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This report from Rediff Entertainment Bureau suggests that Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ is now in the running to play Superman:

Caviezel, Fraser, Law in running to play Superman
rediff Entertainment Bureau | August 12, 2004 10:53 IST

Jim Caviezel may play another superman.

After playing Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's smash hit, The Passion of the Christ, the devout Catholic is the frontrunner to play Clark Kent, the mild mannered reporter for The Daily Planet.

Of course, as everyone on this planet knows, when evil beckons, when trouble is on the horizon, Mr Kent metamorphoses into 'Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it is Superman!'

Bryan Singer, who directed both the cult classic The Usual Suspects as well as the X-Men series, will champion the latest version of the classic comic superhero.

I am tempted to go into reflections on other characters who have appeared in both Superman films and Jesus films, but I'll resist for now.

Update (18 August): From the Seattle Times, Up, up and away in search of a Man of Steel (Anthony Breznican, The Associated Press),

No superhero fits the literary Christ motif as neatly as Superman, so it's no surprise the soulful, buff and blue-eyed Caviezel is one of the fan favorites to answer a question that has perplexed Hollywood for decades: "Who can play Superman?"

Caviezel's manager, Beverly Dean, is familiar with the rumor, but calls it speculation.

"Would he like to do it? He loves Superman," she said of the actor who grew up in Mount Vernon. "But the truth is there has been no offer (and) the script isn't even finished. But absolutely he'd be interested."

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On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila draws attention to a Philologos piece:

Questioning Virginity

The post touches on the well-worn debate about the meaning of almah in Isaiah 7.14 and suggests:

And yet to think this really matters is, from a contemporary point of view, putting the cart before the horse. Not only needn't Jews be disturbed if the word almah in Isaiah can be interpreted legitimately as meaning "virgin," but they also should realize that such a meaning explains why Christianity came to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus in the first place. In other words, as is the case with many supposed details of Jesus' life and death in the New Testament, we are dealing here with a legend invented by Jesus' early disciples in order to portray him as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. It was only because they interpreted almah in Isaiah as "virgin," as did the Jewish translators of the Septuagint, that they imagined such a story about him.

I think that this is back to front. It is highly unlikely that the story of the Virginal Conception was invented in order to portray Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy. Isaiah 7.14 is ill-suited to making the case that the Messiah would be born of a virgin because, as any educated Jew would have known and still knows, Isaiah 7.14 is about neither the Messiah nor a virgin! One of the things that is so striking about the use of proof-texts in Matthew 1-2 is that the author is clearly struggling to find scriptural texts that accord with a story that has already been established and developed on other grounds and by other means. Take, for example, Matthew 2.23, "He shall be called a Nazorean", the prophecy that is supposed to establish the notion that Jesus would be brought up in Nazareth. Here no-one can even be sure what text Matthew is thinking of, how much less that he invented Jesus' upbringing in Nazareth on the basis of the said text. In other words, the process that is taking place in Matthew 1-2 is not, to use the term John Dominic Crossan applies to the Passion Narrative, prophecy historicized. It is history, or tradition, scripturalized. Here the story comes first, the scriptural justification afterwards.

The term scripturalization is not my own but James Kugel's; I have been developing a case that the term can help us to understand elements in the origin of the Gospels, and especially the Passion Narratives.

In relation to the so-called Virginal Conception, it is also worth drawing attention to two important recent works which argue that Matthew does not, in fact, narrate a virginal conception at all, Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (The Biblical Seminar, 28; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) and Robert J. Miller, Born Divine: The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God (Sonoma: Polebridge, 2003) [See also Study Guide and Excerpt].

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Most of the British New Testament Conference Seminar Programme is now available on-line -- titles and abstracts of papers. Some are still to come, though. Link here:

British New Testament Conference 2004: Seminars

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The SBL Site is advertising an offer to own all 91 issues of Semeia electronically for $19.95:

Opportunity to Own All Issues of Semeia for $20

Essentially this is a pre-publication offer as part of a joint project between SBL and Logos Research Systems. The feature adds, "Continued development of this product depends on the placement of a minimum number of prepublication orders, so cast your vote for the electronic Semeia today."

It is perhaps worth adding that Issues 79-81 and 83-91 (PDF) are available on the SBL site; and Vols. 19 and 60-72 are available on Ebind (see my Journals page for listing). The project to get Semeia available electronically has been a long and drawn out one, with some hiccups along the way. Once upon a time all the early issues were available on the old Scholars Press web site, but they've not seen the light of day again for some years now. So this may be a good chance to get your own personal complete run of copies for not too much, though one can't help wondering what happened to the original project to get the complete run available on-line several years ago for free public access.

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I have mentioned this before (e.g. here), so please forgive the indulgence of mentioning it again now that there's a picture of the cover available. I spotted this on Amazon today. The publication is Robert Webb and Kathleen Corley (eds.), Jesus and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History and it is due out at the end of this month from Continuum. (Previous links are to Amazon.com; see also Amazon.co.uk, which also has a substantial saving, or go direct to Continuum). The picture is of Grunewald's Crucifixion, which is appropriate given its apparent influence on Gibson.

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Open Access News note that the presentations from the JISC/CNI meeting on "The future of scholarship in the digital age" (Brighton, July 8-9, 2004), are now online. There is nothing directly related to Biblical Studies here, but plenty of interest for reflection on the issues connected with digitization of materials, e-learning, open access and the like:

The future of scholarship in the digital age

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Beliefnet have an interview with Bart Ehrman on his recent book Lost Christianities:

The Christianity Battles
What if Ebionite Christians, Marcion Christians, or Gnostic Christians had been more convincing?
Interview by Deborah Caldwell

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs, according to Bart Ehrman, author of Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Ehrman says some groups of early Christians claimed there was more than one God. Some believed Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human. In his book, Ehrman looks at how these early forms of Christianity came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. He spoke recently with Beliefnet about what Christianity might have become if a different strain had emerged victorious from first-century intellectual battles.

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I posted details the other day of an Austin Farrer Centenary Conference in Oxford in September. Jeff Peterson informs me that there is another conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

Captured by the Crucified

A Conference and Spiritual Life Workshop Celebrating Austin Farrer's Lived Theology in the Centenary Year of His Birth

November 4-7, 2004

The site features a quotation from Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, "Austin Farrer . . . possibly the greatest Anglican mind of the twentieth century." There's also a photograph of the great man, which reminds me rather of my grandfather.

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There is a new issue of New Testament Studies out:

New Testament Studies Volume 50 - Issue 03 - July 2004

Der zwölfjährige Jesus im Tempel (Lk 2.40–52) und die biografische Literatur der hellenistischen Antike
NILS KRÜCKEMEIER

Das Vaterunser: Gründe für seine Durchsetzung als ‘Urgebet’ der ChristenheitKARL-HEINRICH OSTMEYER

From Faith to Faith: Romans 1.17 in the Light of Greek Idiom
JOHN W. TAYLOR

Domestic Space and Christian Meetings at Corinth: Imagining New Contexts and the Buildings East of the Theatre
DAVID G. HORRELL

Paul's Quotation of Isaiah 54.1 in Galatians 4.27
MARTINUS C. DE BOER

The ‘Letter’ to the Hebrews and Its Thirteenth Chapter
A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

Points and Lines: Thematic Parallelism in the Letter of James and the Testament of Job
PATRICK GRAY

Die Historisierung der johanneischen Theologie im Ersten Johannesbrief
THEO K. HECKEL

Whence the First Millennium? The Sources behind Revelation 20
JACK T. SANDERS

Links above are to article abstracts. Full text access is for subscriber and subscribing institutions only (but who knows? Maybe one day that will change!).

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Here are the latest additions to the Review of Biblical Literature under the New Testament heading:

Chester, Stephen J.
Conversion at Corinth: Perspectives on Conversion in Paul's Theology and the Corinthian Church
Reviewed by Chris M. Smith

Gilbertson, Michael
God and History in the Book of Revelation: New Testament Studies in Dialogue with Pannenberg and Moltmann
Reviewed by Kyle Abbott

Grant, Robert M.
Second Century Christianity: A Collection of Fragements
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Lieu, Judith M.
Neither Jew Nor Greek?: Constructing Early Christianity
Reviewed by Sabrina Inowlocki

Moxnes, Halvor
Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom
Reviewed by Ronald R. Clark

Patte, Daniel, Monya A. Stubbs, Justin Ukpong, and Revelation E. Velunta
The Gospel of Matthew: A Contextual Introduction for Group Study
Reviewed by Scott Yoshikawa

Spencer, F. Scott
What Did Jesus Do?: Gospel Profiles of Jesus' Personal Conduct
Reviewed by Vaughn Crowetipton

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This message was circulated today to recipients on the British NT Society's mailing list, but it may be of interest to others:

Teaching Fellow in New Testament Studies
School of Divinity
University of St Andrews

Salary - £18,893 - £20,010 pa pro rata

We have a temporary post starting on 13 September 2004 until 30 June 2005, or as soon as possible thereafter, to provide cover while a member of staff is on Research Leave. You should have expertise in keeping with the School’s strong profile in New Testament. The School wishes to appoint a candidate whose work will duly contribute to its established reputation for excellence in both teaching and research. It is anticipated that the position may be particularly attractive to scholars who have recently completed their doctoral studies, though some experience of teaching New Testament in a university environment would be desirable.

You will be expected to teach a sub-honours module in New Testament Greek, honours modules on John’s Gospel and the Historical Jesus.

Please quote ref: JB01/04

Closing Date: 16 August 2004

Application forms and further particulars are available from http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/recruitment/vacancies or from Human Resources, University of St Andrews, College Gate, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, (tel: 01334 462571, by fax 01334 462570 or by e-mail Jobline@st-andrews.ac.uk).

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There are some enjoyable reflections on the cinema and Christianity in the current issue of Time Magazine:

The Gospel According To Spider-Man
Christians have discovered a powerful new teaching tool, and it's playing at a cineplex near you
By RICHARD CORLISS

I admit that this strays a little from the NT theme of this blog, but it's only a little, and I wanted an excuse to use that marvellous headline. A couple of excerpts:

For decades, America has embraced a baffling contradiction. The majority of its people are churchgoing Christians, many of them evangelical. Yet its mainstream pop culture, especially film, is secular at best, often raw and irreligious. In many movies, piety is for wimps, and the clergy are depicted as oafs and predators. It's hard to see those two vibrant strains of society ever coexisting, learning from each other.

Yet the two are not only meeting; they're also sitting down and breaking bread together. The unearthly success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ helped movie execs recognize that fervent Christians, who spend hundreds of millions of dollars on religious books and music, are worth courting. Publicists hired by studios feed sermon ideas based on new movies to ministers. Meanwhile, Christians are increasingly borrowing from movies to drive home theological lessons. Clergy of all denominations have commandeered pulpits, publishing houses and especially websites to spread the gospel of cinevangelism.

The cinevangelists would say that the churches' appropriation of pop culture is nothing new. "Jesus also used stories," Johnston says. "In his day, parables were the equivalent of movies." Marc Newman, who runs movieministry.com, traces pop proselytizing back to the Apostle Paul. "In Acts there's a Scripture describing how he came to the Areopagus, the marketplace in Athens where people exchanged ideas. Paul speaks to the men of Athens and refers to their poets and their prophets. He used the things they knew as a way to reach out with the Gospel."

And you could also say that Paul (at least in Acts) was at his least successful in Athens! This paragraph is also worth mentioning:

Rarely, a Christian message is implicated in a Hollywood film. Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which an ordinary guy sees the light and travels far to make contact with extraterrestrials, was conceived by its original screenwriter, Paul Schrader, as Saul's transforming journey to become the Apostle Paul. The Matrix (the first one, not the sequels) was manna to hermeneuticians. In a recent Museum of Modern Art film series called "The Hidden God: Film and Faith," Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray comedy about a man who relives the same day over and over, was cited as a profound statement of faith, either Buddhist (rebirth), Jewish (acceptance) or Christian (redemption).

I didn't know that about Close Encounters and Paul Schrader, who also wrote the screenplay, with Scorsese, for The Last Temptation of Christ.

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Thanks to Michael Pahl for alerting me to the programme schedule for the Evangelical Theology Society 56th Annual Meeting. As usual, this event takes place just before the SBL Annual Meeting, so it is in San Antonio from November 17-19:

ETS 56th Annual Meeting

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There's a huge new catch-up Explorator out today with plenty of interest. One thing I'd missed that it includes is a notice of the latest edition of Bible Review:

Bible Review August 2004

Alas, the happy days of selected free content are over, so some of us will not see much of this issue. There is also a new edition of the following, with the same subscriber-only access:

Archaeology Odyssey September / October 2004

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This story from the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Rewriting the Bible was never so hip
By Rich Copley

Genesis 1:1-2: First off, nothing ... but God. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God says the word, and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! The cosmos in chaos: no shape, no form, no function -- just darkness ... total. And floating above it all, God's Holy Spirit, ready for action.

Not exactly the King James Bible, eh?

The verses above are from The Word on the Street, a new interpretation of the Bible by Welsh performance artist Rob Lacey.

The book is due in stores Sept. 3, from Zondervan, after a successful launch in England earlier this year.

Lacey takes familiar texts and stories and puts them in the vernacular of urban youths and young adults.

One detail of this project I've heard here for the first time is that David Trobisch has lent a hand:

Zondervan gave Lacey a "theological safety net" in David Trobisch, a New Testament language professor at Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine. He helped with the interpretation.

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I had to get up early this morning -- very early for me on a Sunday -- to go to Pebble Mill and do a short piece for Radio 4's Sunday programme. It was just four minutes or so and the blurb was:

Tradition dates the first ever Olympic meeting to 776 BCE. The games were abolished nearly twelve hundred years later by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius on the grounds that they were pagan. But if that suggests a deep rooted antagonism between Christianity and the ideas that came out of the classical Greek world it would be misleading. . .

You can listen to the programme here:

Sunday

Or click on the individual links for the particular segments.

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