Page "The Passion of the Christ" Paragraph 43

Gibson originally announced that he would use two old languages without subtitles and rely on " filmic storytelling.

" Because the story of the Passion is so well known, Gibson felt the need to avoid vernacular languages in order to surprise audiences: " I think it's almost counterproductive to say some of these things in a modern language.

It makes you want to stand up and shout out the next line, like when you hear ' To be or not to be ' and you instinctively say to yourself, ' That is the question.

'" The script was written in English by Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald, then translated by William Fulco, S. J., a professor at Loyola Marymount University, into Latin, reconstructed Aramaic, and Hebrew.

Gibson chose to use Latin instead of Greek, which was the lingua franca of that particular part of the Roman Empire at the time, so that the audience could easily distinguish between the sound of Italianate Latin and Semitic Aramaic.

Fulco sometimes incorporated deliberate errors in pronunciations and word endings when the characters were speaking a language unfamiliar to them, and some of the crude language used by the Roman soldiers was not translated in the subtitles.

The pronunciation of Latin in the film is closer to ecclesiastical Latin than to so-called " classical " Latin.

( Clear instances of this can be heard when Pontius Pilate says " veritas " and " ecce ".