jesus Christ." My thought on that is, Jesus, yes, but not necessarily Christianity as it exists today. Islam and Christianity are two individually entrenched religions. It is more than a split over the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity, and I don't see another Emperor Constantine on the horizon who can join the two.
