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I am intrigued by the portrayal of Antipas in The Passion of the Christ. What are the sources for this portrayal? Several have suggested that it is in large part derived from Jesus Christ Superstar. A review on Net Monster's Movie Reviews, for example, comments

So Gibson's portrayal of Herod as an overweight buffoon appears to be less based upon historical evidence than a direct crib from Jesus Christ Superstar. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice should sue.

Or see this review on Cool Stuff. That one scene is the source for the other is possible. Have a look at Antipas in another recent Jesus film, The Miracle Maker, in which the opening line of Herod's greeting has almost the same intonation as Herod's greeting in Superstar, "I've been waiting to see you . . . ." The depiction of Herod in that one song in Jesus Christ Superstar is so memorable that it cries out for imitation. But I can't think of any other elements in The Passion of the Christ that appear to be derived from Jesus Christ Superstar. The best analysis I have read of the scene is in Robert Gundry's The Burden of the Passion (see also previous comments):

The treatment of Herod Antipas, to whom Pilate sent Jesus and who sent Jesus back to Pilate, exhibits Gibson's artistry-and homework as well-at its most subtle and thorough. The drunken feast that Jesus' entry interrupts recalls the drunken feast at which the severed head of Jesus' forerunner, John the Baptist, was served to Herod on a platter. Herod's wife Herodias is present here as she was present there. But Herod wears a woman's wig and mascara. Why this womanish portrayal of him despite his heterosexual marriage? Well, it was Herodias who manipulated Herod against his will to have John the Baptist beheaded. To represent her dominance over Herod, Gibson makes him effeminate. There is more. On his way to Jerusalem some Pharisees had said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." But Jesus answered, "Go tell that fox for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. . . . It is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem" (Luke 13:31-33). The Greek word behind "fox" is feminine, so that Jesus is calling Herod a vixen, a female fox-not an animal to be afraid of or to run away from. Gibson matches Herod to Jesus' slur.

An excellent analysis. I would add something I've just spotted from Emmerich's Dolorous Passion

He was seated on a pile of cushions, heaped together so as to form a species of throne, in a spacious hall, and surrounded by courtiers and warriors . . . .

. . . . . They all began at once to vociferate their accusations, to which Herod hardly listened, being intent solely on gratifying his curiosity by a close examination of Jesus, whom he had so often wished to see. But when he beheld him stripped of all clothing save the remnant of a mantle, scarcely able to stand, and his countenance totally disfigured from the blows he had received, and from the mud and missiles which the rabble had flung at his head, the luxurious and effeminate prince turned away in disgust . . . . (Emphasis added).

I am less inclined now to think that Superstar is the source for this depiction of Herod -- Emmerich alongside the Gospels, given Gundry's insights, are the more likely sources.

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In Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson comments on the recent Crossan story about The Passion of the Christ in which there seems to be some criticism of the act of harmonizing the Gospel accounts for the film. Stephen writes (excerpted):

I certainly agree that having four gospels instead of one harmonized text has proven to be much richer theologically and historiographically, but I'm taken aback at the apparent per se objection to any harmonization of the gospels. Unless one is to film a single gospel straight through, which is not common, film treatments of Jesus are going to use a blended combination of the gospels. Does this mean that the genre of the Jesus film is fundamentally illegitimate? I just don't get it.

I share this surprise at the strong reaction amongst some scholars to the harmonizing in The Passion of the Christ, not least because this is an age-old tradition in the Jesus films and The Passion of the Christ is far from unique in this regard.

There are essentially four important exceptions to the general rule about the Jesus films harmonizing the four Gospels to produce their narratives, The Gospel According to St Matthew, Jesus (based on Luke), Matthew and The Gospel of John. Otherwise, the Jesus films have narratives in which characters, scenes, motifs and more are drawn together from all four Gospels and none of them. One could give many, many examples but one that I have drawn attention to in the past is Mary Magdalene in the number "Everything's Alright" in Jesus Christ Superstar:

The various stories of the anointing of Jesus (Matt. 26.6-13, Mark 14.3-9, Luke 7.36-50, John 12.1-8) are rolled into one in the number 'Everything's Alright', and unlike any of the Gospels, the one who anoints Jesus is Mary Magdalene (cf. Luke 8.2). And shortly before this, Jesus' reply to Judas' criticism of Mary ('Strange Thing Mystifying') utilizes another story still, the Woman Taken in Adultery (John 8.1-11):

'If your slate is clean, then you can throw stones
If your slate is not, then leave her alone.' (Do You Think You're What They Say You Are?)

I think it's important to understand not only the principle of harmonizing in Jesus films, but also the elements that are repeatedly found appealing by the different film-makers. Certain motifs from the Gospels repeatedly prove popular to the film-maker and can be seen again in The Passion of the Christ. The trial before Herod (unique to Luke, see 23.6-12); Pilate's hand-washing (unique to Matthew, 27.24) and "we have no king but Caesar" (unique to John, 19.15) are all very common in film depictions of the Passion, and not surprisingly crop up again in The Passion of the Christ.

But the issue of harmonizing is clearly one that strikes a real chord with many scholars viewing this film and it does make me wonder whether it is a result of their general lack of familiarity with the Jesus film tradition. Consider, for example, Emily Cheney in Gibson's Gory Story on the SBL Forum. She notes that "It is primarily Mel Gibson's Passion Play, not an accurate portrayal of Jesus' death and the events leading up to his death because we have four versions in the New Testament, not one" and adds:

He harmonizes the four gospels, not respecting how each gospel is emphasizing different aspects and is written for different audiences, at different times, in different places.

Or consider Ched Myers, Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” Anti-Semitism and the Gospel: Mark’s Trial Narrative as Political Parody, who remarks:

One of the many problems with Gibson’s film is that it weaves in strands from all four of our gospel versions (not to mention his own gratuitous additions). Attempts to “harmonize” what are four very different versions of the Jesus story have long been discredited because they give the editor such wide license to pick and choose. This effectively creates a “fifth” gospel—or in Gibson’s case, anti-gospel. The only way to unravel Gibson’s fabric is to examine each gospel separately, in order to see their different emphases and purposes.

I am intrigued by the comment here that harmonies have "long been discredited". Of course it is the case that we academic types love to pour over the Synopsis, but we are not marking an undergraduate essay on the Historical Jesus when we are looking at The Passion of the Christ but at a film that is part of a tradition of Christian story-telling. Or from an article interviewing Francis Moloney, Moloney: 'Scene After Scene is Just Wrong' in Passion Film, we read:

Moloney argued against the way in which Gibson selected different verses from different gospels. "Each passion story has its own point to make," he said, adding that if the film puts a selection of all of them together, what you get is a "juxtaposition of material that doesn't belong together." A classic example he mentioned was that the last words of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, "My God my God, why have you forsaken me?" are "words of despair." The two writers "really wanted to show that Jesus really died an agonizing death, and that the answer of God to this death is the Resurrection in the very next chapter."

As with the other Jesus films, the cry from the cross "My God, my God . . ." is effectively recontextualized by the harmonizing, drawing in a selection of -- and sometimes all of -- the words from the cross. I quite agree that the harmonizing of the words on the cross does not allow us to understand the way in which Mark's narrative works, but then the film is not attempting to give us an exposition of Mark's Gospel.

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Martin Webber emails to point out that the old Acts-L homepage at Baylor University, along with the archive of older materials, has now disappeared. I've adjusted the link on my E-Lists and Luke-Acts pages so that they have only the Yahoo!Groups link. If anyone happens to know of the whereabouts of anything else for the list, I'd be happy to hear about it.

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I commented yesterday on Bible Studies - Русские страницы and drew attention to some concerns about articles of mine that have been reproduced there without permission. I wrote to the author of the site to express my concern and he emails me in response with an explanation. He says that he did ask for permission to reproduce many of the articles on the site but he could not always find the relevant email addresses and some people did not reply. Others, he says, may have just slipped through the net. So I had a look in my own correspondence and see that I did in fact write to the author of the site in response to an email he sent me on 27 November 2001. (I write well over 5,000 emails a year so it is not surprising that I forget some). My email of 27 November 2001 says that I am happy to encourage links to any of my articles but that I am not happy to grant permission to reproduce any of them. I might add that in some cases (e.g. Fatigue in the Synoptics) I do not own the copyright anyway and so cannot grant others permission to reproduce them. So I have asked the author to take my articles down.

The site in question has lots more articles and as far as I can see there are no statements about copyright or permission being granted. It is possible that there are others whose articles have been reproduced without permission; I have written to the author of the site to encourage him to add statements concerning permission where he has it, not least because I can imagine that others might be less gracious than I when their material has been reproduced without permission. I should add here that I think that what the author of the site is doing, bringing Biblical Studies to Russia, where books and journals are often scarce, is most valuable. For that reason it is all the more important to make sure that everything available on the site is there legitimately.

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There have been comments here and elsewhere on the AAR decision to hold stand-alone meetings. The AAR web site have now made available the text of the response from the AAR board on this issue in relation to the petition organised by Karen King and Elaine Pagels:

A Message from the AAR Board

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I have commented previously on Robert Gundry's short article on The Passion of the Christ in the SBL Forum's Letters to the Editor. They have now re-ordered this page and sensibly given Gundry's article (as well as the other longer ones) a page of its own:

The Burden of the Passion
Robert H. Gundry

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It is good to see the SBL Forum continuing to publish Letters to the Editor -- this brings alive the SBL pages as indeed a kind of "forum" for debate and discussion, adding a degree of diversity and interaction for the first time. The latest to be added is this interesting contribution:

The Question, Not the Answer, Is the Problem
Stuart S. Miller

The tendency to regard the defining moment in Jewish-Christian relations as the rejection by the "Jews" (as if the original followers of Jesus weren't Jews!) of Jesus at Golgotha rather than the rejection by Christians, subsequent to the crucifixion, of the halakhah, only serves to further deflect attention from Christianity's roots in Judaism. All the attention given to answering the question, "Who killed Jesus?" further misleads the adherents of both Christianity and Judaism from the truth. Christians continue to skirt the implications of their Jewish heritage for their faith and their relationship with the Jews. Jews, by responding defensively, only legitimize the falsifying of history that has allowed Christians for so long to regard them as the "Other." . . . .

. . . . New Passion plays, such as Mel Gibson's movie, only further mask the historical truth and do nothing positive for relations between Christians and Jews. The Church and Christian leaders need to set their own history and relationship with the Jews straight, not by readdressing, or compelling Jews to readdress, "Who killed Jesus?" but by finally teaching their adherents the undeniable truth about Christian origins. Empathy for the suffering of Jesus the Jew might then be transformed into a truly meaningful lesson.

Stuart S. Miller is Associate Professor of Hebrew, History, and Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

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Greg Bloomquist emails me to point out that the late Tony Fisher's Greek New Testament pages have encountered a problem -- one always gets an "Error! Database is busy . . ." message. I have written to a contact in the York University computing department in the hope that this can be fixed. It may be that in the long term we should approach York with a view to taking over the site so that it can be maintained on a more day-to-day basis. I will post any updates here. In the mean time, the Online Greek Bible provides a similar service if one is doing a simple search. That site is superior in one way -- it provides varieties of fonts for display, including unicode, but it is not able to tackle the more complex searches that Tony Fisher's site can. Also, I am not keen on the anonymity of the site -- I prefer web authors to be upfront about who they are.

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This new book has been announced from SCM Press:

Paula Gooder and Peter Kevern,
Exploring New Testament Greek: A Way In

This practical textbook for undergraduate students and serving ministers is specifically designed to teach the reader about New Testament Greek, and to enrich the readers understanding of Scripture. Features a regularly updated companion website with exercises and revision notes.

0334029422 £10.99 OUT MAY 2004

The site features an endorsement from me, indeed the only endorsement currently given there:

"· '… clearly fills a gap in the market.' Mark Goodacre, University of Birmingham"

I should therefore point out that I have not seen this book. I was asked to look at a book proposal in January 2003, and I have looked out my report and see that what I wrote was "This book proposal is a very interesting one, and it would clearly fill a gap in the market." I reported favourably on the book proposal, but listed several potential concerns too. I'll ask SCM if I can now have a look at the book.

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On Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson draws attention to:

Armin Daniel Baum

He is at the Freie Theologische Akademie, Germany and this page features a CV and list of publications. I have added it to the Scholars: B page and have at the same time updated the links to several of the other pages there. (It still amazes me to see how few university sites bother to set up forwards from older pages. It is something I am always nagging about here, often to no avail. At least we have a set of good forwards set up from older pages in the Dept of Theology, but that's because I look after them).

Stephen also refers to one of Baum's articles available for download:

Die Diskussion der Authentizität von Herrenworten in altkirchlicher Zeit [PDF]

Note too several other articles of interest on the Freie Theologische Akademie site:

Artikel zum Download

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We had a fascinating seminar yesterday in the Graduate Institute for Theology and Religion here in Birmingham. Andy Pryke, from the School of Computer Science gave a paper called:

"Who wrote Paul? Can text analysis based on data compression techniques
(like "winzip") add to our knowledge?"

I will present some preliminary research which applies techniques from computer science and genetic analysis to the text of the letters attributed to Paul. The presentation will show visual representations of the relationships between these documents, and no background in computing is required. Feedback is welcome, particularly on (i) the utility of the method and (ii) the relationship of these results to those of traditional scholarship.

The talk was concise, clearly presented, patiently explaining the computing side of things so that we could all understand, and wanted to enlist the help of those present on the Biblical scholarship side of things.

As I understood it, Andy had applied compression techniques to all the letters in the New Testament in order to ascertain how similar each text was to each text, so that one could see -- for example -- how similar 1 Corinthians is each other letter in the New Testament, then how similar Romans is to each other letter in the New Testament and so on. The use of compression technology like Winzip is useful in this context because it compresses texts by looking for repeated patterns, allowing one to express the compressed text as a number, e.g. "The cat sat on the mat" could be represented as "Θ c@ s@ on Θ m@", thereby reducing the number of necessary symbols from 17 to 10, 0.59. One can then make a direct comparison with another text using the same code, Θ = the, @ = at, and see how similar the chosen text is. "Born of the flesh" could be represented as "Born of Θ flesh" using the same code, reducing the number of necessary symbols from 14 to 12, 0.88, so (obviously) quite different from "the cat sat on the mat". Likewise in the New Testament letters, each text was tested for its relationship to each other text and the degrees of similarity ascertained. The results of the 400+ different relationships can be plotted visually so that one could see where the clustering of similar texts occurred.

The results were interesting. The seven undisputed Paulines appeared to cluster together as very similar texts, but 2 Thessalonians was right there in the mix with them. Ephesians and Colossians were both a bit further away, though similar to each other, and Colossians more similar to the undisputed Paulines than was Ephesians. The Pastorals were way off -- more similar to non-Pauline texts like Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter than to the undisputed Paulines. And the Pastorals clustered together as similar to each other. The one real anomaly in the results was provided by 1 and 2 John, both of which came out as similar to the undisputed Paulines and less like the other letters in the NT.

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Thanks to Holger Szesnat for this one. I'm afraid my Russian is non-existent so I have no idea whether this will be a useful site to readers or not:

Bible Studies - Русские страницы

The site has some English content too, including this essay;

Rick Strelan, "Who Was Bar Jesus (Acts 13,6-12)?"

Update (01:28): having looked around the site a bit more now, it seems clear that one of the things it does is to reproduce articles from around the internet. However, there do not appear to be any statements (in English at least) about whether or not permission has been sought. The site includes at least two articles of mine that are reproduced without permission and without any acknowledgement of their original location and this kind of thing is, of course, unacceptable.

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I took part last night in a Panel Discussion of The Passion of the Christ at the Light-House in Wolverhampton. It was an interesting experience. To be honest, I felt a little over-prepared. The other panelists had seen the film once each and were less familiar with the background than I. My natural enthusiasm, not only for the film but also for the opportunity to engage critically about it, meant that I had to be careful not to talk too much, a tough challenge.

Dr Deirdre Burke from the University of Wolverhampton spoke first. Her view was that the film was deeply disturbing and that there was anti-Semitism here of the kind that was likely to lead to people vandalising synagogues. The Rt. Rev’d Michael Bourke, Anglican Bishop of Wolverhampton, was more positive about the film and said that he had preached on it over the Easter period, but that he was a little concerned about the violence in the film -- graphic depictions of violence in the cinema could lead people to become desensitized to violence in the real world. Dr George Chryssides, also of the University of Wolverhampton, was pretty negative about the film. He felt that it did not stand up well as a piece of history and was misleading on several fronts. I tended to make the kind of points I've made here and in my article. I had just watched the film again and explained that because it engaged me strongly on an emotional and spiritual level, it was harder for me to exercise the kind of critical detachment that I would normally aim for in this kind of context.

Deirdre Burke expressed her concerns about the film in the context of talking about holocaust survivors, so I did point out that Maia Morgenstern, the actress who plays Mary the mother of Jesus, was the daughter of a holocaust survivor and the grandaughter of someone who died at Auschwitz. I still feel that this cannot be lightly brushed aside.

George Chryssides commented that the film was not recognisably set in Jerusalem -- he felt that it looked nothing like it and did nothing to evoke a Jerusalem setting in the viewer's mind. I found this interesting and it did make me realise that there are no long shots of the temple, for example, little that will make the viewer think of the Temple and its architecture.

The audience had widely varying views and seemed pretty representative of the reaction in the general public. Some love it, some hate it. One member of the audience introduced himself as a media studies lecturer and said that he thought the film awful and completely cliché ridden, slow motion, use of flashback etc. Predictably, perhaps, I tried to point out the differences between this film and other Jesus films, and specifically focused on the fascinating phenomenon of seeing events through Jesus' eyes, including seeing the view of the stone rolling back from inside the tomb. In fact I noticed this all the more in the viewing of the film beforehand -- there are many scenes on the road to Calvary where one is clearly seeing events as Jesus himself sees them, shaky camera and all. And during the scourging, it is Jesus who sees the devil and the demonic baby.

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As regular readers will know, I have commented here several times on the way that the character of Simon of Cyrene, played by Jarreth Merz, is depicted in The Passion of the Christ. To take an excerpt from my recent article, The Passion, Pornography and Polemic, for example, I commented:

At this point, when the viewer is strongly identifying with him, Simon is directly castigated by one of the Roman guards as “Jew!” This is the only character (other than Jesus who is called “King of the Jews”) in the entire film who is specifically characterised as a Jew. The point is important, not least given the fact that some critics of The Passion of the Christ have imported terminology into the film that is not found there. The film does not once, for example, castigate those in opposition to Jesus as “the Jews”, in spite of repeated assertions to the contrary. Moreover, the positive depiction of Simon of Cyrene as a Jew is clearly not accidental. This scene in The Passion of the Christ is largely dependent on Catherine Emmerich’s Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, especially Simon’s exhortations to the soldiers to stop. But where she makes Simon a pagan, Gibson insists that his heroic figure was a Jew.

Evy Nelson now emails me with a less positive take on the depiction of Simon:

Yes, Simon of Cyrene is called "Yehuda," but so is someone else, done so, by my reading, in contradistinction. One personifies as a type the Jew who fails to go the distance w/Jesus and therefore ends in despair and destruction. As I witnessed Simon's character development, I sensed that he represents the Jew who begins to understand who Jesus is and embraces that revelation, whereupon he casts aside his Jewish observance.

Stick w/me on this one. When Simon is first impressed, he is wearing a skull cap not unlike modern-day kippot (whether men did or did not wear such in 30 CE is, as I see it, a moot point; what matters in Gibson's Passion envisioning is how this item of clothing as symbol is realized) and at least one of his outer garments is striped in such a way that many Jews watching the film have identified it as a tallit, an item that we all recognize as a primary sign of Jewish belief and observance. These items he continues to wear as he, forcedly, assists Jesus in carrying the cross. When Jesus falls and is yet again brutalized by the Roman guard, Simon, right before he defiantly defends Jesus, casts off his outer garments, tallit presumably included. The camera clearly shows the clothing lying ignobly in the dust . . . .

. . . . . Is Gibson trying to communicate a subtext regarding Judaism here? Well, if you see the film again, notice that as Simon launches into his castigation, we are suddenly presented w/finely dressed men w/ostentatious tallit in the background of the scene. However, if Gibson is not consciously trying to communicate a subtext of antagonism or offense, then the nature of the scene is one that, nonethelss, can leave a Jew feeling uneasy. It is for reasons like this that Gibson should have, in my opinion, enlisted Jewish insight.

As for the skull cap, that too is lost at the point Simon completes his task on Calvary. If you watch the film again, notice how head coverings on men figure in the presentation of characters. Contrast, for example, the disciples at the Last Supper--nary a head covering--w/the multitude demanding Jesus' crucifixion. Even Sanhedrin member Joseph of Arimathea is without head covering when he attends in the lowering of Jesus' body from the cross.

I am grateful for this alternative, interesting take on the film. And let me reiterate that I do have some concerns with the film's perspective on and depiction of elements in the Passion narrative, concerns that may well have been less if Gibson had indeed, as Evy suggests, "enlisted Jewish insight". I hold to the view I have often expressed that Gibson was mistaken in not enlisting the help of an advisory committee of scholars from different backgrounds of the kind that The Gospel of John so wisely used. Having said that, I am not convinced that Simon's loss of his clothing is significant. It seems unlikely to me that it is intended to communicate any significant subtext regarding Judaism except in our initial viewing of Simon, it serves to affirm all the more strongly his Jewish identity. I have had a chance to think carefully about this and happily, Evy's email arrived yesterday, not long before I went to see the film for the third time, so I had a chance to watch the scene carefully. I must admit that I had not noticed the features Evy refers to before. My reasons for not finding the loss of clothing significant are twofold. First, it seems to me that it is simply that Simon is struggling with the cross, the violence and everything else. His loss first of some clothing and subsequently his hat / skull cap is a bit of realism -- he's been struggling with this heavy cross and with the trauma of the trudge to Calvary and it would be unrealistic to expect all his clothing to remain in tact. It seems reasonable to me to assume that his loss of his outer garments is not religiously significant. It is about verisimilitude. Second, the all important charge of "Judaeus!" (Jew!) comes after the loss of his outer garment. The film-makers have located the line that specifically encourages the viewer to think about Simon's Jewish identity after the point at which he loses some of his clothing. If there is any intention to convey a subtle anti-Jewish message here, then I think the film fails and works against itself. Where I think the issue of the clothing is interesting, and I am grateful to Evy because I had not thought about this before, is that it encourages the viewer to think all the more strongly about Simon's Jewish identity. And this is striking in the light of the fact that the source material, Catherine Emmerich's Dolorous Passion, Chapter 33, uses the clothing to signify to the reader that Simon was not Jewish:

At this moment Simon of Cyrene, a pagan, happened to pass by . . . . The soldiers perceiving by his dress that he was a pagan" (emphasis added).

I am grateful for the opportunity to have thought some more about this scene. I should also point out that Evy Nelson has an article on Christianity Today called The Latest Temptation of Christians.

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The Ecole Biblique web site announces the sad news that Marie-Émile Boismard died on 23 April:

Fr. Marie-Émile Boismard, o. p. (1916-2004): Notice Nécrologique

This full obituary is written by Jerome Murphy O'Connor and reports on Boismard's life and research. There is a bibliography at the end.

Update (30 April): URL has now changed to:

Fr. Marie-Émile Boismard, o. p. (1916-2004): Notice Nécrologique

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On a recent blog entry on Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson makes some interesting comments on Alan Garrow's forthcoming book, The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache, and adds, "the $120 retail price from T&T Clark in that series may mean waiting until the SBL Annual Meeting". I am sure that it is worth mentioning that T and T Clark International are continuing with Sheffield Academic Press's tradition of providing half-price on hardback books in the JSNTS that are not otherwise available in paperback. This is an excerpt from a recent letter sent out with the recent T and T Clark International catalogue in March (page numbers refer to the current catalogue):

Our scholar’s discount scheme enables you to buy titles published in the following leading research series at half the normal retail price:

• Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements (see pages 4-10)
• Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements (see pages 13-17)
• Library of Second Temple Studies (formally Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha Supplements) (see pages 22-23)

Now collectively known as the T&T Clark Library of Biblical Scholarship, these series offer the very latest research in all aspects of Biblical Studies, including innovative work from historical perspectives, studies using social-scientific and literary theory, and developing theological, cultural and contextual approaches.

Signing up for scholar’s discount is easy. Either e-mail us your details at newbooks@continuumbooks.com or visit our new website www.tandtclark.com and register on-line.

By registering for scholar’s discount you are entitled to 50% off all hardback volumes in The T&T Clark Library of Biblical Scholarship AND you qualify for special offers on countless new and backlist titles.

As far as I can see one can not yet register on-line, so it looks like the best route is the email one. But I have written to T & T Clark International to enquire further about the possibility of their adding a registering service for this discount on their new site and I will report on any update here. I should perhaps add in this context that I have recently accepted an invitation to become editor of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series and will report further on this in due course.

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The latest email from Ben Witherington III has been added to beliefnet's Scholarly Smackdown on Jesus and Paul conducted between Elaine Pagels and Ben Witherington III. This time the order is reversed and Ben Witherington contributes first:

Scholarly Smackdown Round 3: Ben Witherington III

His topic is Gnosticism and the canon. Was there any fully-fledged Gnosticism in the first century? Witherington says no. There's one useful bit of bibliography, something I had missed: Craig Evans, "Thomas, Gospel of" in R. P. Martin and P. H. Davids (eds.), Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Development (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1997): 1176.

I'm still not sure if this format is conducive to really decent critical engagement. The problem I mentioned before is exacerbated by reversing the order of engagement in this round so that here Witherington if effectively starting afresh. There's not enough actual conversation here.

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Thanks to Arne Halbakken for this link from WorldNetDaily

Jewish activists: Apologize to Mel
Posted: April 24, 2004
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Even the most hostile critic must concede that just as depraved films stimulate degenerate imitation, so do uplifting films stimulate noble behavior. That is certainly what has been happening with "The Passion." Wouldn't it be uplifting and even noble were the Jewish groups who earlier had insulted "The Passion," its maker, the Gospels that inspired it and indeed all Christians, now to issue an apology?

Wouldn't it be refreshing if those who earlier warned of anti-Jewish violence because "Gibson is spouting classic anti-Semitism" would now say contritely, "We were just plain wrong"? How about a "We're sorry" from those who threatened, "Mel Gibson's mouth has turned into a lethal weapon." Instead, what they are now saying is, "Just wait till those Muslims see 'The Passion.'"

One of the things that concerns me about the piece is the implication that it was only "Jewish groups" who were concerned about The Passion of the Christ. Many of the film's most vociferous critics have not been Jewish; and the famous "ad hoc committee", as Paula Fredriksen has tried to make clear, had as many Catholics on it as Jews. Still, Lapin appears to be right that the "dire warnings" turn out not to have been justified.

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Some new additions (and one update) to the Gospel of John Books and Articles page. These are all Word documents and are from Jeffrey Staley's homepage. Thanks to John Urquhart for alerting me to the new URL for the second of these items:

Jeffrey L. Staley, Reading with a Passion: Rhetoric, Autobiography, and the American West in the Gospel of John (New York: Continuum, 1995), full text of the pre-publication chapters.

Jeffrey L. Staley, “What Can a Postmodern Approach to the Fourth Gospel Add to Contemporary Debates About its Historical Situation?” in Robert Fortna and Thomas Thatcher (eds.), Jesus in the Johannine Tradition: New Directions (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001)

Jeffrey L. Staley, “Liar Liar and ‘This Woman’ in John 7:1-8:59: From Rhetorical Analysis to Intertextual Rereading” in Amy M. Donaldson and Timothy B. Sailors (eds.), New Testament Greek and Exegesis: Festschrift in Honor of Gerald F. Hawthorne (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)

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Another addition to the Historical Jesus: Books and Articles page:

Scot McKnight, “Jesus and the Twelve”, IBR Studies (no date), Institute for Biblical Research web site

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I am going to make up for being late on this last week by noting the latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature as soon as it's out. These are just the titles directly related to the NT:

The United Bible Society's New Testament Handbook Series
Reviewed by Susan Lochrie Graham

Bøe, Sverre
Gog and Magog: Ezekiel 38-39 as Pre-Text for Revelation 19, 17-21 and 20, 7-10
Reviewed by Michael Barram

Davis, Stephan K.
The Antithesis of the Ages: Paul's Reconfiguration of Torah
Reviewed by Gary D. Salyer

Gathercole, Simon J.
Where Is Boasting?: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's Response in Romans 1-5 Reviewed by H. H. Drake Williams III

Koester, Craig R.
Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community
Reviewed by Steven A. Hunt

Patte, Daniel and Eugene TeSelle, eds.
Engaging Augustine on Romans: Self, Context, and Theology in Interpretation
Reviewed by Martin Ramey

Theissen, Gerd and Dagmar Winter
Translated by M. Eugene Boring
The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria
Reviewed by John Byron

Witherington, Ben III and Laura M. Ice
The Shadow of the Almighty: Father, Son, and Spirit in Biblical Perspective
Reviewed by Seung-Ai Yang

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A forthcoming book of interest in the JSNTS series:

Alan Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence of Didache (London and New York: T & T Clark International, 2004).

Abstract:

This book maps the relationship between Matthew's Gospel
and the Didache.

While scholars agree that some form of relationship between these two texts must exist, no consensus regarding the precise nature of this relationship has yet been agreed. At the same time, serious consideration has never been given to the possibility that Matthew's Gospel was written with direct knowledge of a text substantially similiar to the single extant manuscript of the Didache.

If it may be shown that Matthew had direct knowledge of the Didache, then a number of significant implications follow, for example: new evidence is brought to bear on the Synoptic Problem; insight is gained into the pattern of first century Christian liturgical practice and belief; and a detail is uncovered in the story of Gentile incorporation into the Jewish form of the Jesus movement.

The book has an excellent accompanying web site:

Didache Garrow

It is run by the author, Alan Garrow and designed around the principle of a cube, with the main cube leading off to several different cubes. It takes a little while to get used to navigating your way around this web site, and you might find yourself making several false moves, but it's a fun idea and I'm all in favour of nice new ideas like this. The site includes details about the book, the author, background information, sample chapters, coloured texts and so on. A great example to others on the innovative use of the web to act as a companion to a monograph.

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Andrew Gregerman emails with the note that in my Featured Links: July 2001 I had a bunch of references to the FindArticles.com reproductions of Harvard Theological Review. I have been gradually stripping these away from the site, but had missed this page. I've now added a note there.

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Don't forget to look at the latest Explorator from David Meadows:

Explorator 6.52

One paragraph from New York Times linked there caught my interest:

Arts Briefing
By Lawrence Van Gelder

It includes some comments on the American newspaper coverage of The Passion of the Christ:

According to the initial findings of a study by the College of Communications at Marquette University, a Jesuit institution, most articles that it categorized as straight news reports were either neutral or positive. Reaction to the film, about the last hours of Jesus, became more negative in editorials, reviews, critiques and feature articles. The preliminary report, part of a larger study of newspaper coverage in all 50 states, said that besides addressing general religious themes, the press tended to focus on anti-Semitism, violence and historical accuracy.

Yes, I would say that that was my impression too -- those were the three areas around which the comments have coalesced.

[And thanks too to David Meadows for a link to my article on The Passion]

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I am so used to linking to and commenting on others' reviews and articles about The Passion of the Christ that it feels odd to point to something I've written myself. I hope that readers will not think me self-indulgent to do so. The latest article to be added to the Essays from Bible and Interpretation on The Passion is the following (with American spelling):

The Passion, Pornography and Polemic:
In Defense of The Passion of the Christ
By Mark Goodacre
April 2004

If you recognise sections of it, it will be because parts are adapted from blog entries here. But the majority of the article, about three-quarters of its 4,500 words, is new.

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