NT Gateway Weblog

Jim Davila has been covering the story about a new Church of England prayerbook which apparently decides to refer to "magi" rather than "three wise men". See his blog entry on Magi, Wise Men, Wise Women? and a follow-up More on the Magi. One reflection -- I wonder whether some of these newspaper reports, and perhaps also the CofE's prayer book, witness to a kind of residual fundamentalism which insists that we can only allow ourselves to focus on what is clear from the Biblical text. The evolution of the tradition, the development of the legend -- these are all part of what is delightful about retelling the story. When I go annually to my children's nativity plays at church and school, I don't stand up and say "There are no 'kings' helpers' in my text of Matthew" or "Luke does not specify the number of shepherds" or "How do you know it was a stable?", let alone "There are no lobsters in the Biblical text". I would rightly be thought a fool to do so, the theologian's equivalent of the Lord of the Rings nerds who disapprove of every place where Peter Jackson departs from Tolkien.

When did the number three begin to get fixed, though? There's an interesting web page with some useful background here:

Concerning the Magi and their names

This is from a site called The Hymns and Carols of Christmas by Douglas D. Anderson. The page quotes a certain Otfried Lieberknecht who cites Metzger:

A good study to check in cases like this is Bruce M. Metzger, "Names for the Nameless in the New Testament: A Study in the Growth of Christian Tradition", in: Kyriakon. Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed. Patrick Granfield & Josef A. Jungmann, vol. I, Münster: Aschendorff, 1970, p.79-99. Metzger has a whole chapter (p.78-85) on "The Names of the Wise Men", which includes a rich bibliography of earlier studies of this topic (p.79 n.3).

According to Metzger, the earliest source giving names to the magi are the anonymous _Excerpta Latina Barbari_, the Latin redaction of a Greek chronicle which seems to have originated in Alexandria during the first or second half of the 6th century: "In his diebus sub Augusto kalendas Ianuarias magi obtulerunt ei mundera et adoraverunt eum: magi autem vocabantur Bithisarea Melchior Gathaspa" (cit. p.80).

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In ten minutes from now as I write, Radio 4 are broadcasting a half-hour programme about Monty Python's Life of Brian in their Reel Histories series. If you're in time, you can listen on-line here:

BBC Radio 4

If not, I'll check after the broadcast to see if it's archived. Here's the blurb:

Sat 14 Feb, 15:30 - 16:00 30 mins

Gerry Northam presents the series exploring the truth behind classic film versions of history.

2/4. Monty Python's Life of Brian

Reluctant messiah Brian Cohen outraged church leaders and the film was banned by local councils across the country. But was there any fact behind the farce? Historians reveal the real Judean Popular Front; classicists explore the fate of a second messianic Jesus, and director Terry Jones explains why the Virgin Mandy sounded like a parrot.

Update: it is archived here for a week:

Reel Histories: Monty Python's Life of Brian
(Fast forward 2 minutes to get to the beginning of the programme)

It's a good programme; Philip Davies from the University of Sheffield is one of the contributors most used; he reflects on the history behind the film, claiming that on the whole Python got it right, e.g. the uprisings that led to the Jewish war, "Only the true Messiah denies his divinity" as parodying NT scholarship on the Messianic secret, and more. There are some enjoyable contributions too from Terry Jones who thinks of the film as heretical but not blasphemous. One interesting insight he provides is that many of the extras used in the film were local Tunisians, many of whom had recently been extras in Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth.

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The papers read at the Symposium on The Passion of the Christ held at the end of January are now available on the websites of both The Journal of Religion and Film and the Journal of Religion and Society, the co-sponsors of the event:

The Journal of Religion and Film: Volume 8: Special Issue No. 1 (February 2004)
Exploring Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ Symposium

Journal of Religion and Society: Volume 6 (2004)
Special Issue on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ

But use the first of these -- it has the full articles with footnotes and bibliography. I've not had chance to read the articles yet myself, except to glance at Reinhartz's which is as strong as one would expect it to be. But I mention it now so that you can begin to investigate this interesting symposium -- I wish I had been there.

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I've taken a look at Kevin Bush's N. T. Wright page and also the related WrightSaid email list and a couple of updates are worth reporting:

(1) On Easter day, Channel 4 will be broadcasting a documentary about the resurrection of Jesus written and presented by Tom Wright.

(2) Since Bible Review have annoyingly dropped all their on-line articles, Kevin Bush has obtained permission to reproduce the Tom Wright ones for his site:

The Great Debate
Speaking of Good and Evil
The Shape of Justification
Farewell to the Rapture
The Resurrection of the Resurrection
Paul, Leader of a Jewish Revolution

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Stephen Carlson and Rubén Gómez have been exchanging some interesting thoughts about the technology of producing academic articles on the web, and specifically on how to represent footnotes, developing out of Stephen Carlson's piece on In-line Glossary technique. As an element in the discussion, Stephen usefully provides two alternative versions of his article on "Clement of Alexandria on the 'Order' of the Gospels", one with hyperlinked endnotes and one with hyperlinked sidenotes. I agree with Rubén in preferring the sidenotes version -- it helps with the problem that the standard monitors are too wide for representing continuous text -- the reader simply does not find it helpful to read across the long lines that were typical of the early days of the web. But even in his endnotes version, Stephen has not fixed the width of the text, so one can reduce the window size in order to read at the most appropriate width, something I always like to do where possible. Sadly, more and more sites fix the width of the text so that it cannot be manipulated. That's a side issue (!), though, and this is just to say that I would like to see more sidenoted articles in the future.

Five further comments:

(1) If hyperlinked sidenotes are to become more common, the problems with printing out such a version will tend to make it necessary to produce alternative printer-friendly versions. This of course already happens in other contexts a good deal.

(2) The Biblical Archaeology Society used sidenotes to good effect in some of their on-line articles, though not hyperlinked if I remember correctly. Alas, most of these have now been removed (as previously commented) and those that remain don't appear to be using the side-noting system.

(3) The rise of PDF as a quick, convenient way of representing articles on-line may well be slowing killing off the art of producing good on-line articles or reproductions of articles using hyperlinked endnoting. Since hyperlinks can be incorporated into PDFs, it is possible that we will see PDFs with hyperlinked footnotes but I doubt it.

(4) Another option that appears to be getting less popular is the one used by the on-line Biblica which uses frames for endnotes so that one can preview on the screen the notes that also appear at the end of the article. I think that this is a neat solution, not leasts because it means one does not need to jump around in the document -- text and endnote can appear simultaneously -- but the decreasing popularity of frames make it unlikely to have a resurgence.

(5) One thing I would like to see with the hyperlinked endote technique is something that is rarely provided -- a [Back] hyperlink in the footnote that takes you back to the right point of the text. Too often, it is assumed that the individual simply uses the "back" button on the browser. I like to provide little arrow buttons to take the reader back to the text (see here for example); this is something I picked up from Mahlon Smith (e.g. here). Stephen Carlson uses another useful technique -- you can click on the endnote number and get back to the right point in the text. The only difficulty with that is that the reader might not know to do that.

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I commented earlier on how little The Passion of the Christ has made it into the popular news in the UK; but then I don't read tabloids anyway so how would I know? Helenann Hartley, when visiting a theological college which subscribes to The Mirror, spotted this feature:

THE PASSION OF CHRIST IS GRIM NIGHTMARE
John Hiscock

NOTHING I have ever seen has been more difficult to watch than this.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most violent films ever made - two hours and six minutes of unremitting, relentlessly graphic brutality.

Mel Gibson's controversial story of the last hours of Jesus Christ is a sickening bloodbath and, in my opinion, suitable viewing only for sadists . . . .

This makes me want to see the film even less than I already do, especially after the comments Crossan reports about the lyrical beauty of the violence, which I find sickening. Curiosity will drive me to see it as soon as it is out in March; but I won't be looking forward to it.

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I was asked by an American newspaper reporter today whether news about The Passion of the Christ had made any impact in the UK yet; my answer was that there has been very little in the popular media at all. There have been a few articles in The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, BBC news on-line and so on, but few people I have spoken to have heard about it here. But within a few hours of talking to him, BBC news had a feature on the film in its main news broadcast at 10 p.m. (big box office, anti-Semitism etc.). Also, there's now an official British site:

The Passion of the Christ: Official UK and Ireland Movie Website

Update (Friday): Helenann Hartley has sent over this link from BBC News

Religious battle over The Passion
David Willis

This is the text version of the report that appeared on the 10 p.m. news on the BBC last night.

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Thanks to Charles Miller on Synoptic-L for drawing my attention to this:

Scholarly Smackdown
A liberal professor and a conservative professor debate the movie, the Bible, theology and more.
By John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III

It seems that Crossan and Witherington have been asked by beliefnet to engage in a public email conversation in connection with the release of the film. The first exchange, dated 10-11 February, focuses on the question of the suffering and violence. Crossan's piece makes excellent reading -- he really is incapable of being dull. He focuses on the problematic link apparently made between suffering and sacrifice and draws attention to this issue in this way:

And the second question I would raise for our dialogue is: What is the appropriate separation between suffering and sadism? How do you depict and view actual torture without its sadism becoming pornographic? In the same EWTN interview, Mel Gibson admitted that “I don’t think it’s as brutal as it really was. I’ve stopped short of what I think probably really happened. However, it’s brutal, it is graphic.” Then comes this absolutely breath-taking and profoundly disturbing interchange. Raymond Arroyo: “There is a sense of beauty in the violence, and I don’t quite know if I’m expressing that correctly, do you sense that?” Mel Gibson: “Good, yes, I do, I mean that is a definite intent to do that. To make it lyrical, to make the violence lyrical. In a way, to find the beauty in it.” Despite those terrible formulations, the point is clear. Sacrifice equals suffering and so, to appreciate sacrifice, that suffering must be shown with exact and graphic violence.

Unfortunately Witherington has not yet seen the film so he is labouring at a disadvantage at the beginning of this exchange; I'd suggest beliefnet get a copy to him or an opportunity to attend a preview viewing asap.

Beliefnet also have a massive site on the film with lots of links and discussion; I'm adding a link to my page on The Passion of the Christ:

Beliefnet: The Passion of the Christ.

Additional note: one of the two big "fan sites" on The Passion of the Christ has disappeared over the last two days, so I've added a notice on that ahead of withdrawing the link.

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Matti Myllikoski draws my attention to this:

Bibliothèque nationale de France

It has an excellent collection of texts printed in French including various old books that are very useful for the study of the history of Biblical scholarship including Pierre Bayle, Richard Simon, Jean le Clerc and Voltaire. The texts are produced in photographic reproduction in PDF files which one views a page at a time. The key part of the web site for the digital texts is:

Gallica: la bibliothèque numérique

From there go to "Recherche" and you can search on key texts.

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David Meadows comments usefully on a Jerusalem Post article on The Passion and specifically its over-played It-was-only-the-sadistic-Pilate-who-was to-blame line:

Chatter: Passion Protest

Meadows draws attention to the passage about Jesus in Josephus' Antiquities 18 and the line "at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us . . ." One might add that many leading Historical Jesus scholars avoid the it-was-all-Pilate line including E. P. Sanders, who confesses his admiration for and understanding of Caiaphas alongside the claim that it is highly likely that the High Priest indeed played a key role in the execution of Jesus.

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Torrey Seland commented on the loss of availability of an article from the on-line Harvard Theological Review at Look Smart's Find Articles. I pointed to the Wayback Machine as a means of getting round these lost articles following a lead from correspondent Darko Svenscak. Torrey subsequently comments that Joan Taylor's article on the Therapeutae does not show up there. I've had a look and can find it by adjusting the URL. So typing in http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2399/n1_v91/20512260/print.jhtml does not work but adjusting "print.jthml" to "p1/article.jhtml" does bring up the desired result: here. That's the good news. But the bad news is that it seems only two pages of the article are archived, so this is pretty useless. And it seems that the Wayback Machine is patchy generally. My example of the Adela Yarbro Collins article has pages 1-10 but nothing thereafter.

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Latest reviews from SBL's Review of Biblical Literature have been posted today; here are those that come under the New Testament heading:

Danove, Paul
Linguistics and Exegesis in the Gospel of Mark: Applications of a Case Frame Analysis and Lexicon
Reviewed by Charles A Bobertz

Das, A. Andrew
Paul, the Law, and the Covenant
Reviewed by James P. Sweeney

Donfried, Karl Paul
Paul, Thessalonica, and Early Christianity
Reviewed by Lucas Bormann

Edgar, David Hutchinson
Has God Not Chosen the Poor?: The Social Setting of the Epistle of James
Reviewed by Goutzioudis Moschos

Hagner, Donald A.
Encountering the Book of Hebrews: An Exposition
Reviewed by Eric Mason

Kysar, Robert
Preaching John
Reviewed by C. Fritz Boger

Nicklas, Tobias
Ablösung und Verstrickung: «Juden» und Jüngergestalten als Charaktere der erzählten Welt des Johannesevangeliums und ihre Wirkung auf den impliziten Leser
Reviewed by Silke Petersen

North, Wendy E. Sproston
The Lazarus Story within the Johannine Tradition
Reviewed by Mary L. Coloe

Schreiner, Thomas R.
Paul, Apostle of God's Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology
Reviewed by James P. Sweeney

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This item from WorldNetDaily reports the attempts of the ten Boom Holocaust Center in Haarlem, Holland to begin an internet campaign to persuade Mel Gibson to add a postscript to The Passion of the Christ:

Needed: 1 million Christians to write Mel Gibson
By Mike Evans

The extraordinary thing about this is that according to an earlier report in the same journal by the same author, Mike Evans, Mel Gibson had already agreed to do this very thing (see blog entry on and WorldNetDaily article on) at Evans's suggestion. So did Evans get the agreement from Gibson or not? If he did, why the need for the campaign? If he did not, why the original report?

Update: an article from the LA Times answers my puzzlement:

'Passion': Christians join the call
Tim Rutten

Evans said he decided last week to publish an account of the meeting with Gibson on the website WorldNetDaily.com, after reading accounts of Anti-Defamation League officials' dismay over a cut of the film they saw during a screening for Protestant clergymen in Orlando, Fla. When no response from Gibson or his representatives was forthcoming, Evans said he "became concerned. Mr. Gibson has never communicated to me that he had changed his mind."

Over the weekend, Evans and his group set up a website, www.melj.net, that invites like-minded Christians to "thank acclaimed actor-director Mel Gibson" for "working closely with leaders concerned about anti-Semitic tones in the movie 'The Passion of the Christ.' " Readers are then asked to read, sign and return a copy of a letter Evans and the Jerusalem Prayer Team plan to forward to the filmmaker.

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The first British review of The Passion of the Christ is concerned that the film is too violent for viewers to stomach. Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link from BBC News which quotes from the review by John Hiscock in the Daily Telegraph:

'Violent' review for Gibson film
A newspaper film critic has questioned whether adults will be able to stomach the violence in Mel Gibson's imminent movie The Passion of the Christ.

He wrote: "For, worthy and serious as Gibson's treatment may be, his blood-drenched depiction of the final hours of Jesus' life is harsh and brutal, dwelling almost entirely on pain, suffering and torment."

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The remarkable resource that is Textkit has added several major new full-text, on-line books. As with everything on Textkit (I think?), these new resources are PDFs that can be downloaded for free. Resources are usually out-of-copyright old-fashioned stuff, but often really useful. These new resources have just been announced on the Greek part of the site. Descriptions below taken from the Textkit site:

Sidgwick's Greek Prose Composition Key, Arthur Sidgwick
Learn Greek with this classic Greek Prose Composition key by Arthur Sidwick. The key, in Classical Greek, can be used to check your work against the lessons presented in Sidgwick's Greek Prose Composition.

A First Greek Course, Sir William Smith
Download this free first year Greek book. Sir William Smith's A First Greek Course was popular throughout the United Kingdom from about 1867 through 1960

Pocket Lexicon of Greek New Testament, Alexander Souter
Download this free and very handy New Testament Greek Lexicon. At 297, the Greek to English lexicon presents key New Testament Greek words with English meanings.

The Gospel of St. Luke in Greek, H.R. Heatley
Download this free New Testament Greek reader of the Gospel of St. Luke. This reader provides the St. Luke's Gospel in Greek along with line notes and a helpul vocabulary to assist the Biblical Greek learner.

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Thanks to Michael Strickland for this one from Yahoo news / Variety and by Carl DiOrio:

'Passion' poised for heavenly B.O.

. . . . "It's one of the most talked about films since the first 'Star Wars' prequel," said Exhibitor Relations prexy Paul Dergarabedian.

The anti-Semitism debate has probably helped the pic, he said.

"Controversy is a double-edged sword. It can either boost your chances or derail you," Dergarabedian added. With "Passion," "People are intrigued. I've never seen all these pieces of the puzzle come together before." . . . .

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The cover story in this week's Newsweek is on The Passion of the Christ. The main article is the most detailed description of the film I have seen so far, with some intelligent analysis of its relationship to the Gospels and questions about anti-Semitism:

Who Killed Jesus?
Mel Gibson's powerful but troubling new movie, 'The Passion of the Christ,' is reviving one of the most explosive questions ever. What history tells us about Jesus' last hours, the world in which he lived, anti-Semitism, Scripture and the nature of faith itself
By Jon Meacham

Well worth a read; more anon.

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In relation to my previous blog post, Darko Svenscak points out that the example I chose is not a good one because only the first page of that article is cached by Google; I hadn't thought to check the rest. But Darko offers another useful tip:

The Wayback Machine

I saw someone referring to this recently and forget who. It's not something I've visited before and it's great fun. Essentially it is attempting to archive everything on the web so that it can be accessed by future generations. Here's its results on the NT Gateway:

Wayback Machine: NT Gateway

It's quite nostalgic for me to see how it developed. That record begins in June 2000 because that's when I moved the site over to its own domain. One can go further back by typing in its old address. But this is to digress. How does the Wayback Machine help us with finding those Harvard Theological Review articles we are after? As long as one has the old URL, one is OK -- just type it into the Wayback machine box and here is the article we were looking for:

Wayback Machine archive of Adela Yarbro Collins, "Mark and His Readers: The Son of God among Jews"

So this could turn out to be a very useful tool.

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Correspondent Darko Svenscak makes the useful point to me that where Find Articles have deleted on-line articles (see blog entry on), they are still present in the Google cache. So if you are looking, for example, for Adela Yarbro Collins, "Mark and His Readers: The Son of God Among Jews", Harvard Theological Review 92 (1999): 393-408 (listed in Featured Links of July 2001), you now get a 404 Not found; but if you paste the title into Google and hit "cached", you can still retrieve it. However, these caches don't last for ever, so if there's something you want to have electronically from Harvard Theological Review, fetch it and save it while you still can.

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The Winter 2003 edition of Biblical Theology Bulletin is now on-line (free to all) at Find Articles:

Piety and Politics: the Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia - Book Review
by Robert Gnuse

Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide - Book Review
by Richard B. Cook

Judges - Book Review
by John F. Craghan

Seeing the Psalms: a Theology of Methaphor - Book Review
by John F. Craghan

Scripture and interpretive method: why read scripture as Canon?
by Kenneth G. Stenstrup

"Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers . . . - Revelation 22:15" - Critical Essay
by Rick Strelan

Who should be called father? Paul of Tarsus between the Jesus tradition and patria potestas
by S. Scott Bartchy

Of Eunuchs and predators: Matthew 19:1-12 in a cultural context - Critical Essay
by Carmen Bernabe

Gainful reappraisal - Presenting the Issue
by David Bossman

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I commented in December on the revamp of the Find Articles site, which included lots of material from the Harvard Theological Review (free to all). Torrey Seland points out that the on-line issues of HTR are now down to just 2001. I have several links to other issues so will have to remove these if there is no sign of their return. It's another reminder not to trust that anything on the web is going to be there forever.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for sending over this link from Saturday's Guardian which I'd missed (no doubt because it is still lying folded up and unread):

Crucified by empire
The blood libel that 'the Jews' killed Jesus sent millions to their deaths
Giles Fraser (Vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford)

It's a well-written, informed piece that helps put the debate over The Passion of the Christ in context; an excerpt:

What is going on here is intra-Jewish sectarian polemic. Note: intra-Jewish not anti-Jewish. The attack on "the Jews" in the Gospels is a family argument, and is conducted with the ferocity typical of a family argument. The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures frequently denounced Israel for failing to live up to God's expectations. "These people draw near with their mouths and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me," insists Isaiah. Attacks upon "the Jews" in the Gospels are of a piece with this intra-Jewish prophetic invective. But once Christianity morphed from a small Jewish sect, wrestling to establish its identity against the prevailing religious establishment, to the official religion of the Roman empire, these denunciations became deadly. Torn from the context of an intra-Jewish row for the soul of Judaism, "the Jews" starts to be heard as "them" as opposed to "us". From this moment on, the Gospels are used as justification for the greatest crime in European history - the death of one Jew becoming the pretext for the murder of millions more. Christians have too often preferred an anti-semitic lie to a disturbingly relevant truth: Jesus was destroyed by the logic of empire.

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On Synoptic-L, Wieland Willker asks "why this botch" (The Passion of the Christ) "gets so much attention in scholarly circles". While not knowing whether it is a "botch" or not -- I haven't seen it yet -- I think that there are several reasons:

(1) Some scholars are interested in the way in which the Gospels are adapted in film and fiction, partly because of the renewed interest in Wirkungsgeschichte and partly because the creative process of adaptation might shed light on the interpretative process. For investigations of Jesus (and other) films along such lines, I would recommend the books by Larry Kreitzer on the OT, the NT and Paul in fiction and film; and this book by Barnes Tatum:

W. Barnes Tatum, Jesus at the Movies (Sonoma: Polebridge, 1998)

I would also recommend these two articles by William Telford:

Telford, W. R., "The New Testament in Fiction and Film: A Biblical Scholar's Perspective" in J. G. Davies, G. Harvey and W. Watson (eds.), Words Remembered, Texts Renewed. Essays in Honour of J. F. A. Sawyer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995): 360-94

Telford, W. R., "Jesus Christ Movie-Star: The Depiction of Jesus in the Cinema" in C. Marsh and G. Ortiz (eds.), Movies and Meaning. Explorations in Theology and Film (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997): 115-39.

(2) Interest in this particular Jesus film is accentuated among some scholars because of their involvement with the question of the depiction of Jews in the Passion Narrative. Paula Fredriksen in particular is worth mentioning here since she was on the so-called "ad hoc committee" that strongly criticized an early script of the film for its alleged anti-Semitism (See blog entries here and here). So too is Amy-Jill Levine who was on the committee that composed that report (See blog entry on). Both Levine and Fredriksen have been involved with discussion about the film as a result of that early and robust encounter with the script. And whatever one thinks about the way that that debate has developed, there is no question that the issue of the depiction of Jews in the Passion Narrative has been a hot topic in Gospel studies over the last generation. What this film has done is to push that debate back into centre stage.

I would add, in relation to this point, that much of the controversy over the film could have been avoided if only Gibson had done what Garth Dabrinsky did on the recent Gospel of John (Visual Bible) film and employ a panel of expert consultants. Gibson claims that he has consulted hundreds of Biblical scholars, but what the film lacks is a panel of accountable, named historical consultants from a variety of scholarly and religious perspectives. The Gospel of John has managed to adapt that Gospel word-for-word without a whiff of controversy and I think that this is in no small part due to the likes of Peter Richardson, Adele Reinhartz, Alan Segal and co on its Advisory Committee.

(3) I suspect the film also excites attention among scholars because of its use of Latin and Aramaic. Of course Gibson had to use a scholar to do the translation -- William Fulco of Loyola Marymount University.

(4) If Biblical scholars had nothing to say about major cultural events like this, then that might be further evidence of a retreat into the ivory tower. Interest is generated much of the time simply because the media asks them for their opinion, and they rightly respond.

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One of the great things about The Passion of the Christ for those like me who are fascinated by Jesus films is that it is generating a good deal of interest in the history of Jesus films. This article takes a look at what is undoubtedly my least favourite of the Jesus films, the 1979 outing starring Brian Deacon, called simply Jesus, based on the Gospel of Luke:

'The Passion's' Precedent: The Most-Watched Film Ever?

The article is from the New York Times and is by Franklin Foer. I enjoyed his description of the film, including this line:

In terms of special effects, the film offers poofs of smoke and gauzy halos to suggest miracles and angels; a hissing snake and a booming voiceover represent the devil. In the scene in which the Romans beat Jesus, their punches obviously don't connect.

He also quotes The New York Times's Tom Buckley's description of it as "painfully monotonous." It's interesting to see, though, that the Jesus Film Project are not at all afraid of the new film; indeed they are embracing it as an evangelistic opportunity and their web page currently headlines with Mel Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ".

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Don't forget to look at the latest Explorator:

Explorator 6.41

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On the Gospel of Thomas e-list, Andrew Criddle draws attention to this piece:

Lasse Collmann, "Thomas 50 and its context"

This is a post-graduate seminary presentation at Helsinki directed by Ismo Dunderberg whom you may know from his publications on The Gospel of Thomas. The English is a little broken (but I am always lost in admiration for post-grads who write doctoral theses in a second language) and it is still in draft mode, but it's an interesting read for those interested in Thomas. Criddle characterises it this way, "This article draws parallels between the saying and other accounts of questioning of the soul by spiritual powers but emphasises that in some of the closest parallels such as the Jewish Hekhalot material the powers, although potentially dangerous are not intrinsically evil."

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Loads more articles on The Passion of the Christ including this one from The Observer by Paul Harris:

Who killed Christ?
Mel Gibson's controversial film on the Crucifixion has been pilloried by Jewish leaders but is being hailed by US Catholics as the best recruiting tool for 2,000 years, reports Paul Harris in New York

One thing is certain though: the hype surrounding the film is going to ensure a box-office smash. Experts predict Gibson will recoup his $25m investment on the opening weekend alone.

And this one from The Scotsman by Rachel Zoll:

Faithful sell film with a passion

"When they attack him, they attack millions of people in America," said Jennifer Giroux, a Roman Catholic nurse from Cincinnati who created seethepassion.com "We have watched films concerning the Holocaust with compassion, concern and sorrow, and we just want to be able to watch this beautiful movie about our faith."

And this one from DallasNews.com by Jeffrey Weiss:

Passion or prejudice?
New movie about Jesus' death stirs anti-Semitism question

which features this great quotation from Dr. Leonard Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Temple University:

"What we know about Pilate otherwise is that the governor was a self-centered thug who would sell his mother on Sunday morning to get himself extra breakfast," he said. "He crucified scores of people at the drop of a turban."

This article by James Murrary is from The Australian is one of those nice review articles which goes through several Jesus films (with a predictable title):

Jesus Christ movie star

On past experience, Jesus films usually succeed, if only because there are enough believers to pack the cinemas. Experience also suggests that the reverential approach is preferred: Jesus the miraculous, the sentimental, the sensational, in an ancient landscape with Roman artefacts and gospel goodies and baddies.

The Passion of the Christ may prove too realistic for those who like their religion sugar-coated.

Finally, Jim West emails me to draw attention to a PAX TV one-hour special to air in the USA, "The making of 'The Passion of The Christ'" in advance of film's Feb. 25 premiere on Feb. 22 and Feb. 24 at 9 p.m. Eastern.

The behind-the-scenes look is meant to help viewers understand Gibson's vision for the film, and it will present never-before-seen footage of the actors and directors at work. The special also will feature on-set interviews of the cast and crew and stories of how the sets were created."

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Rubén Gómez has a new web site and a related blog that is likely to be of interest:

Bible Software Review

Bible Software Review Weblog

This corner of cyberspace will be devoted to bringing you all kinds of information about the ever-growing Bible software scene. Our goal (my goal!) is to build a fairly comprehensive repository of tips, news, articles, and reviews of different Bible software products.

The site can only really be viewed effectively in 1024x768. At present it's still being built but most of the Links section is active. Note: it looks like the blog does not yet have an RSS feed.

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The score for the The Passion of the Christ, composed by John Debney, will apparently be available from February 24. There are some excerpts available at one of the Passion of the Christ fan sites:

Passion of the Christ soundtrack excerpts

You can order from there, or click here for Amazon.

So whatever happened to the rumours that Lisa Gerrard was to score the film (Blogged on December 11 2003)? After this was apparently confirmed, it was then announced that John Debney was scoring the film and that Gerrard would be "co-scoring". But now Lisa Gerrard's name seems to have been removed altogether and the news item has been dropped from her web site. So what is the story here? Some interesting light is shed in the forum of Lisa Gerrard's site, in which Lisa's husband Jacek is a participant. He shows some real frustration with this project and states that "We have all worked VERY hard on the Passion", so much so that other projects have had to be sacrificed. He goes on, "I have VERY deep feeling about all this and is better I say nothing . . . . Not to mention that Patrick [co-writer Patrick Cassidy, MG] missed Christmas completely and his mother came to be with him from Eire . . . . we have worked TOOOOOO hard on this project!" He adds that "I just do not think any of LGs and PCs work will be in the final version of the film . . . ." Elsewhere in the forum, Jacek describes the film as a "masterpiece" and Mel Gibson as a "very good person" but the Debney score only as "good but not exceptional". He hints that the decision to go with Debney was not solely Gibson's choice and also that he "ran out of time to include the work that LG did".

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