One thought on The Passion of the Christ. I was following some of the discussion here (incidentally, one of my fav sites for just good ald fashioned arguing) about the depiction of Jesus suffering in the film and its meaning. However, the debate about the extent of physical/spiritual pain Jesus experienced seems to me to miss one of the more important things shown both in the gospel accounts as well as in Gibson's movie. That would be shame/dishonor. For ancient peoples the suffering of complete loss of honor was, without a doubt, the single worst thing that could happen. Honor is, for those who don't remember earlier discussions on this, a socially acknowledged claim to worth. In the passion story, the mocking, the beating and ultimately the killing of Jesus were done to destroy his "honor rating" so to speak. This could be demonstrated in virtually any event in the passion story, but one coming to mind right now is the taunt of Jesus on the cross, "If you are the son of god, why don't you come down?" This taunt is an attempt at repudiating Jesus claims about himself. Also, suffering a shameful death was, quite literally, the ultimate evil that could befall someone since there was no chance of that person regaining his or her honor.

For further reading, let me suggest Jerome Neyrey's fine book, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew.