DUTCH film director Paul Verhoeven has got up the nose of America’s Catholic League President Bill Donohue by suggesting, in his forthcoming biography of Jesus, that “the son of God” may have been the result of a union between Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee.
Donahue said the director’s claim was “laughable”, and ranted:
Here we go again with idle speculation grounded in absolutely nothing. He has no empirical evidence to support his claim, which is why they say ‘may have.’ He’s been working 20 years trying to sell this argument and hasn’t come up with anything. This won’t make a dent with Christians, nor with scholars somewhat wary of the biblical account. It’s a European version of Hollywood. He should go back to Sharon Stone’s legs.
He was referring to Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, featuring Stone, who topped a poll in 2004 to find the sexiest leg moments on screen.
The actress beat the likes of sex sirens Marilyn Monroe, Halle Berry and Cameron Diaz in the survey, for the moment when she uncrosses her pins in Basic Instinct. The poll of 600 men and women was conducted by the Veet company.
The 69-year-old Dutch-born director also directed Showgirls — starring Elizabeth Berkley in one of the most panned films of the ’90s – and sci-fi action movies like Total Recall, RoboCop, and Starship Troopers.
According to Worldwide Religious News, Verhoeven claims that he and co-biographer Rob van Scheers have written the most realistic portrayal of Jesus ever published.
The book, due to be published in the Netherlands in September, also states that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 original apostles of Jesus, as the New Testament states.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
April 27th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Isn’t this story a very old one? Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Panthera’ is just one version of the story that a Roman soldier was Jesus’ dad.
And of course there’s the Monty Python take: ‘Your father isn’t Mr Cohen.’ ‘I never thought he was Mum.’
Surely you’d have to be a bit mad to think Jesus really was conceived by magic? Either he was Joseph’s son, and poor old Joe seems to have been deemed a bit (ahem) past it, or he was fathered by another man.
April 28th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Funny coincidence here..
as I recall, one of the more pompous US gay groups thought ‘Basic Instinct’ was a negative role model for lesbians (as someone at the time joked – a dyke with a genius IQ and two Ferraris is a negative role model?!), so they picketed cinemas giving away the twist at the end of the story.
Is Donohue trying to do the same? Not really going to work, is it!
Love his rant about ‘empirical evidence’ and ‘idle speculation’ too. Coming from a godbotherer that’s priceless.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Quoting Donahue:
“Here we go again with idle speculation grounded in absolutely nothing. He has no empirical evidence to support his claim” — Sounds a lot like his own religion eh?