TORY MP ANN WIDDECOMBE LOSES THE PLOT: Mark Goodacre has noted her New Statesman article "Why the Jews are wrong", on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and commented on some of the rather serious problems in it. This paragraph also stands out to me (my emphasis):

If I thought there was a current of anti- Semitism in the film I would not take this attitude, but there is not. Short of pretending that the events took place somewhere other than the Holy Land and that the Sanhedrin was not a Jewish court, it is difficult to see how Gibson could give the Jews a fairer deal. He is much harsher on the Romans who, laughing and gloating, inflict the brutality; stresses that Christ himself was a Jew and omits from the subtitles the most damning line of all: "His blood be on us and on our children."

How about by leaving out the fantasy material from the Emmerich visions? And he could even have left out altogether that "most damning line of all" (most damning to whom?) from Matthew's Gospel, which almost certainly was made up by the writer of Matthew. (But it's in the Bible! How could he have left it out? Well, for starters, Mark, Luke, and John did.) As for the omitting of the subtitle, want to make any bets on how long it takes for the line to be added back in when the subtitles are retranslated into other languages? I haven't seen the movie yet and I don't know whether I'll think it's anti-Semitic, but I know that those two things are there.

Also, Ms. Widdecombe doesn't seen to have heard that the Vatican denies that the Pope said "It is as it was."

(Weirdly, the New Statesman site let me through to the article the first time I hit the link, but now it's demanding either a subscriber ID or some money. It just did the same thing with my other browser. Looks like you get one free shot at it per browser; make the most of it.)

UPDATE (7 April): Mark Goodacre replies:

On Jim's other point, about Catherine Emmerich's visions, I think the key question is whether the ones that are used are themselves anti-Jewish. In other words, was the film itself influenced by her anti-Semitism? William Fulco (translator and theological consultant) and Benedict Fitzgerald (co-screenwriter) emphatically deny this (see the blog entry on this). I think there may be grounds for their denial. I have recently begun reading Catherine Emmerich's Dolorous Passion and was particularly struck by the similarities and differences between her depiction and the film's depiction of Simon of Cyrene. It is clear that the film is influenced by Emmerich at this point, specifically Simon's exhorting the soldiers to leave Jesus alone, but crucially where Emmerich clearly depicts Simon as a pagan, Gibson insists that this heroic figure was a Jew

How about the following from the Beliefnet article linked to above?

Payment to people to come to courtyard
Bible references: Matthew 26:59-60
In the movie but not the Bible: In a very brief scene, money is seen changing hands, with the implication that people are being paid to testify against Jesus. This probably refers to Matthew 26, which says "The chief priests and the entire Sanhedrin kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus in order to put him to death." But no money is mentioned in the gospels.

Other sources: "The Dolorous Passion" says "The High Priests now sent for those whom they knew to be the most bitterly opposed to Jesus, and desired them to assemble the witnesses ...The proud Sadducees ...whom Jesus had so often reproved before the people, were actually dying for revenge. They hastened to all the inns to seek out those persons whom they knew to be enemies of our Lord, and offered them bribes in order to secure their appearance."

Also, what about that episode where Jesus is thrown off the bridge by the crowd who arrested him (which crowd, according to the Gospels, came from the Jewish chief priests and elders [e.g., Mark 14:43])?

Mark (Goodacre) also says he couldn't hear the blood libel line from Matthew in the movie. As I said, I haven't seen it yet; I was going by what all the reports said. If they are wrong, someone please correct me. If it's there at all, even if it can't be heard very well, some other translator is likely to know about it and add the subtitle.

UPDATE: Aramaist Ed Cook e-mails:

With reference to your note, "Mark also says he couldn't hear the blood libel line from Matthew in the movie." I heard it; Caiaphas speaks it, in Aramaic, in the middle of a throng yelling "Let him be crucified!" (yitstalev), so it's easy to miss. There was no subtitle. Do the foreign versions make their translations from the English subtitles (as I think likely) or do they translate them directly from the soundtrack? If the latter, do they include some of the Latin by-play among the soldiers at the scourging, which also wasn't subtitled?

As far as I know there are no translations of the subtitles yet. When someone gets around to them I don't know how they will proceed. I am just confident that if ideological anti-Semites know that the blood libel line is there in the Aramaic, they will be sure to include in their translation, no matter what the English subtitles say.

Incidentally, if it's Caiaphas saying the line, that's an important departure from Matthew 27:25, which has "all the people" saying it. Instead of being an impulsive cry by a riotous crowd, it becomes a statement by the high priest himself.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre comments on my updates of today. I think I'll just summarize my point in response to Widdecombe: Gibson could have "give[n] the Jews a fairer deal" by not adding Emmerich's embellishments that show Jews bribing witnesses and brutalizing Jesus beyond the NT descriptions and by leaving out the blood libel line from Matthew. As to whether that line gets translated in new subtitles, no one would be happier than I to have my fears turn out to be groundless. If anyone sees a version with translated subtitles, please let me know what it does with Caiaphas' line.