THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST got it right too. Last week I watched the video: there are two crucifixion close-ups and both clearly show the nails going through the wrists, not the palms. I won't carp about the movie's historical inaccuracies and weirdnesses, since both the book and the movie make clear that the story is just the fantasy of Nikos Kazantzakis. But it's worth noting that, nevertheless, Martin Scorsese did bother to get that crucifixion detail right. I have some other comments that include spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and intend to, don't read the next paragraph.

I'm struck by the "Gnostic" themes taken up in the story, things found particularly in the Nag Hammadi library. The docetic myth, which inverts the traditional meaning of the crucifixion story, is itself inverted to a procosmic stance. And then there's laughing savior on the cross. For both, read The Apocalypse of Peter. Some of the Nag Hammadi texts also make Mary Magdalene a close confidante of Jesus, although not, um, that close (e.g., the Dialogue of the Savior and � the non-Nag Hammadi text in the Berlin Museum � the Gospel of Mary). The theme of the "holy whore" also appears: see for example The Thunder: Perfect Mind. I don't think Kazantzakis could have read all these in 1955 when the book was published, but perhaps he picked up on descriptions of similar heretical ideas criticized at length in the Church Fathers. Or maybe he just had Gnostic revelatory fantasies. If you're interested in this stuff, you should invest in James Robinson's (ed.) The Nag Hammadi Library, which translates the texts, and John Dart's The Jesus of Heresy and History (earlier title, The Laughing Savior) which gives a basic, nontechnical and user-friendly introduction to them and their context and implications. Unfortunately the latter is out of print, but you can pick up a used copy from Amazon at the link above. You can read selections from the Nag Hammadi texts, along with lots of other interesting information, at the Gnostic Society Library website.