7. Jahrgang MBS Te x t e 156 2010

John Warwick Montgomery Oberammergau: Passion Play Problems 2010

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Oberammergau: Passion Play Problems 2010...... 3 Annotation...... 6 The Author...... 6 Impressum...... 7

1. Aufl. 2010 Oberammergau: Passion Play Problems 2010

Oberammergau: Passion Play Problems 2010 John Warwick Montgomery

The decennial Passion Play season at Sanhedrin is shown to be a ghastly trav- Oberammergau will soon come to an esty of justice. The text is based chiefly end. Of course this author attended: he on the Gospel of John and its message is a Passion Play groupie, having been is taken with complete seriousness. The present at no less than six productions music is deeply moving and occasion- (1970, 1980, the special anniversary ally (for example, during the tableaux of season in 1984, 1990, 2000, and 2010), Daniel in the lions’ den and the mock- and having shepherded Christian groups ing of Job, and accompanying the Way to three of those productions. In 2000 of the Cross) rises to truely remarkable and 2010, my wife and I attended with heights. So what is the problem? International Academy of Apologetics The actors have a tendency toward colleague Craig Parton and his spouse; histrionics, but that may be inevitable readers of the Global Journal of Classical considering the nature of the produc- Theology (www.phc.edu) will recall Pro- tion. The English translation of the fessor Parton’s article, “Why Liberals German text leaves something to be Didn’t Understand Passion Play 2000” desired: Judas to Jesus: “How are you (Vol. 4, No. 1, February 2004). I myself so peculiar!”; Annas: “How much lon- commented on the 2000 production in ger will you be reluctant to set limits to my Editor’s Introduction to Vol. 2, No. this stream of corruption? It has already 3 (August 200l). My personal library broken through all the dams and like contains the text of the 1900 Passion an all-consuming, wildly foaming flood Play, together with all the versions from is pouring across Judea.” But the real 1930 to the present (there was no Play difficulty comes through the modifica- in 1940, owing to the Second World tions introduced in 2010 into the stan- War). But I shall probably not attend dard text of the Play—by way of both again—and not because I am getting on additions and omissions. in years. True, there has always been a minor On the positive side, the Play sends a degree of tinkering with the text; in clear message (hard to find these days) 2000, for example, efforts (largely that Jesus was indeed God’s Son, the unsuccessful) were made to pre-empt fulfilment of numerous Old Testament criticism of the Play for anti-Semitism types and prophecies, and that his death by toning down some very strong dia- was a divine atonement for the sins of log. But in 2010, the changes are far all mankind. Christ’s trial before the more extreme. Thus:

Pr o m u n d i s 3 John Warwick Montgomery

1) Judas Iscariot is given a far more Pedius: I’d prefer any other kind of prominent place than ever before assignment to this deathwatch the (“Judas before the High Council”— priests have saddled us with. Act III, Scene 4; “Judas Wanders About Aimlessly” and “Judas Demands the Sabinus: Ridiculous, they are even Release of Jesus”—Act VII, Scenes 1 afraid of the dead! and 4). The object is clearly to make Judas a tragic, sympathetic figure; his Titus: Not the dead—they are afraid acceptance of the thirty pieces of sil- of his disciples, that they will steal his ver is seen as essentially an agreement corpse and then start the rumour that to force Jesus into a meeting with the he has risen from the dead. High Council, not a traitorous bargain with Jesus’ enemies. Merely from an aes- Earlier versions of the Play were even thetic point of view, Judas’ monologues stronger; thus, in 1930, the line just are an agonizing distraction from the above reads: overall thrust of the drama. “This Man of Nazareth, so the rumour 2) The Lord’s Supper scene is made more goes, has said that on the third day He narrowly Jewish than before, with Jesus’ would return from the dead; hence the uttering the Verba in Hebrew—doubt- fear.” less to assuage criticisms from Jewish anti-defamation leagues. However, our The 1930 text has the soldiers encoun- Lord spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew; and tering the earthquake, discovering the the 2010 text gives, if anything, a far stone rolled away, and declaring: “He more condemnatory picture of the Jew- must have risen. No man came here. ish religious leadership of the time than So, what the priests most feared has in previous texts (thus, the far more happened! He has fulfilled His word!” colourful and impressive costumes of the High Council, and the overlong A précis of the 1900 Play describes and boring discussions amongst the the scene thus: “A great noise is heard. Jewish religious leadership). The stone at the door of the sepulchre is overturned, the watchmen fall to 3) Most troubling, however, is the trun- the ground, and out of the sepulchre cated treatment of the Resurrection, appears the Saviour, who has overcome constituting the final scene of the Play. death.”1 In previous versions, there was signifi- cant dialog between the Roman soldiers In the 2010 text, the soldiers have guarding the tomb and the women been entirely eliminated and there is arriving there on Easter morning. This no earthquake or appearance of Jesus included (2000) lines such as: from the tomb. A glowing light is intro-

4 MBS Te x t e 156 Oberammergau: Passion Play Problems 2010 duced to symbolise the Resurrection, lowing the closing Resurrection scene! and Jesus simply stands there, saying Our woodcarver also informed us that nothing. The scene is still entitled “The Stueckl the director would have entirely Encounter with the Risen One,” but it eliminated the Resurrection scene had is a minimal encounter to say the least. not the village folk virulently protested So how has this come about? Clearly, a removal of it.) over the years—and particularly in Declares the “theological advisor”: 2010—less and less stress has been “Today’s audience differs from that placed on the factual aspects of the Res- of twenty and even ten years ago. . . . urrection. And in the most recent ver- Thus, in the representation of the suf- sion, there is much attention directed fering and death of Christ the questions to the existential agonies of Judas and of the meaning and future of human dialogistic interplay among the Jew- existence are illuminated in a dramatic ish religious leaders. Answer: modern way.” Last we heard, though audiences German theology raises its ugly head: change, the eternal message of the gos- dialog, Existenz, and subjective impact pel remains the same: “yesterday, today rather than biblical historicity. and forever.” How do we know this? The 2010 play- Concerning the climactic Resurrec- book, supplied to attendees, contains a tion scene, Moedl writes most reveal- Preface2 by “theological advisor of the ingly: “The final scene is also staged in Oberammergau Passion Play 2010,” one a new way. Jesus is laid to rest, but the Prof. Dr Ludwig Moedl, “Spiritual [!] at tomb is not visible. This eliminates hav- the Herzoglichen Georgianum Munich ing to show the guards at the tomb. The and Universitaetsprediger at St. Lud- Risen Lord appears only briefly ... . The wig.” He says of the changes in the text: character of the numinous is conveyed “For the last two seasons passages had through the glowing light, the music, already been revised, and the current and the restrained visual presentation. staging includes entirely new parts of It is, as theology teaches, a mystery of the text, which essentially were written faith.” by Christian Stueckl (director) and Otto Nonsense. Classical theology has Huber (playwright).” (Incidentally, we always taught that the Resurrection was learned from a master woodcarver in the as historical factual and visible as the village that it was Stueckl who insisted, crucifixion. It was the liberal theology against the will of the community, to of Martin Kaehler and the neo-ortho- schedule the Play in the afternoons and doxy of Karl Barth that drove a wedge evenings, instead of the mornings and between ordinary historical events afternoons—thus making it impossible (Historie) and the supernatural events to follow the text after the sun sets and of Christ’s life such as the Resurrection, forcing the audience to pass into the which had to relegated to a realm of dark night after leaving the theatre fol- “supra-history” (Geschichte)—a realm

Pr o m u n d i s 5 John Warwick Montgomery not subject to historical investigation Two lessons from the Oberammergau and therefore immune to criticism. The Passion Play 2010: (1) “If it ain’t broke, real “mystery of faith” is the mystery as don’t fix it.” (2) Keep liberal theologians to how modern theologians think that entirely away from fine artistic repre- they are helping Christianity by con- sentations of revelational truth. verting it from historical reality into analytically meaningless subjectivity.

AnnotationAnmerkungen

1 Hermine Diemer, Oberammergau and Its Pas- 2 Passionsspiele 2010 Oberammergau: Textbuch, sion Play, trans. Walter S. Manning (Munich trans. Ingrid Shafer (Oberammergau, 2010), pp. and Oberammergau: Carl Aug. Seyfried, 1900), 5-7. p. 250.

TheÜber Author den Autor

Prof. Dr Dr John Warwick Montgomery (Ph.D., Chicago, D.Théol., Strasbourg, LL.D., Cardiff, Dr. [h.c.], Institute for Reli- gion and Law, Moscow) is Emeritus Professor of Law and Humani- ties, University of Bedfordshire, England, Distinguished Research Professor of Apologetics and Christian Thought, Patrick Henry College, Virginia, U.S.A., and Director, International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism & Human Rights, Strasbourg, France. His legal speciality is the international and comparative law of human rights and he regularly pleads religious freedom cases before the European Court of Human Rights. He is a U.S. and U.K. citizen, the author of some fifty books in five languages www.ciltpp.co( m), and is included in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in France, the European Biographical Directory, Who’s Who in the World, and Contemporary Authors.

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