Redemption
Picking up Mark's comment in a thread below is this interesting panel discussion in today's Tennessean with some church leaders and others who saw the Gibson movie, including songwriter Kyle Matthews, who I thought had the most interesting point, and I've only just now noticed that the best part, the last sentence that puts the fine point on it, was edited out of the print edition.

"Matthews: Mel Gibson has always made religious movies. They've just been about the religion of salvation through vengeance and violence. If you take any one of them—The Patriot or Braveheart or Lethal Weapon or Ransom — the theme is the same. At the beginning of every film, something really beyond the pale is done to the most innocent person in the story. Something that's so awful that for the rest of the movie, the main character can enact any kind of horrible violence, blow up everything and everybody, tenfold of what was done in the beginning. And you will cheer because it has been warranted and we are saved through violence. The Passion is different, in that Jesus never loses consciousness. Jesus never really cries out. He bears up under what I thought was unreal suffering. My concern is, how can you build a career and make millions of dollars on the religion of redemptive violence and retribution, and then suddenly make a film about redemptive sacrifice?"

Making that point a bit larger, isn't that the concern too of the Jewish community about this film? That the film itself will mark the initial act of horrible violence and filmgoers will be the ones looking for vengeance, violent or otherwise?

Will the point of the film (if it is indeed redemptive sacrifice) be missed? Hmmm, by Christians?