An interesting article on Beliefnet gives a more thorough discussion of the scenes taken from Emmerich's book 'The Passion': What's Not in the Bible?. An article by Laura Sheahen, also on Beliefnet, Another Scriptwriter for Mel Gibson's 'Passion'?, gives information about Emmerich and quotes a selection from her book that depicts Jews as suffering from a kind of original sin as a result of the utterance recorded in Matt. 27:25:

"Whenever, during my meditations on the Passion of our Lord, I imagine I hear that frightful cry of the Jews, ‘His blood be upon us, and upon our children,’ visions of a wonderful and terrible description display before my eyes at the same moment the effect of that solemn curse. ...this curse, which they have entailed upon themselves, appears to me to penetrate even to the very marrow of their bones, even to the unborn infants. They appear to me encompassed on all sides by darkness; the words they utter take, in my eyes, the form of black flames, which recoil upon them, penetrating the bodies of some, and only playing around others."

Although Gibson does not illustrate this vision in his movie, it is frightening that he would take Emmerich's visions as a guide for his movie.

A set of good resources on the movie is to be found at Resources on the Mel Gibson Movie, the Passion, a site on the Boston College web site.

At this site is a very good article by Philip Cunningham, a Catholic scholar, both on the sources of the film and the way it deviates from current Catholic teachings on Jews. As he notes, "The film is so dependent on her [Emmerich] that it could have been aptly titled The Passion According to Emmerich."