NT Gateway Weblog

In Our Time on Radio 4 yesterday morning had the Devil as its topic. Worth a listen if you didn't catch it:

In Our Time

In the Gospel according to John he is ‘a murderer from the beginning’, ‘a liar and the father of lies’, and Dante calls him ‘the ill Worm that pierces the world’s core’. But Milton’s description of him as a powerful rebel was so attractive that William Blake declared that Milton was ‘of the Devil’s party, without knowing it’. To ordinary folk the Devil has often been regarded as a trickster, a tempter, sometimes even a figure of fun rather than of fear.

How did this contradictory character come into being? Why did it take so long for him to become an established figure in Christianity? And if the Devil did not exist, would we have had to invent him?

Contributors

Martin Palmer, theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture

Alison Rowlands, Senior Lecturer in European History at the University of Essex

David Wootton, Professor of Intellectual History at Queen Mary, University of London

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Torrey Seland yesterday updated his pages; the additions are all on the Philo page:

Resource Pages for Biblical Studies

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Some time ago the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism disappeared from the web. I removed all my links to it in June 2003. This was a new electronic journal based at the University of Surrey Roehampton and the original plan was to place articles on-line as they appeared and then to produce a print version at the end of the year. The print version was to be published by Sheffield Academic Press. One full volume appeared in the year 2000 but nothing subsequently appeared and then even that disappeared. But now it has apparently been resurrected over at McMaster Divinity College in Canada which is where Stanley Porter, the editor, is now based. There is just a paragraph's information about the journal, but happily the volume from 2000 is back on-line:

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism

Update: link added to the NT Gateway: Journals page.

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I reported that Lisa Gerrard is to score The Passion of the Christ; Wieland Willker tells me that I should not express my ignorance on who she is quite so blatantly. It's music for intellectuals, apparently, and that will be why I've not heard of her. So this ignoramus has now been to her web site, lisagerrard.com and read more about her. There is a paragraph on The Passion of the Christ, dated today (11 December):

Prayers answered is the only way to put it. The film depicts the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life. The film is in Aramaic the native language of Jesus Christ and is directed by Mel Gibson. For more information visit the official website.

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In the autumn of 2001 Sheffield Academic Press became part of the Continuum publishing group. Continuum have also over the last couple of years purchased T & T Clark and Trinity Press International, and these three imprints -- Sheffield, Trinity and T & T Clark have now been merged into one imprint entitled T & T Clark International, and several of us attended the launch at the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

But here's an interesting development. The Department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University have announced the launch of a new press, strongly resembling what used to be Sheffield Academic Press, with the same aims and emphases and with some of the same personnel (David Clines, Cheryl Exum and Keith Whitelam). It also looks a bit like there are some hard feelings about the Continuum buy-up of Sheffield Academic Press since Sheffield Phoenix Press is committed to undertake "to be an independent company (not part of a conglomerate); to be managed by academics for academics (not in order to maximize profit); to be led by the publishing ideas of academics (rather than commissioning scholars to carry out the agenda of the publisher)" and so on. Anyway, here are the full details:

Sheffield Phoenix Press

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I've often mentioned The Passion fan web site here; for a while I thought it was a clever means of providing official information about the film without being official, if you see what I mean. There's little doubt that at least for some time it had some exclusive access to official materials. But anyway, now that the official site has been launched, and the fan site has moved over to being ad-sponsored, I've come across another fine site that is in many ways superior to the one that always gets mentioned:

The Passion of the Christ

I'm afraid there's no more distinctive way to refer to this one than that. Its author calls himself "Godfather" -- very helpful! But it's a useful enough site with lots of information and links, if a rather annoying white-writing-on-black cramped content frame. It features the original four-minute trailer introduced by Mel Gibson as well as the one-minute fifty second trailer that now seems to be getting replaced with the newer, shorter trailer everywhere else. Anyway, I've added this web site to my page on the NT Gateway on The Passion of the Christ.

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So who is scoring The Passion of the Christ? A report today in Music from the Movies mentions a certain Lisa Gerrard:

Lisa Gerrard to score 'The Passion of the Christ'

Apparently she contributed music to the score of The Gladiator.

Earlier reports suggested that Jack Lenz was to be responsible for the music (e.g. this Catholic Herald report or here from Lenz entertainment). Still earlier reports had suggested James Horner (refuted here at Music from the Movies).

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One interesting element from the review just mentioned:

Continuing his habit of working with the best cinematographers in the world, Gibson has collaborated here with Caleb Deschanel, whose lush, painterly aesthetic is a perfect match for the film’s almost otherworldly feel. His imagery is perfectly complemented by, unfortunately, the temp-tracked music of Peter Gabriel’s PASSION, which, honestly, works better here at times than it did in the Jesus film for which it was written, Scorsese’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Combined, they have the power to put the viewer in a trance-like state.

I had blogged a month or so ago that Peter Gabriel scored The Passion. This information was taken from the Passion fan site FAQ; in fact they even included audio samples of the music. It was also clear from the on-line trailers that this was the music that was being used. But it now seems that the Peter Gabriel score was simply borrowed from The Last Temptation of Christ as a temporary measure. The new, official much shorter trailer (available on the official Passion of The Christ site) has different music. And the fan site has dropped the faq entry on Gabriel as well as all the audio samples they had available. So it seems pretty clear that Peter Gabriel is not responsible for scoring The Passion of The Christ.

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I commented the other day that I had no idea who Harry Knowles was. David Mackinder helpfully explains that "Harry Knowles is the wunderkind behind the Ain't it Cool film website (http://www.aintitcool.com); he earned some notoriety a few years ago because of his ability to find out information about upcoming films and to affect their box office success; it seems he's now in process of turning from poacher to gamekeeper, as he's become a producer." That web site follows up the special screening of The Passion of the Christ that they were given with a couple of long-ish, very interesting reviews from a "Mr Beaks" and "PetSnakeReggie":

Mr Beaks & PetSnakeReggie share their critical views on THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST!

In spite of that rather unpromising title, this is well worth reading.

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Officials at the Vatican were allowed a viewing of The Passion of the Christ at the weekend. Father Di Noia of the Doctrinal Congregation provides this pretty full interview and it is clear that he really loved the film. Reading this interview from Zenit does make one want to see it too:

Mel Gibson's "Passion": On Review at the Vatican

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The latest additions to the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Bauckham, Richard
Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels
Reviewed by Sharyn Dowd

Gilmour, Michael J.
The Significance of Parallels between 2 Peter and Other Early Christian Literature
Reviewed by Thomas J. Kraus

Levine, Amy-Jill and Marianne Blickenstaff, eds.
A Feminist Companion to Mark
Reviewed by Stephen W. Felder

Meyer, Marvin
Secret Gospels: Essays on Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Sandnes, Karl Olav
Belly and Body in the Pauline Epistles
Reviewed by H. Drake Williams III

Scott, Douglas
Edited by S. R. Llewelyn
New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published 1986-87
Reviewed by John S. Kloppenborg

Hafemann, Scott J.
The God of Promise and the Life of Faith: Understanding the Heart of the Bible
Reviewed by Mark Gignilliat

van Kampen, Kimberly and Paul Saenger, eds.
The Bible as Book: The First Printed Editions
Reviewed by Patrick Graham

Viviano, Benedict Thomas
Trinity--Kingdom--Church: Essays in Biblical Theology
Reviewed by Kathryn Greene-McCreight

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David Instone-Brewer yesterday issued a follow-up to his latest Tyndale Tech email, this one drawing attention to more full-text availability on the internet. I'll pick out a few highlights over the coming days, as usual (and may also comment that Tyndale Techs remain NT Gateway - free zones). David is also singing the praises of the new Theology Portal (cf. my blog entry on) and this reminded me to add a proper entry on the NT Gateway Resources page which I've now done:

General Resources: Religion and Theology

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Here's an odd article on The Passion of the Christ from MCN (Movie City Center) Notepad:

What's Mel Afraid Of?
The Passion of the Christ's Surprising Public Premiere

It's by David Poland and is all about a preview screening of the film to a certain Harry Knowles. The author is apparently quite upset about all this, concluding with "I cannot support this unique and uniquely grotesque road to release". But it's all a bit of a mystery to me -- perhaps because I have no idea who Harry Knowles is.

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The Biblical Studies Foundation site has had a major redesign. They have also announced the second beta edition of the new NET Bible. This may have been on the site for a while -- I don't recall the last time I visited and the changes are not dated.

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A couple of minor updates on the NT Gateway to report: new URL for VocabWorks on the Greek NT Gateway: Computer Software page and a new URL for the Polyglot Bible on the Bible Translations and Editions page; thanks to Andy Parker for the latter.

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The third programme in the series The Good Book was broadcast tonight at 8 p.m. on Radio 2. If you missed it, you can listen on-line, and there are other resources available on the site including Biography from W. L. Moberley, some Experts' Notes from Sue Gillingham, Paula Gooder and Edward Kessler and more:

The Good Book: David

Looking back over last week's episode, it's nice to see my colleague Robert Beckford's face staring out from the Moses' pages.

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Latest version of Explorator posted by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.32

Couldn't blog all day Sunday -- blogger seemed to be down.

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