Page - 76 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

textual tradition of polemical literature on Jesus, but in the 19th century they developed a scholarly tradition under the name of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism) where many religious themes were discussed, in concert and conflict with Christian scholarship.30 They often proposed a more nuanced representation of Jewish groups around the time of Jesus, offered insight into Hebraic sources and tried to make sense of what it meant for Judaism to pos- sess such a strong Christian matrix.31 Abraham Geiger wrote extensively on the Jewish Jesus, claiming that the historical research started with Jews, and Heinrich Graetz became involved in a polemical discussion with French authors, among whom was Renan. German Jews felt, maybe mistakenly, that Renan’s depiction conveyed a racial depiction of Judaism and contributed to strength- ening the opposition between Jesus and the Jews in a way that was not differ- ent from old anti-Jewish polemics.32 By the end of the 19th century, numerous publications on the life of Jesus were in circulation, some more scholarly than others, some more innovative than devotional. Members across religious groups were involved – Protestants of various confessions, Catholics, Jews and freethinkers all felt challenged to analyse or fictionalize the life of Jesus and the history of Christianity.33 While it is not possible to offer a detailed discussion of how fictional literature treated these religious topics, that activity must be bore in mind, for scholarship and fiction were not autonomous spheres of intellectual activity. Indeed, themes, topoi and debates about fiction and poetry not infrequently have roots in schol- arship. One contributing factor to this overlap in themes was the popularity of the historical novel in the 19th century, which played a major role in nation- al myth-making. Historical novels brought to public attention controversial themes of the past, but they also treated the past as a serious realm. Fiction- alized histories of early Christianity and its protagonists never disappeared, as recent literature proves.34 Biblical themes were challenging, and many novelists fictionalized stories that were under the scrutiny of scholars. FILMING JESUS: REALISM VERSUS HISTORICITY? It is therefore not surprising that at the end of the 19th century, when the first moving images appeared, the new medium ventured into the religious field, 30 On this subject see Schorsch 1994; Wiese 2004. 31 While Jesus opened up a discussion about the Jewish matrix of Christianity, the opposite is also true: at the beginning of the 20th century many Jewish scholars started to conceive New Testament literature as part of Jewish tradition. See Facchini 2018c. 32 Heschel 1998; Facchini 2018a; Facchini 2018b. 33 Gatrall 2014. 34 A recent example is provided by Carrère 2014. 76 | Cristiana Facchini www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1