The dearth of information about Jesus’ Crucifixion makes it impossible to describe the event in accurate detail, as Mel Gibson attempts to do in his new film, “The Passion of the Christ,” biblical scholars and anthropologists say.The Crucifixion is the centerpiece of the movie, set to open in U.S. theaters on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday on the Roman Catholic calendar.People who have seen the movie say it adopts standard Christian imagery in excruciating detail: Jesus being pinioned to a Latin cross — a T-shaped device with a short upper extension — with one nail driven through both feet and one through each palm.In a December e-mail sent to The Associated Press, Gibson said he did “an immense amount of reading” to supplement the Bible’s relatively unadorned account of the Crucifixion in the four Gospels.“I consulted a huge number of theologians, scholars, priests, spiritual writers,” Gibson wrote. “The film is faithful to the Gospels but I had to fill in a lot of details — like the way Jesus would have carried His cross, or whether the nails went through the palms of His hands or his wrists ... Since the experts canceled each other out, I was thrown back on my own resources to weigh the different arguments and decide for myself.”
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