August 26, 2004
The Passion of the Christ
The passion of the Christ was made available to me through innovative Russian technology. From a linguistic point of view I was intrigued, this late on, in my studies in applied linguistics, with Aramaic and Arabic’s use of the same words for the first person singular pronoun – ana. Also the word for yes – aiwa, and the word for no – la, are the same in both languages.
In UAE the Passion of the Christ was a vast hit. From a cultural and historical standpoint it’s easy to see why. Isaac and his half-brother Ishmail were never closer than right now. Between inevitable tears while watching, I had a bit of time to ponder the Aramaic linguistic similarities to Arabic (of what little Arabic I know I mean!), And their closness despite the distance between Muslim and Christian faiths that Sarah herself induced through her impatience with God and the offering of Hagar her concubine to her husband.
The movie struck me as an eerie reminder of just how much the truth of the history recorded in the Bible, and even its fundamental central message – that the forgiveness of sins comes only through the propitiation of the Christ, the son of the living God who sacrificed himself on behalf of all mankind is forgotten or brushed aside and yet nowadays is (almost) fully accepted by all these reloes of Ishmail here.
I was struck with how so much more diluted and filtered and just basically unfamiliar to many the bible has become through hundreds of years of western society insisting that their freedoms be gained in other ways than the biblical freedom offered by the Son of God. Of course, the Prophet Mohamed really, really waters down the Messiah too, doesn't he. What with considering Jesus merely "the Prophet Essa", rather than the son of the living God.
In UAE the Passion of the Christ was a vast hit. From a cultural and historical standpoint it’s easy to see why. Isaac and his half-brother Ishmail were never closer than right now. Between inevitable tears while watching, I had a bit of time to ponder the Aramaic linguistic similarities to Arabic (of what little Arabic I know I mean!), And their closness despite the distance between Muslim and Christian faiths that Sarah herself induced through her impatience with God and the offering of Hagar her concubine to her husband.
The movie struck me as an eerie reminder of just how much the truth of the history recorded in the Bible, and even its fundamental central message – that the forgiveness of sins comes only through the propitiation of the Christ, the son of the living God who sacrificed himself on behalf of all mankind is forgotten or brushed aside and yet nowadays is (almost) fully accepted by all these reloes of Ishmail here.
I was struck with how so much more diluted and filtered and just basically unfamiliar to many the bible has become through hundreds of years of western society insisting that their freedoms be gained in other ways than the biblical freedom offered by the Son of God. Of course, the Prophet Mohamed really, really waters down the Messiah too, doesn't he. What with considering Jesus merely "the Prophet Essa", rather than the son of the living God.
