Newsweek magazine has launched a frontal attack upon Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," but the real target of the magazine's article is the truthfulness of the Bible itself. In "Who Really Killed Jesus?: What History Teaches Us," Newsweek's February 16 cover story, writer Jon Meacham labels Gibson's movie "controversial," "powerful" and "troubling." More seriously, he blasts the movie as anti-Semitic and potentially dangerous. Newsweek raises the specter of a new wave of anti-Semitism spreading across the world, directly due to the influence of "The Passion of the Christ."

The movie is to be released February 25, Ash Wednesday. According to Meacham, the movie, "is already provoking a pitched battle between those who think the film unfairly blames the Jewish people for Jesus' death and those who are instead focused on Gibson's emotional depiction of Jesus' torment." Meacham conceives that Gibson "obviously reveres the Christ of faith" and then criticizes Gibson for "a literal-minded rendering of the most dramatic passages scattered throughout the four Gospels."

Why would Meacham be surprised that Gibson turned to the Bible as the historical source for his movie? According to Newsweek, the Bible is simply not to be trusted. Mincing no words, Meacham describes the Bible as "a problematic source." In his words: "Though countless believers take it as the immutable word of God, Scripture is not always a faithful record of historical events; the Bible is the product of human authors who were writing at particular times and places with particular points to make and visions to advance."

Making this argument, Meacham reflects the trend of liberal biblical scholarship over the last half century. In the wake of the Holocaust and with the rise of modern sensitivities, liberal biblical critics have sought to distance themselves from the clear teachings of the Gospels. Furthermore, they have increasingly lambasted the Gospels as unreliable, anti-Semitic, and largely fictional accounts intended to justify the early church's separation from Judaism.

Beyond this, such scholars argue that the Gospels have themselves fueled anti-Semitism throughout European history, and that a literal presentation of the biblical material is inherently dangerous.

In the magazine's opening pages, editor Mark Whitaker justifies the cover story by claiming that "The Passion of the Christ" raises "disturbing questions" about who killed Christ. Pressing his point, Whitaker argues that Gibson blames the Jews of Jerusalem, rather than the Roman leadership, for the death of Christ. In Whitaker's words, "we thought it was worth a clear-eyed review of the evidence."

Unfortunately, Newsweek offered anything but a "clear-eyed review of the evidence." Instead, the magazine took the opportunity to continue the slander of anti-Semitism against the Gospels and to fuel the very passions the magazine condemned.