NT Gateway Weblog

The new theatrical trailer (2 mins.) for The Passion of the Christ is also now available on the official web site (and they have retained the "teaser" trailer there too):

The Passion of the Christ Official Web Site

While on the topic, see also this interesting article from the International Herald Tribune (but originally in the New York Times?) investigating the inside story on the Pope's apparent endorsement of the film:

Frank Rich: Chutzpah and spiritual McCarthyism

Excerpt:

McEveety declined to speak with me, but last week I tracked down Michelini, an Italian who lives in Rome, by phone in Bombay, where he is working on another film. As he tells it, McEveety visited Rome in early December, eager "to show the movie to the pope." Michelini, it turned out, had an in with the Vatican. "Everyone thinks it's a complex story, the pope, the Vatican and all," Michelini says. "It's a very easy story. I called the pope's secretary. He said he had read about the movie, read about the controversy. He said, 'I'm curious, and I'm sure the pope is curious too.'"

A video of "The Passion" was handed over to that secretary - Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, whom Vatican watchers describe as second in power only to the pope - on Dec. 5. The archbishop later convened a meeting with McEveety and Michelini in the pope's apartment. There, Michelini says, the archbishop quoted the pope not only as saying "it is as it was," but also as calling the movie "incredibile."

Update: here's the link to the (same) story in the New York Times, courtesy Paleojudaica and Explorator.

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After a year or more of absence, I had dropped the link to BSW's Multi-Library Search Engine from my Bibliography: Search Engines page but -- as so often -- not long after dropping the link it has returned:

BSW Multi-Library Search

If you've not used it before, this is a useful bibliographical tool which searches from one page the extensive collections THEOLDI (at the University of Innsbruck), COPAC (Union of universities in the UK and Ireland), LCOC (Library of Congress Online Catalogue), PIB (Pontifical Biblical Institute) and articles in some on-line journals (e.g. Biblica).

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Helen Bond's new book on Caiaphas is now out. It is published by Westminster John Knox who have details here:

Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus?

"This is a book about Joseph Caiaphas, the longest serving Jewish high priest of the first century and, along with Pontius Pilate, one of the men who sent Jesus of Nazareth to his death." --from the Foreword. "Written in a thoroughly accessible style and displaying easy mastery of the historical sources and mature judgment on controversial matters, this book will provide a much valued resource for scholars of ancient history as well as students of the Gospels and Acts." --James D. G. Dunn, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, University of Durham. "Well written, thoroughly researched, and probably a definitive study of Caiaphas. A fine example of the rigor expected of a scholar of antiquity, and especially marked by its readability and attractiveness for nonspecialists and scholars alike." --Jackson P. Hershbell, Professor Emeritus of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. HELEN K. BOND is Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Edinburgh. An expert on the history and archaeology of first-century Judea, she is author of the groundbreaking Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation.

ISBN: 066422332X. Price: $24.95

See also Amazon (US) and Amazon (UK).

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A new trailer has been released today for The Passion of the Christ. It's longer than previous versions (2 minutes) and you even catch a little bit of Jesus speaking in Aramaic at the Last Supper. It's only available at the moment on a new Yahoo! Movies page:

Yahoo! Movies Exclusive: The Passion of the Christ

I've had a look round and the other sites -- including the official one still have the shorter, "teaser trailer". I've added a link to the Yahoo! site on my page on The Passion of the Christ.

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There is a review, not ever so favourable, of The Gospel of John in the Star Tribune's Movies section:

The Gospel of John
Despite the filmmakers' efforts to make "The Gospel of John" into a dramatic feature film, it never quite makes it beyond the Sunday School lesson stage.

You may need to register to view the article (free).

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Torrey Seland commented on the future for his pages, mine and others like them. I had responded here; Torrey replied; Jim Davila offers his response; and Torrey responds. After a little more thought, I find myself in sympathy with what Jim Davila is saying. The evolutionary model is the right one and the attempt to introduce hierarchical structures, centralisation, too much control could be unwieldy and to the detriment of all of our sites. Our sites are powered by energy and enthusiasm and my guess is that others are like me -- they do it because they enjoy doing it. To be frank, when I look for things that I can cut back on, my preference is always to cut back on things other than the internet stuff. I suppose that where Torrey was hitting a note with me was in the thought that one day it will all become too unwieldy, too much for individuals working in isolation. I always have a backlog of links to add to the NT Gateway, some sent to me by kind individuals who cannot work out why it is taking me so long to add their link, many that I have found myself and are awaiting the next spare moment. But in the end they do make it onto the site and I don't think I have a bigger backlog now than I've had in the past. So I'm not too concerned at the moment. What I would be interested in would be some dialogue about the future and being British, beer or wine is fine with me too. Unlike Jim, I won't be in Groningen but I will be in San Antonio, so we could take it there.

A couple of further notes: (1) By "SBL sponsored", I wasn't thinking about web space. I used to host the NT Gateway at the University of Birmingham web site but moved it to its own domain for a variety of reasons a few years ago. Perhaps the major reason was simply reliability -- I wanted a much more robust server than the university was providing. I fund the name and the web space through book purchases that are made through the site -- they just cover costs. So I'm not in loss through the site though I'm not in profit either. What I have wondered about a few times, and I've even approached SBL about this in the past, is the notion of a kind of SBL seal of approval for a handful of key sites in the area. In a way the SBL does that now to some degree with its Sites of Interest on the new web site. I would be interested to talk to them further about the way in which we can all interact with them in this kind of area. I've just been invited to join the SBL Forum Advisory Board and look forward to talking about issues connected with the web. (2) Felix Just, S. J. did moot something more formal for the future of academic Biblical-related web sites, a kind of SBL-sponsored loose confederation of key sites. The strength of his proposal was that it combined the evolutionary model with some degree of control and structure. His plan, if I remember it correctly, was that SBL centralise a gateway or portal and that individuals underneath that umbrella do their work, e.g. he would have the Johannine Literature covered. Wherever possible, the sections, groups, consultations etc. at SBL would be those responsible for that area of the web. I've had a look and see that Felix's draft proposal is still on-line:

Recommended Biblical Resources

I think this was either Nashville 2000 or Denver 2001, in the CARG (Computer Assisted Research Section). It was enthusiastically received in the session but I don't think that anything further has come of it and perhaps now nothing will. Still, it's an interesting idea.

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I've refreshed my Scholars: T page -- lots of wandering scholars' faculty pages and home pages. I've deleted the link to Tom Thatcher's. He used to have a huge and interesting web page with full-text reproductions of articles and more, but it's been off the web now for well over a year. I saw Tom briefly at the SBL in Atlanta; we share the same birthday (date and year). The other revisions are new URLs for Charles Talbert, William Telford, Bruce Terry (massive site) and Mary Ann Tolbert.

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Polebridge Press, the publishers of Karen King's recent book on Mary Magdalene, have a mini web site in connection with the book. It's clearly aimed primarily at the press but there are some useful features including excerpts, an image of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3525 and the text from Papyrus Berolinensis:

http://www.maryofmagdala.com/

[Note: there is a far, far better image of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3525 on the P.Oxy. web site].

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BSW announced today that they have made available on-line Vol 10 (1997) of the journal Filología Neotestamentaria (Vol 11, 1998 and Vol 12, 1999 have been available for a while):

Filología Neotestamentaria 10 (1997)

Christian-B. Amphoux, «Quelques remarques sur la formation, le genre litteraire et la composition de l'Évangile de Marc» , Vol. 10 (1997) 5-34

J. Smit Sibinga, «Serta Paulina on composition technique in Paul» , Vol. 10 (1997) 35-54

G.H.R. Horley and John A.L. Lee, «A lexicon of the New Testament with documentary parallels: some interim entries, 1» , Vol. 10 (1997) 55-84

Ernesto Borghi, «La notion de conscience dans le Nouveau Testament: Une proposition de lecture» , Vol. 10 (1997) 85-98

Josep Rius-Camps, «Las variantes de la recension occidental de los Hechos de los Apostoles (IX) (Hch 4,23-31)» , Vol. 10 (1997) 99-104

Simon Légasse, «Vas Suum Possidere (1 Th 4,4)» , Vol. 10 (1997) 105-115

J. Duncan M. Derrett, « 1Artoj and the comma (Jn 21:9)» , Vol. 10 (1997) 117-128

Roy R. Jeal, «A strange style of expression: Ephesians 1:23» , Vol. 10 (1997) 129-138

Maria-Irma Seewann, «Semantische Untersuchung Zu PW'RWSIS, Veranlasst Durch Röm 11,25» , Vol. 10(1997) 139-156

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National Catholic Reporter has an article / interview on Elaine Pagels, "Scholar stirs controversy with views on early Christian development". It's only available to subscribers, but this extract courtesy of Maurice A. O'Sullivan:

"Oh, this was gentle," she said of the stinging rebuke of one critic, a fellow scholar who, to put it charitably, did not like her latest book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. The critic, Luke Timothy Johnson, said Pagels adhered to a "stunningly simple argument." . . . .

. . . . Pagels argues that early authority figures within the church, particularly Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, concluded that the writer of the Gospel of Thomas erred in suggesting that Jesus taught "that we have direct access to God through the divine image within us," Pagels writes. In contrast, the majestic Gospel according to John -- which Pagels believes was probably written in response to Thomas, with the two texts "in dialogue" but also often in conflict -- took a far different view of Jesus and his ministry and proved more useful in uniting the growing Christian movement.

If Thomas believed humans should try to emulate Jesus as a way of discovering inner divinity, John's Gospel "succeeded ever after in persuading the majority of Christians," Pagels writes, that "only by believing in Jesus can we find divine truth." . . . .

. . . . "The history of Christianity is not a triumphal march of ideas but a series of intense arguments and conversations," Pagels said. "I love that side of it."

Others are less enthusiastic. In a review for the independent Catholic magazine Commonweal, Johnson, who teaches New Testament and Christian origins at the Candler School of Theology, took Pagels to task for needlessly defending noncanonical texts that honor spiritual experience over "the rule of faith (or creed)."

"Welcome to another exercise in revisionist history," Johnson wrote, adding that Pagels' "historical point is that the good stuff lost out. Her normative point is that Christianity has to claim its inner Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism] if it is to appeal to people like Elaine Pagels."

Pagels understands Johnson's critique, but maintains she is not so much saying that "the good stuff lost out" as arguing that contemporary Christianity is richer by having a wider range of early texts from which to draw. . . . . .

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Ken Penner on b-greek draws attention to the following web site which reviews Memorisation Software including several of those linked on my Greek NT Gateway: Computer Software page:

Memorisation Software Reviewed

FlashWorks and VocabWorks both get four pencils (good).

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Raymond Arroyo has interviewed Mel Gibson about The Passion of the Christ and this is to air in the USA on EWTN Global Catholic Network between January 23-26. Apparently he addresses the anti-semitism issue and also comments, "I don’t know if I will ever work again. I’ve said that this is a career killer and it could well be, but that doesn’t matter because I don’t care":

EWTN to air 2nd Exclusive Interview with Mel Gibson on "The Passion of the Christ"

The film also features in Empire Online which reports that Gibson "has secured a massive distribution deal for the movie"; it also notes that "The film's full trailer looks set to be released this weekend":

Power Push For Passion

The source for this appears to be Variety -- see this at SciFi.com:

Passion Opening Wide

This includes the additional information that it will be "the widest opening ever of a subtitled movie"; the release of the new trailer is pinned here to January 16.

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I reported back in December that Lisa Gerrard was to score The Passion of the Christ; this after earlier reports that it would be Jack Lenz or James Horner. The latest is that John Debney is to score the film. This from Music from the Movies:

Debney scores 'The Passion of the Christ'

Debney's latest include Elf and Bruce Almighty.

The news on the Lisa Gerrard web site has changed to say now that she is co-scoring the film: "There are other brilliant composers involved, amongst them Lisa is also collaborating with Patrick Cassidy." IMDb give Lisa Gerrard and Rachel Portman as providing the music.

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New from Eerdmans is:

Michael Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters
624 pages; dimensions (in inches): 6.25 x 9.25; 54 illustrations; 2003
ISBN: 0-8028-3934-7

Unlike the many books that treat the apostle Paul merely as a historical figure and his letters as literary relics, this new study by Michael Gorman focuses on the theological message of Paul’s writings, particularly what they have to say to the contemporary church.

An innovative and comprehensive treatment of Paul, including commentary on all of the Pauline letters, Gorman’s Apostle of the Crucified Lord unpacks the many dimensions of Paul’s thought carefully and holistically. Six introductory chapters provide background discussion on Paul’s world, his résumé, his letters, his gospel, his spirituality, and his theology, while the main body of the book covers in turn and in full detail each of the Pauline epistles. Gorman gives the context of each letter, offers a careful reading of the text, and colors his words with insightful quotations from earlier interpreters of Paul.

Enhancing the text itself are questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter and numerous photos, maps, and tables throughout. All in all, Apostle of the Crucified Lord is the ideal book for students and any other readers interested in seriously engaging Paul’s challenging letters.

The above link takes you to the Eerdmans catalogue; also available here at Amazon.com.

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There was a short feature on the Today programme this morning on the King James Bible. Here's a link to the audio (about three minutes):

The King James Bible is 400 years old - an exhibition has just opened at Hampton Court

For a little more on what this is talking about, have a look at this web page:

The Hampton Court Conference

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There's a new on-line article from the latest (Fall 2003) issue of Christian History that may be of interest:

Midwife of the Christian Bible
Irenaeus identified the books of the New Testament, then showed the church how they fit with the Old.
by Fr. John Behr

See also previous blog entry on this issue.

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Viewers of The West Wing may have noticed the resemblance between Toby Ziegler and the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright:

   

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On his Philo of Alexandria blog, Torrey Seland writes:

Etana turns out to be an excellent site for students of Philo and his social world too. But it makes me think about how long it is useful to keep up all these other collections of links like my own site, NTGateway, and others. I know from my own work that it eats my time, and I can't imagine how Mark Goodacre gets time to keep up his great site as a one-man work...
Have we reached the point where we should seriously consider coordinating more of this work, get some sponsors, and establish a team to work on a really megasite for Biblical studies? Viewpoints are welcome....

Torrey is asking a useful question here and I don't know that I have a good answer at this stage. Four initial thoughts, though, as well as to second Torrey's "viewpoints are welcome":

(1) When people ask me about the NT Gateway at conferences, usually to wonder out loud about how I get the time to do it all, I tend to find myself saying that I enjoy doing it and that's why I carry on doing it. As soon as I stop enjoying it, I will have to stop doing it. (It's also a fact that I work too hard, produce less research than I would otherwise do and don't get as much sleep as I should, but you don't want to hear about that).

(2) Where I was beginning to flag on keeping the NT Gateway up to date, this blog has helped enormously. For reasons I've stated before, it's much more enjoyable than just doing the NT Gateway.

(3) There is one area that I have failed to keep up to date on the NT Gateway and it is now causing me some concern: on-line articles. These are proliferating at a real rate and it is not straightforward to keep on top of them. This situation is hardly going to reverse itself and there may come a day when I have to admit defeat on this one.

(4) I've sometimes wondered out loud about the possibilities of greater collaboration and it may indeed be the way forward to begin thinking seriously about this. My hunch is that it would only work if one could involve a major organisation and the obvious one would be the SBL. But all this needs some more thought.

Let me make clear that I have absolutely no intention of stopping developing and maintaining the NT Gateway, but I do think that Torrey Seland is asking some useful questions for the long term about how we all look to the future for Biblical (and related) resources on the web.

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Stephen Carlson is producing a fascinating review of Paul Foster, "Is it Possible to Dispense with Q?", NovT 45 (2003): 313-337 over on Hypotyposeis, so far Part 1 and Part 2. I am taking more than a little interest in this since Foster's article is largely focused on my work on the Synoptic Problem. I am writing a full-length response to Foster so will not comment at any length here but will comment on one or two things are they arise in Stephen Carlson's so far very thorough critique.

Carlson comments on Foster's brief discussion of the Farrer Theory's precursors. I would add that while of course Foster cannot be expected to cover all the proponents of the theory, there are two who are probably too important to miss, not least because I have drawn from them heavily in the material Foster is reviewing, and they are H. Benedict Green and E. P. Sanders / Margaret Davies (see my Introductory Bibliography for references).

In Part 2 Carlson makes some useful comments on Foster's claim on an "unproven assumption that is necessary for the Farrer theory", which "must hold for such a proposed solution to be even a possibility. It must be assumed not only that Matthew wrote before Luke, but also that the Matthean gospel had been in existence for "long enough" (however one may measure that) and had also circulated widely enough to come to Luke's knowledge." (315) As I commented to Foster before the publication of his review, I regard this as a clever attempt to turn a weakness for the Q theory (viz. the narrow window available for Matthew and Luke to be producing their Gospels in isolation from each other) into a strength. But the point only works with the singular quotation Foster picks from Farrer, and then only partially. Foster criticises Farrer's view about Matthew as an "orthodox Gentile Christian writing", but this view is quite singular. It is not shared by Goulder, whose Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974) is a forthright defence of the composition of Matthew by a Jewish scribe; I think I recall Michael Goulder saying that Farrer himself was largely persuaded by the thesis in its early stages, but Farrer died just before Michael Goulder gave the first of the Speakers Lectures in Oxford that eventually became Midrash and Lection. Since I agree with Goulder and the consensus about this, it's a red herring for Foster to bring out Farrer's view here as if it is a necessity for the theory -- it is not. But in any case, Farrer's general point in context is about the prima facie case; and it is a reasonable place to begin. Consider the passage immediately before the sentence Foster picks out:

If there is no difficulty in supposing St. Luke to have read St. Matthew, then the question never arises at all. For if we find two documents containing much common material, some of it verbally identical, and if those two documents derive from the same literary region, our first supposition is not that both draw upon a lost document for which there is no independent evidence, but that one draws upon the other. It is only when the latter supposition has proved untenable that we have recourse to the postulation of a hypothetical source. (Farrer, "Dispensing": 56)

In my view, this is the right place to begin. Stephen Carlson's mention of Michael Thompson's article on the "holy internet" in this context is a very helpful one. Something I commented on in Case Against Q was the remarkable nature of Burton Mack's theory that has Luke written nearly forty years after Matthew yet preferring to use the moribund Q.

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Latest Explorator was posted yesterday by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.37

One story of interest featured is this:

Roman Anchor Found in the Dead Sea

An archaeologist from Kibbutz Ein Gedi has probably made one of the biggest finds of his career - and it happened just as he was walking along the nearby beach of the Dead Sea. He found a lead-and-wood anchor - without the lead - that probably dates back to the Roman period, 2,000 years ago. The anchor found by Dr. Gideon Hadas is 1.8 meters by 0.9 meters wide (6 by 3 feet), and weighs some 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs.). Dr. Hadas informed the Antiquities Authority of his find, and received permission to research it.

That's from Arutz Sheva. Jim Davila also blogs this and links to a paragraph in Haaretz with a picture.

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On Friday I mentioned a couple more N. T. Wright articles on-line. Now here's another, with thanks to Kevin Bush for drawing attention to it:

The Bible for the Post Modern World
William Orange Memorial Lecture 1999, hosted by the Latimer Fellowship

A little while ago AKMA made some interesting comments on some throw-away comments Wright had made about postmodernism. I don't suppose AKMA would care to comment on this article when he has time? I'd be interested to hear what AKMA thinks.

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I began getting a page together on Biblical resources on Sexuality for the NT Gateway some time ago but like lots of my projects it's sitting around only half-finished. I am happy to see in the mean time that Holger Szesnat has got together a useful set of resources here:

Internet Resources: Bible and (Homo)Sexuality

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Thanks to Kevin Bush for pointing out to me another Wright article on-line:

Jesus and the Identity of God (PDF)

It's hosted on the N. T. Wright Page and was originally published in Ex Auditu 14 (1998): 42-56.

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