The Bible Series -- Drama and Historical Context

While I realize that the only thing people seem to want to talk about at the moment in connection with The Bible Series is the alleged resemblance between a still of Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni and President Obama, I will risk talking about several other features of the most recent instalment of the drama, which was broadcast in Sunday evening on History Channel.  Here is a recap of the episode (courtesy of the History Channel website):




One of the aspects that I appreciate in the New Testament episodes of The Bible series is the attention paid to historical context.  One of the challenges for film-makres on this kind of project is to provide some explanation of the historical context without weighing the narrative down with turgid exposition. I talked about this a little in relation to BBC's The Passion in 2008 in a piece that also found its way onto the DVD, "The Passion" and Its Historical Context.

The Bible nicely illustrates the political situation at the turn of the era by drawing in an incident from Josephus's Jewish War 1.33.2 (648-655), the cutting down of the golden eagle over the great gate:

Josephus describes the young men as gaining courage from the report of Herod the Great's ill health.  The Bible series depicts that bad health in an extraordinary and memorable scene where Sam Douglas as Herod lies bloated and in agony with leaches all over his body.  This scene is a great adaptation of the story from Josephus and, as I commented the other day, Sam Douglas's Herod is up there with Peter Ustinov's iconic depiction of Herod in Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977).  Here is Douglas:

While Herod is suffering away in his palace, the viewer gets to meet Mary and Joseph for the first time, in Nazareth in Galilee.  The viewer is treated to an imagination of a first century BCE synagogue.  This, of course, is difficult to imagine given our lack of detailed knowledge, but I was delighted to see Mary and Joseph sitting down next to one another, in a scene that depicts the meeting of their eyes.

Since several people have asked me about the role of an academic consultant, this is the kind of thing that one comments on.  There was a question, for example, over whether or not to depict Mary and Joseph separated into different parts of the synagogue, a male section and a female section.  This is where a consultant points out that there is no evidence for that kind of segregation in this period.  It is one of those areas where history and drama come together -- the scene works better as drama if the two are side by side, but it coheres at the same time with what we know of the history.

This is not, of course, to suggest that attempts to provide historical context trump the drama.  The Biblical texts are what drive the narrative, and one of the ways that the episode dramatizes the Birth Narrative is to combine Matthew's story about the Magi and Herod (Matt. 2.1-12) with the context previously established.  Although the narrative provides the traditional three wise men (to coincide with the three gifts, Matt. 2.11), just one of them consults with Herod, and he is given the traditional name Balthazar:

Focusing on one character among the several from the Biblical text is something that often happens elsewhere in order to generate a story that is easier to follow; compare the miraculous haul of fish later in the episode (based on Luke 5.1-10) where only Peter is present .  This Balthazar is similarly the spokesman for the magi in the nativity scene itself.  The whole clip is available on Youtube here.  It begins with Balthazar seeing the star:




The depiction of the Nativity is traditional, harmonizing elements from Matthew 2 with elements from Luke 2, but it's very effective, very moving.  Leila Mimmack's Mary is just sublime in this scene.  I tweeted the other night, while the episode was being broadcast, that you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by her performance here (after which several respondents responded that they were indeed in possession of hearts of stone).

Once the narrative moves forward by a few years, the political context requires some further explanation.  Once again, turgid exposition is avoided and instead we see an encounter between Pontius Pilate, the newly arrived governor of Judea, and Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea.  The encounter between them sets the scene nicely for the drama to follow both in the immediate context -- John's baptism and death, and the broader context -- the trial and crucifixion next week:

The conversation between the two men not only establishes the politics of the region and the period but also the question of a "Messiah" and what this language means.  It reminds me of Peter Ustinov's Herod the Great in Zeffirelli's  Jesus of Nazareth, who tells Proculus (a fictional character from Rome), over a sumptuous feast, all about the dreams of a "Messiah" figure and what this means.  But by having this kind of conversation just before the beginning of Jesus' mission, The Bible is able to segue neatly straight into John's baptism and messianic preaching.  "You need to keep an eye on your Messiah", Pilate says, as the film cuts straight to Jesus walking along the side of the River Jordan, with snatches of what I think is a kind of "Jesus theme" in Hans Zimmer's score, here heard for the first time in the drama:

And when it comes to Jesus' walking, I can't help thinking of Martin Scorsese's comments about the importance of making sure that your Jesus walks normally, and not a couple of inches above ground.  He loved Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew (1964) in which Jesus clearly just walks.  Diogo Morgado, who plays Jesus in The Bible, gets this right too.  He does not glide; he does not float; he walks.  In fact, there is a lovely moment towards the end of the episode where Jesus sploshes through the water to get to Peter's boat for the miraculous haul of fishes story.

There are many others things I would love to discuss about this episode of The Bible, but I will conclude with just one.  Although it came in for a lot of criticism from academics and others, one of the things that Gibson's Passion of the Christ did well was the "point of view" shot, whereby the viewer would see events as Jesus sees them, often the trigger for a flashback, a flashback that was often Jesus remembering something.  Here in The Bible, there is a great point of view shot, as Jesus goes down into the waters of baptism, and we see things as he sees them:

He is looking at John, as he emerges from the water.  It's an impressive scene not least because this is the kind of area where one could end up being really crass and cheesey.  In the Synoptics' narrative, a dove descends and there is a voice from the heavens.  The Bible does not attempt to depict that directly, but simply suggests Jesus' epiphany by showing a shot of the sky as he emerges.

(Note: the above pictures are mainly screenshots taken from episode 6 with a view to illustrating the points I am making; the second picture (of Sam Douglas as Herod) is a publicity still from History Channel).

The Bible Series - into the New Testament

The Bible Series has continued to have massive ratings, with over 10 million for last Sunday's second two-hour instalment. Next Sunday's two hour instalment features Jeremiah and Daniel, Exile and Return, in hour one and the Nativity story, John the Baptist and Jesus in hour two. There is a new trailer available:



I must admit that I have never quite known how to picture Jeremiah in my mind.  Has there ever been a depiction in a mainstream film or TV series?  Somehow, Raad Rawi's depiction in The Bible really works, though, sufficiently that I might almost be imagining this face in future readings of the text.

A couple of things are worth looking out for here. I think Sam Douglas makes a great Herod, rivalling Peter Ustinov's iconic portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth (dir. J. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977). And I love Leila Mimmack's adorable portrayal of young Mary, which rivals any portrayal of Mary in film and TV that I have seen, including Olivia Hussey in Jesus of Nazareth, Keisha Castle-Hughes in The Nativity Story (dir. Catherine Hardwicke, 2006) and Tatiana Maslaney in The Nativity (BBC, 2010).

The preview also shows glimpses of a remarkable scene that dramatizes Josephus's narrative of the cutting down of the eagle over the gate of the temple -- definitely one to watch out for in the episode.

There is a shorter preview available here:




And speaking of young Mary, there is an interview with Leila Mimmack here, interspersed with clips from the episode:





It is probably worth adding also in this context the longer clip of the Nativity episode that they released last Christmas:




I must admit to finding this facetious comment on Entertainment Weekly a little amusing: " Next week, the mini [series] could get a ratings boost by the addition of a new fan-favorite character — Jesus Christ joins the show once The Bible gets into the New Testament."

The End of Google Reader

I am very disappointed with the news that Google Reader is coming to an end. USA Today reports that Google Reader is shutting down in July, and the news is widely reported elsewhere.

Since I moved over from Bloglines to Google Reader some years ago, Google Reader has been part of my every day way of experiencing the internet, especially blogs and podcasts. Google Reader also generates the blogroll I have to the right of this blog.

So we have until July to find a good replacement. Does anyone have a good recommendation? It has to be free, it should not have a magaziney-type interface, and it must at least have the functionality of Google Reader, ideally with the ability to generate a nice blogroll for a specifically chosen group of sites. I suspect I'm asking too much?

Late Antiquity Made New Symposium: The Poster

Thanks to Maria Doerfler for this fantastic poster for the symposium celebrating the work of Elizabeth Clark, coming soon at Duke!

Blog notice here. For more see details here.

Thomas and the Gospels Reviews and Inteviews

I am grateful to Christopher Skinner for posting an interview with me about my book Thomas and the Gospels over on his Peje Iesous blog.

Interview with Mark Goodacre (Part 1)

Interview with Mark Goodacre (Part 2)

I am also grateful to Tony Burke for this fair, appreciative but critical review over on Apocryphicity:

A Review of Mark Goodacre's "Thomas and the Gospels"

Speaking of reviews, I somehow failed, inexcusably, to mention this essay by Loren Rosson III over on The Busybody:

Retrospective / Review: Q, Thomas and Killjoy Scholarship

It looks back at my Case Against Q and forward to Thomas and the Gospels. I kind of like the term "killjoy", though I have tended to use the term "spoilsport" in the same context in the past of that kind of reluctant scepticism that I find myself cursed with.

I have also been lucky enough to be reviewed over on Matt Page's Bible Films Blog:

Book Review: Thomas and the Gospels

I am a big fan of Matt's blog and I am looking forward to hearing his reviews of History Channel's The Bible in due course.

And Rafael Rodriguez reviews the book, and has some really nice things to say as well as some helpful criticisms here on Verily, Verily:

Goodacre, the Synoptics and the Gospel of Thomas

I'd love to find some time to interact with some of Rafael's points in due course.

Thanks also to Michael Bird, Jim West, Thomas Creedy, and I think also James McGrath (but can't find the link, soz) for appreciative mentions.  Apologies to any I have missed -- please let me know in the comments below.

Thomas and the Gospels is available from Eerdmans, SPCK, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk.  There is an Eerdmans interview (8 minutes) as well as a book trailer (one minute).

The Bible Series a Massive Ratings Success

I expected The Bible Series on History Channel to debut strongly last night, but I had no idea just how well it would do.  Apparently, it had a massive 14.8 million viewers on the night, 13.1 million of whom watched the first broadcast between 8pm and 10pm.  Details here:

History's "The Bible" is the Number 1 Cable Entertainment Telecast of the Year

To put this into some kind of context, other cable shows like Doctor Who on BBC America get a couple of million viewers.  Over 14 million puts it up there with the top rated, prime time shows on the main networks.

Congratulations to all of those involved!  #TheBible was also trending world-wide all evening, and #NinjaAngels made an appearance too!  You can catch a few short clips of those NinjaAngels, in this short video:

The series continues next Sunday on History at 8/7C.

Previous blog posts on The Bible here.

The Bible Series: The Consultants' Role

I have been blogging off and on for a few weeks on the forthcoming History Channel series, The Bible, which begins airing in the USA tonight, 8/7C.  There are ten episodes and two are broadcast each week, culminating with the final two on Easter Day, 31 March.  There are now tons of video clips available, but here's one of my favourites, a nice montage of scenes set to The Script's "Hall of Fame":

One of the reason for scholarly types to be encouraged is that the executive producers, Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, did hire a large group of academic consultants.  The group is so large that I must admit that I don't know everyone who was involved, but I can confirm that I was involved, and so were  Helen Bond, Craig Evans, Joshua Garroway, Paula Gooder and Candida Moss.

Garroway comments on his experiences as a consultant in an article on CNN's Belief Blog:

Another consultant was Rabbi Joshua Garroway, an assistant professor at the Hebrew Union College and an expert on early Christianity and the Second Jewish commonwealth (circa 530 B.C. to 70 A.D.) Judaism. He was a paid consultant on the project.

“One of the issues that came up frequently in the comments was the goal of the production was to remain faithful, or at least as faithful as possible, to the narrative and text of the Bible, as opposed to a historical critical approach,” he said.

“The series is not meant to be a historical feature but as a representation of the biblical narrative which is at times historical and at times not,” Garroway said.

One reason Garroway thought he was brought in was because in parts of the New Testament, “there are less than generous depictions of Jews, Jewish leaders and Jewish traditions.”

One of several Jewish scholars involved, his role as a New Testament scholar was to help the production stay faithful to the text but also “diminish as much as possible scenes or statements that could be construed as overly negative toward Jews and Jewish judgment.”

While he thinks the project has an overall Christian orientation, “I think they did well.”

“I don’t think it will run into the same problems that Mel Gibson’s movie ("The Passion of the Christ") did because the producers have been somewhat conscientious about forestalling some of the things that could produce that effect in the Jewish community,” he said, referring to perceptions of anti-Semitism from the 2004 film.

Craig Evans comments in an article in the Herald:

Craig Evans, professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, was one of about 40 consultants and faith leaders recruited from around the world to ensure the show’s historical and scriptural accuracy.

“We have loved our relationship with Craig,” said Downey, adding that the well-known scholar and his wife became close friends as Evans guided the New Testament parts of the project with his “expertise and love of Scripture. … He’s been a great blessing.”

Evans’s task involved reading and re-reading the script, initially to correct mistakes and then to examine dialogue and the authentic representation of the culture and history of the Middle East in New Testament times.

“This was a challenge,” said Evans, who has previously consulted for National Geographic documentaries, among other projects. “How do you work it all into a movie?”

And I talked to the Huffington Post about the project the other day:

Mark Goodacre, a New Testament scholar at Duke University who was one of several academics who consulted on Downey and Burnett's script, said there are bound to be questions of interpretation, accuracy and “what's included and not included” in any Bible adaptation.

“We tried to make sure things held together historically, but in any adaptation that's a compelling drama you have to draw lines and make connections through dialogue, scenes and narrative,” said Goodacre, who noted the series relies on a mix of Biblical translations with dialogue that appeals to modern viewers.

“You don't want people talking King James English, but there are recognizable lines and, of course, iconic places," he said. "But [Downey and Burnett] are also not afraid to provide some linking pieces and do things that are not direct. It's very naturally done.”

Broadly speaking, the role of the consultants began back in 2011 when planning on the series was beginning.  I first met the producers in Greenwich, London, in July that year.  Our main role was to look at scripts as they were produced and to offer comments, but also to answer emails and phone-calls, and to advise on details in the scripts from the scholar's perspective.

Last year, in the autumn, we got to view early cuts of the episodes and once again to offer comments, and to draw attention to anything we thought required special attention.  It was a fascinating experience because it gave you an insight into the world of TV production to see the partially finished episodes, and to watch things coming together.  I had the same experience watching these early edits that I had when watching the BBC / HBO Passion in 2008 -- it's a profoundly moving experience to see scripts with which one has become very familiar now becoming reality.  And although these were early edits, and one watched them out of sequence, I have to say that I was not disappointed.  It's a superb series.

The consultant's role is always, inevitably, a very minor role in something like this.  The producers themselves are the ones calling the shots, and they don't need to talk to people like us at all.  And it must be frustrating for them to be talking to people like us who really don't know anything about film-making.  But it's greatly to their credit that they were willing to spend so much time asking the views of academics and taking their views seriously, and I was impressed throughout the experience with the time they took to listen to all the little suggestions we had.

Eerdmans' Video Book Trailer for Thomas and the Gospels

If the eight minute video interview about Thomas and the Gospels is a bit on the long side, Eerdmans have produced a nice short "book trailer" version here:


View it on Eerdword here.

Interview about Thomas and the Gospels on Eerdword

Thanks to all the bloggers and social media folk who have posted this video, and many thanks to Eerdmans for filming it and editing it.  It's eight minutes or so long, and it's focus is my book Thomas and the Gospels (Eerdmans, SPCK, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk):




View the video on Eerdword here.

Amy-Jill Levine delivers Clark Lectures at Duke

The Kenneth Clark lectures are an annual highlight of the Duke calendar.  This year, Amy-Jill Levine is the Clark lecturer, and the series kicks off today:

--
Kenneth W. Clark Lectures 2013:

Guest Speaker: Amy-Jill Levine

Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge U.K. Holding a B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, and Christian Theological Seminary. Her recent books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (co-authored with Douglas Knight). With Marc Brettler she edited the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford). A self-described Yankee Jewish feminist, Professor Levine is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox Synagogue in Nashville, Tenn., although she is often quite unorthodox.

Schedule

Lecture 1
“’I didn't mean to sound anti-Jewish': Historical ignorance, cultural stereotype, and New Testament interpretation”
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
10:00 – 11:15 a.m.
0016 Westbrook, Duke Divinity School

Lecture 2
"Of Bridegrooms and Virgins: Jesus and Jewish Women"
Thursday, February 21, 2013
12:20 – 1:30 p.m.
0016 Westbrook, Duke Divinity School
--

Late Antiquity Made New: Duke Symposium Celebrating Elizabeth Clark

I am delighted to post this notice of a forthcoming symposium honouring the work of my colleague Elizabeth Clark:

LATE ANTIQUITY MADE NEW

A CELEBRATION OF THE WORK OF ELIZABETH A. CLARK

April 11-13, 2013

Duke University

Durham, NC 27708

Full Program & Schedule:  http://sites.duke.edu/clas/symposium-2013/symposium-schedule/

Registration (Free and Open to all!):  http://tinyurl.com/bsbby3q

Late Antiquity Made New brings together more than fifty internationally recognized scholars of Late Ancient and Early Christian Studies and their related disciplines.  The conference has two projects: documenting the emergence of “Late Antiquity” as a discipline within and beyond the Study of Religion during the past four decades, and exploring directions for contemporary and future research in the field.

With Keynotes By:

Patricia Cox Miller (Syracuse): “Caressing the Wolf's Head: Reading Animals in Early Christianity”

Dale Martin (Yale): “Armed and Not Dangerous: Jesus in Jerusalem”

Catherine Chin (UC-Davis): “Aristocratic and Apostolic Genealogies in the Late Fourth Century”

We warmly welcome all guests.  For further information, please contact Maria Doerfler at med33@duke.edu

Sponsored by

John-Kelly C. Warren Roman Catholic Studies Endowment

Evelyn and Valfrid Palmer Roman Catholic Studies Endowment

Dennis and Rita Meyer Endowment Fund

The Center for Jewish Studies

The Duke/UNC Center for Late Ancient Studies

Duke Department of Religion

Duke Divinity School

Duke University Graduate School

The Academy of American Religion

Department of Religious Studies, UNC Chapel Hill

Duke History Department

Trinity College of Arts and Sciences

Office of the Provost

More Bible Series News and Video Clips

It's been a week or two since I've posted anything on the forthcoming History Channel Series The Bible, executive produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.  I and several others (including Helen Bond, Paula Gooder, Candida Moss and Craig Evans) acted as academic consultants on the series.  An extended trailer is now available here:





Several more clips are also available on Youtube. This is from episode 1 about Abraham and features interview footage with British actor Gary Oliver who plays Abraham:





I love the fact that he remembers watching Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth when he was eleven, which means that he is a similar age to me -- and that was a memorable experience in my life too.

This video is in the same format -- interview footage with British actor Lonyo Engele who plays, rather appropriately, the Guardian Angel, also in the first episode. He also talks about how he has seven angel tattoos on his body! There is some footage here of the destruction of Sodom.





This one is in the same format again, an interview with British actress Kierston Wareing who plays Delilah in Episode 3, along with footage from that episode. There are some interesting reflections here on the accent she used; she is an Eastenders actress who has a cockney-sounding accent but she wants to make sure that she can be understood by the American audience:





From the same episode, British actress Sharon Duncan-Brewster plays Samson's mother. There are again video clips and she talks about how she had to sit in the make-up chair for hours when she is aged.





And the great thing about Sharon Duncan-Brewster is that she has also appeared in Doctor Who, in the 2009 tenth doctor "special" "Waters of Mars".

Lots more stuff is appearing regularly on The Bible Series website including useful episode summaries.  I will continue to post blog updates here as these new publicity materials appear.  Previous posts under this label: The Bible Series.  See also Facebook and Twitter.

Myths of Mary and the Married Jesus on Youtube

The Cadbury lecture I gave in Birmingham just over a week ago is now available on Youtube here:



Or watch it on Youtube here.  The lecture is 48 minutes long.  It features much of the powerpoint, but some slides have been omitted for copyright reasons. All of the Q&A is also features, though under the veil of darkness.

Update (12 February 2013): I have now made the audio available as an extended episode of the NT Pod.  This version has the advantage of enabling you to hear the talk without seeing the speaker constantly waving his arms around.

Myths of Mary and the Married Jesus

I am back in England for a couple of days and I'm here to give the second of this year's Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham, which was once my happy home (1995-2005).  Details of this year's Cadbury Lectures are here:

The Cadbury Lectures 2013: Religion out of the Box: Dialogues with academy, society and culture

22 January -- 19 March

My title and abstract:

Myths of Mary and the married Jesus: how popular culture is affecting scholarship

From Jesus Christ Superstar to the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, from the Last Temptation of Christ to the Da Vinci Code, this generation has seen a radical alteration in our perspectives on key characters in early Christianity. Mary Magdalene has been transformed from a repentant prostitute to the first apostle. Now she is even Jesus’ wife. But is Mary’s rehabilitation rooted in reassessments of the primary texts or is it a product of our own immersion in popular culture? What do we know about her Gospel, her tomb, her family? The real story of Mary’s rejuvenation is so mysterious that it leads us to question the identity of the woman we thought we knew.

It will be a fully illustrated talk (as long as we can get the powerpoint working) and it's tomorrow (Tuesday) at 6.

I am also looking forward to speaking today in the Biblical Studies Colloquium on the topic "How reliable is the story of the Nag Hammadi discoveries".  But I am of course most looking forward to catching up with old friends and colleagues in Birmingham!

Frans Neirynck (1927-2012)

I have only just found out that one of the great New Testament scholars, Frans Neirynck, has died (Death notice here).  Any scholar who had a three-thick-volume Festschrift is someone to be reckoned with.  I suppose the thing that he will be remembered for more than anything else is the detail and accuracy of his scholarship -- his articles were meticulously researched and presented with great clarity.

I have not been able to find much on the net in the way of obituaries, but Biblical Studies at Leuven has this fine tribute:

A tribute to Prof. Frans Neirynck

I never met Prof. Neirynck myself; he retired from the conference circuit at about the time that I was beginning to go to events.  From what I hear, though, he was a formidable character and a mighty warrior for his favourite positions, especially the Two Source Theory and John's use of the Synoptics.

Christopher Evans Memorial Service & Tributes

There was a memorial service for Christopher Evans last week at King's College, London and there are some details on the King's College website including two tributes that make delightful reading (both Word documents):

Right Revd Dr Peter Selby

Professor Morna Hooker

More on Christopher Evans, including obituaries, here.

Jesus and Jesus' Wife Walking on Water

In The Jewish Press, Yori Yanover adds this excellent picture of "that man" and "that woman" walking on water.  I must admit that I am rather taken by this picture.

Since the author of the article copies most of the content from John Finnegan's article in the Harvard Crimson without acknowledgement, I am sure he won't mind my reproducing his picture here.

Harvard Crimson on the Jesus' Wife Fragment

Harvard Crimson, the student paper of Harvard University, has an article today on the Jesus' Wife Fragment:

'Jesus's Wife' Parchment Continues to Ignite Controversy
By JOHN P. FINNEGAN, CR

According to Kathryn Dodgson, director of communications at HDS, the publication is waiting to print King’s article while the papyrus undergoes scientific analysis.

Once she receives the results of that analysis, King will incorporate them into the article for the Harvard Theological Review, Dodgson wrote in an email.

Currently analysts are testing the ink on the fragment to confirm that it dates from the fourth century like the papyrus itself, which has already been tested.

King could not be reached for comment on this article.

There are also comments in the article from Greg Sterling, Janet Timbie and me.

I'm sure many of my readers will have spotted the mistake in the title of the piece -- it's not "parchment".

The return of my blogroll

I had to get rid of my blogroll recently because a couple of blogs were getting flagged up by Google (incorrectly) as featuring malware, but then my automated links were being interpreted by Google as linking to the malware.  Happily, these issues seem now to have resolved themselves and I've added by blogroll again on the right hand side of the page.  

As it happens, it is fortuitous because blogger has ironed out some problems with its automated blogroll delivery, and it seems that now all the biblioblogs (and related blogs) that I subscribe to are showing up, in order of the most recent to post at the top.

The Bible Series Website and new video

More scenes from The Bible Series are now available in this new Youtube video set to a certain Pastor Charles Jenkins singing "Awesome":



The series now has its own website with lots of photographs and video clips here:

The Bible

I should perhaps mention again that there were several academic consultants involved in this project and I was one of them.

More on The Bible Series here.

Appearance on 700 Club Interactive, on the Jesus Wife Fragment

There's been a rumour circulating that I appeared on CBN's 700 Club Interactive just before Christmas, and I can confirm that the rumours are true.  It was something of a new experience for me.  I have to confess that I had not heard of the programme before they got in touch with me, but when I mentioned it to others, they were able to fill me in.  The topic was the Jesus' Wife Fragment, which they spent ten minutes or so discussing from about half-way through the programme (begin at 14:48).  There is a short report, featuring Karen King and Claire Pfann (University of the Holy Land) and then Gordon Robertson interviews me via Skype.  Here's the Youtube version:




Or you can view it on CBN here:




I enjoyed taking part in the programme, but working with Skype was a little stressful as the connection went pretty blurry from about half-way through.

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene? at Baylor

I'm lecturing at Baylor University tomorrow on the topic, "Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene?"  They have put this nice poster together, which features details of time and location.  I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Life of St Paul (1938) on Youtube

You can now watch The Life of St Paul (dir. Norman Walker, 1938) in its entirety on Youtube.  It's not a film that I had ever seen;  in fact, I was only dimly aware of its existence.  Since it is not easy to get hold of on DVD, this is good news for Bible Film enthusiasts:

It is two hours long and stars Neal Arden as Paul.  IMDb's page on the film is here: Life of St Paul (1938).

The Bible Series Official Trailer

There's a new "official trailer" out now for The Bible series coming in March from History Channel:


More on The Bible Series here.

Holy Land Archaeology at Duke

My colleagues Eric Meyers and Carol Meyers are once again leading a group of a students in an intensive study of Holy Land Archaeology.

They flew out at the end of December and are currently busy touring Israel, seeing sites, listening to one another's insights on the key archaeological, historical and political issues:

Holy Land Archaeology at Duke

The photograph here is nicked from Ben Gordon, who is TAing on the tour, and it depicts the group gathered for the discussion by Iron Age storehouses at Hazor.

As you'd expect from Duke students (I know, I would say this, but it's true), the writing on the blog is clear and full of great insights.  The whole blog is superbly illustrated with lots of great pics, including this one of "verifiable archaeological rock stars" Eric Meyers and Carol Meyers:

Standing with Christian Brady

Our friend and fellow-blogger Christian Brady has suffered the unimaginable grief this week of the death of his son Mack.

This morning, we are standing with him.

May light perpetual shine upon him.

Beyond Belief does Apocalyptic

The most recent episode of Radio 4's Beyond Belief discusses Apocalyptic. One of the guests is Philip Alexander, professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature at the University of Manchester, whose work will be well-known to many readers:

Beyond Belief: Apocalyptic

If you get to listen to this programme, it's because the Domesday scenario - according to which the world would end on December 21st - did not happen. The interpretation of the Mayan calendar that arrived at this date was derided by most Mayan scholars, but this hasn't stopped the media camping out in the French village of Bugarach, identified as the only village on earth which was to be spared destruction.

Apocalyptic ideas about the end of the world, as we in the West understand them, have their roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions. The popular imagery - the Mark of the Beast, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Whore of Babylon - feed the imagination of film makers and writers, who draw upon Biblical imagery.

Joining Ernie Rea to discuss the nature and role of apocalyptic ideas on western religion and culture are Dr Philip Alexander, Professor of Post Biblical Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester; Dr Stefan Skrimshire, lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leeds; and Rev Dr Steve Jeffrey minister of Emmanuel Evangelical Church in North London. 

It's a good listen.  You can listen again at the link above, or you can download the podcast.  The programme is thirty minutes long.

Still no news on the Jesus' Wife Fragment

CNN's Belief Blog has today published an update on the testing of the Jesus' Wife Fragment:

"Jesus Wife" fragment gets more testing, delays article
 Eric Marrapodi

The news is that there is no news:

"We're moving ahead with the testing, but it is not yet complete, and so the article will await until we have the results," King said in an email to CNN.

"The owner of the fragment has been making arrangements for further testing and analysis of the fragment, including testing by independent laboratories with the resources and specific expertise necessary to produce and interpret reliable results. This testing is still underway," Kathyrn Dodgson, director of communications for the Harvard Divinity School, said in a email to CNN.

"Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish Professor King’s paper after conclusion of all the testing so that the results may be incorporated," Dodgson said. "Until testing is complete, there is nothing more to say at this point."

However, one useful point is here clarified, that the tests are being arranged not by Harvard but by the still anonymous "owner of the fragment".

For more on the fragment, including my own reflections on what I think is a forgery, see The Gospel of Jesus' Wife.

The Nativity gets American premiere on BBC America

Back in 2010, the BBC followed up its successful The Passion (2008) with The Nativity, a two hour drama written by Tony Jordan and stripped across several nights on BBC One (IMDb). I thought it was an excellent drama.  Historical consultant Helen Bond had her own reflections on it.  At the time, I noted that it was to be distributed by BBC Worldwide and hoped that it might get shown in America.

Two years later and The Nativity is about to get its American premiere over on BBC America, on Sunday at 1pm ET/PT.  They are showing it in one fell swoop rather than stripped across several nights, so you'll have to treat it like watching a film.  For those who haven't seen it yet, do try to catch it.

Here's the original BBC One trailer, just 40 seconds' worth, still available on Youtube:



In the lead up to the BBC America showing, Amazon Instant Video and iTunes have made available a free three minute "sneak peak" for downloading.  It's Joseph talking to Joachim and Anna, Mary's parents, and then a nice scene of Joseph and Mary walking and chatting.

This presumably means that the series will be available for purchase on both Amazon and iTunes as soon as it has aired next week, which is all good news.

I am delighted to see that this has made its way to America at last.  If only the BBC had partnered with BBC Worldwide for The Passion, rather than HBO, perhaps we might have had an American release for that by now.

Disambiguation: this is not The Nativity Story, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and released four years earlier in 2006 in cinemas (my review), nor is it Nativity!, a comedy produced by BBC Films a year earlier, in 2009, and starring Martin Freeman.

Update: I've just noticed that The Nativity is also getting repeated this year on BBC HD, on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 5.30/5.45pm -- The Nativity (including more clips for those in the UK, or with jiggery-pokery skills).

The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers

Several other bloggers (including Joel Watts and Jim West) have mentioned this fine new volume from Eisenbrauns, Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media (great Oxford comma there). It is edited by my esteemed colleagues here in the Duke Religion Department, Eric and Carol Meyers.

The volume is the result of the Duke Conference on this subject held in April 2009.  At the time, I blogged about the conference, and you can listen in to an archive of the talks on our iTunes U.  It is all worth reading, of course, but I am happy to provide access here to my essay in the volume (as well as to the table of contents):

The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers
Mark Goodacre

The essay has a response by AKMA, though I can't reproduce that here.

Another Bible Series video

Here's another video featuring scenes from the forthcoming History Channel series, The Bible:



It's largely the same scenes released in the first look the other day, but with some added shots of Jesus at the end, and set to a song by Blake Shelton.

My previous posts on the series are gathered here: The Bible Series, History Channel, 2013. .

Did Jesus Exist? with Richard Carrier and me on Unbelievable?

Premier Christian Radio's Unbelievable? with Justin Brierly today featured a discussion about the historicity of Jesus with Richard Carrier and me. You can listen here:

Unbelievable? Did Jesus Exist?  Richard Carrier vs. Mark Goodacre

Richard Carrier is the world's foremost proponent of the "mythicist" view of Jesus - that he never actually existed as a historical person. He explains his theory that St. Paul only ever spoke of Jesus in the spiritual realm and that the Gospels are "extended parables". Mark Goodacre is NT professor at Duke University. He contends that Carrier's mythicist view is extrememly far fetched and the evidence for the historical Jesus is beyond reasonable doubt.

Scenes from The Bible series, set to CeeLo Green

Also newly released this evening, this montage of scenes from The Bible series (History Channel, March 2013) set to "Mary Did You Know?" by CeeLo Green. The montage includes scenes from several episodes in the New Testament half of the series, including the Nativity, Jesus' Life and Passion, and Paul:

 

 Other posts on The Bible series are here.

The Bible Series -- First Look!

The first clip of the The Bible Series (History Channel, 2013) has been released tonight. Suitably enough, it's the Nativity scene:

 

The Bible dramatizes key narratives from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and it is executive produced by Mark Burnett (The Voice, Survivor, The Apprentice) and Roma Downey (Touched by an Angel). It is produced by Lightworkers Media.  I and several others have acted as consultants.  You can follow The Bible Series on Facebook. My previous post on the series is here: The Bible Series, History Channel, 2013.

Beverly Gaventa to join Baylor

Beverly Roberts Gaventa is moving to Baylor.  Details here:

Dr. Beverly Roberts Gaventa Appointed Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Baylor University

WACO, Texas (Dec. 11, 2012) - Baylor University Executive Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Davis, Ph.D., has announced the appointment of Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Ph.D., as Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation in the department of religion at Baylor University. Dr. Gaventa currently serves as Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she has taught for 21 years. She will join Baylor beginning in fall 2013.

Dr. Gaventa received her Ph.D. from Duke University under the supervision of W.D. Davies and her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she studied with J. Louis Martyn and Raymond E. Brown. She holds Honorary Doctorates from Christian Theological Seminary and Kalamazoo College. She also is an honorary professor of New Testament at Stellenbosch University in South Africa . . . .

. . . . "Distinguished Professors have a unique role in helping to clarify and articulate Baylor's mission to be a research university with a distinctively Christian identity," Provost Davis said. "The serious study of the Bible is a central part of that identity, and Dr. Beverly Gaventa has established herself as one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world who engage in theological interpretation of the Christian Scriptures. She brings to Baylor a sterling reputation as a scholar/teacher, and she will, in splendid ways, build on the legacy left by her predecessor, Dr. Charles H. Talbert, Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus."

Read the whole announcement here. Thanks to Mike Parsons and Mike Whitenton for the news.

NT Pod 63: Conflicting Christmas Stories

It's that time of year again, the time for the release of the Christmas episode of the NT Pod!  So I have interrupted the series on the Gospel of Thomas, for NT Pod 63: Conflicting Christmas Stories.

The episode explores the differences between the Birth Narratives in Matt. 1-2 and Luke 1-2 and asks how this can be the case if Luke is familiar with Matthew.

This is now the fourth year of the NT Pod Christmas episode.  You can find the others here: NT Pod Christmas episodes.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  You can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

My Response to Crook's Response to My Review of Parallel Gospels

I reviewed Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels at this year's SBL and Crook responded.  I now have a few comments on that response.  I am grateful for Zeba's thoughtful comments.  I will take his points in turn:

(1) On the lack of word-alignment, I had not realized that this was a publisher's decision rather than an author's decision.  I understand the importance of affordability but I think it is a great shame that  something so fundamental to Synopsis construction is here jettisoned because of cost considerations.

In the discussion on Monday, I facetiously suggested that one could save a lot of space by getting rid of Q from the Synopsis, thereby freeing up more space for word-alignment.

(2) On the source-language translation, I understand Zeba's decision but I disagree with it.  The difficulty is that prepositions, for example, do not exist on their own, as individual sense-units.  They only attain meaning in connection with nouns in a particular case, so it makes no sense to translate hypo always as "under" and meta always as "with".  It is misleading to translate every preposition the same way, and it is a decision that greatly detracts from the appeal of the Synopsis.

(3) I am a little surprised by Zeba's response on the inclusion of Q in the Synopsis.  I think the inclusion of Q would be defensible on the grounds that it helps to illustrate the Two-Source Theory or that it facilitates comparison between Matthew, Luke and the reconstructed text of Q, but it is surely not debatable that including one solution to the problem into the presentation of the data prejudices the reader in favour of that solution, is it?

Zeba suggests that his Synopsis offers some encouragement to the Farrer Theory, e.g. placement of double tradition pericopes in the Synopsis and also the generation of more minor agreements.  However, the point about minor agreements is at least in part negated by the fact that Q is present in this synopsis to explain key minor agreements, especially Q 3.3 and Q 4.16.

Zeba also suggests that the inclusion of Q is no different from the inclusion of Thomas or John, but there is, of course, a material difference.  Both Thomas and John are extant works with textual witnesses and patristic citations; they are not hypothetical texts. In fact, the (helpful) inclusion of Thomas and John illustrates my point well -- that a Synopsis should aim to present the data without prejudice to a given solution to the problem.  Integrating Q into the presentation of the data confuses problem with solution in a fundamental way.

But my key point here is the pedagogical difficulty of including Q in the Synopsis, which turns double tradition into a second kind of triple tradition, and makes colouring the Synopsis much more difficult.  These are issues that are worth considering further.

Zeba Crook's Response to my Review of Parallel Gospels

I am grateful to Zeba Crook for making available his response to my review of his Parallel Gospels and to Loren Rosson for posting it on his blog:

Zeba Crook's SBL Response to Mark Goodacre

Review of Crook's Parallel Gospels

At this year's SBL in Chicago, I took part in a session on Monday afternoon, in the Synoptic Gospels section, that was devoted to  reviewing Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels.  The other reviewers were Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster and Robert Derrenbacker.  My article review is available here:

Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels: Review Article
Mark Goodacre

Update (22 April 2014): My conference paper is now revised and published in SBL's Review of Biblical Literature here:

Review of Zeba A. Crook, Parallel Gospels [PDF]
Mark Goodacre

Please cite as: Mark Goodacre, review of Zeba A. Crook, Parallel Gospels: A Synopsis of Early Christian Writing, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2014)

SBL Chicago 2012

In the past, I have often blogged my way through the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. Sometimes I have even sat in sessions, blogging away as I listen.  For one thing, it's been a great way to help me to stay awake.

To some extent, Twitter has changed all that. A quick tweet on your phone, with the #sblaar hashtag, and you are in touch with loads of others who are also tweeting away, most of whom you will never even meet.  Twitter has actually made blogging the SBL much easier -- it helps you to work out what's worth a blog comment and what is only worth a tweet.

If you read this year's tweets, one thing will come through again and again, especially on Saturday, the realisation that McCormick Place is simply MASSIVE.  One fellow participant said that it was far bigger than the village he lived in in Cambridgeshire.  I found that it was a huge help with the usual SBL diet issue, that one eats far too much unhealthy stuff in quantities that are too large.  Normally, one does not have to walk ten miles in the convention centre just to get from one session to the next, and so I was able to shed a few calories that way.

And that was already after one had commuted in from the hotels area, itself a couple of miles from McCormick.  You did not have to walk, though, if you did not want to.  The shuttles laid on by the society worked well and it reminded me a bit of Orlando 1998 when you could find yourself sitting next to someone interesting quite by chance, or renewing old acquaintances, or overhearing fascinating conversations.

In some years, the book exhibit has been really squeezed in space.  This year, there was so much space available that they hardly knew what to do. And yet, I don't think I visited it as often as usual because everything was so far away from everything else.  You had to plan to go to the exhibit.  You could not simply pop in for 10 minutes in between sessions.

Moreover, SBL tarting was much more difficult than usual.  I have always been an advocate of tarting one's way from one session to another.  But this year, you might have half an hour's walk to get from one session to another.  On the Saturday, I wanted to get from John, Jesus and History (superb paper by Dale Allison aligning the BD with John son of Zebedee that cohered nicely with my NT Pod on the topic) to the Second Century Intertextuality section to hear about Papias -- but I had nearly had a heart attack by the time I had arrived.

My experience of SBL this year was tarnished by the worst series of headaches I have had since I was in college.  So I was in survival mode for much of it and I must apologize to those who found me a little stranger than usual.   Nevertheless, there were a couple of highlights, one the chance to see Skyfall, on Friday evening, with old friends.  Of course the danger with doing the best thing first is that everything is down-hill from there, but it was still a treat.

I was pleased too to get some Chicago pizza on Monday evening, and some good beer, pub food and Thai food on other evenings.  It's awful to say, but eating and drinking really is the heart of SBL.  Oh, and I had an amazing breakfast on Tuesday morning at Eleven City Diner, which looks exactly what you would imagine a Chicago diner should look like, and the breakfast was fantastic, and lasted me all day. And we saw Austan Goolsbee there too (Obama's first term economic advisor, for those not as up with American politics as I am).

As usual, I seemed to have let myself in for involvement with too many sessions this year.  I enjoyed speaking on Secret Mark over at the Biblical Archaeology Society's Fest on Sunday morning and found them an ideal audience, genial but interested and full of questions (more here).   In the past, I have not bothered with a powerpoint, but on this occasion I felt that I needed to illustrate the talk, and it took us the best part of fifteen minutes to get it working.  Still, we got there in the end.

Back at the SBL, I also chaired a session that day, the first of the "Blogger and Online Publication" sessions.  The focus was on Media and Archaeology and featured Simcha Jacobovici, James Tabor, Robert Cargill and Christopher Rollston.  It was not the easiest session to chair and the attendance was poor, I'd guess thirty to forty or so.

On Monday afternoon, I was part of a panel reviewing Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels in the Synoptic Gospels section.  The other reviewers were Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster and Robert Derrenbacker.  I found myself in the unusual position of being the mean guy here, since it seems that the other reviewers were all far more positive overall about Crook's new Synopsis than I was.  I will post my review under separate cover.  For what it is worth, Zeba Crook responded well  to the critique, with good humour and some good points.  The discussion flowed too in the aftermath.

I walked the twenty miles from that session in the East of McCormick Place to another in West, only just making it in time.  This was a session reviewing two recent books on the Gospel of Thomas, my Thomas and the Gospels and Simon Gathercole's Composition of the Gospel of Thomas.  The three reviewers were Stephen Patterson, Christopher Tuckett and Nicola Denzey Lewis.  I was delighted with them all -- critical but appreciative.  More than one could possibly have hoped for.  I received the reviews too late to compose a response, so I responded on the fly.  I made a fair fist of it but Simon did much better and made me laugh several times, not least in drawing attention to Dorothy L. Sayers's character the Revd. Simon Goodacre, in response to the reviewers' remarks about the remarkable similarity of our books in spite of their independence.

One thought did occur to me in that session.  Although there is the conceit that everyone has read the books in question at a book review session, in fact very few have yet had the chance even to look at them, all the more so as several have only just bought them in the book exhibit.  So it would be ideal to begin these book review sessions by allowing the authors ten minutes each to summarize their books before the reviewers are invited in.  In other words, with new books, the sessions could be crafted in such a way that they are geared towards the majority of hearers.  The reviewers too could be encouraged to address those who are not familiar with the books.  Having said that, I did think the organization and chairing of the session (by the Extent of Theological Diversity section, partnering with the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism section) was exemplary, so it's just a small suggestion for the future ethos of the SBL.

It wasn't my favourite SBL, but that's mainly my fault, and I would like to thank the SBL for the fantastic work they put into making this such a successful meeting, and thanks too to all those who worked so hard as volunteers to make things go so well.

Karen King article in the Boston Globe

I meant to blog this last night but didn't get a chance because I was at the new Bond film, Skyfall (which is very good, by the way).  Lisa Wangsness, who has been publishing on the Jesus' Wife Fragment story from the beginning., has a new piece in the Boston Globe.  She was one of the three journalists who broke the story on 18 September (Harvard Professor identifies scrap of papyrus suggesting some early Christians believed Jesus was married) but unlike others, she has continued to follow the story and to report on the developments (Debate, doubts about a married Jesus, 26 September; Scholars begin to weigh in on 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife', 27 September) and now she has a profile piece on Karen King:

Harvard divinity professor relishes adventure, research

Jesus finding put scholar in spotlight

Lisa Wangsness

I have spoken to Lisa on several occasions, including one time last week while I was sitting in the carpool at school, and I get a short quotation in the piece:

“I started seeing that the lines that were being drawn between orthodox or correct Christianity and heretical Christianity couldn’t be drawn that way,” she said. “I had to step back and start sort of fresh and say, ‘What are the similarities and differences among [ancient] Christians, and how might we account for them, in terms of them belonging to this place?’”

King argued that these texts should be seen as part of the story of Christianity, not as distortions of a complete belief system articulated by the Gospels and handed down by the fathers of the early church. She contends that the early history of Christianity needs to be rewritten to include these previously marginalized voices, taking into account how “a limited set of perspectives has shaped what people believe.”

“She’s made her mark on the field by doing that,” said Mark Goodacre, a New Testament scholar at Duke University. “It’s a massive contribution to scholarship.”

The article does mention the forthcoming tests on the Jesus' Wife Fragment but there is no more information about timetable:

King is now awaiting the results of ink composition tests, which cannot establish for sure that it is authentic — but they could reveal that it is a forgery.

“I’m on the edge of my seat as much as anybody,” she said. “And we’ll see.”

The article is also mentioned by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica.

The Jesus' Wife Fragment: How the Forgery Was Done

I am grateful to Andrew Bernhard for sharing his full exposition of how the Gospel of Jesus' Wife was forged, on the basis of Michael Grondin's online interlinear Gospel of Thomas website.

I have previously blogged about Andrew Bernhard's research on the fragment (Jesus' Wife Fragment: Further Evidence of Modern Forgery), where I drew attention to what I regarded as a possible "smoking gun" for the case, the fact that the fragment takes over a typographical error in the PDF of Grondin's Interlinear.  Andrew's essay, How the Gospel of Jesus' Wife Might Have Been Forged: A Tentative Proposal, provided a brilliant analysis of the links between the fragment and Grondin's Interlinear.

But now Andrew has produced a complete analysis of the links between these works in a new essay that he has published here:

Notes on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife Forgery

The piece is a well-written, persuasive account of how he sees the forger of the fragment working, and I would encourage you to read it all with care.

Here, courtesy of Andrew Bernhard, is a summary of the findings:

--

1. Gos. Jes. Wife borrows the framework for a simple dialogue between Jesus and his disciples from Gos. Thom. 12.

2. All decipherable words in Gos. Jes. Wife appear in Gos. Thom. with a single exception: TAHIME (“my wife.”)

3. The words of each line of text in Gos. Jes. Wife are found in close proximity to each other in Gos. Thom.

4. The forger has slightly redacted Gos. Thom. by making masculine pronouns feminine and (attempting to) transform affirmative/negative statements into their opposites.

5. More than half a dozen notable textual features in Gos. Jes. Wife can be attributed to a forger’s dependence on Grondin’s Interlinear.

Summary:

I think it is now fair to begin openly describing Gos. Jes. Wife as a modern forgery.  Although it is admittedly a novel type of forgery, its text can be explained too easily and too completely as a “patchwork” of words and short phrases drawn from the Gos. Thom. by a forger relying on Grondin’s Interlinear. The possibility that Gos. Jes. Wife is a genuinely ancient writing seems extremely remote.

Gos. Jes. Wife is intended to appear as a basic dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, and the words of both Jesus and his disciples are introduced using the same words found in the basic dialogue of Gos. Thom. 12. Every word in Gos. Jes. Wife (except one) can be traced back to Gos. Thom., and every line of text in Gos. Jes. Wife contains words found in close proximity to each other in Gos. Thom. – even when there is no obvious relationship between them (e.g., line 3). Where a word might easily have been spelled differently in the different texts, both Gos. Jes. Wife and Gos. Thom. have the same spelling (i.e., NAEI). In addition, the forger’s redactional tendencies, namely switching third-person pronouns from masculine to feminine (lines 2, 5, 7) and attempting to invert affirmative / negative statements  (lines 5 and 6), can be identified. The forger has also inadvertently included several tell-tale peculiarities in grammar and spelling that reveal the modern origin of Gos. Jes. Wife.

The forger’s “fingerprints” are discernible in every line of text that has more than one word in it. In line 1, the forger has reproduced a typographical error from Grondin’s Interlinear (the omission of a direct object marker) and a line break from NHC II. The second line has been copied verbatim from Gos. Thom. 12, except the forger has changed a third-person pronoun from masculine to feminine. In line 3, the forger has used a Coptic spelling for the name “Mary” that is barely attested in antiquity but could well be derived from the English translation in Grondin’s Interlinear. In line 4, the forger has omitted a conjunction (JE) that would ordinarily be expected, probably as the result of a line break in NHC II. Line 5 contains a simple inversion of a negative phrase found in Gos. Thom. 55, and the forger has switched its subject from masculine to feminine. Once the intended text of line 6 is recognized, it seems clear that a forger tried to compose the line of Coptic while thinking in English; relying on the translation in Grondin’s Interlinear, the forger attempted to transform an affirmative statement from Gos. Thom. 45 into a negative version but made a pair of grammatical errors in the process (i.e., two verbal prefixes modifying a single infinitive; a non-definite noun modified by a relative). In line 7, the forger has merely rearranged text from Gos. Thom. 29 and 30, switching a masculine pronoun to its feminine equivalent (for the third time in seven lines) in an effort to mask the identity of his or her source.

In the end, only a single Coptic word in Gos. Jes. Wife could not have been copied directly from Gos. Thom. This word, which instantly transformed Gos. Jes. Wife into an international sensation, appears near the center of the small papyrus fragment. It is a compound of a possessive article and feminine noun that could easily have been formed by anyone using Grondin’s Interlinear and the most widely available Coptic-English dictionary in the world: TAHIME (“my wife”).
--
Renewed thanks to Andrew for making this clear and convincing study available.

Gospel of Thomas Movie

Thanks to Ben Blackwell for pointing this one out (and also for plugging the all-too-often-forgotten BBC / HBO The Passion).   It's a new dramatized version of the Gospel of Thomas, and it's rather good:




It is perhaps a bit much to call it a "movie", but it is nice to have the text acted out with Jesus as a talking head, and occasional others also appearing (e.g. Jessica Taylor as Salome at the 26 minute mark is great!), and with some nice ethereal music.  It captures the mood of the Gospel of Thomas very well.

The translation used is Nicholas Perrin's.

The Youtube version above features the "Western" Jesus Christ (their terms), played by Duncan Rennie.  The "gentle" term added there relates to the tone used by Jesus in this version.  Somewhat remarkably, you can also get Jesus to speak "Mezzo" or "Passionate" by going to the website below!

Gospel of Thomas (Morphic Media TV)

The "Passionate" version is also available on Youtube here:




The main site also features a version with a "Semitic" Jesus (their terms) played by Daud Shah.  Just select "Semitic" at the bottom of the page.  I must admit that I am a bit more partial to the "Semitic" Jesus (who is not actually "Christ" in Thomas, for what it's worth).  As far as I can tell, the "Semitic" Jesus only speaks in the one way -- he is not available in Gentle / Mezzo / Passionate alternatives.

The Semitic Jesus version is also not yet available on Youtube, but I hope they make it available at some point so that more will find it there too.

This Morphic Media website is pretty remarkable -- you can even go directly to particular sayings, and control things in other ways.

Michael Pahl and the Disgrace of Cedarville University

I would like to join my voice with the many others who have expressed their dismay at the actions of Cedarville University in relieving Dr Michael Pahl of his teaching duties.

It is a decision that reflects very badly on Cedarville University and I would like to express my opinion of this in the strongest terms and say that it is a disgrace. Not only is Michael Pahl an outstanding scholar, a true star of the future, but he is also a faithful, devoted evangelical Christian whose character and commitment are without blemish.

Michael is a former doctoral student of mine and one of the most outstanding students I have had the pleasure of working with. While there is no doubt in my mind that Michael will go on to better and greater things at an institution that appreciates his gifts, it is nevertheless a bitter disappointment to see Cedarville behaving in such an appalling manner.