Tags
angels, bible, crows, crucifixion, eye eating, unrepentant thief
Thanks to everyone who helped me out with those bits of angelic lore. I do have one follow up question. In The Passion of the Christ, during the crucifixion scene, a crow flies down and pecks out the eye of the unrepentant thief. I don’t recall, does that happen in any of the biblical accounts? Which side is the unrepentant criminal on (or is it even established)? These are specific details that I can (and will) look up fairly easily, but if any one knows off the top of their head, that’d help.
Joshua Alan Doetsch 
Response for Josh
Greetings, Josh ! Torrie’s mom here, good Catholic girl that I am. Torrie said you were looking for some info. I hope the following helps. If not, let me know, and I am sure I can find this answer within a few days. But here goes:
First of all, in most artwork, the thief on Christ’s right (viewer’s left) is the repentant thief; the one on Christ’s left (viewer’s right) is the unrepentant one. I do not remember where they were in the movie, or if perspective matters in this regard.
I know that the film was based upon the four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John); a work called The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Anne Catherine Emmerich (she was a stigmatic and an ecstatic visionary to whom was revealed a vivid account of the Crucifixion – she lived in the 18th/19th century, dying in 1824, I think, and she was beatified by Pope John Paul II a couple of years before he died); and a work called La Mistica Ciudad de Dios by Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda (in English, The Mystical City of God by Sr. Mary de Jesus de Agreda, or the Venerable Mary de Agreda – she lived in the 17th century, I think, and died in the mid-1600s.
Anyway, Mel Gibson is a traditional Catholic, and so I wonder if the eye-plucking thing is a reference to the passage in Matthew (Matt. 18:9) which says, “If thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee, having one eye, to enter into life, than, having two eyes, to be cast into Hell fire.” According to a sermon of St. Alphonsus Liguori, it is better for you to lose an eye and save your soul, than to preserve it and be cast into Hell. Perhaps it was the way to save the soul of Gesmas (sometimes Gestas, the bad thief). In case you didn’t know this, the good thief was named Dismas, and I think he later became a saint – though I wouldn’t bet my lunch money on it without looking it up.
You could also check Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.
And from a metaphysical standpoint, I found this, which is interesting:
“We have all seen the traditional picture of the crucifixion with three crosses. Jesus on the one in the center ,and the two thieves crucified on either side. As the scripture says , they crucified two thieves with him, one on his left and one on his right.
We have established substantial evidence that the crucifixion occurs in the human skull at the place that Stedmans Medical dictionary refers to as calvaria or Mt Calvary which is the dome of the skull. What would qualify in the skull as the two thieves?
The eyes! How many times have you said, ‘my eyes were deceiving me, or my eyes were fooling me’. The eyes take life away from us because we follow what we see with the two, yet we neglect following what we should,with the single eye.
Thus the two physical eyes represent the two thieves crucified on the left and right of Jesus, and He represents the center, or single eye, or Pineal Gland of the brain. Only once in the Bible is the single eye mentioned and it is mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 6:22 when he says, if your eye be single, your body will fill with light.”
I hope this helps. If not, let me know. I know you have my e-address, though you don’t use it.
Re: Response for Josh
Wow. That is very helpful. Thank you much!!! 🙂
Re: Response for Josh
She probably won’t see your reply you know, since she doesn’t have an account – you should make her day and drop her an e-mail. 🙂