I’m not even religious, I just want to know.
The Prince of Egypt isn’t a Christian movie, it’s Jewish. It’s literally from the old testament, the book of Exodus.
I don’t care if you’re religious or not, stop helping the Christians appropriate my culture.
You’re a bit late on that one - that particular appropriation happened 2000 years ago.
While you’re here, though, can your recommend any good Jewish religious movies?
They end up mostly being Holocaust movies for obvious reasons, but my personal favs are The Pianist and Fiddler.
Judaism doesn’t have exclusive ownership over the old testament. They are an important part of the Christian canon too.
Heck, you don’t even give enough of a shit to refer to the scripture by the Jewish name. If you really cared perhaps you should start by calling it the Torah, the name “old testament” is nonsensical when you remove the new testament.
You should stop complaining about people “appropriating” your culture when you’re already giving it away freely anyways.
What a strangely aggressive take. The old testament in Christianity is more equivalent to the Tanakh in Judaism, of which the Torah is a part. The film tells the story of one of the highest of high holidays in all of Judaism, so it does make sense to call it a Jewish movie first and foremost.
After all calling a Christmas movie Jewish just because Jesus was a Jew would be silly.
He started out as aggressive. Christians aren’t appropriating Jewish culture lol. Also OP watch Martin Scorsese’s movies as they all have Catholic themes.
I found awsamation’s appeal to emotion specifically to be a bit aggressive, which is why I had decided to respond.
Messianic Judaism and the concept of celebrating Pesach and Yom Kippur as Christians are examples of Jewish appropriation. In general, I see much less straight appropriation these days, and much more the concept that we should rejoice that Judaism doesn’t have to exist anymore as Christianity is Judaism v2, which only serves to erase Jewish culture.
I didn’t make any appeals to emotion, I just pointed out their own hypocrisy. If you want people to believe that you actually think Jewish culture is being appropriated by Christianity, the very least you need to do is not use Christian terminology when there exists widely known Jewish terminology for the same thing. If you don’t know enough about Judaism to know the name Torah, then you have no right to complain about the interaction between Christianity and Judaism.
And of course Christianity believes that Judaism is unnecessary now. Just like Mormons believe the Christianity is unnecessary because they have the v3 update. It doesn’t erase Judaism, heck the thing that started this whole thread was the fact that Jewish scripture is included directly in the Bible. The old testament stories are the same either way. The only difference is whether you believe that Jesus was the savior who fulfilled the law and brought the new law, or if you believe that the messiah hasn’t come yet. But those stories still point to a future savior.
Responding to everything here so that we’re not bouncing between 2 different threads.
Appeal to emotion – “Heck, you don’t even give enough of a shit to refer to the scripture by the Jewish name. If you really cared perhaps you should start by calling it the Torah, the name ‘old testament’ is nonsensical when you remove the new testament.” The language you used implies they don’t care about the argument and that the lack of care is what counteracts an argument instead of facts.
Perpetuating the “Judaism is unnecessary now” narrative is part of what breeds antisemitism and makes for more hate crimes. Jews are literally seen as “Christ-killers”, and therefore literal murderers of God, in many Christian communities. This lead to normalized persecution of Jews over the course of the last 1500 years. The whole of Catholicism/Christianity is much larger than just the Mormon community, so it tends to have much more of an impact. Look up Jewish Decide for more info.
While I agree that the “Old Testament” is meaningless in relation to Judaism, you’re trying to pick apart an argument on semantics which didn’t sit right with me. Why not demand that Exodus be called Shemot? That is the proper Judaic term after all. Exodus technically refers to the Old Testament.
As for the Christmas reference – literally replace ‘the birth of Christ’ with ‘the story of Passover’. Sure it’s something that Christians learn about, but it’s not something seen as Holy as it is in Judaism. The vast majority of Christians do not really celebrate Passover, just as Jews don’t celebrate Christ or Christmas.
The language you used implies they don’t care about the argument and that the lack of care is what counteracts an argument instead of facts.
I only threw in that line as counter to their closing sentence of “stop helping the Christians appropriate my culture.” I find it hard to believe that this supposed Christian appropriation actually bothers them very much if they themselves default to the Christian terminology. If you insist on calling my argument an appeal to emotion, then I will insist that I was only countering their prior appeal to emotion.
Perpetuating the “Judaism is unnecessary now” narrative is part of what breeds antisemitism and makes for more hate crimes.
By that same logic, every single religion in the world perpetuates hate crimes against every single other religion. The Judaism/Christianity relationship isn’t special because literally every religion that isn’t Judaism inherently includes the idea that Judaism is unnecessary. Just the same as how Judaism inherently includes the belief that every religion except Judaism is unnecessary.
Why not demand that Exodus be called Shemot?
Because prior to this interaction, I (a Christian) have no recollection of ever hearing the term Shemot before. If they had called it Shemot that would’ve been even better. But as it stands, the term Torah is very basic in the context of understanding Jewish terminology
Sure it’s something that Christians learn about, but it’s not something seen as Holy as it is in Judaism. The vast majority of Christians do not really celebrate Passover, just as Jews don’t celebrate Christ or Christmas.
That all comes down to the difference in their views of Christ. If you believe that Christ was not the messiah, then you have no real reason to celebrate him. If you do believe that Christ was the messiah, then you have incentive to celebrate important events in his life and less incentive to celebrate the feasts which were only instituted in order to point to him.
Why would I celebrate the passover, a feast that points to the sacrifice of the coming messiah, when I could just celebrate the life of that messiah instead.
I think the best comparison I can think of is something like world war 2. We don’t celebrate D day, or the battle fo the bulge, or the battle of Midway. Because instead we can celebrate remembrance day. Why celebrate every major battle when you could celebrate them all at once in the winning of the war?
Or if you’re Jewish, you celebrate those battles because you don’t believe the war is over yet.
I appreciate you, I actually didn’t know that set of books could be referred to as the Tanakh. I knew calling it the Torah would be a bit of an overstep.
Even if Christians claim it as part of their religion and have been appropriating it for “2000 years”, it’s still neither right nor accurate. I view it as further attempts to make Christianity seem more like the right choice and ease conversion for Jews which really really REALLY bothers me. It’s right up there with calling Jews white. We’re not.
Whether we’re white or not depends on how convenient it is for someone else 🤣
I live in a very Jew-friendly area so thankfully nobody’s attempting outright conversions, but there’s always the consistent commentary of Christianity being the default that just hits be the wrong way.
The important detail isn’t which exact term for Jewish scripture will most closely match the old testament in Christianity. The important detail is that “old testament” as a name is meaningless in reference to Jewish scripture, because the term only has meaning if you consider the new testament as equally valid scripture.
So they’re arguing that referring to Moses in a Christian context is “appropriating” Jewish culture, while doing the exact same thing themselves in the exact same comment. If they actually cared at all they’d have known that using any Jewish name for the scripture would’ve served their point better than “old testament”.
As for the Christmas thing, it doesn’t make sense to call a Christmas movie Jewish because if you actually follow Judaism then the birth of Christ isn’t something worth celebrating to you. Any Christ as the savior narrative goes directly against what Judaism believes about Christ. And any Christmas movie without Christ as a savior narrative, might as well be considered non-religious.
Appropriation is very much a Christian context - you guys are the original Microsoft taking everything from somewhere else and then literally trying to extinguish the competition.
The Torah being referred to as old testament happens because otherwise you end up with confounded looks by Christians who can’t seem to grasp that religion is diverse and older than 2000 years or so.
That explanation would’ve been a lot more convincing if it was included before I called them out for using the Christian name.
“They used the Christian name because otherwise nobody would’ve understood” sounds a lot like a desperate attempt to cover for having a Christian show them up about knowing the basic terminology of Judaism while they complain about Christians “appropriating their culture”.
A culture which by the way, Christians have just as much claim to. And Muslims as well. Turns out that all of the Abrahamic religions actually have a legitimate claim to these scriptures.
Whataboutism won’t save you.
Which is why that potential whataboutism was only one sentence tacked onto the end of my comment, while the rest of my comment was a direct rebuttal.
Only focusing on the easiest points to argue against won’t save you.
The Ten Commandments was good for it’s Era. The original Ben Hur as well. These days conservative targeting films pander too hard and general audiences don’t like them.
Was coming here to basically say this, that religious epics were once a source of great filmmaking in classic Hollywood.
Dogma is a really good movie with a Christian theme. Good Omens is a great series with Christian themes though it’s more atheist in it’s message than Dogma.
I’ve been reading about the history of early Christianity, before there was an official New Testament and what people believed was a bit more chaotic with a lot more of what we would call takes on Christianity flying about - that’s why I love things like Dogma and Good Omens. To my mind they aren’t being disrespectful, they’re just interpreting what Christianity is and where it comes from, and why it’s important.
That’s why George Carlin’s priest is such an idiot - he’s not interested in belief, he’s interested in golf and his own ego, and becomes a sinner with his whole buddy Christ idol anyway (which is one of the funniest things Smith ever created!)
I’d definitely have to add Life Of Brian to the trinity of comedies that handle religious themes respectfully but well. So many underrated lines - “he is the real Messiah, and I should know, I’ve followed a few!”
Oh yeah definitely Life of Brian too, good eye.
It was hilarious that Kevin Smith protested his own movie.
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Some of the veggitales bits were legit funny. I never saw passion of the Christ but I’ve heard people say it was well done at least.
The Passion of Christ is basically gore and I hated it. The hyper focus on Jesus’s suffering instead of focusing on his message is a huge problem in Christianity in my opinion. It’s had this bizarre tendency to normalize abuse in the name of one of the most loving human beings ever to walk the planet.
I 100% understand an emphasis on the suffer of Christ as a personal meditation on the nature of suffering and how we relate to God in our suffering. But the kind of glorification of the torture of Jesus that is common in a lot of Christianity is really twisted.
Yeah it’s a real extreme-Catholic/Orthodox thing to focus on the blood and pain I think. Catholic art, especially those little wax icons tends to show more of the blood running from the wounds on the cross. Mel Gibson is one of those extremists, hence his barely concealed antisemitism.
That shit is rampant among American evangelicals as well. Just Calvinism and puritanism at their worst
Huh, maybe it’s all Christians then… I don’t know I started to get the feeling like I wanted to explore more about faith (I’m a permanently wavering agnostic) and started reading the New Testament. And very early on in Matthew Jesus says something along the lines of don’t pray in front of all the others in the temple to show off how holy you are but do it in private. And that line of thinking inevitably leads to questioning the need for a church
Of course it was St Paul and not Jesus who formalised things a bit more.
Spotlight
To add a more recent film to those on the list, Silence (2016). It deals with Catholic missionaries in Japan during the years of the Shogunate. It asks questions about the moral dilemmas of faith and sacrifice, and is pretty dark, both in theme and cinematography (the colour palette of the movie is very very grey) which isn’t something a lot of modern Christian films ask or do.
Some great performances from Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson and Adam Driver.
Passion of the Christ was the first thing that came to mind. Surprised no one else mentioned it. Is it not considered good?
Just gonna copy/paste my response to another comment in this thread:
The Passion of Christ is basically gore and I hated it. The hyper focus on Jesus’s suffering instead of focusing on his message is a huge problem in Christianity in my opinion. It’s had this bizarre tendency to normalize abuse in the name of one of the most loving human beings ever to walk the planet.
I 100% understand an emphasis on the suffer of Christ as a personal meditation on the nature of suffering and how we relate to God in our suffering. But the kind of glorification of the torture of Jesus that is common in a lot of Christianity is really twisted.
And I’m a film buff. I love art house shit and I hated that movie
Well, let me ask you: is it good? Is it? Good?
“Hey guys, let’s put on a movie!”
“Sure! What should we watch?”
“I don’t know. Something good.”
“Say no more…”
I mean… I personally didn’t care for it, but then I usually have the exact opposite taste in films as the film buffs so…
I think Dude Where’s My Car is a good movie. I think Citizen Kane is boring as fuck. See what I mean here? lol
Star wars is pretty good, even if it’s for kids
Hah. Gotem.
Seriously tho there are Christian religious references in tons of movies. The matrix trilogy could be considered Christian if we push enough.
Even more explicit is the original Tron movie. You have a created world where the programs (created beings) exist only to serve their users (gods). A rebel program (the MCP - a fallen angel/Satan) is taking over and denying the existence or users, but some remain faithful. The scene where Tron gets to an I/O port is a prayer in a temple. The MCP is only defeated when Flynn, the User, becomes incarnated in that world and lays down his “life” for the sake of all the faithful programs.
Is that myrrh you’re smelling
Not sure if it counts but Kingdom of Heaven is a fantastic movie. But I think it fits the letter of your question, but not the spirit.
The Exorcist holds up pretty well
The Last Temptation of Christ is probably the best I’ve seen. 1988, directed by Martin Scorsese with Willem Dafoe as Christ as Harvey Keitel as Judas. It was nominated for Best Director at the Oscars.
Be warned - it’s not your standard Christian film, and is R rated for a reason.
Details on the film, and here are details on the novel that inspired it by Nikos Kazantzakis.
Yep, it’s not “canon”, but it’s an interesting take.
Damn, Willem Dafoe went deep.
Probably the best performance of his career, IMHO.
My wife has seen more so here’s her recommendations for Christian movies that are good movies.
“Joseph, king of dreams” is pretty good for a Christian movie.
“Fireproof” made her cry, not specifically a kids movie, she says it was a great romantic movie.
She’s seen a bunch and those are the only two (three, with Prince of Egypt) she’d actually recommend to people, although she hasn’t seen all of them.
I love the song Joseph sings while in prison in “King of Dreams”.
I haven’t seen Fireproof. Will have to check it out.
Try King David with Richard Gere — yes it’s Old Testament, but an interesting take on the story.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a nice riff on the story of Christ, believe it or not. The 1972 movie is very well done and captures the time when it was made.
And for a nice allegory about Christ, try Jesus of Montreal.
Ben Hur is an obvious choice? Why has nobody said this one? It’s one of the most famous movies of all time and overtly religious.
This is a really good movie by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The life of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew. Pasolini shows Christ as a Marxist avant-la-lettre and therefore uses half of the text of Matthew. Il vangelo secondo Matteo
