The Passion of The Christ has excited outrage, controversy and furor; in fact, the historical inaccuracies and arguably anti-Semitic material in the film have created a powerful advertising machine. The film has done enough damage, but is it capable of doing any good?  

If The Passion of The Christ is capable of making any productive contributions to contemporary life, let it be a revival of interest in Aramaic and other languages that are in danger of extinction. Although Aramaic — an ancient Semitic language — is often misunderstood to be a dead language, it is still spoken by small pockets of Christian communities in the Middle East, including regions in Iraq, Turkey and Iran.  While Aramaic will have to settle for the injection of publicity it received from The Passion of The Christ, the Maori language and culture of New Zealand today gained a concrete and powerful tool for its preservation.

Today, New Zealand introduced its first Maori language television station, the aim of which is to preserve and promote the language and culture of the indigenous people of New Zealand.  The Maori comprise approximately 12.5 percent of New Zealand’s population of four million, but less than 10 percent of the Maori population speaks the Maori language.  

The station is targeted for a young audience, since a startling proportion of the Maori population — approximately half — is under the age of 24. By making Maori immediate, accessible and relevant, the television station will hopefully encourage a revival in Maori language and culture.  

Perhaps today is a bad day for sound scholarship and religious understanding, but it is certainly a good day for the preservation of language and culture.  

Mimi Hanaoka