The Greatest Story Ever Picketed

A.O. Scott looks at the debate over Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in a sharp piece for The New York Times today. He uses the brouhaha as a starting point to explore the history of New Testament cinema, from Technicolor Biblical spectacles like the 1959 Ben-Hur to more experimental fare like The Gospel According to St. Matthew, and from the religious know-nothings who condemned The Last Temptation of Christ sight unseen to the secular know-nothings doing the same thing to Gibson's picture. I wish he'd had space to get into the bizarre religious movies of the 1920s -- Noah's Ark, the original Ben-Hur -- but one can't have everything…