Keep The Faith

Having done his faith proud with Christ story The Passion Mel Gibson is clearly filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to wade back in with a follow-up theological opus. Or, put another way, having pocketed more money from his film than any one person could possibly know what to do with, old Mel has realised there's a big sack of cash to be made by giving biblical tales the Hollywood treatment. Talking on a radio show this week Gibson declared his intention to attempt an adaptation of the story of the Maccabees. 'The who?' You say. No, not The Who, the Maccabees. We'll forgive you for not having more then a passing familiarity with this particular tale seeing as it doesn't actually appear in the Bible itself, either Old or New Testament. The story concerns a family of Kohanim (that's Jewish high priests to you) who organized a rebellion against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and managed to reconsecrate the defiled temple of Jerusalem. "It's about Antiochus, the king who set up his religion in the Temple, and forced them all to deny the true God and worship at his feet and worship false gods," said Gibson. "The Maccabees family stood up, and they made war, they stuck by their guns, and they came out winning. It's like a Western." While not a direct part of the biblical canon, the story of the Maccabees is actually the basis for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Given the distinctly semitic nature of the tale and its importance to the Jewish religion, the cynical among you might presume this is a cunning way to deflect the accusations of anti-semitism that have sprung up in the wake of The Passion. But, with guerrilla fighters, running battles through the Jerusalem streets and an unlikely underdog triumphing against overwhelming odds, the film definitely has all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster.