NT Blog

Beliefnet have published Round 2 of the new Scholarly Smackdown on Jesus and Paul between Elaine Pagels and Ben Witherington III. Remember to read it while you can -- the last one (Crossan and Witherington) went premium after it was finished:

Scholarly Smackdown: Did Paul Distort Christianity?
Round 2

Since you and I have some substantive disagreements on what Paul said, it’s important for those participating in this conversation who are not scholars to know that this discussion is not just a matter of “liberal” vs. “conservative,”-much less “he said, she said”-- but that serious scholars, the great majority of them Christians, like you and me, can honestly interpret these letters differently. Those who want to read more about the various viewpoints will find here suggestions of a few places to start, so that they may come to their own decisions.

There's lots of material of interest, though I can't help thinking -- as with the Crossan / Witherington exchange -- that there is much too much talking past each other. There is not enough of the kind of really stimulating direct exchange of views that one might have expected. One of them will ask a question and the other will not answer it or will answer it only indirectly. I wonder if they would benefit from some of the everyday cut-and-thrust of the academic e-lists which can often hold one to account in a pretty direct way. If you don't answer a question, someone will ask it to you again; if your answer skates around the issue, someone will point this out. One of the things I like about the e-lists is the (intelligent) use of the in-line comment -- quoting your dialogue partner's views and engaging with them. I am enjoying these new "Scholarly Smackdowns" (though I still hate the title); I hope beliefnet do more of these in the future; and I think that they are more than just a series of mini-articles from contrasting perspectives; but I would like to see the participants engaging with each other a little more directly than they sometimes do at present.

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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Bible and Interpretation list this article from the Toronto Star (TheStar.com):

Christian scholar questions Gibson's depiction of Jesus
Theology taken from nun's meditations
Passion is dangerous, sadistic, expert says
RON CSILLAG

"This is the most savage movie I have ever seen. I've never seen anything like it. It is two hours of unrelenting brutality." . . . .

. . . . "I have said that if this is the way God is, this punishing God who takes it out on Jesus instead of us, then we should not worship that God. We're dealing with a savage God and we are in really serious trouble if that's what God is like."

Crossan isn't done with his question: "Is your God a punishing God who demands punishment for sin but, who instead of taking it out on us, takes it out on his own beloved son?

"I'm waiting for some strong evangelical with a conscience to say, `Wait a minute. This is not our Jesus. This is not our God.'" . . . .

. . . . . But Crossan is aware of the movie's intent. He knows Gibson's title says it all.

"He said he's not interested in (Jesus') ministry and resurrection, but his sacrifice. But (Gibson) has gone from sacrifice to suffering, and from suffering to sadism. What he's decided to do, and what every passion play does, is to take the four Gospels and reduce them to one. Then you take what each of them does and reduce that to (Jesus') death.

"Then you reduce death to passion, which means to suffer. He shows the last hours (in Jesus' life) as suffering, and I think at that point, it becomes sadism because all that shows you is people thoroughly enjoying beating Jesus to a bloody pulp.

"I'm sure the Crucifixion was horrible," Crossan goes on. "I'm sure the scourging was horrible. I think rape is also horrible but I don't think we should dramatize it or show it in detail. It would be pornography." . . . . .

. . . . . The movie is 5 per cent from the Gospels, 80 per cent from Anne Catherine Emmerich and the rest from Gibson. If she was copyrighted, he'd be sued, or she would get a major screenwriting credit," Crossan says with a chuckle.

But he becomes very earnest when he says he finds it a "huge irony that all these conservative Christians are awestruck over a movie that is based on an extremely conservative Roman Catholic nun's meditations," and not on the very scriptures they hold as inerrant . . . .

. . . . . Ultimately, what the film will convey to foreign markets is that "there are Jews who are bad and there are ex-Jews, called Christians, who are good."

Several of the items here have appeared in other comments made by Crossan on the film. But some comments on specific elements raised here. First, hyperbole. Perhaps this is the most savage film that Crossan has seen, but its violence is nothing like as strong as it is sometimes claimed to be. It is certainly not one of the most violent films made. Nor is it "two hours of unrelenting brutality"; there is a lot of relenting, whether in terms of the camera's gaze, the witnesses' reactions or the flashbacks. Second, harmonizing. I don't know that one can criticize the filmmakers for harmonizing the four Gospels (to "reduce them to one"). Of course we'd like them to do the work that we love doing with the Synopsis, but this is not realistic when one is looking at Christian storytelling. Third, more hyperbole. The film is indeed more dependent on Emmerich's visions than many realise. I was quite struck myself by how many details came from the Dolorous Passion when I began to read it. But 5 per cent Gospels and 80 per cent Emmerich is seriously overstating it.

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On his monthly blog the Dartboard, John Dart mentions the following:

AAR Joint Meetings Petition

The content is that "We the undersigned members of the American Academy of Religion petition the Board of Directors of the AAR to rescind its action taken in April and July 2003 to discontinue concurrent annual meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature." This comes with authority -- it was created by Elaine Pagels and Karen King. But as Dart points out they need to strip out some of these names before submission, and especially Red Butt Monkey, Mel Gibson School of Theology.

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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On Paleojudaica Jim Davila kindly mentions my piece on The Pleasures and Perils of Talking to the Media. I don't think I have ever read it myself (since submitting it, that is!) and have just done so. I see a split infinitive in this line: "Their working assumption is that you are likely to get treated badly and to either have your views ignored, misunderstood, or distorted." I was surprised because I feel like I am always correcting split infinitives in students' work. This looked shoddy on my part. But I looked at my own version and it is not there. What I wrote was ". . . and to have your views either ignored, misunderstood or distorted". There's another problem with that -- some would say that you should not have the structure "either . . . . , . . . . or . . . . " -- but I am relieved to see that I do not inadvertently do something I am always moaning to others about! Note to self: remember to read material you submit to web sites when it appears. Suggestion to SBL Forum: allow an author to read a "proof".

Update (17.12): SBL have already made the change. Thanks; very speedy work!

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Thanks to David Mackinder for the link to this article from today's (now for me yesterday's) New York Times:

Holy Week Pilgrims Flock to 'Passion'
By ANNE THOMPSON

Attendance grew steadily through the week and reached its highest on Good Friday, the commemoration of the Crucifixion, said Bob Berney, the president of the movie's distributor, Newmarket Films.

"Every night since Palm Sunday the numbers have gone up," he said on Friday. "It's a very rare movie that returns to No. 1 in its seventh week."

"The Passion" earned an estimated $17 million on 3,240 screens, Mr. Berney said, up 61 percent from the previous weekend. Since opening it has grossed $354.8 million in the United States, Mr. Berney said, making it the eighth-highest-grossing film of all time . . . . .

. . . . . "It was a campaign-style marketing plan," Mr. Berney said. "Bush conservatives were the target audience, but it spread beyond that."

When Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks released "The Prince of Egypt" in 1998, he took a different approach. He spent four years building support among Jews and Christians alike for that animated family film about Moses, which earned $101 million. "Mel embraced controversy," Mr. Katzenberg said. "I avoided it and built consensus." . . . . .

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On Paleojudaica and Biblical Software Review Weblog there are notices of new content on the SBL Forum. There are three articles in the Features section, no doubt with more to come:

How I Met the Computer, and How it Changed my Life
by Robert A. Kraft

Technology and the Transmission of the Biblical Text
by James R. Adair

Transferring Biblical Narrative to Graphic Novel
by David G. Burke and Lydia Lebrón-Rivera

Incidentally, it is good to see that SBL Forum are using permanent URLs, i.e. any individual articles one links to from previous issues of the Forum have remained constant. But I wonder whether an indexing of previous articles would also be useful. At present you can search the archives but I think a browsing facility would also be useful. I would also be interested to see this "Forum" opening up another forum for SBL members to discuss the articles posted. I will write with these suggestions while they are fresh on my mind.

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This is from the Religion Press Release Service (and talk about trying to milk the publicity from The Da Vinci Code!):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE GOSPELS OF MARY - MARVIN MEYER, THE FOREMOST SCHOLAR OF THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS, TRANSLATES AND INTRODUCES THE GNOSTIC AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXTS THAT REVEAL THE STORY AND IMPORTANCE OF MARY MAGDALENE.

Contact: Laina Adler (415) 477-4409
laina.adler@harpercollins.com

Almost a year after the original publication of The Da Vinci Code comes THE
GOSPELS OF MARY, the ultimate resource for those who have deciphered the code but now seek the texts and truth behind it. Written and translated by Gnostic text expert Marvin Meyer, THE GOSPELS OF MARY is the most accessible text available to help interested readers parse fact from fiction and come to their own conclusions on all matters relating to the life of Mary Magdalene.

Marvin Meyer is your resource for a "Where Are We Now" retrospective story on the impact of The Da Vinci Code. Due to this influential book, for nearly a year Mary and her place within the circle of Jesus' disciples has been a topic of fervent interest and discussion.

"...[Mary's] story is captivating because it encapsulates major unresolved issues facing Christianity -- the role of women in the church, the place of human sexuality, and the yearning for the feminine aspect of the Divine." [Christian Science Monitor | Nov.14]

THE GOSPELS OF MARY is relevant right now.

--Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, uses the Gospel of Mary as a major plot device.

--"Sales of The Da Vinci Code continue to top 100,000 copies a week, according to Nielsen BookScan." [Publishers Weekly | Feb. 9]

--With regards to sales of The Da Vinci Code and related books, Margaret
Maupin, senior buyer at the Tattered Cover in Denver, CO stated, "Bookbuyers are interested in the mysteries, but they don't necessarily want another novel -- they want the truth..." [Publishers Weekly | Feb. 9]

--Elaine Pagels' recent book Beyond Belief relies heavily on Meyer's translation of The Gospel of Thomas, and has renewed interest in the "secret gospels" or "Gnostic Gospels."

Please contact Laina Adler at (415) 477-4409 if you'd like more information on THE GOSPELS OF MARY, a copy of the book, or if you'd like to interview author Marvin Meyer.

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK ----THE GOSPELS OF MARY
"Of all the disciples of Jesus, none seems to have been as independent, strong, and close to Jesus as Mary Magdalene." -- from the Introduction

THE GOSPELS OF MARY: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, Companion of Jesus, by Marvin Meyer, is the first collection of the earliest texts, including the Gnostic Gospel of Mary and other texts -- both inside and outside the New Testament -- that describe the life of Mary Magdalene.

Marvin Meyer is the foremost expert on the Nag Hammadi texts and the texts about Jesus outside the New Testament. As he states in the Introduction, these texts unveil the importance of Mary Magdalene as Jesus' beloved disciple and an apostle and evangelist, a figure whose importance for Christianity is only now emerging from the shadows of history. Included are selections from the New Testament Gospels, extracanonical literature, and Gnostic sources, as well as the Gospel of Mary (the Gospel of Mary Magdalene).

Marvin Meyer has translated the major Gnostic texts that place Mary Magdalene at Jesus' right hand and give her high place among his followers. The Mary texts are complemented by an essay from Esther de Boer, a widely respected biblical scholar and expert on Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Mary.

Cumulatively, these texts reveal a vibrant oral tradition in which Mary Magdalene is not only a follower of Jesus but also his companion and closest disciple.

# # #

MARVIN MEYER is the foremost expert on the Nag Hammadi texts and the texts about Jesus outside the New Testament. His books and articles have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Japanese, and the Gospel of Thomas, of which his is the standard edition, has been listed as one of the 100 best spiritual books of the 20th century. He is Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies and co-chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute, at Chapman University, Orange, California.

ESTHER A. DE BOER is the author of Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth and The Gospel of Mary: Beyond a Gnostic and a Biblical Mary Magdalene.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE GOSPELS OF MARY: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, the Companion
of Jesus
by Marvin Meyer
HarperSanFrancisco; A Division of HarperCollins Publishers
May 2004 | On-sale April 6, 2004 | $17.95 | 128 Pages | ISBN: 006065581X
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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Also on Textweek, Jenee Woodard points to this article on Sojourners:

Bloody Purim & the Bloody Passion
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

The part that catches my attention is the misrepresentation again of The Passion of the Christ:

For centuries - and now again, in the wake of the film The Passion of the Christ and its pointing at "the Jews" as killers of the Christ - Jews have insisted that Christians look also inward for the impulse toward that killing . . . .

As often, this gives the impression that the film speaks of "the Jews", in inverted commas, as a body hostile to Jesus and who killed Jesus. The film does not speak in this way. There are two people in the film whose Jewish identity is particularly stressed, Jesus and Simon of Cyrene. The term "the Jews" only appears in the expression "king of the Jews". As I have mentioned before, there is no chance of a sensible discussion about the very important issues that surround this film if elements that are not present are imported into it.

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The NT Gateway's move to a fresh server seems to have done it a lot of good -- it now seems to be faster and more efficient. Meanwhile it seems that the University of Birmingham sites are struggling -- my homepage has been down for days as has the Department of Theology of which it is a part. No doubt these sites will clunk back into action once people at the university return to work tomorrow, but perhaps I will need to think seriously about moving my homepage too to NTGateway.com.

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Over on Textweek Jenee Woodard notes this new article on Tikkun:

Why did they kill Jesus?
Ched Myers | 04.07.2004

For some reason the text in the article above has got a bit garbled -- letters missing and the like. But you can read a cleaner version on Ched Myers's own site here, though the choice of font colour and background on this one requires a bit more re-think:

Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” Anti-Semitism and the Gospel: Mark’s Trial Narrative as Political Parody

Like most other Biblical scholars and theologians, he hated it. Given that my own reaction is rather different from what has become the standard one among academics, I was interested in one element in his article, which confirmed to me something I have suspected about the academic reaction:

One of the many problems with Gibson’s film is that it weaves in strands from all four of our gospel versions (not to mention his own gratuitous additions). Attempts to “harmonize” what are four very different versions of the Jesus story have long been discredited because they give the editor such wide license to pick and choose. This effectively creates a “fifth” gospel—or in Gibson’s case, anti-gospel. The only way to unravel Gibson’s fabric is to examine each gospel separately, in order to see their different emphases and purposes.

If one of the bases for criticizing this film is that it harmonizes the Gospels, then the problem is not with this film but with all the Jesus films with the exception of Jesus (1979), The Gospel According to St Matthew, Matthew and The Gospel of John. Has the harmonizing of the Gospels "long been discredited"? Of course this is the case if one is doing serious historical critical scholarship on the Gospels, but it is not the case when it comes to producing dramatic reworkings of the Jesus story.

When one is looking at The Passion of the Christ it is important to analyze it as film and not as documentary. One of the questions that has been in my mind from the beginning of the controversy is how this film compares to others in the genre. One of the things that has been lacking in much of the critical reaction to the film has been any comparison between The Passion of the Christ and other Jesus films. What is it that is so peculiarly bad about this film as compared with, say, Jesus Christ Superstar or The Miracle Maker? For a properly critical case against this film to be sustained, one requires more sensitivity to the tradition from which it comes.

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On RogueClassicism, David Meadows reports on his viewing of The Passion of the Christ -- some comments on his view of the Latin.

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If you are in the UK, don't forget Resurrection on Channel 4 tonight at 6.25 pm:

Resurrection
Was Jesus resurrected or is it all a fanciful story at odds with the modern world? Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, sets out to prove the historical truth of the resurrection on a journey that takes him to the places where the real Jesus lived and died.

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My web space provider has moved all the NT Gateway materials to a new server, though at the same address. Depending on your ISP, it may take a little before the NT Gateway shows up again, so please be patient. My own, at the moment, is only accepting requests for NTGateway.com and NTGateway.com/weblog but not www.ntgateway.com etc. So if you have any trouble reaching the site, try omitting the www.

In any case, the NTGateway weblog is going to be taking a little Easter break and should be back again next week. I wish you a very happy Easter.

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat and Stephen Carlson for reminding me of this -- the latest issue of JBL is now available to SBL members. You will need to enter your membership number to view it, or wait a few months before it goes free to all:

Journal of Biblical Literature 123.1 (Spring 2004)

The Oxyrhynchus New Testament Papyri: “Not Without Honor Except in Their Hometown”?
ELDON JAY EPP

Pilgrimage Imagery in the Returns in Ezra
MELODY D. KNOWLES

Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle Instead of a Head Covering
TROY W. MARTIN

Paul’s Masculinity
JENNIFER LARSON

Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23–25)
JENNIFER A. GLANCY

A Pre-Deuteronomistic Bicolon in 1 Samuel 12:21?
BILL T. ARNOLD

Book Reviews

In particular, Eldon Epp's article, his SBL Atlanta 2003 Presidential Address, is essential reading.

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Christianity Today has posted this review of the ABC Peter Jennings special Jesus and Paul:

Jesus and Paul: Looking at a Journalistic Approach to Christianity's Beginnings
A full review of ABC's Jesus and Paul: The Word and the Witness
By Darrell L. Bock

The review is detailed and on the whole sympathetic, though Bock thinks that some things were overdone and other things were not stressed enough:

Inevitably, such specials produce a kind of cacophony of opinion, where one might end up with the impression that no one can really know what happened, since the scholars do not agree. Many of the facts appear to be a matter of debate and widely diverse opinion. So how much can we really know? Most viewers have little idea that the scholars represent vastly different camps, even as they hear them disagree. The differences reinforce a popular perception that when it comes to religion everyone sees what they want to see. So it is all a matter of individual opinion and choice . . . . .

. . . . . In sum, what do we say about Jesus and Paul special? It was an informative and engaging three hours, an achievement for such a topic, trying to balance the many competing ideas and numerous sub-themes.

The Jesus section was improved from its original effort. There was more balance and nuance, although the issues of personal righteousness and sin are still mostly subsumed under concerns that are more political and global . . . . .

. . . . . The section on Paul has three key foci that are overdrawn: that Paul thought the end was near, that he was an innovator rather than a developer of the faith when it came to the Jewish elements and Gentiles, and that his conflict with James and Peter lasted much of his career. Still there is much here worth seeing and hearing. Paul was a brilliant developer and reflector on the message of Jesus. His influence on the faith has been immense. His defense of Gentile inclusion marked the faith and kept its dynamic moving as he reached out to people unlike himself but for whom he saw hope that Jesus was the answer. One hopes the church never loses sight of that great lesson from the great apostle.

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Charlotte Allen comments on the ABC Peter Jennings special Jesus and Paul on beliefnet. She did not like it:

Great Story, Never Told
By focusing so much on political motivations, ABC's 'Jesus and Paul' misses rich narrative and cosmic themes of Paul's story.
By Charlotte Allen

The show's relatively short section on Jesus seem to be mostly outtakes from the 2000 special. It is clear in parts that the Jesus segments were taped before the release of Gibson's movie. Jennings' scholars, some of whom could be found arguing on the side of the politically correct, denouncing Gibson for depicting some Jews as complicit in Jesus' death, are seen in "Jesus and Paul" agreeing that Annas, Caiaphas, and their Temple cronies were corrupt, kickback-taking Godfather figures who probably wanted to get rid of the popular prophet Jesus. One scholar points out that crucifixion was "the most horrible form of torturing and killing that the Romans could devise"--suggesting that Gibson's emphasis on the blood and cruelty was not so misplaced after all . . . .

. . . . . Paul comes off in the Jennings special as an ornery, misogynistic loner who stayed on the move because he couldn't get along with anyone and had weird views about sex (like Jesus, Paul condemned fornication, and he did not approve of homosexual acts). Paul's letters and the Acts paint a different picture: of a gregarious missionary who usually traveled with friends--Silas, Barnabas, Titus, Philemon, Luke--and who treasured his strong-willed female followers such as Phoebe, the deaconess of Corinth, Priscilla from Rome, and Lydia, the wealthy dye-merchant who was a patron of one of his churches. None of these vivid New Testament characters makes it into the Jennings special . . . .

Unfortunately (or not?), it is unlikely that I will ever see it so will not be able to comment.

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Thanks to Mark Elliott for alerting me to this latest edition to the Bible and Interpretation Essays on the Passion:

A Review of the Passion
I find it offensive when much of the marketing of the movie has insisted on its biblical accuracy when, in fact, much of what's good and bad about the movie comes either from an 18th-century nun or from Mel Gibson's own imagination.
By Jason Byassee
Pastor, Shady Grove United Methodist Church

Byassee notes that the film is dependent on the Bible in some respects but less dependent in others. Indeed he makes the interesting comment that "This movie is, in fact, most interesting when it departs from the biblical narrative". But one or two minor comments on points he makes. On the scourging he remarks:

The other example is more brutal—the scourging of Jesus is mentioned in two places, Matt 27:26 and Mark 15:15, and then only briefly. In the movie, this is the most brutal part of it—it goes on forever, with blood everywhere and maniacal guards laughing as they torture Jesus brutally. Again, here is one verse, greatly expanded upon. If asked whether these scenes are biblical, the strongest possible response would be “sort of.”

The scourging also appears in both the other Gospels, Luke 23.16 and 23.22 and John 19.1 and it is from these that The Passion of the Christ derives its sequence, with flogging before sentencing to crucifixion. Byassee also comments:

The final thing to notice is this—the Bible doesn’t actually focus much on what happened to Jesus in his execution. The Gospel just says, “[A]nd they crucified him, one on his right, and one on his left.” There is very little in the way of gory detail there; even when it describes Jesus’ torture, it spends more time on the soldiers’ mocking him than on the blood or his agony.

That is true, but I think this point is at least partly mitigated by the fact that the ancients knew what "they crucified him" meant and we can little appreciate the full horror and scandal that they would have heard when they heard those words.

Byassee also writes:

In the movie, it is Caiaphas the high priest who shouts at Jesus on the cross, “If you are the son of God come down from the cross.” However, he’s not the one who says that in the Bible; he’s not at the cross. And in historical point of fact, none of the Jewish leaders could have been present at an execution because of the biblical belief that contact with the dead defiles.

I have seen this claim made in other reviews of the film and I am puzzled by it. Mark 15.31 places the "chief priests" (οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς) at the cross at just this point. These "chief priests" are the ones who have been present throughout (Mark 14.1, 14.10, 14.43, 14.53, 14.55, 15.1, 3, 11). They are likewise responsible for the cry in Matthew's parallel in Matt. 27.42 (cf. Luke 23.35, "rulers").

Byassee argues that the violence was excessive and possibly too much so: "Was the actual torture that violent?" Two thoughts on this. First, Josephus describes the scourging of Jesus' namesake, Jesus ben Ananias as so vicious that "his bones were laid bare" (War 6.5.3). And he survived. The scourging in The Passion of the Christ is nothing like that bad. Second, crucifixion is described in ancient sources as a matter of prisoners writhing in agony (need to check the source) and there is nothing of this in the film.

Those are just a few comments on parts that I wanted to disagree with. But the review overall has some wise remarks and helpful perspectives. His conclusion:

This movie has its brilliant moments. I had low expectations based on critical reviews from religious sources I trust, yet I sobbed several times and emerged changed somehow. It also had material that made me want to pull my hair out, mostly in its refusal to depict the Jewish leaders differently. The most interesting stuff was in fact the stuff not in the Bible, though its marketers would have suggested otherwise. In all, it seems to me like a good sermon! It challenged me, made me think, moved me, made me mad, I didn’t agree with all of it; in fact, I strongly disagreed sometimes, but hey—if I can have that effect, even partially on a Sunday morning, then maybe I’ve done my job. So I suggest Mel has also done his.

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I have serviced my Gospel of Mark pages, removing and replacing dead links, including to information on the Kata Markon e-list at Jeffrey Gibson's request. I have also added there a link to the SBL Mark Group web page. I have previously blogged this but had not got round to adding a link on my Mark page.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for the link to this review from the Wall Street Journal of the American ABC special on Jesus and Paul:

The ABC of Holy Week
With "Jesus and Paul," Peter Jennings gets it right.
BY ROBERT LOUIS WILKEN

But this is a show for serious-minded viewers, scholarly yet respectful of belief, informative yet entertaining. It tells the story of Jesus and Paul in language believers and critics alike can recognize--indeed not too differently from the way it has been told for centuries.

Wilken comments on "the pronouncement of one 'expert' that Jesus was 'illiterate'" as a particularly egregious historical blunder. I am guessing, though, that this was something said by John Dominic Crossan who certainly claims this in his written work. While many would disagree with Crossan on this point, it's not a "historical blunder".

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British readers will know the Tory MP Ann Widdecombe well and will not be surprised to see that her views on the controversy about The Passion of the Christ are themselves pretty outspoken. Thanks to David Mackinder for the link to this article from the New Statesman:

Why the Jews are wrong
Observations on Mel Gibson and The Passion
By Ann Widdecombe

After a some-of-my-best-friends-are-Jewish style introduction, Widdecombe writes:

What with Pharaoh, the diaspora, the pogroms and the Holocaust, it is not surprising that Jews are alert for any outbreak of ill-feeling; and the rest of us should be vigilant on their behalf. But there is a line between alertness and over-sensitivity, and they have well and truly crossed it in their reaction to this film. They cannot credibly propose to make it a crime to deny the reality of the Holocaust, while themselves denying the reality of a shameful episode in their history. You do not have to believe that Jesus was the Messiah to recognise the illegality of His trial or to wince at His suffering. A bit of wincing would not come amiss from the leaders of the Jewish community whose principal concern appears to be not that Christ suffered, but that Mel Gibson should have the gall to portray those sufferings.

Where does one start with such a catalogue of error and confusion? It is probably unnecessary for me to mention these things, but here goes anyway. (1) The title, which may not be Widdecombe's own, is especially unhelpful. A rule of thumb: the negative use of the term "the Jews" in dialogue focusing on anti-Semitism is a very bad sign. (2) To equate holocaust denial with asking critical historical questions about the Gospels is outrageous. (3) Talk about "the illegality of His trial" simply begs the question. One of the key issues for all scholars is what to make of such historical difficulties. (4) The implication that it is only Jews who have expressed concerns about the film is incorrect. Some of its most outspoken critics, for example, are Christians. This article is careless and inflammatory.

Update: Jim Davila comments in Paleojudaica. Specifically, he draws attention to Widdecombe's remark that "it is difficult to see how Gibson could give the Jews a fairer deal". And he answers:

How about by leaving out the fantasy material from the Emmerich visions? And he could even have left out altogether that "most damning line of all" (most damning to whom?) from Matthew's Gospel, which almost certainly was made up by the writer of Matthew. (But it's in the Bible! How could he have left it out? Well, for starters, Mark, Luke, and John did.) As for the omitting of the subtitle, want to make any bets on how long it takes for the line to be added back in when the subtitles are retranslated into other languages? I haven't seen the movie yet and I don't know whether I'll think it's anti-Semitic, but I know that those two things are there.

I wish that Gibson had omitted the line from Matt. 27.25, though I must admit that I am only taking people's word for it that it is there at all. I was listening out very carefully for it on each viewing and you can just hear Caiaphas mutter something in a distance shot after Pilate has washed his hands. I assume that it is that line, but my impression is that it would be very difficult to subtitle in the film's present form, so I am not too concerned that it is going to get added in again. But this is subject to correction, of course. I am going to see the film again tomorrow so I am going to have another look and listen. Can any readers shed any light here? Can anyone actually hear what Caiaphas is saying at that point?

On Jim's other point, about Catherine Emmerich's visions, I think the key question is whether the ones that are used are themselves anti-Jewish. In other words, was the film itself influenced by her anti-Semitism? William Fulco (translator and theological consultant) and Benedict Fitzgerald (co-screenwriter) emphatically deny this (see the blog entry on this). I think there may be grounds for their denial. I have recently begun reading Catherine Emmerich's Dolorous Passion and was particularly struck by the similarities and differences between her depiction and the film's depiction of Simon of Cyrene. It is clear that the film is influenced by Emmerich at this point, specifically Simon's exhorting the soldiers to leave Jesus alone, but crucially where Emmerich clearly depicts Simon as a pagan, Gibson insists that this heroic figure was a Jew.

Update: See now Jim Davila's additional comments in Paleojudaica, drawing attention to Beliefnet's description: "In a very brief scene, money is seen changing hands, with the implication that people are being paid to testify against Jesus" and quoting from Emmerich as follows:

"The Dolorous Passion" says "The High Priests now sent for those whom they knew to be the most bitterly opposed to Jesus, and desired them to assemble the witnesses ...The proud Sadducees ...whom Jesus had so often reproved before the people, were actually dying for revenge. They hastened to all the inns to seek out those persons whom they knew to be enemies of our Lord, and offered them bribes in order to secure their appearance."

The reference is to Dolorous Passion Chapter IV. On this, let me first say that it is one of those parts of the film that I think is regrettable. I would add it to my list of things that I would have preferred not to have seen because it inevitably evokes, for those familiar with Emmerich, the fuller more troubling context there. Having said that, it is not clear that the film carries forward anything of that context. The brief scene depicts someone looking rather puzzled at the arrival of the man at his door; there is nothing of hastening to the inns, seeking out known enemies of Jesus etc. In other words, I think this falls into that category of material that I find more careless than malicious on the filmmakers' part.

Jim also comments on the throwing off the bridge just after the arrest, also from Emmerich. I'm not sure what to make of that other than to comment that it is an element in the brutalising of Jesus that is evident throughout the film, though the Roman brutality is far, far greater in this film than anything else. What The Passion of the Christ uses this scene for is Jesus' encounger with Judas Iscariot at the foot of the bridge, a kind of parallel to Jesus' looking at Peter after his denial.

Further, Ed Cook emails Jim with the following comment:

With reference to your note, "Mark also says he couldn't hear the blood libel line from Matthew in the movie." I heard it; Caiaphas speaks it, in Aramaic, in the middle of a throng yelling "Let him be crucified!" (yitstalev), so it's easy to miss. There was no subtitle. Do the foreign versions make their translations from the English subtitles (as I think likely) or do they translate them directly from the soundtrack? If the latter, do they include some of the Latin by-play among the soldiers at the scourging, which also wasn't subtitled?

It is interesting to hear that it is possible to hear this line; put my failure down to my worse than elementary Aramaic! But my point is that the way in which this scene is filmed, with the long shot and the cacophony, would make it difficult to subtitle straightforwardly.

Jim goes on to comment:

As far as I know there are no translations of the subtitles yet. When someone gets around to them I don't know how they will proceed. I am just confident that if ideological anti-Semites know that the blood libel line is there in the Aramaic, they will be sure to include in their translation, no matter what the English subtitles say.

That may be right but I hope that it is not. Presumably there are lots of translations of the subtitles already for the showings in the international market, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish etc.?

Incidentally, if it's Caiaphas saying the line, that's an important departure from Matthew 27:25, which has "all the people" saying it. Instead of being an impulsive cry by a riotous crowd, it becomes a statement by the high priest himself.

I would read the departure differently. The very reason that Matt. 27.25 can be so troubling is its invocation of blood guilt by and on "all the people". It is that factor that has allowed the line to have such a particularly toxic effect in the history of anti-Semitism. But my strong preference would be for this to be omitted altogether, Caiaphas or crowd, subtitle or not, along with Pilate's hand-washing and several other features in the film.

Let me just repeat my position on this film lest I am misread. My view remains that while there are troubling elements present here, as there are in all the Jesus films, the case that it is anti-Semitic has often been greatly overstated, and features that argue against its anti-Semitism are routinely being ignored.

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for the link to this article from the Washington Post:

Ideas About Christ's Death Surveyed
Growing Minority: Jews Responsible
By Alan Cooperman

The poll released yesterday by the Pew Research Center in Washington is the first statistical evidence that the movie's box-office success may be associated with an increase in anti-Jewish feeling, although social scientists cautioned that cause and effect are not clear.

In the March 17 to 21 telephone survey of 1,703 randomly selected adults, 26 percent said Jews were responsible for Christ's death, up from 19 percent in an ABC News poll that asked the same question in 1997.

I would want to add that it is not just that "cause and effect are not clear". It is also impossible to view the film without knowledge of the controversy that surrounds it, a controversy that has tended to pose the question in stark and often very unhelpful ways. And I am afraid that the question posed in this statistical survey is as good as useless:

"Do you feel the Jews were responsible for Christ's death or not?"

What New Testament scholar would even be able to answer such a question? One would need to know, "What do you mean by 'the Jews'?" Some Jews, many Jews, Judeans, inhabitants of Jerusalem in the first century, some Judean leaders, the High Priest, his sanhedrin or council? What do you mean by "responsible for"? Primarily responsible? Played a part in? Many New Testament scholars, perhaps the majority, think that Caiaphas, for example, may well have had some involvement in the events leading to Jesus' crucifixion; how would they answer that question? In other words, this statistical survey seems to me to be unhelpful. However, the Washington Post article itself adds:

. . . . . Thus, researchers said, it is unclear whether the movie and its attendant publicity are causing a change in attitudes, reflecting a change, or both.

Despite predictions that the movie would spark violence against Jews, the Anti-Defamation League reported in March that the number of anti-Semitic incidents across the country in 2003 remained the same as in 2002.

Moreover, some previous opinion surveys have indicated that "The Passion of the Christ" is improving, not harming, Christian-Jewish relations. In a March 5 to March 9 survey of 1,003 adults nationwide, San Francisco-based pollster Gary Tobin found that 83 percent said the film had no impact on their view of contemporary Jews. Two percent said the movie had made them "more likely" to blame Jews, but 9 percent said it had made them less likely to do so.

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I know that many American readers will have watched the ABC special on Jesus and Paul yesterday. New Testament scholar Darrell Bock interviews its presenter, Peter Jennings, in Christianity Today:

Peter Jennings Goes Back to the Bible
The ABC news anchor talks about Monday's three-hour special, Jesus and Paul: The Word and the Witness.
Interview by Darrell Bock

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According to Christianity Today's Weblog, this week's Time magazine has put together "one of the best religion cover stories the magazine—or any mainstream news magazine—has ever done." Praise indeed. The link is here:

Time asks why Jesus died

But it's only available to subscribers. Christianity Today Weblog comments on and excerpts some of it for us, though:

Weblog can't do much more than encourage people to read this story, which reveals a thorough knowledge of the subject. There are some great lines from John R.W. Stott, as well as comments from Mark Noll, Jack Graham, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Al Mohler, Randy Balmer, and others. The main voices, of course, are those of Anselm and Abelard, with a healthy dose of Augustine, Calvin, and Luther thrown in, too . . .

. . . . . "The film's stance on atonement could best be described as substitutionary (that initial Isaiah quote sets the theme) with a strong dose of Catholic Passion piety (the very gory details), a pinch of exemplarism (the flashbacks to Jesus' teachings) and those sulfurous whiffs of the ancient good-vs.-evil model," van Biema summarizes, after he has explained those stances more thoroughly above.

I'd say there's more than "a pinch of exemplarism" in The Passion of the Christ -- the theme is hammered home repeatedly at the climax of the film in the crucifixion scene. I would also argue that there are more than "whiffs" of the Christus Victor motif -- the whole film is cast as a battle between Jesus and the devil and the devil, right at the end, gets cast to the pit of hell. But it is refreshing to see someone at least acknowledging that the film's view of the atonement is more than just penal substititution.

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Thanks to Airton José da Silva of the Pontifical University of Campinas, SP, Brazil for sending over this excellent page of Passion of the Christ links, most of them in English but some in Portuguese:

A Paixão de Cristo

I have added a link to my page on The Passion of the Christ.

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila blogs this Reuters article:

Jewish remains give clues on crucifixion
By Megan Goldin

It focuses on the remains of Yehohanan Ben Hagkol and features comments from both Joe Zias and Martin Hengel. It's the first time I've seen comments from Hengel in the media on this topic in spite of the fact that he wrote the definitive book on the subject, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross:

Professor Martin Hengel, a leading scholar of crucifixions from Tubingen University in Germany, said thousands of captured Jewish rebels were crucified by the Romans around Jerusalem during the first century, when Jesus lived . . . .

. . . . "It was used because it was so appalling. It was very painful and everybody could see the suffering. It must have been very humiliating too, hanging naked at the cross," Hengel said.

One of Joe Zias's comments raises a question in my mind:

Gibson's film shows Jesus being hammered to the cross through his hands, in line with the traditional view depicted in religious icons and paintings since the Middle Ages.

Zias said this reflects theology rather than reality. Jesus, like other victims of crucifixion, would either have had his hands tied to the cross, or been nailed through the wrist.

"You cannot crucify a person through the hands because there is nothing there but skin and muscle. It will tear. It has to be done through the wrists," Zias said.

I understand the anatomical point here, but if victims could be tied, might they not also have been nailed through the palms of the hands? Is the anatomical point the only one in favour of nailing through the wrists and if so, would not the possibility of victims being tied partly negate that? I wonder whether those filmic depictions of Jesus being nailed through the wrists (from The Day That Christ Died in 1980 onwards) are as much influenced by the Turin Shroud as by the anatomical evidence, not least given the fact that interest in the Shroud was intensifying in this period.

Update: Jim Davila comments on my comment in Paleojudaica.

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The Boston Globe reviews The Gospel of John and compares it with The Passion of the Christ. Would that a few more had attempted this. Although I have been making comparisons off and on in the blog for a while, I think that this is the first time I have seen it done properly in a review. Perhaps most strikingly, the reviewer thinks that The Gospel of John, because of its source material, ends up rather more anti-Semitic than The Passion of the Christ:

'Gospel' aims for that old-time religion, but where's the passion?
By Ty Burr, Globe Staff, 4/2/2004

"The Gospel of John" is to "The Passion of the Christ" as tap water is to parboiled sacramental wine . . . . .

. . . . The sad truth is that director Philip Saville and writer John Goldsmith have made a picture book rather than a film, one that leans so heavily on Christopher Plummer's placid voice-over narration as to be cinematically inert. Peopled with earnest overactors and featuring a Jesus who has the benevolent, unruffled smile of a high school grief counselor, "Gospel" is as dull as the desert sands . . . . .

. . . . . That sense of duty keeps "Gospel" a puppet show, though. The filming has the flat sheen of a telefilm, and the acting rarely rises above the community theater level. The thoughtful elegance of Jeff Danna's score is the movie's subtlest aspect; lead actor Cusick, exuding the animation of a 3-D winking-Jesus postcard, is its biggest missed opportunity . . . . .

. . . . . The differences with "The Passion of the Christ" are instructive, though. "Gospel" errs on the side of gentility, showing us a mere shadow of a whip-wielding centurion and a trickle of blood on the Savior's brow, while its presentation of the crucifixion is more in line with physical probability (Jesus carries only the crossbar of the cross to Golgotha; the nails pierce his wrists rather than his hands). But the film is also more troubling than "Passion" in the unexamined anti-Semitism it takes from its source. On one level, this merely reflects bad acting: As the head Pharisee, Hippola, Richard Lintern literally twirls his mustache in the tradition of Snidely Whiplash. But where Gibson made sure to provide "good Jews" and "bad Jews," Saville gives us all bad Jews all the time. "Gospel" is so removed from ethnological reality that when one of the apostles addresses Jesus as "rabbi," Plummer has to inform us that "this word means `teacher.' "

"Gospel" gets the letter, all right, but not the spirit. "The Passion of the Christ," meanwhile, revels in an amped-up version of Jesus' death. The movie that effectively conveys the passion of the man's life remains to be made.

One or two comments. First, I disagree with this reviewer over Cusick. I think he's excellent. It's a real achievement to make the Johannine Jesus warm, animated and engaging and he manages it. Second, on the issue of the carrying of the cross, The Gospel of John has a liberty that The Passion of the Christ does not -- there is no Simon of Cyrene in John's Gospel so Jesus can be depicted carrying the cross beam like his fellow victims. Third, I am intrigued by the reviewer's comments on the alleged anti-Semitism in The Gospel of John. It seems to me that the film grappled with this issue explicitly in several ways: (1) the pre-publicity for the film often discussed the issue, using the advisory board to comment; (2) the extra features on the DVD similarly attempt to deal with the issue (an opportunity for Icon for their Passion DVD release?); (3) they self-consciously chose the Good News Bible so that they could use the translation "Jewish leaders" rather than "the Jews"; (4) they added a pre-credit statement about when John was written and what it reflected. Given all this, it is interesting to hear that for that reviewer, he still finds it "more troubling than 'Passion'", though I had to look up Snidely Whiplash.

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There's an interesting article in today's Observer on Matera, where location shooting for The Passion of the Christ took place:

Italy's cavemen cashing in on Passion of Mel
Sophie Arie discovers how a Hollywood religious blockbuster is raising the impoverished town of Matera from the dead

. . . . . . 'People seem shocked at the violence,' said Antonello Scazzariello, an 11-year-old spiky-haired boy who helped chase Judas in the film after he betrayed Christ. 'But when you've been on set, you see it differently. You know it's all fake.'

'There were 20 barrels of "blood" kept on hand in a cave,' said Rosario Gagliardi, a 42-year-old government official who played a disciple. 'When I saw them lash the Christ in the face with a whip, I didn't flinch because I knew it was made of wool.'

The extras laugh as they remember how, between each shoot, Caviezel's hair was rearranged and fresh blood applied from a squeezy bottle.

In fact, while the whippings, lacerated skin and nails through hands are all the masterful efforts of make-up artists, the Italian extras, paid 60 to 90 euros a day, appear to have endured greater physical suffering than the better-known figures in the biblical story.

Two in particular, who hung on crosses alongside Caviezel's double for hours, got so cold that gas burners and fans had to be set up to keep their goosepimples away.

Scazzariello, who had shoe polish and mud matted into his hair for a 'poor and dirty' effect, says he had to wash it 20 times with kitchen cleaner before it was clean.

Despite the physical inconvenience, most of the extras say they would happily play again. 'We got dirty. But the hardest thing was suppressing the giggles,' said Antonietta Scazzariello, who has played in six films in 25 years. 'There's no work,' she said. 'So it's a good thing people like making films here. At least I can earn a bit of cash that way.' . . . . .

The article also features a link to the web site of Matera, which has lots of pictures taken during the filming. One of the most interesting -- and one I have not seen before -- is a picture showing Mel Gibson positioning the nail in the palm of the Caviezel's hand. You will recall that it has been said that it is Gibson himself who symbolically hits the nails into Jesus' hands:

The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson in Matera

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This notice is posted on behalf of Dr G. H. Van Kooten of the University of Groningen:

Full PhD-Scholarship at the Faculty of Theology & Religious Studies at the University of Groningen

Research Groups: Jewish and Christian Traditions (Old Testament, Early Judaism, and New Testament & Early Christianity)& Religion, Representation, and Power (History of Religions and History of Christianity)

The Faculty of Theology & Religious Studies of the University of Groningen announces a search to grant a full, prestigious Ubbo Emmius PhD-Scholarship, granted by the University of Groningen. As an Ubbo Emmius student you will undertake your research within one of the research schools or institutes of the University of Groningen.

This Scholarship is available in two of the Faculty’s research programmes, the research programme in Jewish and Christian Traditions, and the research programme in Religion, Representation, and Power.

The research group of Jewish and Christian Traditions consists of Professor Ed Noort (Old Testament, Archaeology & Biblical Theology), dr Jacques van Ruiten (Old Testament & Early Judaism), Professor Florentino García Martínez (Early Judaism & Qumran), dr Eibert Tigchelaar (Early Judaism & Qumran), Professor Gerard Luttikhuizen (New Testament & Gnosticism), and dr George van Kooten (New Testament & Hellenism). There is also close cooperation with Professor Jan Bremmer (Graeco-Roman Religion).

Excellent and suitable candidates, who have completed a relevant MA, are encouraged to apply.

Please send your application to Mrs. M.C. Buigel-de Witte, m.c.buigel-de.witte@theol.rug.nl, before May 1st, 2004.

Your application should include and/or address the following issues: a curriculum vitae, a title of proposed research, a brief research proposal not exceeding 1,500 words, consisting of a short description of the project (presentation and definition of the principal questions and problems), position of the project within the discipline (can new insights be expected), short description of the corpus of texts/documents upon which it is based; motivated demarcation of this corpus (if applicable), motivation for the project proposed, methodological approach, prospective time-table, and a specification of referents.

Please send also a copy of your MA-thesis by regular mail to: Mrs. M.C. Buigel-de Witte, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 38, 9712 GK Groningen, The Netherlands.

The PhD Scholarship entails a 4-year fixed term contract of 1,295 Euro per month. After one year an assessment takes places.

The University of Groningen was founded in 1614 and is a strong, interdisciplinary university in the North of the Netherlands. There is a direct railway connection between Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) and Groningen.

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William Loader, Professor of New Testament at Murdoch University, Australia, has published his thoughts on The Passion of the Christ

“The Passion of the Christ” and the Passion of Jesus
A Reflection on Mel Gibson’s Film
William Loader

Like many other critics, Loader speaks of the film's "gratuitous violence" and of "R rated violence designed to give a buzz". I remain puzzled by this kind of reaction to the film and am currently writing a short article explaining why I think the film's violence is not gratuitous and certainly not pornographic.

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Also as part of Beliefnet's Jesus and Paul coverage, this excerpt from Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

Homosexuality: Rebellion Against God
A scholar of Paul explains how the great Apostle understood--and decried--homosexuality.
By Richard B. Hays

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Today's Christian features an interview with Robin Griffith-Jones about Paul. Griffith-Jones is Master of the Temple Church in London and features on the forthcoming American TV programme Jesus and Paul. He also has a book coming out called The Gospel According to Paul:

Letting Paul Speak
Author Robin Griffith-Jones wants to help us rediscover the humanity of the early church's most influential convert.
Interview by Melody Pugh

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Regular readers will remember the appallingly titled "Scholarly Smackdown" featuring Ben Witherington III and John Dominic Crossan on Beliefnet over The Passion of the Christ. Now, there's another one, this time in connection with the Jesus and Paul television programme and again featuring Witherington but this time with Elaine Pagels:

Scholarly Smackdown: Did Paul Distort Christianity?
With Elaine Pagels and Ben Witherington III
To help make sense of the scholarly debates about Jesus and Paul, we asked two of the preeminent scholars to email each other about early Christianity (while letting us peek in). Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton, is the author of the bestselling Beyond Belief and The Gnostic Gospels. Ben Witherington III is professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and author of The Paul Quest and numerous other books.

So far Round 1 is available. Remember to read this for free while you can -- Beliefnet have a habit of "going premium" on their content after a while.

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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And Marcus Borg is in on the act too at Beliefnet's Jesus and Paul:

Paul's Unconventional Wisdom
The Apostle Paul gets mixed press, but his most important messages parallel the teachings of Jesus.
Marcus Borg

Many passages that form the negative image are in the six letters that may not have been written by Paul. When they are set aside, Paul emerges as a much more radical and subversive thinker than the negative stereotype suggests.

He was a remarkable man . . . . .

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Beliefnet have also excerpted part of N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997):

Who Founded Christianity: Jesus or Paul?
When Paul preached the gospel, he was consciously implementing the achievement of Jesus, not founding a separate religion.
By N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham

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Beliefnet continues adding features on Paul with a nice new short article:

Christianity Without Paul
What would the religion be like if the Apostle Paul had never lived?
By Bart Ehrman

What would have happened had Paul never lived? One could argue that the vast majority of people who today call themselves Christian would still be worshiping the gods of Greece and Rome, and Christianity would be one of the small sects within Judaism, with little impact on the world around it.

Lots more is available on the site in connection with the forthcoming special Jesus and Paul and I will be linking to some of the other items later.

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The full text of Filología Neotestamentaria Volume XIV (2001) is now available on the BSW site. They have been working hard there recently and these issues are now coming regularly:

Filología Neotestamentaria 14 (2001)

Stanley E. PORTER and Matthew BROOK O.DONNELL, «The Greek Verbal Network Viewed from a Probabilistic Standpoint: An Exercise in Hallidayan Linguistics» , Vol. 14 (2001) 3-41 [HTML] [PDF]

Patrick A. TILLER, «Reflexive Pronouns in the New Testament» , Vol.14 (2001) 43-63 [HTML] [PDF]

Paul DANOVE, «A Comparison Of The Usage Of Akouw And Akouw- Compounds
In The Septuagint And New Testament» , Vol.14 (2001) 65-86 [HTML] [PDF]

Thomas J. KRAUS, «Grammatisches Problembewusstsein Als Regulativ Für Angemessene Sprachbeurteilung . Das Beispiel Der Griechischen Negation Und 2PETR» , Vol.14 (2001) 87-100 [HTML] [PDF]

James SWETNAM, «The Context Of The Crux At Hebrews 5,7-8» , Vol.14 (2001) 101-120 [HTML] [PDF]

J. DUNCAN and M. DERRETT, «Palin: The Ass Again (Mk 11,3d)» , Vol.14 (2001) 121-130 [HTML] [PDF]

Josep RIUS-CAMPS, «Las Variantes Del Texto Occidental De Los Hechos De Los Apóstoles (XIII) (Hch 7,23-8,1a)» , Vol.14 (2001) 131-148 [HTML] [PDF]

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I have serviced the NT Gateway Historical Jesus: Books and Articles page, deleting dead URLs (e.g. Tom Thatcher's articles) and changing the URLs of several others, all now marked with "New URL" in red. So everything should now be fully functioning.

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Also courtesy of Bible and Interpretation, this link to an article on beliefnet:

St. Paul, Friend or Enemy of Women?
It's too simplistic to call the apostle a patriarchal misogynist on the one hand--or to praise him unreservedly on the other.
By Rosemary Radford Ruether

It is a short article with this summary at the end

What Christians need to see today is that both options existed in early Christianity. In Paul's own writings, he assumed that women could teach and lead churches, although he wished them to do so with the traditional sign of women's secondary status on their heads. In the next generation Pauline Christians split between those who wanted to continue this ministry of women, linked to a radical view of women's new autonomy in Christ, and those who wished to suppress it altogether. But in the church for which Timothy wrote both views still coexisted in the same church.

One element in the article that may be a little overstated is here:

But the passage in I Corinthians 14: 33b-35 where it is said that women should not speak at all is generally conceded by scholars today to have been an interpolation from the next generation after Paul. It was not part of the original text.

My own reading of the situation would be that it is not "generally conceded"; some think it an interpolation and some do not. The comment that "It was not part of the original text" might lead some readers to think that there is more text critical evidence for its omission than there is. I am not a text critic, but if I recall correctly there are no texts of 1 Corinthians that lack those verses though they are not always found at precisely the same point.

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Bible and Interpretation references this article from SFGate.com:

Arab censors giving 'Passion' wide latitude
Gibson film packs Mideast movie houses
Charles Levinson

Habib Malik, a professor of history and cultural studies at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, said the allegations of anti-Semitism that have surrounded the film are undoubtedly part of the film's appeal in Lebanon.

"Word got around that this movie was upsetting a lot of people in the Jewish community in the West, and people here are predisposed to be anti- Israel, and anti-Jewish in general, and I think that's one of the reasons why people have flocked to see it," said Malik, who first watched the film with Mel Gibson and a select group of intellectuals and religious figures in Washington.

Malik said he hopes that even if people see the film for the wrong reasons, it may still have a positive influence by exposing Muslims to different religious viewpoints.

Some of this article makes pretty depressing reading.

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The beliefnet article previously noted mentions some films which may be of interest. One already completed and shown in selected cinemas in the UK is Man Dancin', directed by Norman Stone. This appears to be in the tradition of Jesus of Montreal and the like -- the modern day Passion play is re-staged (this time in Glasgow) and the hero's destiny begins to mirror Jesus's. There is an official web site here and a pretty lengthy, seven to eight minute trailer:

Man Dancin'

See also the IMDb entry.

The next mentioned is Regardt van den Bergh's The Lamb. The most informative piece I can find on this is in Variety from September 2003:

$20M leap of faith
Christelle De Jager

"The Lamb," a $20 million biblical epic, is scheduled to start shooting in South Africa in December, exec produced by former Paramount Pictures president Frank Yablans and directed by Regardt van den Bergh ("The Messiah," "The Nativity").

"The Lamb" portrays a journey of faith by Mattias and his son Joel, intertwined with encounters with Jesus. It will be shot in Israel, Tunisia and South Africa and will be one of the biggest projects to come out of South Africa.

You may recognise the director's name from the Visual Bible's 1996 outing, Matthew.

And speaking of the Visual Bible, producers also of the recent Gospel of John, the next project is the Gospel of Mark. There is not a lot available on this film at the moment. Reports usually simply say "in development". The beliefnet article says that it will start filming in "a couple of months". So keep watching this space.

Labels: Gospel of Mark film, Visual Bible

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Beliefnet has this interesting article on Jesus films:

Jesus Movies As Old as the Art Form--With More to Come
By Ted Parks

The article mentions three films which I will blog on separately.

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Thanks to Helen-Ann Hartley for the link to this BBC News item:

Passion panned by French critics
The Passion of the Christ has been judged "sadistic", "manipulative" and "boring" by French film critics.

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Tikkun.org has this article in its latest edition:

Loosely Based on a True Story
The Passion of Jesus Christ in Verbal and Visual Media
John Dominic Crossan

In what follows, I raise first the question of historicity. What, in my best scholarly reconstruction, did and did not happen during that execution? What is Roman history and what is Christian parable? I also raise the question of transition from a verbal to a visual medium in any historical story and especially in this one. Finally, I wonder why Christians who believe they have received a gospel inspired by God in fourfold, that is, manifold format, want so regularly to get it all into one single, composite version.

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Thanks to Jim West on various e-lists for this one. John Dominic Crossan is to appear today on Fresh Air:

Fresh Air Online
As Easter approaches, we take a historical look at crucifixion as a form of execution. We talk with John Dominic Crossan, one of the leading scholars of the historical Jesus, and author of the books The Birth of Christianity and Who Killed Jesus?

It's not on-line yet but should be later today. I'll add a notice here when it is available.

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Some good news: Hypotyposeis is back! So too is The Synoptic Problem Home Page.

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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.03.53 has a glowing review of Bart Ehrman's new Loeb Apostolic Fathers:

Bart D. Ehrman (trans.), The Apostolic Fathers. Vol. I: I Clement, II Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Didache. Loeb Classical Library, 24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. 464. ISBN 0-674-99607-0. $21.50.
Reviewed by Benjamin Garstad, Brooklyn College/Columbia University

E.'s edition of the Apostolic Fathers is useful and engaging. I can whole-heartedly advise its purchase to all those interested in the literature of the second century and the development of the Christian church, even those who already own earlier editions and translations.

Spotted on RogueClassicism and Carl Conrad on b-greek.

Labels: b-greek

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The International Herald Tribune yesterday published the following article:

Mel Gibson revives an old message of hate...
A Jewish View
Michael Lerner

[Read all on one page from this link]

An earlier version of this appeared on Tikkun mail and was subsequently published on 10 March on Tikkun.org as Gibson's The Passion, with the subtitle, "A plea to Christians to Respond with a Gospel of Love and Hope in place of this new fundamentalism".

I was curious about the opening of this article. Something did not look right about it to me:

Mel Gibson unlocked the secret of why Americans have never confronted anti-Semitism in the way that we did with the other great systems of hatred (racism, sexism, homophobia) when he told an American TV audience in February that "the Jews' real complaint isn't with my film ('The Passion of the Christ') but with the Gospels." (emphasis added)

This is given in quotation marks, but did he actually say that? The alleged quotation is from the Diane Sawyer ABC interview of February 16. But only a moment's checking shows that this is a pretty serious misquotation. Here's what Gibson actually said in the interview:

"Critics who have a problem with me don't really have a problem with me in this film," Gibson said. "They have a problem with the four Gospels. That's where their problem is." (Source: ABC News; emphasis added)

Now whatever one thinks about Gibson's remark here, it is quite clear that he did not speak about "the Jews' real complaint". Lerner's quotation wrongly gives the impression that Gibson is speaking in toxic fashion about "the Jews" and their opposition to his film. As I have said before, it is precisely because the issue of anti-Semitism is so serious that it is essential that we are careful with our language. It really will not do to misquote in so serious and damning a fashion.

Now this article has already been pretty influential in the press and on the internet. A quick search reveals that it has often been reproduced, and always with the misquotation, e.g. The Globe and Mail reproduce what I imagine is the original Tikkun Mail version; The Metrowest Daily News has the fuller version and so on. But then the misquotation itself gets quoted by others. Take this Christian pastor who uses it as a reason for discouraging people from seeing the film

Addressing the question of whether the movie is anti-Semitic, Mel Gibson told a national TV audience on February 16 that "the Jews' real complaint isn't with my film but with the Gospels." In other words, Mr. Gibson seems himself to believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John blame Christ's death on the Jews. (Wheat Ridge Congregation Pastor's Page)

Or again, it surfaces on BustedHalo.com, The Problem With the Passion, When Hollywood Plays with Hate and History, by Nora Bradbury-Haehl. One of the most striking is this article on sf.indymedia.org

The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels [Originally on Counterpunch]
by Gary Leupp

Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University and the article is intelligent and well worth reading, but its oddity in this context is that it sees Lerner's attack as misguided without have realised the greater problem of Lerner's serious misquotation (though note that Leupp has in parenthesis "if Gibson indeed said that").

One of the things I have find useful about Jim Davila's approach in Paleojudaica has been the quest for accuracy and holding journalists to account. One of things that is troubling about Michael Lerner's piece is that in encouraging as many as possible to reproduce his piece, he has made a damaging misquotation far more prevalent than what was actually said. This is no way to forward sensible, fair and balanced discussion of a serious issue.

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An interesting article appears in WorldNetDaily:

The power of 'The Passion'
Joseph Farah

Farah looks at the precedent for this film's impact in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927):

Like "The Passion of the Christ," it faced enormous opposition when it was released, sparking fears of anti-Semitism that, fortunately, were never realized . . . .

. . . . "In spite of excellent reviews ... what was harder to comprehend and cope with was the organized opposition of certain Jewish groups to the filmed history of the greatest Jew who ever lived," wrote DeMille.

The article goes on to connect one H. E. Wallner, who committed his life to Christian ministry after seeing this film, with the conversion of a German officer who helped Jews to escape from a concentration camp:

Wallner told DeMille in 1957: "If it had not been for 'The King of Kings,' I would not be a Lutheran pastor, and 350 Jewish children would have died in the ditches."

Some have ridiculed Gibson for suggesting the Holy Spirit guided him in the making of his film, but DeMille made a similar comment: "If I felt that this film was my work, it would be intolerably vain and presumptuous to quote such stories from the hundreds like them that I could quote," he wrote. "But all we did in 'The King of Kings,' all I have striven to do in any of my biblical pictures, was to translate into another medium, the medium of sight and sound, the words of the Bible."

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Beliefnet has exclusive excerpts from the script of Mel Gibson's next film project, which until this morning has been kept under wraps. It features in John D. Spalding's Sick Soul column:

'The Cleansing of the Temple'
Beliefnet's exclusive excerpts from the script for the next Mel Gibson movie
Responding to criticism that "The Passion of the Christ" did not deal enough with Jesus' ministry, Mel Gibson has apparently decided to follow up the blockbuster with another movie, this one focused on Jesus' teachings. Though the project has been kept highly confidential because of the controversial nature of his previous film, Beliefnet was able to obtain a copy of a script treatment guiding this "prequel."
John D. Spalding

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I've adjusted the URL for Matthew Robinson's Classical Greek Fonts and Utilities on my Greek fonts page. Thanks to Wim Pelt for flagging up that the old URL was dead.

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Another addition to my Journals page is:

Currents in Theology and Mission

The full text of volumes from 2002-3 is freely available at the Find Articles web site. There are several articles of interest and ultimately I would like to link to them individually on the NT Gateway. However, given the recent disappearance of articles from FindArticles.com, especially all those from Harvard Theological Review, I am a little loathe to do this at the moment -- and there are many other articles awaiting indexing which may be more stable. But here are some hightlights, with thanks once again to Holger Szesnat. Apologies for the partial references (no pp. numbers etc.)

E. R. Kalin, Romans 1:26-27 and Homosexuality, Currents in Theology and Mission (December 2003)

L. Maloney, Mark and Mystery, Currents in Theology and Mission (December 2003)

M. A. Powell, Binding and Loosing: A Paradigm for Ethical Discernment from the Gospel of Matthew, Currents in Theology and Mission (December 2003)

H. C. Waetjen, The Trust of Abraham and the Trust of Jesus Christ:
Romans 1:17, Currents in Theology and Mission (December 2003)

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for pointing out this useful reorganisation of the Orion site and specifically its Symposia author index which provides easy access to lots of useful articles:

Orion Center Author Index

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I have updated the links to Semeia on my Journals page. Full on-line versions free to all users of issues 79-81 and 83-91 (PDF) are available on the SBL site at a new location:

Semeia: An Experimental Journal for Biblical Criticism

The page also features a link to the book series that now replaces the journal, Semeia Studies.

Thanks to Holger Szesnat for the new URL and the information that those volumes are free.

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BBC Manchester and Online are holding a live debate about The Passion of the Christ tonight at 22:00--01:00 BST and you can join in. Details here:

The Passion of the Christ - The Debate
You can join Mike Shaft and guests for a special BBC GMR debate about the film The Passion of the Christ on Wednesday 31st March. You'll also be able to listen online and join our special live chatroom for the duration of the programme.

The list of contributors looks very interesting:

Our discussion panels will include the following guests:

The Right Reverend Terence Brain - Bishop of Salford
Professor Elaine Graham from the department of Theology, Manchester University
Jean-Claude Bragard, Executive Producer in BBC Religion & Ethics. Produced and directed Son of God, BBC 1 2001
Rabbi Brian Fox from the Menorah Synagogue in Sharston
Councillor Afzal Khan, Muslim Council of Great Britain
Professor Ram Gokal from Manchester’s Hindu Community
Rev’d Roger Sutton, Chair of RUN, Reaching the Unchurched Network and Senior Pastor at Altrincham Baptist Church
Matt Wilson from The Message
Andrew Graystone, Religious Broadcaster
Robin Gamble, Canon Evangelist for the Manchester Diocese

With contributions from:

Rev’d Sarah Foster Clark, Curate for the Rivington and Horwich Benefice
Murray Watts, Screen Writer for the 2000 animation film The Miracle Maker
Stephen Goddard from the Ship-of-Fools website
‘Flic Vic’ Luke Walton (Rev’d)
Rev’d Mandy Hodgson, Team vicar at St Luke’s, Benchill
Mani Raja from Manchester Buddhist Centre
Rev’d Eric Delve, St Luke’s Maidstone
Rev’d Steve Williams, St Gabriel’s Prestwich, and Chaplain to the Bishop of Manchester.
Denis Blackledge, Parish Priest, Sacred Heart Church, Blackpool

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Here's one for American readers, from the Religion Press Release Service:

INTERFAITH DIALOGUE ON HALLMARK CHANNEL "LIGHT ON: GIBSON'S PASSION" ORIGINAL TELEVISION SPECIAL TO AIR PALM SUNDAY, APRIL 4

Contact: Elizabeth Rumble
MacMillan Communications
(212) 473-4442
Elizabeth@macmillancom.com

NEW YORK, March 30 - "Light On: Gibson's Passion," an original television presentation, examines how Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ," has profoundly affected Americans and American culture since its controversial premiere last month. The one-hour special, produced for Faith & Values Media by Lightworks Producing Group, brings together biblical scholars, religious leaders and moviegoers representing diverse faith traditions. The program airs Sunday, April 4 at 6 a.m. ET/PT (rebroadcast at 12 noon ET/PT) on Hallmark Channel.

"In recent weeks we've seen how `The Passion' has shaken up society, with nearly every faith organization and media outlet offering criticism of or praise for the film. Faith & Values Media wanted to bring together thoughtful scholars and other commentators to take a deeper look at the implications this discourse will have on American society now and down the road," said Edward J. Murray, president and chief executive officer of Faith & Values Media.

Leading the discussion from New York City, and corresponding with biblical experts in Nashville and St. Louis, is Mary Alice Williams, an Emmy Award-winning journalist who reports for WCBS Radio, and has previously worked with CNN, NBC and the Odyssey Channel. Sister Mary Boys, a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names and a professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary, and Amy Jill Levine, PhD., professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt University's Divinity School provide biblical insight to the roundtable discussion.

Randy Ingermanson, PhD. joins the interfaith dialogue from Nashville. An evangelical Christian and author of five books, Ingermanson wrote "Who Wrote the Bible Code? A Physicist Probes the Current Controversy." To provide a Jewish perspective, Rabbi Lynn Goldstein, president of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association, joins the discussion from St. Louis along with Father Gary Braun, chaplain of the Washington University in St. Louis. In addition, the Rev. A.R. Bernard, founder and pastor of the
Christian Cultural Center and Dr. David Benke, pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Brooklyn and president of the Atlantic District, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, address the implications "The Passion" fervor will have on the Christian community.

"At a time when national, cultural and global events have turned Americans' attention to more pointed religious discussions, Gibson's film provokes a worthwhile controversy which can lead to serious introspection and dialogue within, between, and among faith communities," said Murray. "'Light On: Gibson's Passion' highlights how the film has brought this dialogue to the forefront of society and provides a unique opportunity to hear this conversation."

Participants in NYC:

Mary Alice Williams, Emmy Award-winning journalist and reporter at WCBS Radio in New York City (Program Host)

The Rev. A.R. Bernard, founder and pastor, Christian Cultural Center

Sister Mary C. Boys, Sisters of the Holy Names and professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary

Dr. David Benke, pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Brooklyn and president of the Atlantic District, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Moviegoers:

The Rev. Sara Lamar-Sterling, associate pastor, Park Avenue United Methodist Church Glenda Adams, an Evangelical Christian Joel Ney, a Modern Orthodox Jew Kathyrn Shaughnessy, a Catholic, and Instructor of Philosophy, Institute of Religious Studies. Rose Molina Kornblau, a Pentecostal Sheldon Kornblau, a Messianic Jew

Participants in Nashville:

Dr. Amy Jill Levine, professor of New Testament Studies at the Divinity School, Vanderbilt University

Demetria Kalodimos, Emmy-Award Winning anchor and reporter, WSMV Nashville

Randy Ingermanson, Ph.D in physics and an evangelical Christian and author

Participants in St. Louis:
Rabbi Lynn Goldstein, president of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association

Father Gary Braun, chaplain of the Catholic Center at Washington University in St. Louis

About Faith & Values Media

Faith & Values Media is the nation's largest coalition of Jewish and Christian faith groups dedicated to media production, distribution and promotion. Its member association is made up of denominations, organizations and individuals, who encompass most of the recognized Jewish and Christian faith groups in the United States. Together, these faith groups have more than 200,000 congregations with 120 million congregants. (A list of member faith groups and organizations is available upon
request.) The programming services of Faith & Values Media are available on Hallmark Channel and on www.faithandvalues.com. Faith & Values Media is a service of the National Interfaith Cable Coalition, Inc., established in 1987.

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A positive review in the Manila Times:

The passion of Mel Gibson
By Dennis Ladaw

Mel Gibson succeeds in conveying the ugliness of violence. We belong to a generation that’s become numb to violent crimes and Passion in a way makes us feel more sensitive to suffering and to people who have fallen victim to torture, terrorism and oppression. Hopefully, it would make others see the major world tragedies in a new light. The 9-11 attacks weren’t just mere headlines and the mass murder of six million Jews, along with other WWII atrocities, are more than just chapters of a history textbook. Ultimately Passion also gives us a new perspective on every crucifix we see from here on.

Also in the news, much more on the confessions getting made after people have seen the film. This is from the LouisvilleChannel.com, but it's repeated in many places:

'Passion' Prompts Confessions To Bombings, Murder, Burglary

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Thanks to Charity Dell for sending this over and for permission to reproduce it here:

Everyone viewing THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST sees this film through a unique "lens"--our gender, religious upbringing--or lack of it--our ethnocultural heritage--combined with the accumulated collection of our personal experiences, shape the "lens" through which we perceive cinematic art. As an African-American Christian viewer of Mel Gibson's film, I must share what I saw, heard and felt when I and a friend attended a matinee showing of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST one Friday in Newark, New Jersey.

At the outset, everyone is drawn in to the movie's plot--immediately, you are "plunked down" in the Garden of Gethsemane and are "watching and praying", as it were, with Yeshua of Nazareth during His final hours. The theatre is completely quiet--except for a few muted voices here and there quoting remembered scripture--and people have neglected to bother with snack purchases and popcorn buckets.

The most riveting part of the film begins with the punishment of the young Jewish Rabbi at the hands of the Romans. Many of us literally FLINCHED in the seats when Yeshua was caned and whipped--and all around you were muffled, anguished cries of "Lord, have mercy!" and "Lord Jesus!"--the classic gut-wrenching phrases black people use to express shock, outrage and extreme horror. Men wept and attempted to stifle their sobs--one elderly black patron told me in the library in which I work* that he "was not religious at all", but that, while watching this movie, he started crying and his stomach got sick, and he literally could not bear to watch the first nail driven into the hand of Jesus: "I just HAD to turn my head away!" But he stated that "the film was good", and that the movie "essentially told the truth."

Descendants of slaves FULLY UNDERSTAND why Gibson's cameras show the instruments of torture and repression--whips and chains evoke powerful collective memories of the suffering of our African foremothers and forefathers HERE in this country at the hands of so-called "Christians." It wasn't so long ago that our great-grandparents literally bore the scars of slavery in their bodies--and the infamous cat o'nine tails was ALSO used on subjugated Africans by viscious, sadistic overseers who acted just like the Roman legionnaries and lictors depicted in the film.

One of the reasons people of color are responding so positively to THE PASSION OF CHRIST is due to Gibson's frank, realistic depiction of the horrors of scourging and crucifixion. The Yeshua of Nazareth depicted in this film shows a full range of emotions--He cries, laughs with His mother, stands up to angry religious authorities who want the adulteress stoned--but most of all, THIS Jesus experiences mental anguish and physical torture, is mocked by Herod and spit upon by the Roman soldiers and bears the full brunt of human hatred manifested in unspeakable brutality. In no other commercial movie venue is there ANY comparable depiction of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53--the "Man of sorrows" Who "hid not His face from shame and spitting", although "we hid as it were, our faces from Him...His visage was marred...yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise Him."

It is THIS Jesus--the JEWISH, biblical "Lamb of God"--not the "Pale Pitiful Mystical Robot-Poppet" of Hollywood's imagination--that African-Americans and Latinos recognize as "OUR Jesus"--the God Who let Himself be beaten, humiliated and crushed, Who felt the sting of violence under a harsh regime, Who suffered injustice and oppression, and Whose torn, lacerated flesh bore the marks of a savage, repressive empire bent on world conquest. Black Christians identify with the God Who becomes a "slave" during Passover, the Festival of Freedom--He is bought for 30 pieces of silver, the market value of a slave in first-century Israel--in order to free humanity from its captivity to sin and death. The honest, unsparing depiction of the harsh reality of Roman punishment "hits home and "rings true" for those whose lives are impacted daily by systemic injustice and senseless violence.

African-Americans immediately recognized the "Jesus" we've heard about in our Sunday Schools, Vacation Bible Schools and worship services, on the knees of our parents and grandparents and community elders--the "Jesus" of our prayer chants, our lined-out psalms and our spirituals and gospel anthems, Who inspired our slave ancestors with hope and gave us joy in the midst of sorrowful lives--and we have ALWAYS heard from our pulpits the message of discipleship--"NO CROSS, NO CROWN!"

Mel Gibson's artistic vision does not spare theatregoers the simply stated, awful truth of the "Apostle's Creed"--"He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead..." Black Christians find it easy to identify with the God Who endured unspeakable agony to redeem a sinful, evil world and reconcile humanity back to Yahweh our Father.

Hollywood is understandably "upset" with Mel Gibson for his "failure" to trivialize suffering and spare them the horrid truth of the ENORMOUS COST of humanity's redemption. For the last 25 years, the Movie Establishment was content to serve up a "saccharine slop of syrupy sweets" and sell these sentimental trifles as "biblical movies" to a jaded public. But then its collective little stomach "heaved" when scourging and crucifixion were accurately portrayed on film! We know from history that the backs of scourged victims were essentially reduced to raw hamburger meat and the internal organs, tendons, bones and muscles were frequently exposed--so Yeshua of Nazareth certainly looked far WORSE than anything imagined by the production company's make-up department!

The "Pampered Princes of Suburbia"--including "media pundits", "leading theologians" and "religious scholars"--who are all whining "Ooooooooh; it's just too bloody for meeee--I can't deal with all that mess and gore!!" ought to try seeing this movie--and the Messiah's suffering--through the eyes of those intimately acquainted with violence and degradation. Scourging and crucifixion cannot and should not be "sanitized, scrubbed clean and prettied-up" to charm the "comfortable folks" who want the movie to "prophesy unto us SMOOTH things!

Those of us deemed "marginal" by the media elites are NOT the ones complaining "there's just too much graphic, gratuitous violence"--Hollywood and the media moguls have not bothered to sample the opinions of black or Latino audiences--who are buying literal blocks of tickets and keeping the theatres filled with busloads and carloads of theatregoers! Nor are black and Latino viewers muttering "anti-semitic slogans" or "cursing all Italians" for "what the Romans did to Jesus"--most black and Latino Christians leave the cinema THINKING and quietly discussing all we have seen and felt.

Inasmuch as Mel Gibson's picture has illustrated the suffering of the biblical Yeshua of Nazareth--and has not shied away from showing that redemption was "bought with a price"--THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is destined to become a movie classic embraced by people of color who have suffered and can recognize the crushed Son of God Who was mistreated, and yet triumphed through it all.

"And let the church say, "AMEN!"

End of review.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link to Sunday Sequence which features a discussion of the Passion of the Christ and has 5-10 minute interviews with Tom Wright and Geza Vermes on the question of anti-Semitism in the New Testament. You can listen to the whole programm here (c. 50 minutes):

Sunday Sequence

Wright's interview is towards the beginning (clearly on the phone rather than in a studio) and then Vermes. Worth listening to; plenty of interest. Both are not keen on the term "anti-Semitism" and rightly prefer to use "anti-Judaism". They agree on little else although -- alas -- they are not given the chance to engage with each other. Vermes does comment on The Passion of the Christ but Bishop Tom does not. Come on, Tom, we want to know what you thought about the film!

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BBC Religion and Ethics have provided a summary of their programming over the Easter period, which may be of interest to some, mainly UK readers:

Religion and Ethics: Easter Programmes

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It's time for another Passion of the Christ round up. The Guardian reports on its UK success:

Passion crowns UK box office

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was the No 1 film at the UK box office this weekend with a haul of just over £2m in three days.

Many screenings were sold out, with churches, as expected, buying up seats through block bookings. The film's total of £2,019, 803 also marked the highest opening for a subtitled film on these shores, defeating incumbent Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

I must admit that it has surprised me. I haven't met many people who have been to see it and those who have have not liked it, but then few academics do like it. I'm unusual. Thanks to Helenann Hartley for a link to a similar story on BBC News here:

Passion wins zombie cinema battle

From here, I spotted a link I had previously missed to an article written by a former fellow-student from my Oxford days:

How faithful is Gibson's Passion?
by The Revd Dr Andrew Goddard
Tutor in Christian Ethics, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford

Far from inciting violence, the lurid portrayal of brutality - overwhelmingly at Roman hands - will hopefully re-sensitize us to its horrors.

At the very least we will question what we do to those who are different or who threaten us.

On Christianity Today, Frank Schaeffer explains why he is not going to see it -- he doesn't like the "celluloid Jesus":

Not This Easter, Mel
I haven't seen The Passion of The Christ, and I don't plan to. Here's why.
by Frank Schaeffer

Meanwhile on Christianity Today's weblog, a link to an extraordinary story from Norway:

They said The Passion of The Christ would provoke neo-Nazis, and they were right: in one case, it's provoking a neo-Nazi to confess to his sins and repent.

Johnny Olsen, whom the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten calls "one of Norway's most feared men," turned himself in to police on Saturday after watching the film.

"He said that it was the film that made him realize that he had to show his hand. He has been preoccupied with Christianity, guilt, punishment, atonement, suffering and conversion during the 10 years I have known him," Olsen's lawyer said. "It has been a long process but the Jesus film made the difference. Now he shows true regret and is ready to make amends."

The full story is here in Aftenposten Norway:

Confessed after seeing 'Passion'
Johnny Olsen, a notorious convicted killer and neo-Nazi, has confessed to two bombings in Oslo in the 90s. Olsen, 41, decided to purge his guilty conscience after viewing Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ, newspaper Dagbladet reports

Back to BBC news, thanks again to Helenann Hartley again for this one from Saturday:

Brothers seek French Passion ban
Three Jewish brothers have gone to court seeking a ban on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in France.

In opposing the release of the film, the Benlolos submitted pages of quotes from US movie reviews, which the judge said would not be accepted as evidence.

And the outcome? In Monday's BBC News:

Judge rejects French Passion ban
A judge in France has rejected a request by three Jewish brothers to ban Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Claims of anti-Semitism stemmed from "a narrow view" of the film, she said.

"To make the death of Jesus into the major motivation of anti-Semitism that leads to secular persecutions against Jews would stem from a narrow view of Mel Gibson's film," said Judge Lagemi following a private screening of the film.

Thanks to David Mackinder for this link to a very negative review in the most recent (April 8) New York Review of Books. The first half of the article is about The Passion of the Christ:

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners
By Garry Wills

My wife and I had to stop glancing furtively at each other for fear we would burst out laughing. It had gone beyond sadism into the comic surreal, like an apocalyptic version of Swinburne's The Whipping Papers.

etc.

Gaff of the day: I was speaking at a sixth form day school in Birmingham today on "The sacred text in Christianity". As is my wont at the moment, I began topically by commenting on The Passion of the Christ, asking how many of the 160 or so students present had seen the film yet. A few tentative hands went up and I was taken aback that so few had seen it. One of the teachers kindly took me to one side later on and reminded me that that all of those present were lower sixth, 16-17 years old, and The Passion of the Christ has an 18 certificate.

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Thanks to Mark Elliott for this latest on the Bible and Interpretation Essays on the Passion, now building up to a very valuable collection:

An Unacknowledged Passion
While most Christians are familiar with the stories in the Gospels of Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture, and crucifixion, they are less familiar with how those same stories have been used throughout history to justify not only anti-Jewish sentiment but, at times, violent persecution of Jews.
By Mark A. Chancey
Department of Religious Studies
Southern Methodist University
March 2004

Chancey's article is an excellent exposition of the appalling history of Christian anti-Semitism, aimed at those who are cannot understand the fuss about The Passion of the Christ. "Understanding why aspects of this movie could be seen as anti-Semitic," he says, "requires understanding the unfortunate role Christianity has played in the historical development of anti-Semitism." I am grateful for Chancey's careful tone -- he avoids the excessive and unhelpful rhetoric that some of the film's critics have used. It is also particularly useful to have a well presented summary of some of the worse episodes in Christian anti-Semitism. Chancey summarises:

It is within this larger context that the furor over Gibson’s movie must be understood. The types of anti-Jewish sentiments mentioned above are foreign to most American Christians today, most of whom who have never heard of “deicide,” “blood libel,” or the ad versos Judaeos tradition. Many Christian denominations have issued official statements repudiating the deicide charge and committing themselves to fighting anti-Semitism. The fact that so many Christians have not regarded Gibson’s movie as problematic is in many ways a sign of progress on this front: most Christians are not carrying anti-Semitism with them into the theater, and they are not finding it on the screen once they get there.

Perhaps because I am a born optimist, I find this last comment particularly encouraging. But Chancey goes on:

”Most” is not the same as “all,” however. If some people can read The DaVinci Code and then believe that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, it requires no stretch of the imagination to think that at least a few viewers will believe Gibson’s movie is an accurate portrayal of events. They will see Gibson’s whitewashing of Pilate and his vilification of the Jews, points on which the movie goes well beyond what we find in the Gospels, and walk out thinking about how vicious “those Jews” were. The anti-Semitic slur “Christ-killer,” though repeated less frequently now than in decades past, is still heard. The minority of viewers who already harbor anti-Semitic feelings may well walk away feeling validated, having just witnessed “the Jews” kill Jesus on the movie screen. Those who still hold to the view that all Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus, and the view does still circulate in some sectors of American Christianity; will find nothing but confirmation of that belief in this movie.

Now having made those positive comments about Chancey's article overall, there are some elements in this paragraph that I find a little troubling. The first is the use of the term "the Jews" in inverted commas. As I have commented previously, some care is necessary here. As is well known, the Fourth Gospel does repeatedly characterise a body it calls "the Jews" in a very negative fashion. But The Passion of the Christ, in spite of what one reads in some articles and reviews, never does this. Indeed the only time that the term "Jew" is used, it is used in positive contexts, with reference to Jesus and to Simon of Cyrene. So we need to be careful about importing terminology into the film that is not found there. It is because the issue of anti-Semitism is so important that we should strive for accuracy in commenting on this film (and not just this film, of course).

Chancey's comments on the film's relationship to the Gospels overstate the case. In the passage quoted above, he writes, "They will see Gibson’s whitewashing of Pilate and his vilification of the Jews, points on which the movie goes well beyond what we find in the Gospels, and walk out thinking about how vicious “those Jews” were." But does the film go "well beyond what we find in the Gospels" here? I don't think so. It pulls back considerably not only on John's language, already mentioned, but steers well clear of the possible implication in Luke that the Romans had little to do with Jesus' death. Lines that are spoken by the crowd(s) especially in Matthew are transferred solely to Caiaphas in the film. As I have frequently commented before, I wish that Gibson had taken more care here. In particular, I wish he had taken seriously the need for an advisory board of academics who would themselves be accountable. But I am also keen that when we discuss what is in the film we do so as accurately as possible. As scholars, it is important that we set the standard on these issues, and show both the film-makers and the media reporters how importantly we regard care, accuracy and fairness.

Jim Davila also comments in Paleojudaica.

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Channel 4 is showing a documentary on the Turin Shroud tonight at 9 pm, part of the Secrets of the Dead series:

Series in which forensic science is used to investigate history. The probity of the Turin Shroud, popularly believed to have covered the body of Christ, has long been subject to scrutiny. This programme reveals the latest developments in theories regarding its age following restoration work in 2002 by a Swiss textile expert.

The Channel 4 web site is also advertising a live chat with the producer/director Alex Hearle after the programme, 10 pm.

Update (23.53): watched this programme tonight. Didn't add much of interest. A textiles expert claimed that the stitching on the shroud was of a kind only found previously at Masada and never found in medieval relics, but that was covered in about five minutes and in insufficient detail. What I'd have liked to have seen something on would have been the Jerusalem shroud discovered by Shimon Gibson two years ago, which -- if I remember correctly -- contrasted radically with the Turin shroud. If there is anything new worth discussing, then that is it.

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I was going to blog this article from Ship of Fools on Friday (see previous entry) but decided it needed to be dignified with its own separate posting, and it's had to wait for this weblog's weekend off:

According to Mel
The Passion of the Christ as seen by Iwan Russell-Jones

It is one of the best reviews I have seen; I have the feeling that he "gets" the film in a way that many reviewers seem not to, reviewers who on the whole have been unable to explain the film's massive public appeal. It's all worth reading, but here's an excerpt:

This is why the violence and the brutality are such an important and integral part of the film. Even as the blows rain down on Christ, the flashbacks remind us of his teaching: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, forgive. The torment, the sufferings, the cross of Christ, are all put in the context of a love that goes to any lengths, extraordinary lengths, to restore and heal. As a grief-stricken Mary tries to comfort him as he stumbles along the way, he tells her, "See, mother, I make all things new."

In Gibson's vision, Jesus, the apparent victim of the worst that the human race can dream up, becomes the victor, the one who through suffering conquers the powers of evil and death, and makes the love and forgiveness of God available to all. The cinematic realization of this vision, at the climax of The Passion of the Christ, is both moving and breath-taking.

Mel Gibson has created a remarkable film. There are images, ideas and words here that will linger long in the memory, and may even have the power to change our lives forever.

And at last someone else grasps the Simon of Cyrene material that I've been banging on about here:

But, crucially, the film itself pulls the rug out from under any form of anti-semitism. This occurs, very consciously, in the sequence involving Simon the Cyrene, who is pressed into helping Jesus carry his cross. When Simon cries out in protest against the viciousness of the Roman soldiers towards Jesus, they turn on him with contempt. "Let's go, Jew," one of them spits out. At this moment where Simon's compassion and humanity become apparent, Gibson has provided a deliberate and forceful reminder of his racial identity.

Quite right (though I remember the line as the single word "Jew"; will need to check this on my next viewing).

There's another less positive review on the same site:

According to Mel
The Passion of hte Christ as seen by Mark Stafford

One comment on his review:

We are given little or no context for these sufferings, we're not rooting for the cause or longing for a resolution, we just come slowly to the point of wanting to stand up and shout, "Leave him alone!", because there's only so much punishment you can watch being inflicted on one person.

But one of things that is so powerful about the Simon of Cyrene episode is that he stands up and shouts exactly this -- "Leave him alone!" We stand there with him, wanting to intervene, unable to be an idle bystander. The film draws us in; its story captures us.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this one from BBC News:

Passion ignites world audiences
The Passion of the Christ, which has aroused controversy around the world, opens in UK cinemas on Friday

This article references one of my favourite web sites, Ship of Fools, so I have taken a look at their Passion coverage. The first article is a must-read:

Gory, Gory Hallelujah
Steve Tomkins on The Passion, violence in films and evangelical doublethink

Was it not a bit violent? Ah, yes, but, you see. "The violence is intended not to titillate or entertain, but to emphasize the reality of the unspeakable suffering that our Savior endured on our behalf." The assumption that no other violent films have a similarly serious purpose because they don't feature Jesus is breathtaking.

I was going to reference the next article on Ship of Fools here, but it is so good that it needs to be dignified with a blog entry of its own.

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Thanks to Mark Elliott for this; Bible and Interpretation have added another article to their Passion of the Christ essays page:

A Judaic Reading of the Passion Narratives for Mel Gibson to Consider
A secular, juridical as opposed to a sacred, theological reading of the passion narratives: what is the difference?
Jacob Neusner

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The Passion of the Christ is released in the UK today. The film has prompted a discussion on BBC Radio FiveLive this morning, underway as I write. Some other recent news, with thanks to Helenann Hartley:

Head to head: The Passion
Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, which is out in the UK on Friday, has provoked major religious disputes over its message and accuracy. BBC News Online gets views from the editors of Jewish and Catholic publications in the UK.

The first view is given by Ned Temko, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, and it features the now standard (but I think misguided) claim about the violence in the film, "an orgy of violence", "sado-pornography" and so on. The second view is given by Josephine Siedlecka, editor of Independent Catholic News and claims that the film is not anti-Semitic, a view only occasionally heard in the media; this is what she writes:

Jesus and Mary were, and are in the movie, Jewish and the same goes for Jesus' 12 apostles.

Gibson's beautifully-drawn character of Simon of Cyrene, who helps Jesus carry the cross, is also Jewish.

While some high priests condemn Jesus, Gibson also shows others walking away saying his trial is a sham.

Many Romans are also depicted as sadistic brutes. The one consistently evil character is the Devil - an androgynous figure never far from the screen.

At the end, we see it defeated, although this could have been more clearly spelt out.

I think I disagree with the last statement -- the extraordinary shot after Jesus' death of the devil cast to the pit of hell is, for me, a high point of the film. But while I think it is not very helpful in this context to point to the fact that Jesus and the Twelve were Jewish, it is good at last to see someone pointing to the way that the character of Simon of Cyrene is drawn. When I went to view the film for a second time this week, I looked out carefully for Johannine style characterisations of "the Jews" of the kind that some critics have levelled against the film (e.g. Julia Neuberger) and there are none -- not even a hint. Indeed the only character specifically characterised as "Jew" -- and I know I have made this point before but it is worth making again -- is Simon of Cyrene, one of the most sympathetic characters in the film.

Passion prompts murder confession
A Texas man has been prompted by Mel Gibson's Passion film to confess he killed his girlfriend, a police spokesman has said.

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I obviously spoke too soon earlier. Peter Bradshaw's review of The Passion of the Christ is published in this morning's Guardian and he does not have a good thing to say about it:

The Passion of the Christ
Peter Bradshaw

It's certainly ambitious and technically proficient, but only very moderately acted and turns out to be an incredibly obtuse piece of macho-masochism, overlooking Jesus's message of love and his human complexity in favour of a bizarre make-up bloodbath, turning his body into a gory lattice of latex weals, cosmetic stripes and prosthetic wounds which proclaim their lurid and ridiculous fakeness to the very heavens . . . .

. . . . . Gibson also has ridiculous devils and Satanic apparitions popping up all over the place, whose appearance he has plagiarised from The Omen and Don't Look Now. Is it too much to ask where the spiritual dimension has disappeared to? Where is the message of love, and hope? Where is the compelling poetry of moral grace? Does all of it have to be swept away in a tsunami of fake gore?

Gibson offers brief flashbacks to episodes like the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper, hinting in the most superficial way possible at what it has all been about in the first place - before we smartly return to Jesus's ongoing steak tartare nightmare, whose horror is repeatedly undermined with cutaway reaction shots of Mary (Maja Morgenstern) and Mary Magdalene (Monica Bellucci) doing their unvarying sorrow ing face to the accompaniment of syrupy-sad music.

But it seems to me that Bradshaw has missed the point of the flashbacks to episodes like the Last Supper and the Sermon on the Mount, which are to drive home repeatedly the very message Bradshaw does not find in the film, love of enemies, prayer for persecutors, laying down one's life for one's friends, forgiveness. The juxtaposition of this specifically chosen teaching with Jesus' own attitude to his suffering is one of the film's most memorable themes.

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I am just sending out the invitation for the British New Testament Conference 2004. If you are not on the mailing list, the invitation is also available here; and the booking form here. The conference this year will be the 25th anniversary of the society and it is hosted by the University of Edinburgh. For details, see the British New Testament Society web site.

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Thanks to Michael Pahl for this very negative reaction to The Passion of the Christ from a fellow Brummie:

Scandalous travesty of the gospels
The Rev. Stephen Barton, Chaplain to Birmingham Women's Hospital, emerged from the cinema feeling sick and angry.

This quotation will give you and idea of the tone of the review:

Many scenes are stereotypical “Jesus film” stock. There is a flashback to the sermon on the mount, which for me recalled The Life of Brian, but the best Brian moment was the release of Barabbas (again, dubious historically), as the latter’s glee is truly comic.

The other “joke” in the film is in a flashback to Jesus in his workshop turning out a three foot high table. Mary asks who it’s for. “A rich man” says, Jesus, his eye, like Gibson’s firmly on the market. “Must be a tall man” says Mary and she doubts whether anyone will every want such a thing. “It’ll catch on,” says Jesus.

It’s incredibly unfunny, and also racist. Still in Asia most people use low tables or none for eating. But here is Hollywood’s Christ, Founder of Western Civilisation.

Well I thought that scene both funny and delightful (and the line is actually Mary's, "It will never catch on"). To call this scene racist is a serious overreaction, to say the least. It is also not clear to me why the Sermon on the Mount scene would recall Life of Brian. There is nothing in that scene's composition or content that I found reminiscent of the famous scene from Brian.

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And today's Independent asks a handful of viewers what they they think of The Passion of the Christ:

'For some it will be an evangelistic experience, for others the film will simply be a violent story'
As 'The Passion of The Christ' opens in Britain, 'The Independent' asked a selection of film-goers if Mel Gibson's vivid account deserves its notoriety

One of the viewers, an eighteen your old student remarks, "The violence wasn't overdone; I'm part of the MTV generation, after all." One of the first times (the first time?) I have seen anyone saying that the violence was not overdone, which would I think be my own view. It is sometimes graphic but it is rarely gratuitous. Interestingly enough, another student interviewed feels the same way:

"One of the most redeeming features of the film is its attempt at authenticity. I realise it's obviously an interpretation and Mel Gibson's particular branch of Catholicism is quite obsessed with the physical sacrifices of Christ, but I didn't think the violence was gratuitous.

"It seemed to be more of a moral message, rather than trying to repulse. It seemed to try and convey, then as now, that violence was the lowest common language of man and that's what came across more than just the thrashing of Christ's body. The violence didn't seem to get in the way. More than anything else, the director conveys a moral message of humanity and perhaps that might convince people to look more closely at the Scriptures."

Could these radically different reactions to the violence in the film be related to the age of the viewer? I had a birthday this week, but am I still young enough to be reacting to this film in the same way that students are?

I am interested too with another of this person's comments, that "It was really enjoyable, but I kept thinking to myself I wish I had a better knowledge of the Scriptures as the narrative isn't strong." When I viewed the film for a second time this week, the lady selling me my nachos made the same remark. Asking me whether I knew anything about the Bible, she suggested I would enjoy it more if I did. She said that she did not know who all the characters were and what was going on, though she did say that she still found the film powerful.

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Today's Times has a very positive review of The Passion of the Christ. Given Mark Kermode's positive review in The Observer, it's beginning to look like British film critics are giving something of a thumbs-up:

The Passion of the Christ
Mel Gibson’s epic of faith and gore stuns James Christopher

MEL GIBSON’S reconstruction of the Passion is the most controversial horror film Hollywood has made since The Exorcist. It is not for faint hearts. The biblical “facts” are hitched to scenes of such intense, visceral realism that you physically flinch from the cruelty. It’s almost impossible not to be moved by Jim Caviezel’s vulnerability as Christ, even if the idea that he is no “mere” man is never in doubt. From the moment he is betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is treated like a lump of meat.

It’s a mesmerising, monolithic performance. Caviezel drips with sweat from the first chilly minute, and staggers through most of the film with one eye permanently closed after having his face pulped by Jewish soldiers within seconds of his arrest. What gives his humiliation such unexpected authenticity is the Aramaic (spoken by the Hebrews) and “street Latin” (adopted by the Romans), even if it sounds like pure Orc to untutored ears . . . . .

. . . . . Claims that the film is anti-Semitic are wildly inappropriate. The mob is far more enamoured of the scent of blood than arguments about blasphemy. The Roman soldiers are drunk on sadism. In their blundering, anarchic enthusiasm, they almost kill Christ several times before they can get him up Calvary.

Perhaps Gibson leans too heavily on old horror-movie staples. One might query the eerie presence of Satan as a cowled and sexually ambiguous monklike figure who ghosts through the crowd with a look of amusement. But it’s a spicy, and fitting, piece of imagination, just like the maggot that wriggles from his left nostril to his right. The rabble of taunting children who hound Judas to his tree have their faces transfigured into devilish goblins. And a teardrop from Heaven hits the ground like a bomb when Caviezel, as Christ, finally expires. But they are modest indulgences in the awesome context . . . . .

In my view, the overall tone of this review, like Kermode's, is about right. It is interesting to hear both Christopher and Kermode describing it as a horror film.

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BBC1's Breakfast News this morning had a feature on The Passion of the Christ presented by Tom Brook, the American film correspondent. And apparently the signs are that it's tough to get tickets for evening showings. (Tip for academics: use your next "research day" to get to an early bird showing -- they're cheaper too. Or take a group of students with you and then it's a "field trip".).

This article in The Independent reports on one strong reaction in France:

'Passion' is fascist propaganda: French film boss
By John Lichfield in Paris

Marin Karmitz, president of the MK2 group, said that he would not show the movie - a runaway box-office success in the United States - in any of his 10 cinemas.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the newspaper of the American movie industry, M. Karmitz said: "I have always fought against fascism, notably through [the films I show]. For me, Passion is a film of fascist propaganda."

As often with the film's most vociferous critics, it is the violence that Karmitz objects to:

He accused the Australian-born director of not only presenting a distorted and anti-Semitic view of the New Testament story but also "turning violence and barbarity into a spectacle".

"For two hours, you see a man being tortured, nothing else," said M. Karmitz.

Although he is Jewish, he criticised Jewish lobbies in the US for focusing on the alleged anti-Semitic elements in the movie and not its "culture of violence". "Behind this Passion ... you can glimpse a whole internationale of religious fundamentalism, a martyrology based on violence, contempt for the body and hatred for [humanity]," he said.

The idea that you only see Jesus being tortured for two hours and "nothing else" is pretty inaccurate. In my own view, the violence in this film is often graphic but it is never gratuitous. As with other similar critics, I find the notion that the film condones "hatred" an extraordinary one given the film's obvious stress on the themes of love of enemies, prayer for persecutors and forgiveness under the most appalling circumstances. Given the film's relentless pressing of those themes, I am surprised that it has not been criticized for trying to hammer the point home too strongly. How often does one see it mentioned in the reviews?

The article reveals an interesting link too with Jesus of Nazareth:

The film is due to be released in 600 cinemas across France on 31 March by Quinta Distribution, a company owned by the Franco-Tunisian film producer Tarak Ben Ammar.

M. Ben Ammar, who produced Franco Zeffirelli's equally controversial Jesus of Nazareth in 1977 and Roberto Rossellini's The Messiah in 1975, has said the film is not racist or anti-Semitic . . . .

. . . . . M. Ben Ammar said: "I thought it was my duty as a Muslim who believes in Jesus, and because I was brought up to respect all three monotheist religions, to show this movie to the people of France and let them judge for themselves."

Jesus of Nazareth "equally controversial"? That's a serious overstatement.

On the links between Jesus films, Paul Schrader, script writer for The Last Temptation of Christ, has recently commented on The Passion. He didn't like it. This from Tuesday's Guardian:

Last Temptation writer: Mel's Passion is medieval
Xan Brooks

"Last Temptation was a very humanistic film in that it sees Christ's struggle as a human struggle," Schrader told the Guardian. "Gibson's film is very different. My guess is that Mel has a problem with the Enlightenment because his film really does go back to the visceral blood cult origins of Christianity, and the fervour it's created is more akin to a Gospel tent meeting than it is to a motion picture."

On the question of whether the film is anti-semitic, Schrader points out that the problem may be largely to do with the Gospels themselves. "The Gospels were rigged for political reasons from the get-go. They were written 30-40 years after the fact to curry favour with the Romans and separate the Christians from the Jews. So the Pharisees were made to seem much worse than they were and Pilate was shown to be more agonised." . . . . .

. . . . . As it happened, Schrader was working in an adjacent studio in Rome when Gibson was shooting The Passion of the Christ, and would often drop by to visit.

"It was at the time he was taking a lot of flak, and I mentioned what had happened with us and Last Temptation. I told him that it comes with the territory: you make a film about this subject matter, people are going to take it very personally. But he didn't follow up on that because I'm sure he was one of those people who subscribed to the Vatican's view of Last Temptation."

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Thanks to Melisso Quero at the BBC for this update on the Bible Mysteries television series. The next episode is to air on BBC2 at 12.40 pm on Sunday 4 April (Palm Sunday); details here:

Bible Mysteries: The Disciples

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Jim Davila's Paleojudaica blog is a year old today (well, now yesterday). Many happy returns. I began reading Paleojudaica from the beginning and it was the direct catalyst for the creation of the NT Gateway blog several months later. Jim has put together an enjoyable retrospective with links to some of the most popular, interesting and recurrent postings. He also reflects on the blogging experience and has some interesting thoughts. This rule is particularly useful:

I've made a rule for myself that when I disagree with someone, I always try to imagine that I'm in the same room with the person, speaking to them face to face, when I compose the entry. That helps me keep to the point, stick to the facts, and avoid personal attacks.

That's something scholars in their criticisms of other scholars in printed work would do well to remember too. One of the things that I've found striking about blogging is that people actually read what you say and so you do become conscious of your audience. I've learnt that any remark I make here might well get read by one of the people whose work I am criticizing -- and that is a very helpful thing to have in your mind. My hope is that that consciousness will also improve the quality of one's published work.

Jim also suggests being wary of sarcasm, which does not work so well in the blogging realm. Agreed -- and also with humour generally one has to be careful. The only thing I'd add from my own experience is that one can get a little too self conscious if one is not careful and one of the keys to successful blogging is to be able to push postings out reasonably frequently in a relaxed enough way. I actually don't want to be spending a lot of time making sure that I've got this potential nuance or that possible reading exactly right. If I were to do that, I'd only ever be blogging and really would have no time for all the teaching and admin. I have to do, to say nothing of trying to eek out some time to research and write. So if people don't like what I write, they can send an email or post a comment. And it sometimes happens that I feel suitably chastened by something someone points out, e.g. I used an unfortunate turn of phrase a couple of weeks ago when commenting on The Passion of the Christ and I was pulled up on it.

Jim also mentions that he has learnt about the shoddy level of some journalism. Agreed. I very much like the way that Jim takes seriously the blogger's prerogative -- and especially the academic blogger's prerogative -- of calling journalists to account. Of course they make mistakes; we all do. The key question is whether they have the humility to correct them and learn from them.

Thanks, Jim, for some useful thoughts. And may Paleojudaica long continue to prosper.

Labels: Blogiversaries

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Spotted a preview tonight for a programme on Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ on Sunday, 9 pm, Channel 4, Mel Gibson - God's Lethal Weapon.

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News of another death while someone was viewing The Passion of the Christ. Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link from BBC News:

Pastor dies at Passion screening
A Brazilian pastor has died during a screening of Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ.

Jose Geraldo Soares, a 43-year-old Presbyterian, had booked a whole cinema to view the film with his congregation.

Halfway through, his wife noticed that he was no longer awake, and a doctor in the audience confirmed that he had suffered a heart attack.

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This article from the Los Angeles Times is slightly off topic, as it were, but it may be of interest to some and has one or two great lines:

Whither goest Mel?
The success of "Passion" has made Gibson hotter than ever. Whether as actor or producer, he can pick from many roads.

"I give Gibson credit for using his resources to present his vision, which he has every right to express. But what dogs will be fed by Gibson's Last Supper? The movie is a two-hour primer on how to do a crucifixion, lacking layers and context, that caught the zeitgeist of the time. It was an egregious mistake for a person living in a multicultural society to present that effort to the world community."

A top major studio executive is equally upset by the "Passion" experience — although if his company signed a deal with Gibson, he "wouldn't fall on the sword," he conceded . . . .

. . . . . " 'The Passion' was made and marketed as Mel Gibson's," Guber said. "He was the true star of the film. His name gave the movie momentum. If Yuki Fiduki was the director, it would have lasted 10 minutes in the theaters. We don't know yet if we have a new market on our hands or merely an anomaly."

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Here's news to brighten up everyone's day. Monty Python's Life of Brian is to be re-released in the USA (and let's hope elsewhere too) to celebrate its twenty-five year anniversary. Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link:

Python film to challenge Passion
Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ.

The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.

Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson's blockbuster with the lines "Mel or Monty?", "The Passion or the Python?" . . . .

. . . . . Rainbow president Henry Jaglom said: "We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion."

He said the surviving members of the Monty Python comedy team "all agreed this was a good time" to bring back the film and would help promote it.

Mr Jaglom, whose partner John Goldstone produced the original film, said trailers for the comedy would start to appear in cinemas on Good Friday.

And the news also appears in today's Guardian:

Life of Brian comes back to bait Mel
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

And this articles features some favourite lines from the film. The fact that the mere quotation of a handful of lines can raise a smile is a testimony to its greatness.

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The Guardian has a nice Jesus films quiz to celebrate the arrival in the UK of The Passion of the Christ:

Christ in the Movies
Christ in the movies
As The Passion of the Christ unshrouds itself in British cinemas, cast an eye back over the sometimes divine, sometimes profane Jesus movies of yore. Are you blessed or are you cursed? The answer is but ten commanding questions away

It's actually quite tough. I scored 7 out of 10 and ended up in limbo.

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Stephen Carlson informs me that his Hypotyposeis blog and Synoptic Problem web page will be down for a few days but due to return on April 1. We all look forward to their return!

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The Passion of the Christ begins two days of preview screenings in the UK today ahead of its national release on Friday:

The Passion of the Christ UK and Republic of Ireland

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Latest SBL Review of Biblical Literature reviews (I'm listing the NT ones):

van Aarde, Andries
Fatherless in Galilee: Jesus as a Child of God
Reviewed by Lincoln Blumell

Green, Gene L.
The Letter to the Thessalonians
Reviewed by Demetrius K. Williams

Patte, Daniel and Eugene TeSelle, eds.
Engaging Augustine on Romans: Self, Context, and Theology in Interpretation
Reviewed by David Parris

Schröter, Jens and Ralph Brucker, eds.
Der historische Jesus: Tendenzen und Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen Forschung
Reviewed by Andries Gideon van Aarde

Vouga, François
Une théologie du Nouveau Testament
Reviewed by James E. West

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I'm sorry to see tonight that Beliefnet have removed a lot of the material from their excellent site about The Passion of the Christ and have pushed it into "premium" content which one has to pay for. This includes things I've often mentioned here, like the Crossan and Witherington Scholarly Smackdown and the very useful Scene by Scene guide. I am sure they have to make ends meet -- we can't all be spare time blogoholic enthusiasts, I suppose, providing everything for free. But it's still a shame when one has useful, freely available material on the net that then "goes premium". I remain intrigued by the Amazon experiment, according to which those texts that are freely available in their entirety are said to be the ones that also sell the most.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for the link to this well-written article on The Passion of the Christ from the Chronicle of Higher Education

'The Passion': They Know Not What They Watch
By TIMOTHY K. BEAL

I'd love to comment a little on this but my time is massively limited at the moment. But it's worth reading for some interesting comments on how the film parallels John's Gospel in setting up an insider / outsider contrast.

Update (24 March): thanks to Whit Stodghill (comments below) and Andrew Mills for pointing out that this has now gone premium too. Can't even find it in the Google cache.

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My university email address is now working again and the university web sites all appear to be back on-line.

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And here's one not to miss. Thanks to Mark Nanos for sending this over:

The Missing Logic that Threatens the Jewish Other: [PDF]
A Review of The Passion of the Christ
Mark D. Nanos

Comments in due course.

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In a comment to an earlier post, Darko points out that the Rotten Tomatoes site has over 200 reviews of The Passion of the Christ:

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

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An interesting and provocative piece today on The Passion of the Christ in Laksamana.net: The Politics and Economics Portal, with the now all-too-predictable title:

The Gospel According to Mel Gibson
Globalvision News Network - By Gabriel Ash

The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus dead because he was immensely popular and could ignite a rebellion; the Bible says so (although Gibson doesn't). Historians give the absent context. The Jewish leaders at the time were Roman puppets; (not unlike the Arab leaders of the modern Middle East) they maintained their position by collaborating with the Roman exploitation of their people. That is why Jesus' challenge was so attractive to the Jewish masses, and a real threat to the priestly leadership. Of course, that would have made Jesus as much a threat to Rome as he was to the High Priest; it is highly unlikely that Pilate would need a lot of prodding to execute a popular and charismatic rabble rouser. But the Gospel writers chose to de-emphasize Roman culpability. Writing after the destruction of the Temple, their audience was no longer Jewish. They did not want to call the wrath of Rome upon them, and they wanted their message to be appealing to Romans. They chose cooperation over confrontation with the empire, wise politics in retrospect.

With this background in mind, let's return to the story as it is. Pilate is given the best possible treatment in Gibson's film; the pro-imperial bias of the Gospel writers is enhanced and expanded with Gibson's own inventions. There is no criticism in the film of the colonial setting itself. On the contrary, Gibson goes out of his way to portray the nobility of spirit of Pilate and his wife. They are somber, almost ascetic. They don't share in the bloodlust of the "natives." Pilate criticizes the Jewish leaders for their lack of "due process" (not in the Bible). Gibson even invents an embarrassing philosophical discussion between Pilate and his wife about the nature of truth. They are not corrupt and hedonistic like the native puppet king Herod, represented in a scene that seems to be a homage to Fellini. On the contrary, their compassion is on display: Pilate offers Jesus water; his wife gives Mary some white linen to wipe Jesus' blood (both details are not in the Bible.)

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My Birmingham email address appears to be down along with all the Birmingham University web sites. If you need to get in touch, please use my blogines email address (but don't add this to your address book because it changes regularly).

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IMDb now has an absolutely massive list of reviews for The Passion of the Christ, at the moment 156 and counting. These are collected from sites external to IMDb, from newspapers etc.:

External Reviews for The Passion of the Christ

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this from CNN:

Spielberg: Won't comment on 'Passion'

First person he'll talk to will be Gibson

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Declaring himself "too smart to answer a question like that," Steven Spielberg on Wednesday deftly sidestepped the controversy surrounding fellow filmmaker Mel Gibson's box office smash, "The Passion of the Christ," which has been accused of anti-Semitism.

And from BBC News, another report on the possibility that Gibson will film something on the Maccabees:

Gibson to film Jewish 'Western'
Mel Gibson looks set to provoke further antipathy among the Jewish community with plans to make a film about the story behind the festival of Hanukkah.

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Sunday this morning (BBC Radio 4) kicked off with a short discussion of The Passion of the Christ ahead of its UK release this week. Two Catholics are brought in to discuss it, Father Peter Malone and Peter Stanford, the first of whom loved it and the second of whom did not. Peter Malone makes the useful point about the value of the flashback scenes during the crucifixion. Listen here:

The Passion Debate

Labels: Radio 4

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila comments on the "Mel Gibson as holocaust denier meme" in the following article:

The Protocols of Mel Gibson
Katha Pollitt

Jim rightly remarks on the inaccuracy of charging Gibson with holocaust denial in the light of his Diane Sawyer interview (and I would add, the Peggy Noonan one too), but adds that otherwise "Pollit has a lot of criticisms of the movie that are correct", commenting that she has an "understanding of the movie that otherwise is supported with some good arguments". I am not inclined to agree here. The lack of careful attention to the source material exhibited in the accusation of holocaust denial seems to me to typify the article as a whole. In the main it is so marked with polemic, caricature and abuse that it is difficult to assess any of its potentially more insightful comments. The title alone should put one on one's guard, but one's confidence is not increased by the idea that using a woman to play Satan is "a nice touch of misogyny" (given that the most positive roles also played by women). While there is much talk of villains who "look Semitic", there is no mention of the fact that the main support (Mary) is played by a Jew, so that the article tacitly reinforces the very racial stereotyping that it is attempting to counter.

A further inaccuracy is the statement that the scourging of Jesus only occurs in three of the Gospels (it is in all four). And there is some nonsense about the scourging being a "ten-minute homoerotic sadistic extravaganza". Like the frequent but equally misleading charge that this material is pornographic, the notion that it is "homoerotic" I find simply baffling.

This is a very poor piece of journalism.

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Yesterday's Guardian has a piece on The Passion of the Christ ahead of its UK release next week:

Passion players
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ finally hits our screens next week. If you want to worship, go to church, not the movies, says David Mamet - while three clerics reveal their reactions to the film

Mamet's piece is a bit too clever for my liking and ends up getting so involved that it says little about the film. You can tell that he is pleased with his line about "communion with the divine" being "better celebrated with the traditional bread and wine than with popcorn and Coca-Cola".

The three clerics mentioned in the subtitle are Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Dr Graham Kings, vicar and Father Kit Cunningham. One hated it, one loved it, one had mixed feelings. I am a bit troubled about a comment made by Neuberger:

There is no doubt that the Jews are presented in an overwhelmingly negative way. Caiaphas, the high priest, is a pompous ass. He - and the other priests - are depicted as fat and overdressed, in contrast with the thin and simply attired Jesus and his followers. The crowd of Jews is given Jesus back after the obscenely vicious scene of the scourging - and it is then that "the Jews" bay for Jesus's blood. They ask for him to be crucified - Pilate, who gave in to the Jews before, unwillingly, gives in again to satisfy their blood lust. This is a highly selective and dangerous reading of the Gospels.

Neuberger is right about the overwhelmingly negative depiction of Caiaphas but her use of "the Jews" here in quotation marks strikes me as quite inappropriate. Now it is possible that I missed it, but I did not notice any group in the film specifically characterised as "the Jews" in this way, yet Neuberger makes this into a quotation. Indeed, as I have pointed out before, the only character I remember being specifically characterised as "Jew" was Simon of Cyrene, undoubtedly the most sympathetic character in the film after Jesus and the Marys. I do think that Gibson could have taken more care to avoid elements that have led to the anti-Semitism charge, e.g. by getting some more historical consultants on board, but there is no way that one can have a serious discussion if one is importing elements into the film that are not there (again, subject to correction if I have remembered wrongly).

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for pointing out this excellent site:

Livius - Articles on Ancient History
By Jona Lendering

This is a series of clear, illustrated, hyperlinked articles on the ancient world. Includes massive section on Ancient Judaea including articles on Jewish Wars, Messiah and more. I have added a link on my Ancient World page.

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Christian History has a piece on the the medieval Passion plays and how an understanding of them informs one's appreciation of The Passion of the Christ:

The Ageless Drama of the Passion
Watching Gibson's film, we are transported 600 years back in time to a medieval art form.
By Jennifer Trafton

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Thanks to Gail Dawson for this one from the Jerusalem Post, which I am noting a little belatedly -- it's a week old -- butr I didn't want it to pass without drawing attention to it because interesting:

Essay: Who killed Jesus? Boring
By HILLEL HALKIN

There is something absurd in the Jewish eagerness, manifested once again in the clamor surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, to prove that "we" didn't kill Jesus. Honestly, it wasn't us, it was the Romans! We simply turned him in. This kind of plea-bargaining is not only demeaning and historically questionable, it is also unreflectingly accepting of the premise of traditional Christian theology that it really matters who killed Jesus because there is a collective responsibility for his death that damns the people of its perpetrators forever . . . . .

. . . . . Abba! I can read that a hundred times and still get a chill down my spine. The Aramaic word handed down to the authors of the Gospels as that used by Jesus to pray to his Father in heaven still means "father" in the colloquial Hebrew we speak every day in Israel. There is an intimacy and a tenderness in that colloquialism, uttered in prayer by no known rabbi of Jesus's time, that only a Hebrew speaker can savor.

I suppose this is merely to make what has become by now - though for thousands of years it was not - a commonplace observation: that the story of Jesus is a Jewish story, set in a Jewish world with Jewish characters and Jewish themes and Jewish preoccupations. Pontius Pilate is the only non-Jew in it. Its final chapters are not about how the "son of God" was killed by the Jewish people. They are about how some Jews helped to kill another Jew who had Jewish disciples and Jewish loyalties and Jewish thoughts and a Jewish message meant for Jews. The fact that by the time the Gospel stories were written, the message in question, or rather, a garbled version of it, was being addressed mainly to non-Jews does not obscure this . . . . .

. . . . . What's to be proud of is Jesus himself. Only Judaism could have produced such an extraordinary character.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this link:

Passion Play
Monday 05 of April, 2004 at 6.45pm - A special evening to discuss the significance of Mel's film, hosted by Jason Gardner

Cost: £6 at the door. Starting at 6.45pm for 7.00pm, doors open from 6.30pm. To book please contact Nicola on 020 7399 9555 or email mail@licc.org.uk.

Held at The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, St Peter's, Vere Street, London, W1G 0DQ

Mel Gibson's stirring re-creation of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life has ignited much discussion amongst film critics and theologians alike, but does The Passion of the Christ present a flawed or fair account of the nature and life of Jesus? What does the way in which the media and the Church have handled the film's success tell us about the future of Christ's image in the public eye? And can we gain from Gibson's focus on the crucifixion an understanding of the work of the Cross that speaks to today's world?

Four panellists with distinctive perspectives will be reflecting on these and other issues raised by the film before inviting questions from the floor. Dr John McDade, Jesuit Priest and Principal of Heythrop College will be discussing the particularly Catholic aspects of the film's theology; Nev Pierce, film critic for the BBC will look at how the UK and US media differed in their response to Mel Gibson and his film; Anna Robbins, lecturer in Theology and Contemporary Culture at the London School of Theology, will explore whether the Church's various strategies for using the film is likely to help or hinder Christian engagement with the world at large. Baptist Minister Dr Steve Nolan, whose PHD examined film theory and liturgy, will compare Gibson's 'incarnation' of the Christ to Jesus' previous outings on celluloid. Chairing the event will be LICC Youth Culture researcher Jason Gardner.

The Passion of the Christ opens on general release Friday 26th of March. Use the Cinema Search at www.bbc.co.uk/films to find out where it's on at a cinema near you during or after the release week.

LICC's Director, Mark Greene, reflects on Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ.
Click here to read his review.

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To coincide with the UK release of The Passion of the Christ, the reJesus web site has set up some materials:

Expressions: The Passion Movie

This will not be of a lot of interest to academics; its primary purpose is as a guide for those who are interested in the film or who have seen the film but who do not know a lot about the New Testament and Christianity.

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Although the official UK release of The Passion of the Christ is listed for March 26 (Friday), a quick glance around local cinemas confirms that the release date is actually March 24 (Wednesday). There is a new UK and Ireland web site for the film here:

The Passion of the Christ -- A Mel Gibson Film -- Official UK and Ireland Movie web site

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On Germany's reaction to the film ahead of its release there later this week, this BBC News story (thanks to Helenann Hartley and Bible and Interpretation for the link):

Germany wary of Passion reaction
German Jewish leaders and church officials have warned that The Passion of the Christ may stir up anti-Semitism when it opens in the country.

. . . . . "The anti-Semites will only have their views on Jews confirmed," said Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

German Protestant leader Wolfgang Huber said the film did not put Christ's suffering into proper perspective . . . .

. . . . German Catholic leaders called the film problematic, and the German Bishops' Conference said: "We urgently warn against using the suffering of Jesus as an instrument for anti-Semitism."

Salomon Korn said the film was a "sado-masochist orgy of violence" laden with "kitsch", while Wolfgang Huber described the film's violence as "intolerable".

Thanks to David Mackinder for this one in the New Republic Online:

STANLEY KAUFFMANN ON FILMS
Gibson's Offering

Meanwhile the money keeps rolling in, and the film has not even been released yet in many countries. This also linked on Bible and Interpretation; it is an article from the Washington Post:

Mel's New Testament Profits
Gibson Could Earn $500 Million From His Leap of Faith
By Anne Thompson

Because he provided the money behind the movie himself, Gibson stands to make several hundred million dollars. After just 21/2 weeks, "The Passion" has already earned a spot among the top 25 all-time domestic blockbusters, with $267.7 million through Monday, and beat "My Big Fat Greek Wedding's" record as the most successful independent release ever. This weekend, the gory religious epic will likely pass "The Matrix Reloaded's" $281 million gross to become the best-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

The piece ends by speculating on what Gibson will do with his millions and notes the possibility that he will make a film on the Maccabees, also reported elsewhere on the web and noted by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica.

And in the Guardian Unlimited, this extraordinary story:

Mel's Passion too much for Georgia couple

The theological implications of The Passion of the Christ proved too much for one God-fearing American couple last weekend when what began as a discussion on the content of Mel Gibson's movie ended with Georgia natives Sean and Melissa Davidson spending a night in police cells, each charged with battery.

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Ben Witherington III's response has now been added in Round 5 of the Scholarly Smackdown on The Passion of the Christ:

Round 5: Ben Witherington III

It remains interesting because Witherington is obviously no great fan of the film, so it is not as if we have Crossan anti- the film and Witherington pro. Their divisions are tending to relate more to why they have problems with it, Crossan largely because of its theology, its alleged anti-Semitism and its violence, Witherington because of its relative lack of fidelity to Scripture. Witherington agrees with Crossan's comments on the depiction of Pilate in the film and makes the useful point that without anything like Luke 13.1 there is no context for the portrayal. He prefers Rod Steiger's portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth.

Unfortunately, Witherington does not engage with Crossan's interesting material about the origins of the Passion Narrative during the reign of Herod Agrippa and makes one of those all-too-easy scholarly put-downs (smackdowns?!), that it is "an undue amount of pure speculation without historical foundation". I don't think that Crossan's remarks can be so lightly thrown aside. They are based on Gerd Theissen's excellent study of the Passion Narrative and represent, as far as I can see, something of a shift in Crossan's own view, which had previously seen very little of the Passion narrative as having an historical origin. They deserve more attention than that, especially if one of the points of the exchange is to demonstrate how the process of academic dialogue should take place. One of the things I like to try to discourage students to do is to use the throw-away one-liner as a substitute for engaging with one's critics.

Witherington concludes by commenting on the familiar theme of the scourging of Jesus:

So let me be plain—I think there are some real and troubling historical distortions in this movie. The one that bothers me perhaps the most is that each Gospel account devotes exactly one verse to the flagellation of Jesus; they do not emphasize it or highlight the fact. It's almost mentioned in passing. The enormous amplification of this to an unbearable extent in the movie is way beyond what poetic license should allow. For me, this is especially egregious since it is not the flagellation that produces the atonement for sins, but rather the death of Christ on the cross. In the movie, this somehow manages to be less gruesome than the flagellation. It seems an odd strategy to amplify the violence beyond biblical proportions in order to exalt the Prince of Peace!

Similar comments have been made in the reviews. All I can say of my experience of the film is that I did not find the crucifixion any less gruesome than the scourging scene and the comment puzzles me. I found the crucifixion itself far and away the most emotional part of the film. I also do not feel completely at ease with the language about what "produces the atonement for sins". Witherington is right that the Gospel writers place no emphasis on the scourging, though I can't help wondering whether the lack of detail is because readers are expected to have some idea of what this would have meant, in a culture in which fear of persecution was a reality.

Finally, Witherington and / or Beliefnet need to spell-check these messages before uploading. (I know, I can talk, but bear in mind that a daily blog takes much more writing time than a weekly email and it's just me -- no editor).

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On the Textweek weblog, Jenee Woodard announces that she has put together the following very useful compendium of links:

"The Passion of the Christ" Mel Gibson Movie - Articles, Study Guides, & Opinions

I have added a link to this on my The Passion of the Christ page.

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Oxford University Press have just released this new book:

Paul - His Story
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Francaise, Jerusalem

Price: £16.99 (Hardback)
0-19-926653-0
Publication date: 18 March 2004
276 pages, 2 maps, 216mm x 138mm

Description

An imaginative, engaging, and short biography of Saint Paul. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's disciplined imagination, nourished by a lifetime of research, shapes numerous textual, historical, and archaeological details into a colourful and enjoyable story of which Paul is the flawed but undefeated hero. Paul's travels and mission are put into a plausible biographical context. New insights into his personality are shown to provide a key to understanding his theological ideas. As a result, the Apostle comes to life as a complex, intensely human individual.

Readership: Ideal for anyone who wants a short and enjoyable account of Paul's life, psychology, travels, mission, and theological ideas. People interested in the development of Christianity, the early Church, or the historical basis of the Bible. Students in religion, theology, biblical studies, and ancient history.

Contents/contributors
1 The Early Years
2 Conversion and its Consequences
3 Apprenticeship in Antioch
4 A Journey into Europe
5 South to Achaia
6 Antioch and Jerusalem
7 The First Year in Ephesus
8 The Second Year in Ephesus
9 Conversations with Corinth
10 Macedonia and Illyricum
11 Farewell to the East
12 The Final Years

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this one:

Whose Passion? Media, Faith & Controversy
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
5:00 pm
Taper Hall Room 101

Join Diane Winston, USC Annenberg’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion for a provocative discussion with a panel of experts to discuss Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion of the Christ. Joining Prof. Winston for the discussion is Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic and USC Annenberg adjunct professor; Benedict Fitzgerald, co-screenwriter of The Passion of the Christ, Richard Fox, USC history professor and author of Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession, Barbara Nicolosi, executive director of Act One, Inc., and William Fulco, NEH Chair in Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Loyola Marymount University who served as the on-set filming consultant for the film . . . . . .

Watch the video

It's over an hour long and is fascinating viewing. The first main speaker is Benedict Fitzgerald, co-screen-writer who uses up most of his time reading out a review and does not use his time as well as one might have hoped. Next up is Richard Wightman Fox, author of Jesus in America, who makes lots of interesting points, e.g. he notes that the mirror of the anti-Semitism debate happened with Cecil B. de Mille's The King of Kings. That would certainly be something worth hearing more about. He talks a little about the fact that American evangelicals have, on the whole, loved this very Catholic film and speculates on the reasons. One of the reasons he offers is that the film gives evangelicals the opportunity to lay to rest once for all the memory of The Last Temptation of Christ and, to a lesser extent, Jesus Christ Superstar. In The Passion of the Christ there is no sexual fantasy about Mary Magdalene and no close friendship with Judas. A very interesting point.

The next contributor is Barbara Nicolosi who is also well worth hearing. She relates a story about a viewing she attended with Mel Gibson and some Church leaders. Afterwards one evangelical pastor pressed Gibson on the scene of Satan with the ugly baby. Where was this in the Bible? he wanted to know. Gibson replies that it's in there somewhere. Pressed further on what it's doing in the film, Gibson replies that he "Thought it was really creepy". Still dissatisfied, the pastor presses Gibson further: What was the source of this incident? Gibson replies, "I guess I just pulled it out of my ass". Nicolosi uses this to reflect on the way that an artist works. This is art, not documentary, and the interpretation of the events is indistinguishable from the narration of those events. (I am paraphrasing, of course, and not transcribing.)

William J. Fulco, S. J. is up next and his contribution is really engaging -- it's the first time I have seen him in action. Would that we could hear more of his defence of the film against its critics. He says that he is taken aback by many of the reviews of the film, especially those from the New York Times and the LA Times, which seem to miss the spiritual dimension to the film. He says that he has seen the film forty times because of having to watch the languages through the editing process and he reveals that he has cried every one of those forty times. He reflects on the way that people react to this film -- they seem either to love it or hate it. He thinks that this is because it is so "in your face". It is difficult to be neutral about it. He also relays an interesting story about his pushing Mel Gibson concerning the resurrection. He suggests to Gibson that the ending is problematic -- they need more depiction of the resurrection. At first Gibson is interested and wants to talk about it some more. The next time he sees him, he asks what they are going to do about the problem with the ending, but Gibson replies "What problem?" and Fulco realises that he is just the translator.

Kenneth Turan from the LA Times is the final speaker before the questions and offers a profound contrast to the others. He actually comes across very Eeyore. He does not want to be there, he repeats over and over again that he found the film and the controversy surrounding it really depressing and he talks about the hate mail that he has received. He says that he has never seen a reaction like this to any other film since he has begun reviewing and he finds it very depressing.

In the Question and Answer session (starts about 52 minutes in), a questioner brings up the question of Catherine Emmerich's contribution to the screenplay, so frequently discussed in the pre-publicity and publicity surrounding the film. Fulco and Fitzgerald both answer. Fulco says that Gibson "was not influenced by her ideology or anti-Semitism" but was looking for ideas. If one used soley the Biblical text, one would have a five-minute movie. He agrees that Emmerich has anti-Semitic stuff, he describes it as "God awful", says that it has nothing to do with the movie and describes it as a "canard" to bring in her position. Fitzgerald (who spent two years writing the script with Gibson) then comes in with the striking claim that "She had practically no influence whatsoever on any of this." He says that "She was, in some respects, the supplier of a couple of ideas, but these were not anti-Semitic ideas; they were ideas about how to treat Claudia Proclea (sic), who was the wife of Pilate." He adds that there are other texts about this character too. (I must admit that I am ignorant of these. Note: the Beliefnet breakdown also references Mary of Agreda's "City of God".)

At the same point, Richard Wightman Fox draws an interesting contrast between the way that Gibson portrays the scourging and the way that it was done in From the Manger to the Cross (1912), in which the viewer's attention is directed to the Roman soldier doing the scourging who is eventually too tired himself to go on. Fox feels that there are artistic ways of showing the scourging without turning it on the viewer to hurt the viewer.

There is another question about Gibson's father, his attitude to Vatican II and so on, and it is acknowledged by Fulco and Fitzgerald that Gibson's father has crazy views.

On the discussion of anti-Semitism, Barbara Nicolosi submits that The Last Temptation of Christ is more anti-Semitic than this film, but Richard Fox counters by saying that Scorsese set the standard for how to depict Caiaphas responsibly -- he dug deep to make sure that he did not use any non-Biblical racial stereotype.

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In the latest of the excellent series of reviews on The Passion of the Christ on Bible and Interpretation, Bruce Chilton offers the following:

Mel Gibson’s Passion Play
Mr. Gibson has fashioned a blunt instrument of propaganda, edged with artistry, whose visceral power gives it the potential to become his most lethal weapon of all.
By Bruce Chilton

I am beginning to think that I am the only NT scholar who actually liked this film! Happily I know that there are a few others of us because I've had one or two supportive comments in response to the blog. Chilton's review is written with some wit and features some useful insights, but ultimately it descends into unsavoury rhetoric. Several of his observations are unrecognisable to me. Consider this remark, for example,

In consideration of the weeping popcorn chompers around me, I did not laugh aloud. But reflective silence only confirmed my conviction that this is the funniest Jesus-movie since The Life of Brian.

I am amazed that anyone could find this film funny, even as a means of expressing real distaste for it in a negative review. The notion that Satan and the ugly baby look like Dr Evil and mini-me from Austin Powers I find difficult to take seriously.

As one begins the review, it looks like it's going to be a positive one. This remark about the opening scene in Gethsemane is, I think, exactly right:

Jesus’ psychic pain is at its height at this point. In fact, the film reaches is climax within three minutes or so; everything that follows is denouement. This is a very brave dramatic gamble and a success.

I found the Gethsemane scene so powerful that I felt that I was likely to find the entire film really engaging. It captures you right at the start. On the Gethsemane scene, Chilton also comments:

As he lies on the ground in his prayer to God in Gethsemane, Satan releases a snake. But once again on his feet, Jesus crushes the snake’s head and marches out to meet his tormenters. No, of course that scene is not in the Gospels; Satan and his snake are imported from medieval imagination. They represent a Christological reading of Genesis 3:15, tinged with the imagery of the Revelation. That is allowed in a passion play, as are all the scenes Mr. Gibson invents from legend and imagination.

Indeed -- and I would want to add that one does not even need to go back to the passion plays. All Jesus films, to varying degrees, work legend and imagination into their screenplays. Those that do it the least are Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew, Jesus (1979), Matthew (Visual Bible, 1996) and the recent Gospel of John (Visual Bible, 2003), but The Passion of the Christ is by no means the richest user of legend and imagination. I would say that King of Kings (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Miracle Maker (1999) and Jesus (1999) all have far greater input from legend and imagination that Gibson's film.

On the imagery of Jesus stamping on the snake's head, I agree with Chilton that ultimately this is based in Genesis 3.15, but it should be added that the theme is developed in the New Testament and finds its most direct source in Luke 10.19, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you."

But Chilton goes on:

And as in the case of any passion play, the artistry consists in what is invented, not in fidelity to the Gospels, and history is beside the point.

I think that this is too strong. There is plenty of artistry in the way that material from the Gospels is adapted by Gibson. Consider, for example, the use of flashbacks based on Gospel material. In Luke 22.61, the narrator casts the reader's mind back to the Last Supper at which Peter's denial had been prophesied, saying "The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had told him, 'Before a cock crows today, you will deny Me three times.'" What Gibson does with this verse is to use flashback: Peter denies Jesus, Jesus looks at him and the viewer is then shown the prophecy at the Last Supper. There is artistry in the way that the film-maker uses this device to dramatise a Gospel text. I don't recall having seen flashback used in this scene in other Jesus films (though cf. two other recent films for the use of flashback, the recent Gospel of John, utilising black-and-white, and The Miracle Maker, moving between claymation for the main narrative and animation for flashback).

Chilton asks about the death of Judas:

These vivid images do tip into camp from time to time. Judas hangs himself by taking the rope off a rotting donkey, a rope big enough to pull a barge. He ties himself to a tree overhanging a cliff. The viewer is left wondering how he got up there: Did Satan levitate him?

In a way, the question is irrelevant -- the power of the scene is in the cut from the scene involving the pursuit and haunting by demonic children, the dead donkey and Satan, to Judas alone, hanging dead on the tree. If one must ask the question, surely Judas climbed the tree.

I would also like to comment on the following:

The burial, by the way, completely eliminates the role of Joseph of Arimathea that is pivotal in the Gospels: an opportunity to portray crucial sympathy by one of Jesus’ contemporaries in Judaism is squandered. In any case, his immaculate linen shroud trembles in the breeze, awaiting shipment to Turin. He stands, his face, butt, and punctured right hand in profile. He marches out of the tomb much as he marched out to his tormenters in Gethsemane but to the marshal beat of a drum.

The point about Joseph of Arimathea is an interesting one -- yes, this is an opportunity missed. On the other hand, I don't know that the burial shroud particularly evoked the Turin shroud. Indeed if Gibson had been influenced by the latter, would he not have had the nails driven through the wrists in the crucifixion scene? Perhaps Chilton is being sarcastic. On the marching out of the tomb, I am puzzled -- this was not in the version of the film I saw, unless I am not remembering it accurately. Can anyone shed any light?

Another passage of interest is on stoning:

She [Mary Magdalene] is nearly stoned by a ring of people with rocks, much as in the stoning scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian rather than by the method of being thrown from a cliff and crushed with a large rock, which both the New Testament and the Mishnah refer to.

A couple of comments here. First, one does not need to go to Life of Brian to see depictions of this kind of stoning; the films Life of Brian is parodying depict stoning this way; likewise The Last Temptation of Christ, which postdated Life of Brian, again depicts it this way. In other words, the mention of Life of Brian in this context is unnecessary. Was there anything else in this scene in The Passion of the Christ that evoked Life of Brian? [Footnote: not a rhetorical question. Last Temptation self-consciously pays homage to Life of Brian in its Sermon on the Mount scene that follows on from the stoning. It's possible that Gibson did something similar, but if he did, I didn't notice it.]

And my second comment on this. Chilton refers to "the method of being thrown from a cliff and crushed with a large rock" as occurring in the New Testament and the Mishnah. However, the NT evidence is much less clear than Chilton implies. Presumably he is referring to Luke 4.29, "And they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff". But this does not specifically describe this process as stoning and it is only one text among several. Other texts suggest that the standard filmic depiction is reasonable:

• John 8.59: Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.
• John 10.31: The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.

Further, Acts 7.58-59 also appears to depict stoning in the traditionally understood way. And surely the very story under discussion (John 8.1-11) imagines the protagonists with stones, or what could the line, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8.7, NASB), mean? In other words, there is no need to invoke Life of Brian here; standard filmic depictions based on New Testament evidence would be enough.

By the end of his review, I have the feeling that Chilton's rhetoric is running away with him and there is little sense of proportion:

By mixing together the genre of the passion play with the pretension of historical accuracy, Gibson has inadvertently made his passion play into pious vaudeville. Claims that this film reflects the Gospels or history are cynical. Critics who treat it as a historical work have confused their profession with self-promotion. Were this film directed by Mel Brooks, we would have something to watch with pleasure. But Mr. Gibson’s Passion is libelous farce, poor art, and an incentive for credulous viewers to confuse Christian faith with hatred.

While I remain sceptical about any claims of special historical accuracy for this film, I do not think that it is "cynical" to suggest that it reflects the Gospels. Many of its lines are straight from the Gospels and on the whole more of its script is derived from the New Testament than is the case with several other Jesus films (cf. Darrell Bock's excellent guide). I would personally regard associating the film with Austin Powers, Monty Python and Mel Brooks as more peculiar than associating it with the New Testament. Nor is the film, for all its flaws, "poor art", as Chilton appears to acknowledge earlier in the review. And I find the assertion about "credulous viewers" confusing "Christian faith with hatred" a difficult one to assess in the light of the film's major, repeated theme through the crucifixion narrative of love of one another, love of enemies, prayer for persecutors and forgiveness of sin. For many viewers it is this theme of overwhelming love in the face of such appalling hatred and wickedness that makes the film so powerful. I do not think that viewers who feel this way are credulous, nor that there is any confusion of the Christian faith with hatred. Quite the contrary.

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for this link. The University of California Press has made available the complete text of the following:

David Daube, Appeasement or Resistance and Other Essays on New Testament Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)

The on-line edition is broken up into the four separate essays:

• The Old Testament in the New: A Jewish Perspective


• Temple Tax


• The Burdened Convert


• Appeasing or Resisting the Oppressor

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On Biblical Studies Resources, Jim West notes this article in WXII12.com:

Survey: 'The Passion' May Be Reducing Anti-Semitism

A new poll suggests fears that "The Passion of the Christ" would trigger anti-Semitism were unwarranted.

A nationwide survey conducted for the Institute for Jewish and Community Research finds that 83 percent of Americans familiar with the film say it's made them neither more nor less likely to blame today's Jews for Jesus' crucifixion.

Nine percent said Mel Gibson's film actually has made them less likely to blame today's Jews, while less than 2 percent said they're more likely to fault modern Jews or Jewish institutions.

The Institute's president, Gary Tobin, added that discussion of the issue has probably been good for Christian-Jewish relations.

The site also has a little repository of clips from the film:

Movie Clips, Interview Clips, Slide Show

So if you haven't seen it yet and want to whet your appetite, have a look at these five clips. The same article, as well as the clips, is available at Click2Houston.com, with thanks to Jeff Peterson for the link.

Jim also links to an article in a German publication, DW-World.de Deutsche Welle, "The Passion" stirs heated debate in Germany. But I don't seem to be able to access this -- error message. I've tried accessing the German language version without success.

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The trailer for The Passion of the Christ has arrived in UK cinemas -- I saw it yesterday.

Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link from BBC News:

Jim Caviezel's risky sacrifice
Catholic actor Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ, was blessed by the Pope at the Vatican on Monday.

Essentially this is an article about Caviezel's career to date. There's another similar article here:

Passion actor Caviezel meets Pope

And thanks to Mark Elliott at Bible and Interpretation for this one (also noted by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica):

Mel's Jesus: A "Real Man" or Just a Toon?
Paul V. M. Flesher
If you read the gospel accounts of the Passion before you view the film, it becomes immediately clear that The Passion does not consistently adhere to the biblical stories

It is an interesting and different take on the film, stressing Caviezel's portrayal of a "macho" Jesus, heroically standing up to the punishment meted out to him. The "toon" of the title relates to the problem that Jesus continues to be able to get up, to survive and carry on after the repeated torture, just like the toons of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the like. It is something that one wonders when seeing the film -- how could a man survive that kind of scourging? But a couple of thoughts occur to me in defence of the film. First, Jesus ben Ananias is said to have been "whipped till his bones were laid bare" in Josephus' War 6.5.3 and yet he apparently survives. Further, the Gospels depict Jesus' death on the cross as relatively quick -- six hours in the Synoptics and three hours in John; and in the latter he does not need to have his legs broken unlike the other men. It is entirely possible that if these stories originate in reasonably accurate memories, Jesus' scourging was severe and his death on the cross consequently quicker.

Bible and Interpretation have set aside a page for these academic articles on The Passion of the Christ here:

Essays From Bible and Interpretation on the Passion.

More are promised; it will be interesting to see who else is lined up.

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Stephen Shields at Faithmaps.org has produced an excellent collection of links to materials on The Passion of the Christ:

Links and Articles related to "The Passion of the Christ"
These resources are intended to aid in understanding the movie, the Scriptural and other sources informing it, and in evaluating its content historically.

I've added the link to my page on The Passion of the Christ.

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I was sorry to read on RogueClassicism of the death of Keith Hopkins. New York Times obituary:

Keith Hopkins, 69, Historian With an Unusual Approach, Is Dead
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

See also The Guardian. I never met Hopkins but almost did once -- he was a successful "media don" and was well liked by documentary makers who found his approach lively, engaging and televisual. So he appeared on New Testament related documentaries as well as those on the ancient world more broadly; I took part in an ITV series called The Apostles and the episode on Matthew featured Hopkins prominently as well as Graham Stanton.

Labels: obituaries

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The March issue of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament is now available. On-line access to the full text articles is for subscription / institutional subscriptions only:

Journal for the Study of the New Testament Vol. 26 No. 3 (March 2004)

Matthew and the Gentiles
Warren Carter

Engagement, Disengagement and Obstruction: Jesus’ Defense Strategies in Mark’s Trial and Execution Scenes (14.53-64; 15.1-39)
William Sanger Campbell

Brothers in Brackets?
Reidar Aasgaard

Poverty in Pauline Studies
Steven J. Friesen

Poverty in Pauline Studies: A Response to Steven Friesen
John Barclay

Constructing Poverty Scales for Graeco-Roman Society
Peter Oakes

Book Reviews

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Apparently The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988) is only this week getting its release in Mexico, a week ahead of the release there of The Passion of the Christ, according to this Reuters story on Yahoo! News:

Christ Film Reaches Mexico 16 Years Later
By Elizabeth Fullerton

Heavily Catholic Mexico outlawed director Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ" for portraying a weak-willed Jesus Christ tempted to have sex with Mary Magdalene.

It will finally debut in cinemas here on Friday.

The film's distributor said this week it was launching "this work of art so the Mexican public can decide for itself and draw its own conclusions."

The film has been timed to open exactly one week before the March 19 Mexican premiere of Gibson's "The Passion"

Still more evidence of this interesting side effect of the popularity of The Passion of the Christ, that it is increasing interest in other Jesus films. Let's hope for a TV airing in the UK of some Jesus films over Easter. Perhaps even some of the rarities, The Day Christ Died or Son of Man?

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T & T Clark International, the new imprint of Continuum that combines Sheffield Academic Press, T & T Clark and Trinity Press International, has now launched its own major new web site with up to date booklist, details on its editorial programme and so on:

T & T Clark International

The site will configure itself for you into U.S. / Canada or U.K. / Other. There are also some good offers in the Special Sales section.

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And following on from the previous entry, I had a look to see if Warren Carter has a faculty page and he does, with a full publications list (though now a little out of date since the Pilate book is listed as forthcoming). It's on Scholars: C and here is the link:

Warren Carter

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On Paleojudaica, a link to this interesting piece by Warren Carter (Pherigo Professor of New Testament at St. Paul's School of Theology) in the Kansas City Star:

A place for Pontius Pilate
Roman governor was merely playing his political part
By WARREN CARTER

It seems that Carter has published a book on Pontius Pilate. This had escaped by attention until now:

Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003)

Over on the Liturgical Press web site, they are headlining with this book with the line, "Have you seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ? Wondering what Pontius Pilate was really like?" Here's their blurb:

Pontius Pilate examines the portraits of this Roman governor found in the Gospels. Unlike some discussions of Pilate, this one takes Pilate’s role as governor and representative of Roman imperial power seriously. It views Pilate predominantly as a strong, efficient, and astute governor, not as a weak and indecisive man, pressured into killing Jesus against Pilate’s convictions. The conclusion considers some of the ethical and theological issues the scenes involving Pilate raise for contemporary readers.

Chapters are “Would the Real Pilate Please Stand Up?” “Reading the Gospel Accounts of Pilate,” “Governors and the Roman Imperial System,” “Mark’s Pilate,” “Matthew’s Pilate,” “Luke’s Pilate,” and “John’s Pilate.”

And they also have an excerpt available from the preface and introduction to the book:

Excerpt from Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for these links from BBC News:

Vatican sermon criticises Passion

A Vatican sermon has made a veiled criticism of Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa said if the film spread the belief that all Jews were responsible for Christ's death, it should be criticised.

But he said in a Lent sermon that "if it restricts itself to showing an influential group of Jews" were to blame, it could not be criticised.

MP slates Gibson's Christ movie

Labour MP Gerald Kaufman has attacked Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ as "damagingly anti-Semitic".

On ITV1's GMTV Sunday Programme, he slated the film's "gratuitous violence, ugliness, wallowing in blood and, it has to be said, crude anti-Semitism".

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for this new URL for Neotestamentica, now updated on the Journals page:

Neotestamentica

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With thanks to Holger Szesnat for several of these, some updates to the NT Gateway Scholars pages:

• Scholars: D: new URL for Robert Derrenbacker; Jonathan Draper added.


• Scholars: F: Gordon Fee's web page has gone.


• Scholars: H: Stanley Harstine's web page gone (he has moved to Friends University but no sign of web page there).

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