NT Gateway Weblog

The latest Christianity Today magazine not surprisingly has The Passion of the Christ as its cover story and has some interesting pieces:

The Passion of Mel Gibson
Why evangelicals are cheering a movie with profoundly Catholic sensibilities.
by David Neff

Mel, Mary, and Mothers
by David Neff

Christian History Corner: Why some Jews fear The Passion
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ gives Christians the chance to disavow a shameful history of anti-Semitism.
By Collin Hansen

The first of these articles is interesting in drawing attention to features in the film that are apparently drawn from Anne Catherine Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of our Lord. In earlier reports on The Passion, this book was often mentioned as a source for the film and it was one of the elements that caused some controversy in the critique of the early script by the so-called "ad hoc committee", especially in view of the depiction of Jews in Emmerich's visions. More recently, the book has been played down as a source for the film's script; the tendency has rather been for it to be claimed the book simply inspired Gibson. But Neff points to two elements derived from The Dolorous Passion. The first is Pilate's wife's provision of pieces of linen for Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus and their use of the linen to wipe up the blood after Jesus has been scourged. The second is:

Another detail picked up from Dolorous Passion is just as dramatically powerful, but much more significant theologically. Emmerich writes that during Jesus' agony in the garden, Satan presented Jesus with a vision of all the sins of the human race. "Satan brought forward innumerable temptations, as he had formerly done in the desert, even daring to adduce various accusations against him." Satan, writes Emmerich, addressed Jesus "in words such as these: 'Takest thou even this sin upon thyself? Art thou willing to bear its penalty? Art thou prepared to satisfy for all these sins?'"

Gibson shows Jesus being tempted by a pale, hooded female figure, who whispers to him just such words, suggesting that bearing the sins of the world is too much for Jesus, that he should turn back. And from under the tempter's robe there slithers a snake. In a moment of metaphorical violence drawn straight from Genesis 3:15, Jesus crushes the serpent's head beneath his sandaled heel.

But the temptation theme is of course key in the Synoptic account, and the snake, the garden, the devil are common elements in Christian meditations based on Gethsemane. So it does not seem necessary that Gibson has derived his Gethsemane scene from Emmerich. The snake is a key (and obvious) symbol also in The Last Temptation of Christ and in the recent Jesus (Roger Young, 1999), the devil incarnates himself in Gethsemane as he had earlier at the Temptation, this time showing Jesus all that is to come in the future.

The female Satan figure is another feature in common between The Passion of the Christ and The Last Temptation of Christ. In the latter, the little girl leads Jesus through his last temptation while on the cross (though of course you only find out it's the devil at the end of the sequence, if you had not already guessed). This marked a contrast with Scorsese's source material, Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation in which the devil was manifested as a small boy.

Back again to the Neff article, note also these comments:

All of this—the sense of one's own sins being responsible for the Crucifixion, the sense of the enormous weight of the world's sins on the Savior's shoulders, the horror of the suffering that Christ endured, the way the story grew inside Gibson—accounts in part for the film's bruising bloodiness. The extremes of brutality are not simply a translation of Gibson's secular visual vocabulary from Lethal Weapon and We Were Soldiers into the sacred sphere.

"The enormity of blood sacrifice," as he put it, is important to Gibson. Unlike liberal Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) who deny the importance of the shedding of blood in the Atonement, Gibson grasps firmly the sacred symbol of blood and spatters the audience's sensibilities with it. Never one to run from a compelling symbol, Gibson presents the truth of Leviticus 17:11 in all its power: "The life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life."

These offer an interesting commentary on the remarks both of Gerald Caron and John Dominic Crossan on the matter of blood and sacrifice.

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Beliefnet has now published round two of John Dominic Crossan's and Ben Witherington III's email exchange about issues arising from The Passion of the Christ:

Scholarly Smackdown: 'The Passion'

[Click on Round 2: Dom]. The exchange features some discussion of the anti-Semitism issue and Crossan has an interesting bit of exegesis on the way that "the crowds" function in Mark's Passion Narrative. Crossan asks:

I emphasize immediately that even if all of Jerusalem was responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion, anti-Semitism would always have been as invalid as anti-Italianism arising from the Roman roots of Pilate and his soldiers. But, granted that, my question is how, as a conscientious Christian, knowing what has happened across two millennia, one should tell or film "The Passion of the Christ" so as to cauterize the potential venom of anti-Semitism.

But Witherington does not tackle this head on, not least because he feels:

"I don't think there are any anti-Semitic texts in the New Testament, which was, after all, written entirely or almost entirely by Jews (Luke-Acts might be an exception)".

My own attempted answer to Crossan would be that we can be informed by looking at other Jesus films and asking which have most successfully avoided the charge of anti-Semitism and how have they done this? And one does not have to look very far. As I have commented repeatedly, it is really worth thinking about why The Gospel of John has avoided the charge, and in a film based word-for-word on the Biblical text which -- along with Matthew -- has tended to be most open to the charge of anti-Semitism.

One further comment to echo what I also said last week: it seems clear that Ben Witherington III has still not seen the film. Surely beliefnet need to get a preview copy to him or get him to a preview screening as soon as possible; it does not make a lot of sense having an exchange about a film that one of the participants has not seen.

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I went through a phase where I could not find a decent aggregator / blog reader and tried lots of different ones. I have now settled happily on Bloglines. I've used it for several weeks and it's just what I was looking for -- all the blogs I want to read are represented in an easy-to-read format; it is web based; it has a nice "notifier" that alerts you when someone has updated their blog; you can subscribe and unubscribe straightforwardly from a given blog; and it allows you to channel email subscriptions to it, so you can read your e-lists on there too.

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Latest in the SBL Review of Biblical Literature:

Evans, Craig A. and Paul Copan
Who Was Jesus?: A Jewish-Christian Dialogue
Reviewed by Andrew Lloyd

Green, H. Benedict
Matthew, Poet of the Beatitudes
Reviewed by Richard Beaton

Hoehner, Harold W.
Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary
Reviewed by Serge Cazelais

Jung, Franz
ΣΩΤΗΡ: Studien zur Rezeption eines hellenisticschen Ehrentitels im Neuen Testament
Reviewed by Angela Standhartinger

Penner, Erwin
A Guide to New Testament Greek
Reviewed by Mark A. House

Schweitzer, Albert
Edited by John Bowden
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Reviewed by James P. Sweeney

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There is so much on The Passion of the Christ over the last couple of days -- literally dozens and dozens of articles and opinion pieces -- that I will just select a couple that have drawn my interest. This one was recommended by Zeba Crook on Xtalk:

Our cross to bear
Mel Gibson's movie is anti-Jewish, theologically flawed and historically dubious, says Roman Catholic priest GERALD CARON

Father Gerald Caron is a professor of biblical studies at the Atlantic School of Theology, Halifax and his article is informed and very interesting. Caron is convinced that the film is anti-Jewish but goes on:

This aspect of the film, however, is overshadowed by another issue that I had not expected to find: the gory depiction of the scourging of Jesus. The theology that underlies this depiction makes me shudder. What takes up no more than a few sentences in Luke (22: 63-65 and 23: 22) and half a sentence in John 19: 1 -- Matthew and Mark do not speak of flogging, only of mocking -- unfolds during more than 30 minutes of horrific and disgusting scenes of torture. By comparison, the Crucifixion comes almost as an anti-climax . . . .

. . . . . It is as if the more blood there is, the easier one will be convinced of the love of God. It is this emphasis on the blood and suffering of Jesus that I find so disturbing. The fact that God would require Jesus to pay such a price "for our sins" may say a lot about how Mel perceives our humanity, but what picture of God are we left with -- a loving Creator or a sadistic destroyer?

It is not the quantity of blood and suffering that has redeemed us, but Jesus's death -- crowning a life of "service" as Mark says in 10: 45. It was Jesus's dream of God's reign that led him to the cross -- not the other way round.

It trivializes Jesus's sacrifice to offer such a spectacle of Jesus's Passion and death totally disconnected from his message and life mission . . . . .

Caron also comments on the care necessary with thinking of the film as a particularly accurate historical portrayal, pointing out that there are major roles in the film for Mary the mother of Jesus, who only appears in the passion of John. "Where on earth did Mel get so much information about Jesus's mother?" He also asks about the role given to Satan and the depiction of Judas.

On his Petros Baptist Church Blog, Jim West draws attention to this piece in Mercury News based on interviews with Joe Zias and John Dominic Crossan:

Scholars: Crucifixion portrayal inaccurate
PETER ENAV

This deals with some of the issues I've been mentioning here about filmic depictions of the crucifixion, and especially the contrast with The Gospel of John, which -- I am suggesting -- was dependent on some of Zias's work in its crucifixion scene:

. . . . . . "If you suspended people by their hands and left their feet free you would kill them within an hour," Zias said. "If you suspended them in a way they couldn't exhale they'd be dead within minutes."

Zias said the question of whether Jesus was nailed to the cross or simply tied to it remains a mystery. "There is no evidence whatsoever he was nailed," he said. "The Gospels say he was crucified and leave it at that."

Well John does also mention nails in the hands (John 20.25-27) which probably makes "no evidence whatsoever" a little too strong.

Zias criticized "The Passion of Christ" for accepting the standard version of three nails being used. He said experiments on cadavers carried out by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages have shown that people hanging with nails through their hands will fall to the ground within a relatively short time, pulled by gravity.

The Gospels suggest it took Jesus three to six hours to die.

"All this is Crucifixion 101," Zias said. "People who study these things understand them. But Gibson ignored them in his film."

I am delighted, though, to see New Testament scholars in the limelight day after day! Suddenly people are listening to what they are saying.

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I have followed Rubén Gómez's lead in Bible Software Review Weblog and added a Trackback courtesy of Haloscan. This allows one to see when someone else has blogged about posts in this blog.

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In the Philo of Alexandria Blog, Torrey Seland comments on the change in name from Bible Windows to Bibloi 8 because of potential action from Microsoft. Incidentally, I am sometimes asked why I do not link on the NT Gateway to any of the big Bible software packages like this. The reasons are fairly simple. My basic policy is only to link to material that is freely available over the internet. As soon as I begin to link to and comment on commercially available products, I might be seen to be endorsing one product over another in an environment in which my judgement is normally based solely on the quality of the product concerned. The New Testament Gateway is not a commercial concern. But it is also simply too great an undertaking to provide a guide to the several excellent packages out there and I do not regard this as an area of expertise. This is one of the reasons that I greatly welcome Rubén Gómez's Bible Software Review Weblog and its associated site.

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Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link from BBC On-line:

Gibson film gets wider US release

. . . . . Distributor Newmarket Films is increasing the number of prints from 2,500 to 4,000 and 2,800 cinemas across North America will now show the film . . . .

Online ticket service Fandango said The Passion, which depicts the last 12 days of Christ's life, was making up nearly 70% of its advance sales.

Fandango said it has become its second-biggest film in terms of advance sales, below current box office smash The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

The Passion's release puts it on a par with hits like Something's Gotta Give, which opened at 2,677 cinemas in December.

The article also reports that Hutton Gibson has spoken up again about his holocaust denial -- "It's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is." O dear.

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On Hypotyposeis, in a comment on an Arutz Sheva piece on The Passion of the Christ (commented on by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica), Stephen Carlson mentions an interesting article by Annette Yoshiko Reed. If you've not read it yourself, the good news is that it is in the issue of Vigiliae Christianae that Ingenta Select are offering free to all:

Annette Yoshiko Reed, "Εὐαγγελίον: Orality, Textuality, and the Christian Truth in Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses," Vigiliae Christianae 56 (2002): 11-46

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I commented yesterday on the question of filmic depictions of crucifixion, specifically nailing through the wrists. Earlier I checked The Gospel of John's crucifixion scene and as in most of the other recent Jesus films, it does depict the crucifixion with nailing through the wrists, with pieces of wood in between the wrist and the head of the nail. Unusually, Jesus is fastened to the sides of the cross by his ankles, as in the picture in Joe Zias's article, Crucifixion in Antiquity. No doubt this is because the academic advisory committee would have been familiar with the work of Hengel and Zias. Good for them. One other really chilling element in the film is when the soldiers come with hammers to break the legs of the other two men crucified with Jesus. The hitting happens off screen but it's still enough to make your blood go cold. I can hardly imagine how I will cope with watching The Passion of the Christ.

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Christianity Today has a very useful round-up on the latest on The Passion of the Christ including links to and excerpts from the first official reviews of the film, and going on with some news items:

Film Forum: The First Official Passion of the Christ Reviews

. . . . In an article appearing soon at Steve Lansingh's The Film Forum, film critic Stef Loy says, "The Passion of the Christ is a visceral, cinematic pulse enabler, raw and bloody, ready to bite into your heart and cause your eyes to well up with tears. Never before has the language of cinema had the potential to challenge the church at large to wake up to the reality of film. It is here to speak and move, to challenge our preconceived notions about life, to affect us in ways that no other medium will ever aspire to." . . . . .

On the news side, it reports on the Diane Sawyer ABC interview with Mel Gibson, including the following two items:

He revealed that the controversial line spoken by Jews in the film—"His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27:25)—would not appear in subtitles, so as not to provoke misunderstandings of how that line should be interpreted. Those words can be heard, however, by viewers who do not require subtitles.

Gibson also assured us that he would not add a printed message at the end of the film dissuading viewers from behaving hatefully toward the Jewish people. "That assumes that there is something wrong with my film for me to do that, and I don't think there is."

You can read the ABC News feature and watch the video here:

Pain and Passion
Mel Gibson Tackles Addiction, Recovery and the Controversies Over His New Film

The Christianity Today piece also quotes New Testament scholar Eugene E. Lemcio who wrote a letter to the Seattle Times:

In The Seattle Times, Eugene E. Lemcio, Ph.D., professor of New Testament studies at Seattle Pacific University, wrote with concern about the hubbub over the film's emotional impact on its audience. "I am disturbed by some of the reported comments by those who have [seen the film]— those that go along these lines: 'There was not a dry eye in the house,' and 'People sobbed throughout.' Is this what makes a film successful and important—that we can all have a good cry? My hope is that viewers will (re)read the Gospels to discover how restrained they are in depicting Jesus' suffering and death. They do not exploit these obviously emotional events. Unless we ask what the suffering and death were about, unless there is an attempt to see how the end of Jesus' life is related to the beginning and middle (and how physical suffering solves a spiritual problem), we will have denied him (and ourselves) justice."

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This just announced by James Adair on TC-List: Peter J. Williams's review of Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20 (ET, Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) is published in the latest TC 8 (2003).

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Thanks to Jacob Knee for some interesting reflections about the relationship between my blog on the Three Wise Men (Saturday February 14) and some of the responses to The Passion (eg Wednesday 18 February); he was going to post as a "comment" but apparently Haloscan won't allow such long comments:

Here are some half-observations without any obvious conclusions:

1. The 'delight' about legendary retellings of the Infancy Narrative doesn't always extend to the Passion Narrative both in scholarship (eg the above referenced discussion of the realism of Gibson's depiction of the wood of the cross) and in popular piety (eg the reformations of the Stations of the Cross during the last century to reflect more closely the biblical story). I'm not sure that 'residual fundamentalism' is the best way to characterise either of these responses.

2. Mel Gibson's film seems in its emphasis on the physical suffering of Christ, to draw on a medieval Catholic theology and aesthetic - not surprising given Gibson's own theological tastes (See eg Grunevald's Crucifixion). Yet unlike the 'Three Wise Men' at this point many scholars want to refer with precision to the 'Gospel narratives'. Whilst perhaps ironically, some of those in the Reformation tradition (who are often suspicious of 'legendary' retellings) seem more than prepared to be carried along.

There is a complicated relationship both in piety and scholarship between legendary 're-tellings' and the 'original' texts. I'm not sure that a 'delight/residual fundamentalism' dichotomy really describes the motivations behind the varied responses within and without the academy. At some points each of us wants (including both scholars and liturgists!) to make a move 'to the original' as a critique of the legendary or an invitation to appropriate the text in a new way, at others points in the story (maybe less politically, ideologically or theologically freighted) we happily affirm the 'delight' of 'legendary' retellings.

For an interesting discusison of whether Matthew's impled readers were intended to understand the magi as kings or wise men - see the chapters, 'The Magi as Kings' 'The Magi as Wise Persons' (pp 136 - 156) in Mark Alan Powell, 'Chasing the Eastern Star: Adventures in Biblical Reader-Response Criticism'. In short Powell argues that the implied readers of Matthews are expected neither to understand the magi as Kings (indeed he argues they are intended to be seen in contrast to kings, as royal servants) nor as wise (Powell claims the readers are expected to repsond, 'God revealed the truth about Christ to a bunch of pagan fools whilst those who were wise enough to figure it out for themselves missed it'.)

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I was commenting yesterday on the question of nailing through the wrists or the palms in crucifixion. Matthew Page comments that he thinks the first film to show nails going through the wrists was Jesus (1979) and that since then Jesus films have nearly all shown them going through the wrists, although there is one that shows them going through both the psalm and the wrists!

I also began to have a sense of deja-vu about this and looked in Paleojudaica's archive to see this pretty well covered in posts on July 19 2003, August 8 2003 and August 30 2003. And I notice that I commented on September 28 2003.

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This morning's Guardian has a short feature on The Passion of the Christ:

Church tries to cool row over Mel Gibson's film about Christ
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

The Catholic church in America was yesterday set to release church teachings on Jews and reconciliation in an attempt to cool religious passions before the release of Mel Gibson's film about Jesus.

It also reports that Mel Gibson had turned down appeals to add a codicil to the film to allay concerns about anti-semitism, that Laura Bush has expressed interest in the film, and that Abe Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, has appealed to the Vatican "to issue a directive to bishops that the film represents Gibson's personal vision of the Gospels".

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In RogueClassicism, David Meadows weighs in on the discussion about footnotes and sidenotes and suggests that perhaps sidenotes are the way to go for print publications too, the only difficulty being how one would deal with the "monster footnote". I agree with David's suggestion that academics should try harder to trim footnotes to matters of substance. There is a joy in the elegant, focused academic footnote, but all too often there is a sloppiness that uses the footnote as a general dumping ground for material that the author cannot make up his/her mind on. Good editorial input from publishers can help here. Trinity Press International made many suggestions for trimming footnotes in my Case Against Q, sometimes suggesting deletion, sometimes suggesting moving to the body of the text and sometimes suggesting trimming. And the book was much better for it.

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Thanks to Matthew Page for this link:

Epic Survey of Jesus Movies
From La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ to The Passion of the Christ by Mike Hertenstein

This is a nicely produced survey of most of the Jesus films with some intelligent commentary from the Flickerings@Cornerstone Festival 2004 web site. I've added the link to my Celluloid Jesus main page.

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Thanks to David Mackinder for this link from PBS Religion and Ethics News Weekly:

NEWS FEATURE: Christian Marketing of THE PASSION

It features a four minute video of the story. The collected links are useful, including especially the following from Boston College, which I've added to my The Passion of the Christ page:

Resources on the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ

The latter includes a useful Comparison of the Gospel Passion Narratives chart (though using some pretty garish colours).

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On RogueClassicism David Meadows draws attention to this article in Israel Insider by Emanuel A. Winston:

Mel Gibson's fake "Passionate" effects

There is some nonsense, especially towards the end of the article, but the gist of the article points up the problems with the realism of the cross in the film:

. . . . Take a look at the lumber being carried by the Jesus actor. Any carpenter - or even lay handyman - will tell you that the Jesus player is carrying a saw-mill produced 6-inch x 6-inch x 10-foot timber. In the news clips on Fox News you can see that it is neatly trimmed and squared timber which is usually displayed in churches and medallions of the cross.

The problem is that the Romans had been crucifying rebellious Jews for many years and didn't commit the man-hours needed to take a tree trunk and hand craft it to a neatly squared and smooth timber, merely to crucify another Jew. The best they could do would be the familiar technique of building a log cabin where two sides of a tree trunk were laboriously chipped with a mattock on two sides so they could be stacked somewhat flat on top of each other. The Romans would not have bothered to square timber and besides, having already crucified thousands of rebellious Jews over 30 years, they had plenty of posts standing and empty, the bodies having rotted away."

But a couple of questions; first on this:

The Romans used the tree trunks as highly visible torture instruments to remind passers-by that this was the penalty for rebellion against the Roman Empire. Their objective was not to beat their victims to death before hanging them up but, rather to keep them alive for as long as possible. A figure dying slowly over many days, groaning, screaming, pleading for water, was a far better deterrent than whipping a victim so that he would bleed to death in hours - as was displayed in the Gibson film. With the amount of colored ink dribbling down Gibson's Jesus, he would have died in hours from blood loss or infection.

But then John implies that Jesus' death was unusually quick (John 19.33-34) so that is not in itself implausible. One other comment:

I haven't seen a film section where they nail Jesus to the cross but, if the past myths prevail, they will put spikes through his hands. They will have to use special effects because the problem with that depiction is that nails or spikes through the palms cannot hold the weight of a human body before it tears through the flesh of the palms or tears longitudinally through the fingers. Spikes must go through the bones to hold but, the myth of bleeding palms has been firmly established in Christian mythology.

I hope that they "use special effects" whatever method is depicted for nailing Jesus' hands to the cross! It's not always the case that the nails are depicted as nailing through the palms of the hands, either. The Turin shroud famously appears to show pierced wrists; the film The Day that Christ Died has nailing through the wrists and I have a feeling that there are others too though I can't recall them at the moment.

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This piece was published earlier this week by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and is, on the whole, a balanced piece with an appropriately sensitive tone:

A Jewish response to Mel Gibsons "THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST"
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein

(Also available in PDF and hardcopy)

. . . . This moment in Jewish-Christian relations should be viewed, above all, as an opportunity for Christians to educate themselves on the past and to learn about Jewish sensitivities on this issue, with an eye toward redressing past wrongs committed against Jews and to fulfilling the words spoken by the apostle Paul: "...do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you." (Romans 11:18) And it behooves Jews to reach out wisely and sensitively to their Christian friends, recognizing that there may be no deliberate intent on their part to strike out against Jews. Such Christians may even be surprised to learn what many have failed to grasp why Jews are so deeply concerned with the implications and reverberations of this film . . . . .

. . . . . Just as the release of The Passion of the Christ is viewed by many Christians as a singular opportunity to spread their gospel of salvation to the world, so it presents an opportunity for enemies of the Jewish people around the world to spread their doctrine of hatred by reviving the age-old canard of Jews as "Christ-killers." We need to be very sensitive to the anti-Semitic possibilities such a movie can trigger, particularly in areas of the world where anti-Semitic sentiment and behavior already exist. Christians have a special responsibility to ensure that Jesus' death upon the cross the very act that Christians believe to be evidence of God's ultimate love for his creation (John 3:16) is not twisted to evil purposes, or used by the very diabolical forces they profess to oppose.

Still, it would be a mistake to exaggerate this film's potential for ill. In the entertainment industry, controversy often does more to put a movie in the public eye than does a carefully coordinated publicity campaign.

Long after the controversy over The Passion of the Christ has faded, anti-Semitism will persist. After we have spoken our piece concerning Mel Gibson's film and taken the opportunity to challenge misconceptions and right wrongs, particularly concerning the age-old deicide charge, it will be time to continue our educational and coalition-building efforts, presenting a positive, conciliatory message and advancing Christian-Jewish relations . . . . ."

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I am a fairly regular visitor to Christianity Today's Weblog though I'd be much more regular if their RSS feed worked better -- it seems only to deliver headlines and only once a week, and not in line with the updates on their web site. Anyway, it's currently the best source I know of for collected links to articles on The Passion of the Christ, these ones all from the week beginning February 9. Some of the more substantial ones have been blogged here, but I have been far from comprehensive and recently have only commented on features of real interest since about ninety percent of the articles are simply going back over the same old material. But if you've not had enough and want to catch up, here's a good source:

Christianity Today Weblog: The Passion of the Christ

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Don't miss this one, linked on both RogueClassicism and Paleojudaica, from Ha'aretz:

A new-old Tiberias is supposed to rise from ruins

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Wieland Willker on TC-List draws attention to this site which provides images of Mark from Codex Washintonensis (the Freer Gospels):

Gospel of Mark

The host is the Dept of Classics at Beloit College (Beloit, WI, USA).

Update: I have added the above link to my page on TC: On-line images. While there, I noticed that I had not added a link to the Biblical Manuscripts Project so I've now corrected that defect.

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Holger Szesnat has put together a very useful, massive list of internet resources on Biblical Hermeneutics, organised in bibliography-style:

Biblical Hermeneutics

I've placed this at the top of my page on Hermeneutics and at the same time have serviced the links on that page -- changed some URLs and deleted others.

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The death of Wilhelm Wuellner on Sunday has been reported on rhetoric-l. Wilhelm Wuellner was a professor at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California and the author of several books and articles on the New Testament and rhetorical analysis. His first book was The Meaning of Fishers of Men (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967). Courtesy of Tom Olbricht, this is his entry in the Directory of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, Watson E. Mills, ed., 1988.
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Born in Bochum, Germany 21 Feb. 27 of Wilhelm and Emma (Beckmann); married Flora May (Slosson), children: Christine, Virginia, Lucy. Edu. Goethe Oberrealschule (Bochum), Abitur, 1946; Evangelische Landeskirche Westfalen, First Theol. Exam, 1951; U. of Chicago, Ph.D. 1958. Pub. The Meaning of Fishers of Men (Westminster, 1967). Member SBL, CBA, SNTS, DIAC, ISHR. Mission House Theol Sem. vstg. asst prof., 1957-58; Grinnell College, Asst. prof., 1958-60; Hartford Sem Foundation, asst. prof., 1960-1965; Pacific School of Religion, assoc. prof, prof. 1965--.
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Read more on rhetoric-l.

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila asks the expert Helen Bond what she makes of Vermes's article about Caiaphas. It's an excellent response which provides some useful nuancing of several of Vermes's points. Also on Paleojudaica, Vermes then responds and clarifies a key point. Apparently he read my brief comments too but does not offer a response except to say that he preferred Helen Bond's comments. Goodness; I'll have to be careful what I write in future! Here was I thinking that only about seven people read my blog and certainly none of my former teachers! But perhaps Jim Davila drew his attention to it. I should say that I remain puzzled by the comment that "Jesus and his followers are not really presented as Jews" in the Gospels, but it may be that I am missing something obvious here.

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As always, there's plenty of interest in the latest Explorator posted by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.42

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Geza Vermes has a piece on Caiaphas in today's Telegraph:

Never mind what Mel Gibson says, Caiaphas was innocent

It's a useful and interesting article, as you would expect from Vermes, yet it features several extraordinary claims -- or is Vermes just being more sloppy in writing a newspaper article than he would when writing his books? Take this, for example:

Given this highly specific context [i.e. post-70], it is no surprise that Jesus and his followers are not really presented as Jews. By contrast, it is the Jews that the Gospels - especially Matthew - blame for the death of Jesus.

Jesus and his followers not presented as Jews? What? I can't make any sense of that at all. I found this also odd:

According to the Gospel writers, Caiaphas judged Jesus to be a blasphemer for calling himself the Messiah. Such an assertion did not amount to blasphemy in any Jewish law, Biblical or post-Biblical.

When the High Priest in Mark rents his garments, this is not only after Jesus has affirmed that he is Messiah but also when he has said "you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14.62).

Also in today's Telegraph a longish piece on reactions to The Passion of the Christ by Chris Hastings:

Passion and Prejudice

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An interesting article in today's Observer lifts the lid on the phenomenon of authors using pseudonyms or anonymity to give their own books 5-star reviews on Amazon:

Amazon reviewers brought to book
David Smith

The art of self-reviewing - and coming up with a false identity to fool cyber-police - was last week exposed as one of the literary world's best-kept secrets. Amazon's Canadian site suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had posted anonymous reviews on the American site under signatures such as 'a reader from Alabama'. There were some prominent authors among them.

The gremlins that bedevilled Amazon all week laid bare how writers can exploit the web to praise their friends, rubbish their rivals and even champion themselves in the hope of shifting extra copies. The humiliation ended only after outed reviewers ordered Amazon to fix it.

Wish I'd thought of that. (Only joking). I wonder if there are any Biblical scholars out there giving themselves five-star reviews?

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ABC News is to broadcast an interview with Mel Gibson about The Passion of the Christ tomorrow (Monday). This ABC News article gives several highlights from the interview:

‘Faith, Hope, Love and Forgiveness’
Mel Gibson Tackles Passion Controversy, and Despair That Spurred His Faith

Gibson insists on Primetime he is no anti-Semite, and that anti-Semitism is "un-Christian" and a sin that "goes against the tenets of my faith."

When asked who killed Jesus, Gibson says, "The big answer is, we all did. I'll be the first in the culpability stakes here." . . . . .

. . . . "Critics who have a problem with me don't really have a problem with me in this film," Gibson says. "They have a problem with the four Gospels. That's where their problem is." . . . . .

. . . . . "I wanted it to be shocking," Gibson says. "And I also wanted it to be extreme. I wanted it to push the viewer over the edge … so that they see the enormity — the enormity of that sacrifice — to see that someone could endure that and still come back with love and forgiveness, even through extreme pain and suffering and ridicule."

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Christian History is still steadily pushing out its content on-line from the Fall 2003 issue. The latest on-line article is:

Three Wise Men from the East
The "Cappadocian Fathers" brought the best gift of all: a powerful scriptural defense of the Trinity and Christ's divinity against the Arian heretics.
by Edwin Woodruff Tait and Chris Armstrong

In other words, this article is a good introduction to Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa.

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