GARY LEUPP has e-mailed a reply to my comments on his Counterpunch essay on Mel Gibson and The Passion. He writes:

Jim Davila posted my Counterpunch on the controversy surrounding �The Passion� on this site, generally praising it (thanks, Jim) but indicating that he had �serious problems� with three points in particular. I�d like to briefly respond to those below, at his invitation.

8. Mel Gibson is a devout, if dissident, Catholic. Anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, and accused of hostility to feminists and gays, Gibson is no model of tolerance.

Davila found this unfair, and on reflection I basically accept the criticism. Being anti-abortion or pro-death penalty is not to lack tolerance but merely to have an opinion. And I don�t know how Gibson relates to feminists and gays in his personal life. Feminists and gays have criticized aspects of some of his films (for example, the depiction of the homosexual relationship between the prince and his lover/advisor in Braveheart, and its impact on his princess-bride, although I personally have no problem with it). What I wanted to say is that Gibson is associated with conservative views that are in fact held by many anti-Semites, and for the ADL or anyone else to be concerned about his intentions in his film is thus especially understandable.

11. Objective historians consider the "real" history underlying the Passion storyline unclear. Most concede (although some scholars contest this) that there was a Jewish man living in the Roman province of Judea in the early first century CE who, killed ca. 30, became an object of worship of the Christian faith.

Davila says he knows �of no living, serious scholar in historical Jesus studies (and by �serious� I mean people who publish in the major peer-review journals and present papers at the major conferences) who holds the view that Jesus never existed�. If Professor Leupp has specific people in mind, I'd be interested in hearing names and references.�

First of all, my piece, appearing on a political website, was not intended as a thoroughly scholarly discussion, which I (as a Japan historian) am not best-qualified to produce. My point was to encourage a dispassionate approach to the question of Jesus and his representation by people holding different points of view. In that context, I think it was reasonable to include the parenthetical note that not all scholars concede Jesus� historicity. I did not specify that I referred to contemporary, peer-reviewed scholars. But Albert Schweitzer was surely a �scholar,� and he wrote that the Jesus who said he was the Messiah and preached the kingdom of heaven upon earth �never had any existence.� G. A. Wells (who is, whatever else, surely a scholar) in several works challenges the thesis that a Jesus remotely similar to the figure in the Gospels ever existed. One may dispute their scholarship, and it isn�t my point to uphold it. (My own view is more along the lines of Crossan�s.) But the alternative to expressing myself as I did would be to say, �All scholars agree that there was a Jesus such as is depicted in the Gospels.�

32. This concept of a god undergoing a horrible death, descending to the netherworld, the rising from the dead, offering salvation to humankind (or to select believers), is not unique to Christianity but occurs in other religions once popular in the Middle East. The Babylonian god Tammuz (earlier, the Sumerian god Dimmuzi) rises from the dead, due to the actions of the goddess Ishtar, on the third day.

Davila says the Sumerian god was not the object of a resurrection cult. But it�s my understanding that his cult led to that of Tammuz, who was dead & resurrected. A scholar of classical Egypt wrote me in response to that piece that �one might make the case that� the dead-god-rising �is the standard pattern,� listing also the cults of Adonis and Antinous. I happily leave the details to specialists. My modest point (which I think Christians in particular need to hear) is that the death and resurrection drama is not unique to their faith and that the latter may have borrowed from pre-Christian cults.

I�m glad these issues are being debated on this site. Gary Leupp

I am grateful to Professor Leupp for taking the time to write this response. I concur that it is very much a mainstream view, although certainly not a universal one, that the historical Jesus wasn't remotely similar to the Christ of faith in the Gospels. My understanding is that it has also been called into question whether the Tammuz and Adonis cults involved resurrection (see Jonathan Smith's article in my previous post). But I am assured in an e-mail by someone who knows about such things that the dying and rising god category is still of some use as an interpretive construct. I should mention also that some people think that the ancient Davidic king may have engaged in a cultic drama of dying and rising at the annual enthronement festival (and I think this is a real possibility, although not one that can be proved with the current data). Since elements of the early Jesus movement used the Davidic royal tradition as a template for understanding Jesus, one could make a similar argument using it.

Thanks again, Gary.