Oberammergau Passion Play

By tradition, in 1633 the inhabitants of the village of Oberammergau in Bavaria, now in Germany, vowed that if God were to spare them from the effects of the bubonic plague ravaging the region, they would perform a play every ten years depicting the life and death of Jesus. They were spared, and the play was first performed in 1634. The most recent performance was in 2000.

Local death records are not in accord with this traditional statement of events. The death rate among adults rose from one in October 1632 to 20 in the month of March 1633. The adult death rate slowly subsided to one in the month of July 1633. At no point did the dying suddenly stop. The date the village undertook the vow is not known. Local records may be partial as both the local priest and his successor died in the plague.

The play, now performed repeatedly over the course of five months, during the first year of each decade, involves over 2000 performers, all of whom are residents of the village. The play comprises spoken dramatic text, musical and choral accompaniment and tableaux vivants. The tableaux vivants are scenes from the Old Testament depicted for the audience by motionless actors accompanied by verbal description. These scenes are the basis for the typology, the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, of the play. They include a scene of King Ahasuerus rejecting Vashti in favor of Esther, the brother's selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and Moses raising up the bronze serpent in the wilderness. Each scene precedes that section of the play that is considered to be prefigured by the scene. The three tableaux mentioned are presented to the audience as prefiguring Christianity superseding Judaism, Judas selling information on the location of Jesus, and the crucifixion.

The play has a running time of approximately seven hours. A meal is served during the intermission of the play. Audiences come from all over the world, often on package tours, the first instituted in 1870. Admission fees were first charged in 1790. Since 1930, the number of visitors has ranged from 420,000 to 530,000. Most tickets are sold as part of a package with one or two nights' accommodation.

There were at least two years in which the scheduled performance did not take place. In 1770, Oberammergau was informed that all passion plays in Bavaria had been banned by order of the Ecclesiastical Council of the Elector, Maximillian Joseph at the behest of the Catholic Church. In 1780, the play was retitled The Old and New Testament. The new Elector, Karl Theodore, having been assured that the play was "purged of all objectionable and unseemly matter" approved the performance of the play. By 1830, the Catholic Church succeeded in halting the performance of all other passion plays in Bavaria. Only Oberammergau remained.

Anti-semitism

Some critics have charged that the play is anti-Semitic, in that it overemphasizes the role of the Jewish people in the death of Jesus. In response to these criticisms the most recent performances have been edited drastically to reduce this aspect. The changes included changing some of the high priests' names from Old Testament names to newer New Testament era names such as Demetrios, Alexander, or Bacchides; the role of the Temple traders has been reduced; the character "Rabbi" has been eliminated and his lines given to another character; Jesus has been addressed as Rabbi Yeshua; Jesus speaks fragments of Hebrew in the play; Jews have been shown disputing with others about Judaism, not just about Jesus; Pilate has been made to appear more tyrannical and some revision of lines was done to reflect that; Jesus supporters have been added to the screaming crowd outside Pilate's palace; removing the line "His blood is upon us and also upon our children's children" (from Matthew 27:25), and "Ecce homo" (Behold the man); Peter, when questioned by Nathaniel regarding abandoning Judaism replies, "No! We don't want that! Far be it from us to abandon Moses and his law"; and at the Last Supper Jesus recites the blessing over the wine in Hebrew.

Modifications to the text of the play and its tableaux vivants continue to be made each decade. These modifications include how the play presents the charge of deicide, collective guilt, supersessionism and typology, the relationship between the books of the Bible that preceded Jesus in time and those that followed. The two main goals of these modifications are to bring the play in line with Catholic doctrine after the Second Vatican Council and to reduce or eliminate the existing perceived anti-semitic content.

External links

• Review (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375409262/o/qid%3D962635267/sr%3D2-1/002-8025266-9572839#product-details) by Ingrid H. Shafer, Ph.D. of Ecumene (http://ecumene.org/)
• Anti-Defamation League entry about the Oberammergau Passion Play (http://www.adl.org/Interfaith/Oberammergau/Intro.asp)de:Oberammergauer Passionsspiele