Oberammergau Passion Play - Origins, Alleged anti-Semitism

A dramatization every 10 years of the Passion of Christ, performed by villagers of Oberammergau in Bavaria, S Germany. It is performed in fulfilment of a vow made in 1663, when the village was saved from plague.

Oberammergau Passion Play is a passion play performed since 1634 as a tradition, by the inhabitants of the village of Oberammergau in Bavaria (now in Germany).

Origins

The town 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. The villagers believed they were spared after they kept their part of the vow when the play was first performed in 1634.

The play, now performed repeatedly over the course of five months, during the first year of each decade, involves over 2,000 performers, musicians, and stage technicians, all of whom are residents of the village. The play comprises spoken dramatic text, musical and choral accompaniment and tableaux vivants. These scenes are the basis for the typology, the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, of the play. 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.

It can be said that the evolution of the Passion Play was about the same as that of the Easter Play, originating in the ritual of the Latin Church, which prescribes, among other things, that the Gospel on Good Friday should be sung in parts divided among various persons.

The Oberammergau play has a running time of approximately seven hours. A meal is served during the intermission of the play.

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.

Alleged anti-Semitism

Historic version of the play were undeniably anti-Semitic in character, reflecting an historical anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church; 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; Jesus speaks fragments of Hebrew in the play;

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 anti-semitic content.