Peter C. Mulcahy ’07 said that the Jews were not solely responsible for Jesus’s death in the movie’s depiction.

“I feel like Gibson did a pretty good job of making you hate everyone involved,” Mulcahy wrote in an e-mail. “I thought it was generally fair in portraying what the earlier Gospels, not John, do in the Bible—blame all of humanity for these sins and thus Jesus’s substitutional atonement.”

Gomes also said that the film’s alleged anti-Semitism is a consequence of what he called its historical accuracy.

According to Gomes, “The Passion of the Christ” is “no more [anti-Semitic] than Christianity carries a message of anti-Semitism.”

“Christianity is burdened with an original sin of anti-Semitism...and a refusal to recognize the Jewish origins of the Christian faith,” he said. “At a certain level, anti-Semitism is almost an empty epithet these days.”

But Christopher P. Jones, Lane professor of the classics and history and teacher of the popular Historical Studies B-09, “The Christian Revolution,” contested the film’s its claim to historical accuracy, although he has not seen the film.

“Anyone who studied those texts knows that, for one thing, they are not written by eyewitnesses...They’re something like 40 years later,” Jones said. “You can’t produce a film that is unprejudiced and uninvolved by using those accounts.”

Kaitlin Burek ’06, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Student Association, wrote in an e-mail that viewers should remember that the film is only “one person’s interpretation of the Passion.”

Many also said that they were concerned about the film’s graphic violence.

“This seems to be a Christian version of ‘Kill Bill,’” said Jones, referring to the Quentin Tarantino movie released several months ago.

But Gomes, Jones and Saldarriaga said that the violence was historically accurate.

“[It was] definitely violent, but in a very historical way,” said Saldarriaga.

According to Gomes, “There is so much gratuitous violence in the world...I don’t think you can hang on the violence issue as a way of condemning the film.”

And while most of the controversy over the film centers on its alleged anti-Semitism, Shaye J.D. Cohen, Littauer professor of Hebrew literature and philosophy, said it raises a different debate.

“The right question to ask is whether the film implicitly or explicitly sees the Jews of later times...as condemned, damned, or sinful, because of the complicity of some of their ancestors in the crucifixion,” Cohen wrote in an e-mail.