The Oberammergau Pastime Play?

The Oberammergau Pastime Play?

The Oberammergau Pleasant Afternoons in the Sun Play?

The Oberammergau Profile of a Prudent Professor Play?

The Oberammergau He was a Good and Wise Teacher and a Swell Guy Not the Son of God Who Was Ritually Murdered By All of Us For All of Us?

Human beings have such a capacity for excess... apparently it was not possible to find a middle ground between anti-Semitic caricatures of God-killers, perhaps accompanied by Hostel-worthy levels of gore and what I think of as the Sue Anne ("What's All This Fuss About Famine?") Nivens approach -- let's not pay too much attention to all the unpleasantness:

"For many centuries Oberammergau was concentrated on a suffering Christ," says Christian Stückl, who is directing the play for the third time. "I wanted to give him a deeper profile, ["deeper" than that of God giving His very life for our salvation? wow, that WOULD be deep...] to show that he was a man who wanted to say something."...

"For me the message of Jesus is not only that he died for our sins on the Cross" says Frederik Mayet, one of the two actors who portray Jesus in the current production. "He had very simple statutes like, 'Love your enemies' and 'If someone slaps your cheek, give him the other.'...
Although it is unlikely that first-century Jews carried silver menorahs in public, as happens here, the anachronism helps the audience understand Jesus' heritage. "It's important to know that Jesus had a bar mitzvah," says Mr. Stückl. "What's a bar mitzvah?" people in the village now ask him.

"Now Jesus is portrayed as a reformist rabbi," says Rabbi Noam Marans, the associate director for interreligious and intergroup relations of the American Jewish Committee.

Seriously, change the name, guys.

Word Origin & History

passion

late 12c., "sufferings of Christ on the Cross," from O.Fr. passion, from L.L. passionem (nom. passio) "suffering, enduring," from stem of L. pati "to suffer, endure," from PIE base *pei- "to hurt" (cf. Skt. pijati "reviles, scorns," Gk. pema "suffering, misery, woe," O.E. feond "enemy, devil," Goth. faian "to blame"). Sense extended to sufferings of martyrs, and suffering generally, by early 13c.; meaning "strong emotion, desire" is attested from late 14c., from L.L. use of passio to render Gk. pathos. Replaced O.E. þolung (used in glosses to render L. passio), lit. "suffering," from þolian (v.) "to endure." Sense of "sexual love" first attested 1580s; that of "strong liking, enthusiasm, predilection" is from 1630s.

(On second thought...)

Of course, if we actually hold to the creed of The Church of As Long As You're a Nice Person that a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross, focusing on Christ's sacrifice becomes a kind of porn for those who love depictions of violence, doesn't it?