Bible Films Blog

Gospel Comparison:Wedding at Cana

2012-01-24T19:23:00.003Z

Sunday's lectionary gospel reading (in the Church of England at least) was the story of the Wedding at Cana and Jesus turning Water into Wine. In the CofE's lectionary it is one of the few passages from Jesus' ministry to appear every year, and so it's perhaps not surprising that it occurs in a good number of Jesus films.

What's interesting about the various portrayals is that, particularly in the later films, the filmmakers tend to take the opportunity to stress the otherness of Jesus' culture from our own. On occasion, however, this clashes with the film's overall portrayal of Jesus. It's somewhat jarring to see a blond-haired Jesus at a more typically middle-eastern wedding.

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905)
As is typical of this film, it prevents the action in a very straightforward manner. Jesus and his mother sit prominently at the front of the action, though the film's static camera, which frames the whole scene as if the audience is watching the action in a theatre, means that it's very much Jesus that is centre stage. The stone jars filled with wine are tiny - certainly not capable of holding 20-30 gallons. In contrast to the narrative where only the servants see what he is doing, here Jesus gestures to those at the back to get them to stand and see the action as if he's performing in a magic show.

From the Manger to the Cross (1912)
It's 100 years since Robert Henderson-Bland's Jesus came to our screens. In contrast to several portrayals this is not Jesus' first miracle, and it's one of the film's weaker moments. As with the above the miracle is performed somewhat theatrically and in full view of the guests. The chief steward is still surprised, but not so much because of an apparent breach of protocol. One notable innovation in this scene is that at the moment Jesus performs the miracle a light from above shines on his face.

Intolerance (1916)
The Judean Story, as director D.W. Griffiths called it, is the shortest of the four and is pure propaganda. The film as a whole is essentially campaigning against the temperance movement, showing the damage intolerance and its perpetrators have caused down the centuries. But it's the Jesus story where this intolerance coincides most closely with Griffith's biggest concern. In one intertitle he describes those objecting as "meddlers then as now". In another he adds a footnote explaining that "Wine was deemed a fit offering to God; the drinking of it a part of the Jewish religion". Not dissimilarly to Olcott's portrayal as Jesus conducts the miracle a cross shadow falls across him, only whereas the 1912 film used it to suggest divine approval, here it foreshadows Jesus' demise at the hands of intolerant humans.

The Gospel Road (1973) [pictured]
It would be over fifty years until this episode from the gospels was portrayed in the cinema, and when it came it was at the hands of one well acquainted with the pleasures and problems of alcohol. Johnny Cash's music provided the soundtrack for Robert Elfstrom to direct himself as Jesus. The scene has the surreal dreamy quality typical of much of the film which here reflects Cash's description of this episode as a parable (as some commentators think).

The wedding itself is very sparsely attended, and it's here that there's the greatest clash between the ultra blond Jesus and the effusive middle-eastern dancing. There's also a man smoking a hookah (water pipe) off to the side. Mary seems to be absent in this portrayal, although the camera does linger on a couple of women's faces as it becomes apparent that the wine has run out. Cash pipes up with his song "He turned the water into wine". A handful of particularly nice shots later (of the water being poured out and then changing colour) and Jesus has saved the day.

Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
This is one of the best scenes in the film, particularly because of the emphasis on the story's cultural context. Whilst, as noted above, this is fairly common for this episode, Scorsese nails it far more effectively than most of the other directors, despite Dafoe's blond locks.

The film also showed Jesus dancing, something absent previously but that most of the subsequent films would include, as well as a moment of levity as the miracle is performed. Nathanael, who has invited his new friends to the wedding, is convinced that the stone jars only contain water. Jesus is casual and playfully asks what's in the jars, before gently insisting that it's wine rather than water, and then raising a glass to his stupefied new disciple. Again Mary is absent, though Magdalene attends. When her attendance is challenged early on, Jesus uses the opportunity to talk about his father's feat where everyone is invited.

Jesus (1999)
In many ways Last Temptation is one of the foremost inspirations for Young's Jesus, using some of it's edginess, such as showing Jesus dancing at the wedding, whilst sanding down Scorsese/Kazantzakis's more controversial edges. This scene borrows heavily from Scorsese's, but adds in Mary, portraying her as a somewhat pushy mother catapulting her slacker son into messiahship (the moment Mary the mother of Jesus births the Christ one might say). Jesus is keen to stress that he's not ready, but for Andrew and John, who are having doubts, its the moment that they become convinced he is "the one". Eventually fed up with his reluctance ("My hour has not yet come") she lectures him ("it is time, for Andrew and for John") before forcing his hand telling a nearby servant "Jesus will help you with the wine". She ends by bossing poor Andrew around as well :"Drink Andrew, the cup you desired is here...He is the one Andrew. Have no fear in following him". The use of "he is the one" seems somewhat comical after The Matrix, but it's hardly the film's fault that it happened to be released the same year as one of the most talked about films of the decade.

The Revolutionary (1999)
Also released at the same time as The Matrix was the hilariously bad The Revolutionary. It also has a Jesus who dances, but here in contrast to the exuberance of Sisto and Dafoe, Jesus dances like a creep trying to hit on all the girls. When it becomes clear that the wine has run out Mary (who looks about the same age as Jesus) begs "please they'll be disgraced", whilst the hostess laments "How could this happen? I can't believe it". All of which at least provides a bit of cultural commentary about the severity of such a shortage. The scene is overshadowed however by the ridiculously snobby steward "you can't be serious" and his 'dramatic' change of heart - "This is the best wine I have ever tasted". This exaggeration of the text reflects the common interpretation that this 'sign' is about the wine of Christianity replacing the water of Judaism.

Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999)
Also released in 1999 was Mary, Mother of Jesus. The film makes a few interesting references in this scene. Firstly that the wedding in question is that of Jesus' cousin Joses, reflecting the Catholic interpretation that the brothers of Jesus named were actually his cousins (the precise meaning of the Greek word here is disputed). Secondly Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of Jesus discuss Peter's view that women shouldn't "be allowed to follow the master". Mary asks Magdala what Jesus said: "that women are fit to guide becuase they raise our sons".

It's difficult to know what to make of this. Directing Peter's comments towards Mary Magdalene evokes the Gospel of Mary, although I'm not sure this is deliberate. But what is particularly interesting is how this relates to the issue of women priests. Peter could be read as a stand-in for the pope and, by extension, the Roman Catholic church. By getting Jesus to disagree the (Catholic) filmmakers might be offering a critique of the church's official church. But on closer inspection, Peter's words go far beyond Catholic teaching, denying the right for women even to be followers. Jesus' reply, in contrast, permits women to guide, but falls far short of condoning priesthood.

Gospel of John (2003)
After all that Saville's Gospel of John is rather unremarkable. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the use of the Good News Version of the Bible, providing a somewhat softer response from Jesus after Mary's initial comment.

Bible Films Blog Review of 2011

2012-01-11T08:20:00.000Z

It's perhaps fortunate that in a year in which I've struggled to blog regularly there's not been a great deal happening. 2010 was a quiet year; 2011 was quieter still.

From the point of view of this blog, major change was the start of the Facebook page. Apologies if I've been banging one but this, but I'd urge anyone disappointed by the lack of traffic on this blog to keep an eye on things over there, even if you "don't do Facebook". You don't have to start a Facebook account, or give them any information to read it, and all the news about new Bible films, or reviews by others on older ones is there.

I'd also encourage others to keep posting and commenting. I'm particularly grateful to Peter Chattaway who frequently adds new bits and pieces, and for all the others that have contributed. Ultimatey, I guess, I started this blog as a way to resource those looking into Bible Films, and as digital communication has moved on better ways have emerged to do that. Facebook provides a less top-down approach than this blog which means that there can be more interaction between users, and a wider pool of people contributing and so on. And if you just want to read that's fine - the same stuff is over there, but in general you get it much quicker. The blog will stay for more in-depth writing such a recent posts.

Despite the rumours which continue to fly about Bible films in the works (including the exciting news this year about Scott Derrickson filming Goliath) almost no new dramatic portrayals of the biblical narratives were released this year. The closest we came was the première of the midrashic Young Avraham at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival. There was also the short film The Gathering and DVD releases of a new filmed version of Schöenberg's "Moses und Aron" and Where is my Father>, a new film about Job.

Thankfully, there were at least a few documentaries to keep up the interest. The BBC gave us a three-parter The Bible's Buried Secrets presented by Exeter University's Francesca Stavrakopoulou. The first part looked at the evidence (or lack thereof) regarding David and Solomon, part 2 raised the question as to whether God had a wife, before the final part looked at the origins of the Garden of Eden myth and proposed that the original story used Eden to talk about Jerusalem. The series was interesting, although not always convincing, and managed to avoid some of the modern TV documentary clichés, but was beset by overly dramatic rhetoric about "rocking" and "shaking" the very core of monotheism.

For those who felt the series was a little too one-sided in favour of atheists and liberals, the BBC, as always, redressed the balance at Easter offering a two-part documentary The Story of Jesus. Aside from such prominence being given to such a orthodox / traditional / conservative retelling of the Easter story, the programme was also notable for breaking from the standard format of having one expert narrating and interviewing others by using nine different scholars do the work on screen, occasionally meeting to hand on to the next. It also featured some good footage from Big Book Media.

The only other significant occurrence was about as tangential as things can get. BBC4 broadcast a rather surreal fictionalisation of the events leading up to the release of Monty Python's Life of Brian in general and the infamous TV debate in particular. Holy Flying Circus starred Charles Edwards as Michael Palin and Darren Boyd as John Cleese as they went head to head with Malcolm Muggeridge (played by Michael Cochrane) and Mervyn Stockwood, the then Bishop of Southwark (Roy Marsden). It contained a few good laughs, but was overall rather hit and miss and its greatest contribution was perhaps giving the BBC a legitimate opportunity to air the full version of the original programme Friday Night, Saturday Morning.

And that was more or less it! For the blog and me it was a year of great contrasts. The start of the year was busy with several different presentations and projects all happening within 10 days of one another at the start of the year and struggling to be able to even put metaphorical pen to non-literal paper. Whilst 2012 already has the publication of a new Bible films book to it's name (Catherine O'Brien's "Celluloid Madonna"), the popular Easter release window is looking rather unpopulated at the moment and there's precious little else on the horizon at the moment. Time will tell.

Nativity Scenes Revisited - Part 4: The Nativity (2010)

2012-01-08T18:07:00.002Z

In the absence of a significant Jesus film this year, the BBC version's of The Nativity remains the most recent portrayal of the events surrounding Jesus' birth. The first three half hour episodes I watched with the kids, but knowing the content was a little harsher in the final episode I watched that one alone.

It's hard to really explain to a 5 year old and a three year old why "funny Joseph" as they had been calling him suddenly got scarily angry, but it speaks volumes of Andrew Buchan's performance that as an adult I could appreciate that his reaction wasn't as extreme as might be expected in the circumstances.

The downsides were perhaps a little more obvious this time around. Whilst I still think this is one of the, if not the, best versions of the Nativity Story on film some of the things that make it good also rein it back from becoming great. Paramount in my thoughts here is the soap-operainess of the whole thing. On the plus side the characters are well rounded, and simply by making it a kind of soap opera a lot of the religious veneer is stripped away. It's unclear how special Mary and Joseph know they are. Weird things are happening to them, yet they are not being transported to another plain of reality - they remain the same people. But then at times it does just feel a little too like Eastenders. In a way that's no bad thing - Eastenders is a far better soap than most in the world as well as in this country - but there's nevertheless a tension between the side of me that likes to see religious fluff blown away, and the side that wants there to be some sense of gravity. Perhaps in the end it's just one or two moments that just take me out of things and make me feel I'm watching a soap opera, and, at the end of the day, I don't watch soap operas.

It also feels a little over long. I'd be interested to see the film cut down to one ninety minute feature. I think it would benefit from being a little leaner. Part of the problem here is that gradually drawing the three threads alive requires each to be kept alive, but that the side stories never land as well as that of Mary and Joseph. That said some of the birthing footage would be amongst the first to go were I trying to chop half an hour out of the programme.

What I do like about the final episode is the way Joseph is shown as returning to his ancestral home rather than, as is usually the case, just a random town. He still has family there, and it's there rejection of Mary, and Joseph's dislike at the way they treat her that sees the two of them stuck in a stable. Lastly the final few shots of this catch something of the otherness of this moment. Some films do it with soaring scores attempting to direct your emotions, other with lighting or dialogue. Here however, it's with quietness and humility. Suddenly it makes no sense that these Magi and these shepherds even, are on their knees worshipping a little baby. It's odd and yet there they remain rooted to the spot and aware of their own smallness in the presence of one smaller even than themselves.

Nativity Scenes Revisited - Part 3: King of Kings (1961)

2012-01-07T09:14:00.005Z

I know Christmas ended yesterday in the west, but as there is at least one regular reader of this blog that celebrated Christmas yesterday, I thought I might make at least one more entry in this series before moving on. In fact, there might be at least one more give the last news from Mark Goodacre). Besides I got a new Blu-Ray / up-scaling DVD player yesterday and this is is usually the first Bible film I head for in these circumstances.

For a three hour film, the Nativity sequence is surprisingly short at just three and a half minutes, although, as with other entries in my series, that's excluding the slaughter of the innocents. In this film that's quite a significant point. The Nativity sequence is just a part of a much bigger prologue, which last for around 18 minutes in total. The thrust of this prologue is political and historical rather than theological. The film is big on the political context of the Romans invading and oppressing the Jews; the violent attempts to overthrow them by some; and Jesus' coming as the Prince of Peace.

The Nativity scenes themselves are a bit mixed. There are a couple of astounding long shots, but the closer scenes look too obviously fake. This is made worse by the voices not being in-sync with the actor's mouths.

Orson Welles narrates over a series of shots of the holy couple starting as specks in the distance and then in a wide shot and then in a mid shot. The next scene is Bethlehem which the voice notes has been "much corrupted by Rome" (again inserting the political) and Joseph struggling to find somewhere for Mary to give birth. Eventually they find the cleanest stable, not only in Bethlehem, but one suspects, the whole world.

One thing that is striking is that the birth happens entirely "off camera". There's not even an establishing shot accompanied by relevant sounds or a fraught looking Joseph. The first we see of it is a remarkably perky looking Mary laying down the new born king.

There's a beautiful shot of the magi following the star, one of those that relies on its movement for it's composition - I couldn't find a screen grab that captured its essence - shots like this are truly cinematic. Then it's back to the studio as the magi dismount and continue on foot to the rather twee "ah-ah-ahs" of the background chorus. Unlike the magi, the shepherds are not mentioned, but have already arrived and there's a couple of classic Nativity scenes before the scene ends in a classic pose. Interestingly this nicely composed shot bears very little relation to the reverse shot that is shown directly before it.Like other artistic interpretations of Matthew's gospel there is a certain level of parallelism between Jesus the new born king and Herod the Great. Here however things are ramped up. The scene after the stable scene is of Herod and his son who will also go on to be a king (or at least a tetrarch) in discussion with Lucius about the "King of Judea". Interestingly Herod senior almost seems to defer to his son as to the best course of action. Herod junior plays it with a straight bat, preferring to bide his time one the one hand whilst simultaneously giving tacit approval to his father's horrendous solution. Lucius objects but obeys, yet it's here that his long path to salvation begins - it seems as if this is the first time Rome's orders have ever clashed with his own morals.

Nativity Scenes Revisited - Part 2:Life and Passion of Jesus Christ

2011-12-18T08:09:00.002Z

Having started with Pasolini's nativity scene a few days ago, I thought we'd go back to the beginning and look at The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. My kids have watched silent films before, mainly Buster Keaton, so it wasn't so much of an education. That said the real advantage for them of watching this film was that it kind of predates intertitles, or rather it still has title cards, but not the cards which tell you what the characters are saying. In many ways this is very good for young kids who know the story, but wouldn't necessarily grasp the dialogue, and it helps me talk get used to the idea of interpreting film, and thinking about what they watch.

The other thing it gave me the chance to talk to them about was the fact that moving images are in fact a series of still images. I didn't go too far with this one, but as Nina asked some very interesting questions about the black and white to colour process here, it was a good chance to talk about hand colouring and how laborious that was because it was frame by frame and so on.

To my mind it"s still rather unclear about which parts of this film emerged when. In the early days the content of this film wasn't fixed in the way that is universal today. There was a catalogue of the available tableaux (scenes) that distributors/theatre owners could choose from, so the content of this film was fluid from the start, which explains why there are so many versions of this film available today, in very different cuts, some scenes hand coloured by nuns, some not, and so on. And this film appears to have been doing the rounds for a long time. Parts of the material appear to date from the nineteenth century, one widely available version of the film with a few sound effects dates from 1933 (I seem to recall. Don't quote me on that).

One of the reasons I mention that is because whilst the date of this film is usually cited as around 1905 (give or take a few years) some of the techniques are quite advanced. Take for example the faded in appearance of the angel to Mary. My knowledge of early techniques is limited to things like double exposures, shielding and so on, but I don't know how exactly they get the angel to fade in so smoothly. Feel free to fill me in below!

Likewise when the wise men (who have previously been filmed using a blue filter) arrive in the stable (hand coloured), there is a certain amount of camera panning here (very rare in its day, perhaps one of the earliest example?) and for a while it's unclear how the two colour styles are going to resolved. In the end the right hand side of the screen is filtered blue whilst the coloured characters against the black and white background are on the left. It's an ugly shot, but it's fascinating seeing the filmmakers wrestle with these questions, develop processes, and develop solutions, even if they are not entirely satisfactory a hundred years later. It breaks our visual code, but was, in a way, part of creating such a visual code to begin with.

I was also reminded in watching these scenes about something I've been meaning to say since seeing this film in a proper cinema a couple of years ago: Pathé have placed their logo on a number of the film's sets. I'm not sure whether this was merely crass advertising, or some form of early copyright (meaning that either the film, or the sets could be easily identified in case someone tried to use them without permission), but it seems Incredibly crass here. Less noticeable on the small screen, but certainly obtrusive when seen in a cinema,

I mentioned a few years back how this film misses out the innkeeper, and this scene retains a good deal of interest. For one thing when a couple with a donkey arrive on the scene right at the start many will expect that they are Mary and Joseph, but in fact they are just two of the extras who disappear off screen moments later. The arrival of the real Mary and Joseph is heralded by the clearing of the set, but their arrival on foot strikes a real contrast with the bedonkeyed couple that have preceded them. It also adds a sense of unease. Is that Mary and Joseph or just someone else?

There's also a nice piece of paralleling between the shepherd scene and the Ascension. Both feature a horizontally split screen to reveal heaven above and earth below, and whereas in this scene the good news is coming from heaven, later the subject of that good news will be making the return trip.

Nativity Scenes Revisited - Part 1:Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo

2011-12-12T08:46:00.006Z

I thought a good way to resurrect this blog would be to revisit some of the film portrayals of the Nativity story in the run up to Christmas. It's a good way to attempt to ensure that the kids don't get so focussed on the fat guy in the red suit that they forget about why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

In many ways Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew) is not an obvious place to start with a 3 year old and a 5 year old, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like an interesting idea. Firstly I occasionally hear some of my friends complain that all their kids ever watch is cartoons. That's always seemed a shame to me, so we've always tried to give them a mix of cartoons/CGI with films with people. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Singin' in the Rain (1952) have long been favourites and there are plenty of others.

Secondly, I also want to broaden their horizons so they are not just limited to Anglo-American fare. Studio Ghibli is a great place to start, and the more I thought about it the more I could see Pasolini's film as being another easy access point. After all they are already familiar with the Nativity story, and this part of the film has relatively little dialogue. As it happens Nina has all kinds of snippets of language under her belt that are unknown to me: just the other day she was saying hello in Romanian or Albanian (she wasn't quite sure which) that she had picked up from a Romanian/ Albanian friend at school.

There's a third reason as well that Il Vangelo is good place to start. Most images of the nativity picture it rather laviously. Mary wears royal blue and salmon pink robes, the wise men are dressed as kings, even the shepherds are relatively handsome. Pasolini cuts his images from a more basic fabric. His wise men - clearly rich due to their substantial entourages - are ordinary looking. They have time weathered faces and their dress is - compared to their rivals from other films - relatively threadbare. When they bring their gifts they are not conveniently smelted lumps of gold nicely packaged in a decorative case, they are a selection of jugs and goblets held in a blanket (I have Nina to thank for drawing my attention to that).

Whilst there are many anachronisms in Pasolini's images, clothes and backgrounds, his locating of the story primarily in a peasant culture, in a poorer, less luxurious age is quite striking, and a nice antidote to the typical religious Christmas card image.

Aside from the educational advantages that Pasolini's film provides, it's also just a great piece of filmmaking. One of my favourite moments in all cinema is the silent arrival of the magi accompanied by the haunting sounds of Odetta's "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child". It's remarkably moving and poignant and captures the holiness and spirituality of the moment, whilst simultaneously highlighting the relative loneliness of Jesus' birth and calling compared to most these days.

The other major segment of this part of the film is, of course, the annunciation. This is also simply wonderful. The opening dialogue-free scenes convey far more in their close-ups and images than most films with dialogue. Mary has, presumably, just told Joseph of her pregnancy and is at a loss for any further explanation. Joseph is similarly speechless. When the angel appears in a dream there are no flashing lights, just a girl in a white dress against a toned down background sound. The reconciliation is similarly wordless. In a sense little has changed - neither can find the words to express what is going on. Yet clearly, in another sense everything has changed. Margherita Caruso (Mary) allows the corners of her mouth to flicker the smallest bit at Joseph's return, and then Pasolini makes us wait for what feels like an age before allowing her a proper smile. The delay triggers a far greater emotional response than such a flicker of happiness would normally provide.

Around these two scenes we get Herod and his cronies, again ordinary looking, but with a nicely underplayed hint of the sinister, and the girl angel appearing again to Joseph and the magi to warn them of the impending attack from Herod. The later is again wordless. The angel stands in their path, looks in one direction and then leas them in another.

The gamble worked. The kids enjoyed it, even the three year old Digory managed sat relatively engrossed, and Nina declared at the end "I like watching Italian film". As a lover of Pasolini and Rossellini's neo-realist cinema I can't wait until she can read well enough to be able to introduce her to some more.

Friday Night, Saturday Morning: Monty Python vs The Church

2011-10-24T20:05:00.005+01:00

Having been waiting to see this for years now, it was very pleasing to discover that the show had been re-broadcast by BBC4 to coincide with the broadcast of Holy Flying Circus last Wednesday. It's available on iPlayer for two more days.

For those unfamiliar with the details, in the run up to the release of Life of Brian the BBC's late night talk show in hosted the now infamous debate between John Cleese, Michael Palin, Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the then Bishop of Southwark. It must have made a big impact then as well: shortly afterwards the TV comedy sketch show "Not the Nine O'Clock News" produced a well-executed spoof.

Having seen numerous clips of this debate over the years, almost whenever the film is discussed in fact, I have long wanted to see the whole thing, and have wondered why the full version hadn't appeared on any of the many special edition DVDs of Life of Brian.

The most likely reason for this it now appears is length. Given that most comparable programmes today usually restrict such items to 15 minutes; that I always seem to see the same few excerpts; and from what I'd gleaned from various discussions of the programme, I'd always assumed it was about 10-15 minutes. In fact the programme spends over 52 minutes on the subject, briefly squeezing in a song from Paul Jones and a chat with Norris McWhirter before it ended 15 minutes later.

Something else also became fairly clear: the reason that these same few excerpts are repeated again and again (despite the quantity of material) is that the debate was incredibly poor. Leaving aside the fact that Stockwood and Muggeridge, and to a much lesser extent Cleese and Palin, fail to listen to what their opponents are saying, chairman Tim Rice, just lets the church representatives drone on and on about irrelevant side issues. No wonder modern day programmes tend to keep things shorter.

Part of this is perhaps because they missed the crucial opening scenes of the film which established that Brian was not Jesus, but it was mainly due to the pair being allowed to bring notes, and Rice's deferential attitude to them. The 1970s were a very different time, with the authority of the church having a far greater hold - for instance the first ever "Question Time" featured a bishop, but I can only remember that happening once when I've watched it and I'm an avid fan. Stockwood in particular seemed to think the he was entitled to go on and on rather tangentially, and Rice seems too intimidated to step in.

I suppose this was also due in part to the fact that Palin and Cleese were interviewed on their own first, and so, to a certain extent, had already had their say. Yet the subjects being discussed were far less controversial in this section. They talked about the process of raising the finance, and how they develop the script and so on. There were even a couple of interesting points around Bible films. Incredibly for a man who only a few years before had contributed to a hit film about Jesus, Rice had never heard of Rossellini, or Il Messia, which was released just two years after Jesus Christ, Superstar. Secondly Cleese makes the point that three more biblical comedy films were in production, which makes me wonder which one. Wholly Moses (1980) would seem obvious, but it tries so hard to cash in on Life of Brian that it's hard to imagine that it was close to completion much before Brian's welease. Mel Brooks' History of the World: Part 1 (1981) would be the other likely choice, but as to a third, all I can think of is the French film Deux heures moins le quart avant Jésus-Christ, released in 1982.

That said, it was this section of the show that contained what was, for me, one of the most interesting parts of the show.

Rice
"Is there anything that could offend you on screen"

Cleese (shrugs, then pauses)
"I have one tiny quibble and I think that Terry Jones and Graham Chapman would no doubt disagree with me, but I think the crucifixion thing at the end is not about pain, it's about death and they are very separate."

Rice
"So what's your beef?" [i.e. what's your problem?]

Cleese
My beef is that there are one or two close-ups of one or two people registering pain and I think that that confuses what the last thing's about. 'Cos I mean one's not really making fun of the fact that someone has been flayed to this flesh hung down and then nailed up. The point of that last thing is that it's about death, y'know it's about attitudes to death, and it's quite possible, to be relatively cheery about death, quite possible. I'm not saying it's easy.

Cleese elaborates on this later on including talking about how if Christianity is true then death does have a bright side. I must admit that I've never really thought about that final scene in that way. I'm not sure the latter point holds up that well, but I'm certainly intrigued by the part of his answer quoted above.

The above exchange is typical, actually, of Cleese's attitude throughout the debate. It's often been said that he and Palin were trying to have a serious debate and the two non-comedians were playing for, and getting, the laughs. Indeed one point that really stood out to me is when Cleese is trying to make a serious point but because his answer sounds like something out of a Python sketch the audience laugh, and Cleese looks almost aggrieved that his serious point has been lost because it was mistaken for a joke. Cleese steals the show actually. Stockwood and Muggeridge are two smug and too entrenched to really get their point across, indeed it could be argued that this debate was the defining moment of the established church's weakening grip on authority. Palin for his part is clearly furious and insulted and whilst his restraint is impressive, it hampers his contribution to the discussion.

One final thing that I found interesting was how little these debates have changed in some ways. Whenever some perceived "outrage" is perpetuated against Christianity, someone will always object that "they" would dare to do this kind of thing about Islam. This argument is put to Cleese and he demolishes fairly well, by explaining about the dominance, authority, history and impact on the culture that Christianity has had and how this is why they set their sights on it. So it's surprising that 30+ years later the argument is still trotted out overlooking the fact that people do satirise Islam, and that Jesus is also considered a prophet in Islam.

Secondly Stockwood/Muggeridge also lament the declining standards in biblical understanding. Perhaps this is even worse now than it was, but it was interesting to note that this was a point of debate even then. Other things are different though. The opening credits are far racier than any you see today - a couple seemingly naked and in bed stop to turn on the show. It wasn't clear if this was during, after or instead of having sex, but whichever way there would probably be a fair amount of complaint about increasing sexualisation of our culture were this to happen today.

Overall then, the debate was a bit of a disappointment. The best bits have obviously been shown many times before and what is usually left out was fairly dreary. If only Rice had been David Dimbleby. At least Dimble might have heard of Rossellini.

Holy Flying Circus

2011-10-21T01:59:00.004+01:00

There have been many controversial films, books and television programmes over the years, but there's something completely different about Monty Python's Life of Brian: people actually like it. Many defend the right of Martin Scorsese to have made Last Temptation of Christ, or Salman Rushdie to have written "The Satanic Verses", but few people have the strength of feeling for them as they do for the anarchic tale of a man who was mistaken for the Messiah.

It's no doubt because of this strength of feeling that BBC4 commissioned Holy Flying Circus about the events leading up to the release of the film. The programme is the latest in a long series of fictional recreations of the off screen lives of 60s and 70s entertainers and focuses on the, now infamous, TV debate between Michael Palin and John Cleese on the one hand, and the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge on the other. The story is told from three sides, that of the Pythons, that of the programme's production team, and a group of Christians (distinct from Muggeridge and the bishop) who object to the film.

All of which makes it sound rather dull, except for the fact that the story is told in a surreal and Pythonesque way. In addition to the general atmosphere of silliness we also have over-the-top characters, men playing women, animated sequences, John Cleese played as Basil Fawlty, obscure interludes and even a scene inside an alien spaceship. In short Holy Flying Circus tries to make the medium the message.

One further similarity is the way which both films have Jesus speaking at the start of the film and then not really again. Life of Brian famously shows Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount before the camera pans out to those at the back who can't quite hear what's being said. But Holy Flying Circus has Jesus explain in Aramaic - a clear nod to The Passion of the Christ, another controversial religious film - that the story is largely fictional, and just to make the point it has the supposed Jesus-figure fart.

I suspect that many people, were they to see the film, would find that pretty offensive and will also be unhappy with the language and the nudity. I suspect the programme-makers would defend it on the grounds that doing so re-ignites the same battle now that the Pythons were fighting then. Sadly I don't think that's true. Is using the C word, doing Tourette's jokes and showing a penis for the sake of it really edgy, or just a bit like the kind of jokes Cambridge students might do "on a damp Tuesday afternoon"?

That's not to say it isn't funny. Parts of it are very funny, particularly Mark Heap's turn as the head of the Christian protesters. But overall it's rather hit and miss; the odd laugh out loud moment interspersed with mediocre jokes and self-indulgent rubbish.

But in the final quarter of an hour, the film changes gear and actually gives a reasonable and extensive portrayal of the talk show debate. This was particularly interesting to me as there are still parts of the debate that I have ever seen (indeed I was reflecting earlier that if Holy Flying Circus ever gets released as a DVD this would be an excellent special feature.

This last part of the film, interspersed with the occasional deviation into Michael Palin's mind, is clearly the strongest part as the gags are refined a little and the drama takes over a little. Much of this is also due to a stronger focus on the better portrayed characters. Charles Edwards's take on Palin is outstanding. Complex and nuanced Edwards manages to play the domestic scenes touchingly despite the fact he is playing opposite Rufus Jones in drag. Darren Boyd also does a great job playing Basil Fawlty even if the concept he was given is a bit odd, but the others are rather weak. Punt is hopeless as Eric Idle and he and the three of the other Pythons are all rather two-dimensional. Lastly Stephen Fry's turn as God demonstrated precisely why his status as national treasure is beginning to drift.

So whilst the concept of telling a story about Python in the style of Python is good, and whilst some of the performances are very impressive indeed, the overall effect is rather like the sketch shows described by Palin's taxi driver home - "very hit and miss".

Dim Recollections - Moses und Aron

2011-10-18T19:14:00.003+01:00

Over on the Bible Films Facebook page - which is where you should go for latest news, and other people's reviews about Bible Films (you don't have to "do" Facebook to read it!) - Peter Chattaway has posted news that Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's 1973 adaptation of Moses und Aron was recently screened in New York. It's been a long time since I saw the film, but it's one of those films that has stuck with me if for no other reason than it's the only feature length film I've seen that is anything like it.

The film is an adaptation of Arnold Schönberg's unfinished opera, Moses und Aron. Two other versions of Schönberg's piece have been released in the last few years, neither of which I've managed to see, but both of which I am keen to see. If nothing else I feel they might help me get a better understanding of Schönberg's work to enable me to grapple with what Straub and Huillet are doing with the material.

In other words, then, Moses und Aron is not for the faint-hearted; I would class it as the least accessible film I have ever seen. Schönberg's opera is a complex exploration of how hearing God speak is an ineffable experience. It works on the interplay between Moses and Aaron. Moses is able to hear God's voice, but is unable to express what God has said correctly. Aaron on the other hand has the task of disseminating what Moses tells him for the sake of the masses. In the process much is lost, and essentially it's that which the libretto is trying to explore. What gets lost in translation?

Schönberg never finished the third act and so only his lyrics remain, which shows that even the great man never quite got a hold on his subject matter, which makes me feel a little better for never managing to write down my thoughts on watching the film. He also pioneered in the field of atonal music - which uses notes independently of the standard scales with a single central tone. This means that even the music to the opera is not easy to appreciate and enjoy.

Filming such material was never going to result in box office gold, but Straub and Huillet also have their own set of complex ideas that they wish to explore by adapting Schönberg's material. The majority of their work was, in fact, adapting established works. Indeed, the only other piece of theirs I have seen is Toute révolution est un coup de dés (Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice - 1977) was an adaptation of Stéphane Mallarmé's poem. I'm sure that in this day and age there are several others available to watch online, and so I should really watch more. Not to mention my need to read the two booksI have about their work.

Their style is so cinematically austere, that it makes your standard Dogme film look like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. They use long, long shots, with very little movement. The image that is most prominent in my mind of this film is such a shot of the back of Moses head. There's also a lack of dramatic action. The focus of the film is the relationship between Moses and his brother, but there are occasional scenes with the rest of the Israelites (the chorus). But they remain stationary in the kind of rigid formation you expect from watching a choir perform live, rather than how you would expect a crowd to act - even in an opera.

The austerity has a point however: it's pushing questions about cinema's form to an extreme. As David Thomson puts it in his essay on Straub ¹.

What we think of as story is invariably the effect of a chosen way of filming. The medium is intensely decision based, and thus there has always been an abiding formal element to it.

...There is a further, inevitable kind of order in the sequence of shots within a film. And although Straub's work has alarmed audiences and been enjoyed by relatively few, it is built upon the assertion that in cinema we respond to those sequences; that composition; light, movement, and sound play upon our thoughts and feelings."

I'm not sure I fully understand that, but it's the most succinctly clear summary I have to hand!

The final act is just read out - no music exists and so in some ways the final act is less accessible for more conservative opera fans, although conversely it does mean that the film becomes a little less accessible for the average film-goer.

In Straub and Huillet's hands the opera also explores the question of word vs image, which is very in-keeping with the second commandment's ban on graven images, often understood as a ban on using images to gain a greater intellectual or spiritual understanding of God.

So that's about it really, like I said, dim recollections. There are more perceptive comments from Richard Brody at the New Yorker.

1 - David Thomson, "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film", LONDON (Little Brown), 2002, Fourth Edition, p.843.

Doubt in the Gospels

2011-09-29T21:41:00.003+01:00

I've been reflecting a little bit on the subject of doubt in the Gospels, and I thought I'd share some of what has been going through my mind.

In my experience at least, doubt is not often something that is welcomed in church contexts. It's sometimes accepted, but often a cause for concern. Occasionally someone makes the point that we need to have doubt in order to have faith.

There are at least four passages in the canonical gospels where they record someone/some people doubting in the face of the miraculous. I suppose there are far more if you count the enemies and opponents of Jesus, but in most of these cases the doubt is a result of their predetermined decision not to believe in Jesus.

The most famous one is, of course, the disciple Thomas in John 20. I don't want to dwell on him too much. Firstly because being the obvious one I am sure that everything that can be said about him has been somewhere by someone. But secondly, some scholars suggest that this is actually the author(s) of John trying to smear the growing sect springing up around the (emerging) Gospel of Thomas. From a Bible films point of view however, it's noticeable that he nearly always gets a raw deal. If this scene is to be included then you can bet your bottom dollar that Thomas will express some doubts earlier in the film as well.

It's possible that this incident is also referred to in passing by Matthew. The second passage I want to cover comes from Matthew 28:16-17

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them and when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted

Matthew's "some" suggests that Thomas was not alone. Perhaps John focussed in on him to increase the drama of his narrative (though I suppose Thomas's doubts were before he had seen the risen Christ). What I find interesting though is the way the comment is casually thrown in and remains without comment. These people are seeing the risen Jesus, and yet still they doubt. But there's no shock horror, no rebuke. They were there, they saw everything everybody else did, they just still had their doubts.

What's also interesting is that the suggestion is that these people worshipped in spite of their doubts. Furthermore the next verse is even more telling because Jesus includes them in his commissioning. They have their doubts but Jesus still values them and their contribution. It's significant that these other doubters never appear in a Jesus film.

The third passage I want to look seems to be evading me for the minute. I think it is also in Matthew, and as it's the one that I noticed most recently.

Lastly there is John 12:27-30. Jesus asks God to glorify his name, and God replies "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again". We're told the crowd heard it but whilst some attributed it to an angel some said it was just thunder. Again this is intriguing because it seems like the kind of occasion when it should have been easy to draw a consensus. And yet some heard the voice of God or an angel; others just heard thunder. This passage appears in 2003's "Gospel of John" but nowhere else as I recall.

What's I find intriguing is firstly the way that Jesus seems to be fine with the doubts, at least on these occasions. But more striking is that the case is often made by atheists today that people in Jesus' day were likely to misattribute unusual natural occurrences to the hand of God. But the Bible provides evidence several times that people were both willing and able to suggest alternative explanations for supernatural events. Scepticism isn't new, but significantly, in the latter two/three cases it also doesn't seem to be a barrier for following Jesus and being included by him.

The Sermon on the Mount in Film

2011-09-08T21:47:00.005+01:00

Next weekend I'm due to do a talk on "Blessed are the poor in spirit" which has got me thinking about portrayals of the Sermon on the Mount in film. The different films emphasise different parts of the sermon, although obviously the Beatitudes get a good showing in a lot of different films. Anyway, I thought I'd list some of my favourite portrayals and give a brief explanation.

King of Kings (1961)[Pictured above]
In contrast to Matthew's arrangement, Ray uses the Sermon on the Mount as the climax of the movie's first half. The buzz has been building about Jesus so everyone gathers to hear him preach and check him out. It's a spectacular build up and the idea of Jesus moving through the crowd is good, if lacking in realism. Sadly the post-production overdubbing of Jeffrey Hunter's original vocals leaves this feeling stiff and forced. But the build up and the colours are spectacular.

Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
Pasolini's filming of this part of the gospel is perhaps the most interesting, certainly from a scholarly angle. Most scholars believe that rather than their being a single key sermon Matthew 5-7 is a compilation of Jesus' teaching. Some films reflect this by simply splitting up the sermon into different parts and placing them throughout the film. But Pasolini stays true to the gospel by leaving all the material, but also acknowledges the scholarly angle by changing the setting, weather and background Jesus is speaking against as well his clothes and hair. Sadly whilst it's clever, it's also a little dull.

Son of Man (1969)
Dennis Potter's take on the Sermon is to excise the Beatitudes and focus on the "Love your enemy" part of the Sermon. The previous scene is critical here: a group of Roman soldiers have just attacked a local Jewish village and there is a seething contempt in the crowd Jesus addresses. Potter plays fast and loose with the wording, but certainly stays true to the spirit of the text. And Colin Blakely delivery is incredible. One of my favourite clips from a Bible Films ever.

Life of Brian (1979)
Life of Brian's take on the Sermon on the Mount is so well known that I knew all the best jokes before I'd even seen it. Still the timing and delivery are so perfect that even after all the times I've seen it, I'm still amused by "Blessed are the cheesemakers". It was perhaps the first time that anyone had ever considered what it was like to be someone at the edge of one of Jesus' sermons. We often wonder how he would have been able to address such a large crowd, but never consider what it was like for those on the edge. What's also impressive about the scene is how it nails so much of biblical interpretation: "obviously it applies to all makers of dairy produce". Of course if you missed it you may very well not understand the whole film. Not normally a problem unless you're about to be interviewed about it on national television as happened to Malcolm Muggeridge.

Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Like Potter before him, Paul Schrader plays a little loose with the original wording, and gets brilliant results, again thanks to the lead actor's delivery. Last Temptation opts for Luke's Sermon on the Plain rather than Matthew's Mount, and it fits well with the confrontational prophet that Scorsese portrays in certain parts of the film. The spontaneity of this portrayal has a real vitality about it, and the ending, which makes it a little controversial for church use, nevertheless highlights the issue that occurs again and again in the gospels of Jesus' original audience failing to understand him.

The Miracle Maker (2000)
The Miracle Maker makes little attempt to depict the Sermon on the Mount although it does include a few extracts of some of the less famous passages, at least two of which are animated. The "why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye?" is played for great comic effect with the audience laughing in the background. But the best part is Jesus' twin similes contrasting the wise man building his house upon rock with the foolish man building on sand. It's a nicely stylised piece of animation, and rather memorable.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Rossellini's Il Messia also includes a segment of Jesus teaching the disciples the words from the sermon whilst they go about their everyday tasks, but I haven't got the time to check it out just now. Does anyone else have any favourites that I've missed?

And I'm Back

2011-09-08T21:30:00.002+01:00

Thanks to all of you who have been in touch over the last few months to offer your condolences or ask me if I was OK. It's certainly the longest I've ever gone without posting since I started this blog, and I appreciate the emails, comments and Facebook posts.

A lot has been going on for me. Obviously the death of my mother-in-law has been hard, both in terms of my own grief but also the need to be available to comfort my wife, and the headspace required to do that. I also started a new job the day before Jane died, and so that has also been taking headspace, as well as raising the question as to whether I still want to do this now that my vocation seems to be pointing in a different direction. I think I do, but my enthusiasm has waned somewhat over the last few months. We'll see how it goes.

The other thing with the new job is a new routine to get used to, and that's been tough as well. Hopefully I'll be able to work something out with this to find the time to keep writing about and watching Bible Films and pass my thoughts on for what they're worth. That said, I do really think the Facebook page is a really good development, and I've been really pleased to see a greater number of people posting there over the last few months. If you're thinking about posting something up yourself, please do. There are a lot of people interested in this area and I'd much rather be facilitating a wider ranging discussion / flow of information than just boring people with my own chatter.

Anyway that's enough of that, except to add that I'm afraid I probably won't be able to reply to everyone who has contacted me over the last 4 months. Sorry. And what's that? You want me to tell you about my job? Well I'm the Church Relationships Manager for the Church Urban Fund in the Central Region. The Church Urban Fund do a fantastic job tackling poverty in England by funding and resourcing activist from the poorest 10% of communities. It was a job I really wanted working for a fantastic organisation. If you'd like to find out more there's plenty of into on our website, and one of my side projects has been our new Facebook page. And if you're a vicar in the Midlands then I'd be keen to meet up to talk to you about what we're doing and how you can get involved. Don't worry we can talk about Bible Films to.

And now, on with the show.

Jane Paine (1954-2011)

2011-05-26T20:03:00.003+01:00

My wife's mum died on Tuesday after a long, long battle with cancer. I've often heard people described as bravely fighting cancer, and often wondered if it was just something people said. But Jane left me in no doubt. It was about 4-5 years ago when she discovered that she had had cancer and throughout the last half-decade she utterly refused to let her illness take over her life. She continued to always look on the bright side, being as active as she could, never making a fuss and continuing to pour out her love to those around her. Even a short time before her death, as she drifted in and out of consciousness and fought for every breath she pulled herself up to give a comforting touch to my wife as she cried.

Jane was also a very encouraging person. The first time her death really hit me was as I drew up to the house after being away in London. I was dressed in a suit - rare for me - and I began to imagine going in to the house and the reaction being smartly dressed might bring. "You look nice Matt" I heard her say in my head. And then it hit me.

Then there was her sense of compassion, always looking after people. My wife has often spoken of Jane comforting her frequently when she grew up. There are various stories of her supporting people she didn't really even know, and standing with them through their difficult times.

It was no doubt these qualities that led her into Art Therapy. She studied for her BA and her MA in the subject, but the cancer meant that she never got to go into practise. She would have been brilliant. So much of my wife's artistic talent was nurtured by Jane (and came through her genes no doubt) and she leaves behind a vast array of painting and drawings.

And on top of all of this, she also had an incredible gift with children. All four of her grandchildren adored her, and she always seemed to know what to say and how to interest and engage them. And numerous other children have been blessed by her presence in their life.

She leaves behind her husband Dave - her true love of forty years, who has looked after her over the last few weeks, months and years like you wouldn't think possible - four adult children - who live out so many of her best qualities in all that they do - and four grandchildren. It was a privilege knowing her and she will be most sorely missed.

Scene Guide: The Passover Plot

2011-05-16T09:12:00.003+01:00

Having reviewed The Passover Plot a couple of Mondays back, I thought it would be good to post a scene guide for the film. It's been a while since I did one of these (see all) so a reminder (for me if no-one else) of the reasoning behind my citations from the gospels.

[EBE - Text intro explaining political situation]
[EBE - Arrest of messianic/zealot preacher]
Jeremiah 33:15-16 cited
Teshua in the desert - Mark 1:12-13
Baptism of Yeshua - Mark 1:9-11
[EBE - Introduction to Pilate]
Healing of a blind man - Mark 8:22-25
Yeshua teaches - Mark 8:12, 11:22-24
Greatest Commandment - Mark 12:28-31
Beatitudes - Matt 5:3-12
Rejection at Nazareth - Mark 6:1-5
Yeshua recites the Shema - Deut 6:4
Are you the one? - Matt 11:2-6
Calling the disciples - Mark 3:13-19
[EBE - Romans in Zealot Meeting]
[EBE - Zealots and Yeshua's brothers]
Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:1-20]
Death of John - Mark 6:17-29
[EBE - Pilate and Herod]
Isaiah 53:7 cited
[EBE - Bartholomew's baby]
News of John's death - Mark 6:30-32
[EBE - The disciples complain]
[EBE - Jesus preaching]
Jesus fails to heal - Mark 6:5
[EBE - Yeshua meets the Zealots]
Isaiah 53:5 cited
[EBE - Yeshua Plans his Death]
[EBE - Pilate and Herod collude]
Triumphal entry - Mark 11:1-11
[EBE - Fire stars]
Cleansing the temple - Mark 11:15-19
[EBE - Temple uprising]
[EBE - Death of Bartholomew]
Last Supper - Mark 14:22-31
Gethsemane and Arrest - Mark 14:32-50
[EBE - Pilate and Herod collude]
Jewish hearing - Mark 14:53-65
Trial by Pilate - Mark 15:1-20
Crucifixion - Mark 15:22-39
"Burial" - Mark 15:40-47
The Empty Tomb - Mark 16:1-8
[EBE - Death of Jesus]

A Few Notes
The first that is noticeable from looking at this scene guide is how heavily the film uses the Gospel of Mark. Aside from a token nod to the Beatitudes, the extra-biblical episodes added to fill out the story and a few citations of the prophets, all the incidents in this film are found in Mark's gospel. Whilst this is highlighted by my policy of citing Mark even if the event occurs in all of the synoptic gospels, it's nevertheless fair to say that Millard Cohana and Patricia Knop's screenplay, which is presumably largely based on Schonfield's book, uses Mark the most.

There are a number of potential reasons for this. Firstly, close adherence to Mark gives Schonfield's work an air of authenticity. If Mark is the oldest gospel, then a supposedly subversive alternative version of the life of Jesus should probably look more like Mark than anything else. The film pre-supposes that at a very early stage there was a parting of the ways between its real history and the history told by traditional Christianity. Mark would be the most in touch with those traditions, and, from the film's perspective, the gospel least bent away from "what really happened". It's significant that the text at the end of the film stresses that Mark was written over 40 years after the events it portrays, and gives dates for the other gospels as Luke 85AD, Matthew 90AD and John 110/120AD.

Secondly, of all the gospels Mark is the one that is usually seen as portraying Jesus as a man of action. Certainly there are fewer words and those tend to consist of pithy sayings rather than long teaching discourses as found in Matthew and John in particular.

Thirdly, Mark's gospel does not so much include a resurrection as an empty tomb. The additional, and almost certainly forged, endings try to patch over this embarrassing omission (which may be deliberate or the result of damage to an early copy of the manuscript), but the genuine ending, in the form we now have it, only includes accounts of the empty tomb. (spoiler) The film also gives us an empty tomb - Jesus is woken up and taken away - but, as he dies shortly afterwards, no resurrection appearances. The film shows a single attempt to demonstrate this to someone not in on Yeshua's plot, but it fails.

Having said all that the film does not really portray a Marcan Jesus. Mark's Jesus may be a man of action, but his action is not so much a quest to be hailed as the messiah but as a healer and exorcist. There is only one "healing" in this film, and there's more about that below, and no exorcisms. I was struck in a recent read through of Mark quite how prominent the dealing with the demons aspect of Mark's gospel is. One of the things that is strange about the film is that Jesus does so very little. He's not a miracle worker, he's not a teacher and he doesn't rise from the dead. The film's alternative history fails to offer a compelling reason for why the Jesus story lived on and for why he didn't simply fall into the all-too-heavily populated category of failed Jewish messiahs. At least bar Kokhba minted his own coins. There's also relatively little talk of the Kingdom of God. This is Jesus' obsession in Mark, but is overshadowed by the film's emphasis on Jesus being the messiah. Indeed faced with Pilate's questioning Yeshua conspicuously does not even say "my kingdom is not of this world".

The one miracle that the film does portray is the healing of the blind man from Mark 8:22-25. It's this single miracle that persuades people to follow him and proclaim him the messiah. But the film suggests that Jesus does not perform a miracle at all. The blind man is in fact a fraud, seemingly pretending he is blind to make his appeal for money more compelling. Jesus sees through it and so spits in his face. The man momentarily gives himself away, and before he can cover it up, the disciples have declared a miracle and the crowd joins in. There are shades of "penny for an ex-leper" here. It's an intriguing reinterpretation of an odd text - after all, why does Jesus spit in the man's face - but if this was Jesus' sole miracle (and we later see him fail to bring Bartholomew back to life), it again raises the question of why anyone really found Jesus worth following.

There are two main asides from the time Jesus spends with his disciples. The first is the role of the zealot movement. They are seen as very prominent in Jerusalem and around, and there's an uneasy relationship between them and the followers of Jesus. In a key scene the two groups meet and Jesus lays out his agenda of peaceful revolution as opposed to violent overthrow. The result is a plan to have Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a donkey and then disappear to avoid capture by the Romans, reappearing in the temple shortly afterwards to re-take the city peacefully by sheer numbers alone. Recent situations in the Middle East at the moment come to mind as we have seen attempts at a similar peaceful movements result in varying degrees of success. There are certainly echoes of 1961's King of Kings whether intentional or not.

The other aside is the story from the perspective of the authorities. Donald Pleasance's role as Pilate is particularly to the fore, and its clear he is pulling all the strings, shown scheming with Herod, Caiaphas and his own soldiers. There's also a good deal of screen time given over to Caiaphas, reminiscent of BBC's The Passion. Caiaphas is hated by the zealots who mock him as corrupt, and pushed about by Pilate. Hugh Griffith's portrayal of Caiaphas taps into numerous aspects of the worst of Jewish stereotypes over the centuries and so its hard to sympathise with him. Yet, surprisingly, the body he convenes to hear Yeshua's case find "no cause" for a charge of blasphemy, and returns him to Pilate to see if he can get him under Roman law.

At the end of the film there is a lengthy note, the first part of which is as follows:

Yeshua of Nazareth died with his faith undimmed. Those who shared his faith were convinced that death could not hold him, and that he had gone to God until the day when the prophecies would finally be fulfilled.

Biblical Studies Carnival: Apr. 2011

2011-05-08T08:37:00.005+01:00

Photo by Tim Parkinson, used under a Creative Commons Licence

Where does the time go? It barely seems like a fortnight since I realised I was late posting the last Biblical Studies carnival and now here I am being late posting this one.

Anyway Jim Linville has done a great job with April's Biblical Studies Carnival, adding a generous (and most welcome) dash of his typically irreverent humour, not to mention so many links that it could possibly take more than a month to read. Towards the end - where he finally gets onto what is really, lets face it, the most important stuff - there are a couple of extra links to reviews on last month's BBC series The Bible's Buried Secrets.

Some Obscure Paul Films

2011-05-04T09:25:00.002+01:00

Recently I've come across a number of lesser-known films about St. Paul so I thought I'd post a few bits and pieces about them here.

The first is Damascus (pictured above). It's a docudrama made in 2008 as part of a collaboration between Agape 4 Media (the team who distribute the Jesus film), Youth Arise and one or two others as part of the Pope's Year of St. Paul. It's shot in and around Damacus itself and uses actors from the region and at some point I should hopefully get around to reviewing it.

The next is Life of St. Paul (1949). According to the IMDb it starred DeForest Kelley, best known for his role as Dr "Bones" McCoy in Star Trek. Paul was played by Nelson Leigh who would reprise the role 8 years later in The Living Bible Series: Acts of the Apostles. Life of St. Paul was made the same year as The Pilgrimmage Play which also starred Leigh (as Jesus). Both films were made by the same director, John T. Coyle.

Then there is I Paul from 1980. IMDb contains a good synopsis of this one. It was essentially a soliloquy given by Fred J. Scollay as Paul delivers his final message from prison to Timothy using the words of the King James Bible. It's available on DVD in the States, but seemingly not in the UK, which is a shame given that this is the 400th anniversary of the KJV.

Dayamayudu appears to be a sequel to the Jesus film Dayasagar. It's about Peter and Paul and can be seen on YouTube in its entirety. (I assume given the advert that plays at the start and that its there in full that it's legitimate to watch it on YouTube). Sadly there are no subtitles.

Also online is Paul the Emissary which I've discussed in passing before and a long time ago at Arts and Faith. It's available through the producer's website TBN (you have to scroll down a bit as there are a number of other films you can view online including The Revolutionary.

Lastly, I posted a link on the Bible Films Facebook page to a piece on 1960's Paul of Tarsus. There's an article all about the 10 part series at Roobarb's Forum. According to Ian K McLachlan it still exists in its entirety in the BBC archives (as does 1956's Jesus of Nazareth. Another poster adds that there is a clip from the series in the Roger Delgado documentary on the Doctor Who Dalek War set. I'm not a great fan of Dr. Who these days, but I know a couple of readers of this site who are. Has anyone seen this documentary?

Whilst I'm mentioning the Facebook page, just a quick plug to encourage you to "like" it (which means all the news bits will appear in your News Feed) and to post your own links / opinions there. I really want the page to become much more communal and as so many of you know things that I don't it would be great to have your contributions direct.

The Passover Plot (1976)

2011-05-02T22:19:00.002+01:00

The 1970s were a time when the traditional aura of respect for Jesus was beginning to be tested, and following the relative success of Jesus Christ, Superstar and Godspell in 1973 the rights were secured to adapt Hugh Schonfield's 1965 book "The Passover Plot". Essentially both the novel and the film were a previous generation's The Da Vinci Code - a best-selling but trashy and implausible book making controversial claims and later getting adapted into a similarly poor movie. The main contrast is that whereas The Da Vinci Code claimed Jesus died at the crucifixion, but that his blood line lived on, The Passover Plot suggested that Jesus tried to fake his death on the cross so he could appear to have been resurrected.

The film itself is not nearly as bad as might be expected. For one thing it's the Jesus film most steeped in the Jewish origins of the gospel narratives. Jesus is known as Yeshua, and his disciples also take on the Jewish versions of their names (John reverts to Yohanan, James reverts to Jacob, Judas to Judah and so on). The prayers around the Last Supper have a strongly Jewish feel to them, and rely more on traditional seders than the New Testament for their dialogue. Other Jewish rituals are shown such as the celebration of the birth of Bartholomew's son, the recital of the Shema and we even see Jesus and his disciples wearing tefillin at one stage. There's a strong emphasis on the hopes for a Jewish messiah (which in actual fact many doubt was the case) and Jesus' emphasis is repeatedly stressed as being on reformation and fulfilment of the Jewish faith, rather than starting a new movement.

Another plus is its well-rounded portrayal of Jesus' humanity, at least up until he reveals his plan to convince everyone he is the messiah by faking his own death. It's hard to imagine whether most Christians would find this mentally unstable Jesus more palatable than the one from Last Temptation of Christ. There he is wrestling with the possibility that he might be the Messiah from the start, such that its difficult to ever really like that film's Jesus, even if ultimately the film affirms traditional Christian theology. Here however there's plenty of time to appreciate a Jesus that is devout, dances, smiles, whispers and shouts, but in the end he's not the messiah, just deluded enough to believe he is.

Jesus communicates his message with such diverse styles that it tends to gives the film a surreal and other-worldly feel. At times Jesus chats with his friends, the volume is so low that the audience is straining its ears to catch what he is saying. Shortly after, he is yelling with all his might to a crowd in the open air. This combined with long periods of quiet whilst the camera pans round to capture the mood give the piece a rhythm and mood quite unlike any other Jesus film I can think of. Its good to encounter something new like this: it makes you think in fresh ways about the original source material.

One result of the lingering quiet periods is that the film includes relatively little action. With a running time of over two hours we nevertheless encounter only one miracle - and even then the implication is clearly that it was not actually Jesus' doing - and relatively little teaching. And there lies one of the main problems with the message of Schonfield, director Michael Campus and producer Wolf Schmidt: without the resurrection, Jesus is just a miracle worker and teacher. Without the miracles Jesus is just a teacher. Without much in the way of teaching Jesus is just a nice, but deluded man whose ideals of loving your enemies may well just be a part of his delusion. Telling a story about a sower, and correctly identifying the greatest commandment are hardly the marks of an interesting person, let alone one who was so significant that his followers founded one of the world's great religions.

Spoilers ahead.
This becomes even stranger when we discover that not only was Jesus crazy enough to try and fake his own death and resurrection, not only was he unable to see that if you have to fake it the chances are that you're not who you think you are, but he ends up dying shortly after the crucifixion anyway. Whilst this might explain some of the resurrection appearances, and Jesus apparently leaving this world after a period of time, it's still unconvincing. Several of the disciples knew what Jesus was doing, the others are unlikely to be convinced that Jesus had in fact entered the life of the world to come whilst he was still looking like he was at death's door. It's interesting that by making Peter a fairly minor character, and bringing to greater prominence those we don't hear of again, such as Bartholomew and Judas, it leaves the door open for the suggestion that Peter genuinely believed it, whilst the disillusioned others left the movement, but Yakov (Jesus' brother James) is pivotal in misguided plot, but still goes on to lead the church in Jerusalem.
Spoilers end.

So despite a few notable strengths, The Passover Plot is ultimately a silly and highly implausible piece of filmmaking, which is certainly not dissipated by learning that the actor playing Jesus, Zalman King, would go on to be called "the high priest of erotic filmmaking". Whilst I suspect that overall King's films have little to commend them, I imagine few have quite such a preposterous plot as this one.

Digging Out the Talpiot Tomb Debate

2011-04-28T10:48:00.003+01:00

Back in 2007 there was a documentary and a great deal of subsequent discussion about the so-called Jesus Tomb at Talpiot. I wrote a few posts on the claims here, as well as a couple at ReJesus, but Mark Goodacre provided the most coverage.

I was reminded of these discussions today when listening to the podcast for the BBC Radio 4 maths show "More or Less". Towards the end they discuss the probability of five people meeting whose fathers all had the first names John Charles. The initial calculation comes out to be one in several billion billions, but what's significant in this case is that this is not theoretical, "but" as the narrator says in Magnolia "it did happen".

The team however quickly whittle down this astounding statistic down to something much more reasonable, and you can hear their reasoning about 23 minutes into the podcast (actual file here).

A number of these reasons are also relevant to the Talpiot Tomb question. Firstly it was an actual discovery, so that changes the statistical calculations altogether, secondly the location appears significant, but various other locations would have given rise to a similarly apparent significance. Thirdly, the smaller and smaller the probabilities get the more likely it that a reality blip changes everything.

Coincidentally I was also musing on a related point again this weekend, how we tend to find names cluster together rather than occur at random. I once commented on Mark Goodacre's blog that a modern day example might be the cluster of names Seumas, Mary and Patrick. Individually the probability wouldn't be that high, purely on the basis of their popularity in the population as a whole. But in reality because they are all Catholic names the likelihood of finding such a cluster would be much higher than this simple basis for the calculation. If you searched for it in a Catholic part of Belfast you'd get a much higher number of families than if you searched in Kent, or a Protestant part of Belfast. Given how sectarian Judaism was at the time, it's reasonable to want to know about these names relate to each other before assuming the probabilities are all independent.

Which leads me onto another question. During the Radio 4 podcast the expert says that looking at the 40s and 50s he had difficulty finding "the distribution" even though they had the rankings. So if we're lacking this key piece of data for just 60 years ago, how accurate is the data that was used to calculate the probability regarding the Jesus Tomb? If I remember rightly, the overall figure was calculated my multiplying the assumed probability for each name individually. Now the probability for each name was drawn from other ossuaries found in the region from around the same period of time. The problem with this is that it's not representative of the whole, at best its representative of those rich enough to have a bone box. But Jesus and his family were not rich. Were this to be their tomb then it would only exist because Jesus' life had elected their status. We have no reliable information of the distribution and occurrence of names of people within Jesus' social class and so this is another flaw (amongst many) that the programme makes.

The Story of Jesus (BBC)

2011-04-25T09:17:00.007+01:00

This Easter's biggest piece of religious programming was BBC1's two-part documentary The Story of Jesus.

In a break from what has become the standard format for such documentaries, rather than having one (usually photogenic) expert both narrating and interviewing other experts, this programme was narrated by David Suchet (Poirot, minus the accent) but the on-screen camera work was performed by nine different scholars who occasionally met to pass on the baton to the next there were other experts involved as well (I counted 19-20 in total) but these nine had a far greater screen time than their counterparts. After years of seeing the same, increasingly tired, old format, it was good to see a new approach being tried and the hand-overs, which took a bit of getting used too, were an effective way of moving things on.

Part 1 of the series began by looking at the textual evidence for the gospels and their reliability. Tom Wright was very much to the fore here, explaining how the earliest scraps of the scriptures and far more contemporary with the originals than other written sources from the time.

After that Simon Gathercole was introduced and he guided us through the nativity story. There's talk of Herod and the Magi and rather than giving an astrological answer to questions about the Star of Bethlehem, a textual one is given: it's evoking a quotation from Numbers 24:17 "a star has come out of Jacob". The discussion begins to be illustrated with dramatised footage and it's rather good. The lighting, filters and film stock result in high quality footage and the choice of predominantly near / middle-eastern actors (or those of near / middle eastern descent) gives an extra sense of realism. Mary here is perhaps the most convincing looking Mary I've seen, and her performance is pretty decent as well.

The impressive casting also extends to Jesus himself, played by Big Book Media's Selva Raslingam who is almost as far from the traditional Hollywood Jesus as one can get. Having been taken briefly through archaeological finds in Sephoris and Nazareth by James Strange we come to Jesus' ministry. There's talk of John the Baptist (featuring nicely-restrained use of time-lapse photography), and the symbolism that flows out of the story of the Wedding at Cana. We're told that there are two Greek words translated as "miracle", one of which means "sign". In the story of the Wedding at Cana the miracle is called Jesus' first "sign" and alludes to passages from the prophets predicting that water flowing down the mountains will turn to wine. Greg Carey is leading things through now and he highlights the abundance theme in many of the miracles, pointing to God's new kingdom, a place of abundance. There's a brief mention of the roughly contemporary Jewish miracle worker Honi. The first episode comes to a close with Greg Carey discussing the Transfiguration and it's perhaps the first time that the dramatised footage has been a little disappointing.

Whilst from a narrative angle part two picks up from more or less where the opening episode left off, thematically things are very different. It's the turn of Obery Hendricks to present now and his focus is very much on Jesus' radical, political message, rather than this spiritual one. There are small sections on the synagogue at Magdala, and his parables and teaching, and then we're into the events of Holy Week.

The leading expert for this section is Ben Witherington III, although occasionally the location footage oscillates between him and Helen Bond (whose focus is mainly on Jesus' death). It's here that the information being presented is most well known, and as a result least interesting for those who know the subject well. This isn't improved by limiting the viewpoints that are expressed to produce a reasonably conservative position. This is as much in the editing of the experts' soundbites as their viewpoints. Bond is not nearly as conservative as Witherington, but the quotations that are left don't really demonstrate the difference. There's also no more sceptical voices such as that of John Dominic Crossan who claims (incorrectly in my opinion) that most of what is contained in the passion narratives is prophecy being historicised.

Finally we return to Wright again who nicely summarises his defence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. People in those days knew that dead people stayed dead, Jesus undoubtedly died because the Romans were expert executioners and that when first century Jews talked about resurrection they solely meant bodily resurrection. Suchet wraps things up, though his closing summary is rather poor. Overall however, this is a solid introduction to Jesus' life, handsomely photographed (barring the flyovers of models which were a bit distracting) and well acted, defly providing a traditional view of the story of Jesus and his extraordinary life.

A Few Thoughts on The Passion

2011-04-21T22:31:00.004+01:00

My wife and I are working through the BBC/HBO version of The Passion (2008) this week. I think it's the first time I've seen it since the year it aired, so it was interesting to see it again properly. One of the things that's interesting about watching so long after it aired is that some of the actors have moved on and become much more well known for their roles in other programmes.

Take, for example, Tom Ellis, playing Philip here. Since recording The Passion Ellis has gone on to star as the love interest in Miranda (a hilarious sitcom simultaneously sending up and revelling in the style of 80s sitcoms). As a result it's impossible to take him seriously in this. Likewise, I'm much more familiar with Bleak House than I was back then (which features Annas and the captain of the temple guard in different roles), and I've seen Paloma Baezan in 1998's Far From the Madding Crowd as well. All of these roles change the perception of these actors and the roles they fill here.

One thing I've noticed this time around is how manipulative the character of Caiaphas is. Overall its a very sympathetic portrayal, but episode 2 contains at least two instances where he subtly alters the facts to make his argument more persuasive. It's a subtle touch, but exactly the kind of thing you see politicians doing on Question Time every week. First up he starts by objecting to Jesus' critique of the law, saying that without the law the Jews will become no different to the Romans, but then he somehow turns this round to say that this will lead to the Romans coming down more heavily. The logic doesn't really hold up, but the way in which it is argued is very persuasive. Likewise Joseph of Arimathea gets similarly worked over later on. Caiaphas, dressed in all his priestly regalia, subtly alters Jesus' words as overheard by the bird seller. He claims that Jesus said he would destroy the temple, rather than merely predicted that it would be destroyed.

The quality of the writing is similarly evident throughout this episode (2) not least in the words of Jesus. The late Frank Deasy did a fantastic job here making the words sound fresher and more immediate. Sometime, I'd really like to take a closer look at the way Deasy had Jesus say certain things. I noticed a nice reference to Jesus Christ Superstar at one point as well.

Another interesting scene in this episode is the anointing of Jesus' feet. Here it's performed by the prostitute Jesus reformed in the first episode, not Mary Magdalene or Mary the sister of Lazarus. This fits with the Synoptics, and Luke in particular, but goes against John (who identifies Mary as the anointer) and some church tradition (which has often, wrongly identified Magdalene). What really struck me this time around was the way that the only people the camera shows in the scene are the disciples. Judas and Philip are appalled by her actions and Jesus' failure to condemn her. The absence of external observers works to put a distance between Jesus and his followers who are soon to be upset by Jesus prophesying his own death, This is another great scene shot with a nice blue filter and in atmospheric light.

The visual aspect of this episode is really strong actually, the colour scheme - a variety of light browns punctured by the occasional red Roman Road or black priestly turban - emphasises the poverty of most of the people of that day and stresses the gulf between them and the elite. The external scenes in particular are still very nice to look at.

Tomorrow we should cover the crucifixion episode (3) which has been pre-figured today by the "trials" of Barabbas and the two robbers we met right at the start of episode 1. They already have slightly different approaches, one is definitely more terrified by what is happening to him and almost seems to act as if he is innocent, or at least didn't expect things to go so far. I can't remember which repents though, whether they continue along these tracks, or bring a surprise twist and making a more surprising twist - the bad robber being the one who repents.
Anointing just disciples

Easter UK TV Schedule 2011

2011-04-16T07:29:00.004+01:00

It's that time of year when I like to do an overview of the Bible film related telly that's on over the Easter period. There's a few things on this year although more documentaries than dramatised films about the scriptures. That said, given the absence of a major new dramatised series, there's a fair bit on this year.

Palm Sunday - Sunday 17th April
Does Christianity Have a Future?, BBC1 22:25
Rowan Williams is all over the telly this Easter, although this is really about frumpy politician turned popular reality TV "dancer", Anne Widdecombe. Having reinvented herself, Widdecombe ponders the question of whether the church can reinvent itself to ensure its survival. There's a look at the Alpha Course, Catholic immigrants and the resurgent black pentecostal churches, as well as a look at the longer term future.

Good Friday - Friday 22nd April

What's the Point of Forgiveness, BBC1 09:00
Williams again, this time teaming up again with Bettany Hughes, who made the excellent The Day Jesus Died this time last year. The programme is looking at forgiveness in a variety of contexts from Jesus' words on the cross, to the widow of one of those killed on 9-11.

The Story of Jesus: Part 1, BBC1 10:00
This is the first of a two part documentary looking at the life of Jesus. Part 1 covers Jesus' birth, ministry and the miracles whereas the second episode, on Easter Day, will cover the passion and resurrection. As with The Miracles of Jesus the programme will be using time lapse photography. It's to be hoped that this is slightly more restrained here than in the original series. It's directed by Big Book Media's David Batty and given that Jesus is also played by the Jesus from that project, Selva Raslingam, it all sounds quite promising.

The Prince of Egypt, BBC1 13:30
Before Pixar raised the bar in animation, Dreamworks looked poised to become a major force in animation. The Prince of Egypt was a decent first outing. Whilst not ideal from a biblical point of view, it was generally well made and did well at the box office. The massive, and unforeseen, success of Shrek and the disappointment of Joseph, King of Dream moved Dreamworks in another direction, but 13 years on The Prince of Egypt still looks pretty fresh, and the hieroglyphic sequence remains arguably the most impressive moment from any of the filmed versions of Moses' life.

Barabbas, C5 14:20
Barabbas' eerie crucifixion scene, famously shot during an actual eclipse, is a great choice for Good Friday a film about the way the events that day change lives. It's a far more complex exploration than the other Jesus cameo films from the era and well worth a watch.

Easter Sunday - 24th April

The Story of Jesus: Part 2, BBC1 11:35
Part 2 of the series wheels out the bigger hitters, with Ben Witherington, Helen Bond and Tom Wright amongst the nine experts featured. Whilst this episode starts with more of Jesus' ministry, I suspect it will be Jesus' death and resurrection that are the major foci of this episode.

Flight of Faith: The Jesus Story ITV1, 23:15
Laurence Vulliamy steps out from behind the camera on Time Team to narrate this journey through the life of Christ. It's major boast seems to be its use of aerial photography, though I'm not quite sure how much can be done with that. Nevertheless, it's American release was well received by various Christian outlets. There's an interview with Vulliamy available on YouTube.

Lastly, Chariots of Fire will be showing on Film4 at 6:40pm on Easter Sunday as well.

Incidentally you can see other festive seasons' religious programming all together or individually - Easter '10, '09, '08 and '07; Christmas '10 '09 '08, '07 and '06).

More Non-Western Jesus Films

2011-04-08T08:33:00.005+01:00

Over the years, my friend Thomas Langkau has been an invaluable source of information to me, hunting out all kinds of obscure Jesus films and sending me the information. So it's him I have to thank for drawing my attention to the following films, all of which originate from non-western countries.

The first (pictured) is the 1996 Philippine film Kristo. It starred Mat Ranillo III as Jesus and is based on John's Gospel. Ranillo has been starring in passion play / theatre versions of the story since 1977. It's well known enough to have its own pages on Wikipedia page and IMDB, although photos are rather scarce. You can however watch it all (unsubtitled) on YouTube.

However, this is not the first Philippine Jesus film. It appears that there was also one made in 1952 called Kalbaryo ni Hesus. There are quite a lot of press cuttings (including some photos) on this film at the Pelikula blog. According to IMDb, Jennings Sturgeon played Jesus.

Lastly there's A Ultima Semana (The Final Week), which is another Passion movie from Brazil. There's not much on this one aside from an IMDb page. It's not even entirely clear who played Jesus. More may come to light on this one however as IMDb claims it was released on video in 2007. There's no evidence of that at Amazon, but perhaps a copy will come to light at some point in the future.

Biblical Studies Carnival: Mar. 2011

2011-04-07T09:06:00.002+01:00

Photo by Tim Parkinson, used under a Creative Commons Licence

Dreadfully late with this one, partly because it took me a while to find, and partly because I wasn't sure whether to post this here or on my Facebook channel. In the end I decided that seeing as the carnival is about blogs, I should keep it here.

Anyway Darrell Pursiful of the Dr. Platypus blog has posted March 2011's Biblical Studies Carnival. He's given it a basketball theme - a sport I used to be half-decent at mainly due to my height, but a lot of the terms fly, er, over my head. Nevertheless, it's a fun theme and it's nice to be mentioned.

Next month it will be the turn of Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop & Tea Room to host the carnival. I do occasionally peruse Jim Linville's blog so it will be interesting to see what he comes up with.

Testament: Ruth

2011-04-04T12:16:00.002+01:00

I recently came to the realisation that Ruth is one of my favourite books of the Hebrew Bible. It's fine reading about kings and prophets, mighty leaders and spiritual giants. Inspiring even. But, as is no doubt clear, I am not such a person and the chances are that you aren't either. For those of us lesser mortals, Ruth is our kinswoman. It's true she ultimately became the great grandmother of Israel's most famous king, but, at the same time, it's unlikely that she lived to know it.

What I find inspiring about Ruth is that she is so ordinary. She didn't seem to aspire to greatness, indeed I doubt she would have been able to conceivable of any way in which she might still be talked about 3000 years later, and her achievements must have seemed modest. And yet three generations later her loyalty, faithfulness and love have had huge implications.

The second thing that draws me to Ruth is the way she makes the right choices in the toughest of circumstances. Her story is told against a backdrop of famine grief and broken dreams. All she has left is her mother-in-law, and, watching this yesterday (Mother's Day in the UK), I was struck by what a fantastic example this is of how to honour one's mothers or strive for the best for one's (adult) child.

At the same time there is a huge cultural gap between the story of Ruth and today, which both the text and Testament's adaptation of it highlight without losing the story's relevance for all cultures. It's a culture of where the thought can cross your mind of remarrying in order to have another son to marry your widowed daughter-in-law. It's a world of sealing contracts by taking off your sandal, gleaning etiquette and making sexual advances by uncovering the other person's feet.

Other versions of this story never really capture the essence of this other world, but this film does it admirably. A key factor here is the choice of medium. The 3D puppets that the animators use lend the film a sense of nostalgia and tradition. Furthermore using an animated format from another culture, albeit a different culture from the one in which the story is set, heightens the feeling of otherness. At the same time the skill of the animators make Ruth an incredibly appealing figure capturing her vulnerability without making her seem a victim.

The film's lighting and use of colour also heighten the power of the story. The early scenes of famine and the death of Naomi and Ruth's husbands are dark and at times fairly mono-chromatic, which contrasts with Ruth's brilliant blue robe. There are also a couple of other visual links to the Virgin Mary – another woman who gives birth to a "royal" son in Bethlehem. But the film as a whole makes use of a broad colour palate, often quite dramatically, whilst still maintaining that sense of the past, which is so critical even in the text's original context.

It's also to the film's credit that it portrays Naomi as a little cranky early on. Again it's easy to portray Naomi as a helpless victim, but giving her this personality not only reflects the bitterness of her recent experience, but also gives her a sense of fight and strength of character. It also suggests that Ruth's actions not only provide for her mother-in-law, but draw Naomi out of her grief and bitterness.

Whilst Ruth, through no fault of its own, lacks the dramatic source material of other films in the Testament series, it's poignant character study and visual form make it possibly the best entry in the nine-film series, giving a sense of what an ordinary life can look like when lived by the most unordinary values.

Young Avraham Movie to Première at Vancouver Jewish Film Festival

2011-03-31T08:17:00.004+01:00

Over the years, I've become somewhat jaded about the seemingly endless flow of people telling us they are making new Bible-related films: all too often they are never heard of again. So I'm a bit surprised that of all of them, one that actually has gone the distance is Young Avraham.

As its title suggests, Young Avraham is a story of the early life of the biblical patriarch, from his childhood to the point where he appears in the Book of Genesis. It's based on Midrashic tales but with an eye firmly on 21st century sensibilities.

Anyway, whilst the film has been available on DVD for sometime now, it's having it's North American première on Sunday night (3rd April) as part of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.

I'm hoping my favourite Vancouverite Peter Chattaway, who had a good bit to say about this film when news broke in 2008, will make it to the screening as I'd like to hear what he has to say about it. Whilst I find the idea interesting, the medium doesn't really appeal. As I noted earlier in the week, 3D CGI dates pretty quickly, and is easy to do badly. Two of the four clips on the film's official website have been available on YouTube since August 2007 and, to be honest, don't look great. That said, I've seen worse and they do make me think that the film will be interesting. In the first we see Abraham's father being told to kill the boy by his king, echoing the request that God makes about Isaac many years later. The second contains a scene of a magus pointing out the presence of a new star coinciding with the boy's birth, echoing the star that accompanied the birth of Jesus. The latter certainly gets me wondering if this is a modern flourish, or something that's found in the account in the Midrash. Either way it's interesting. The former suggests this decidedly Jewish film riffing on the birth of Jesus. The latter would be highlighting the way Matthew is riffing on the birth of Abraham. The former seems unlikely, whereas I'm sure that I would have heard of this detail were it to be the latter. Time to do some research...

The Bible's Buried Secrets: The Real Garden of Eden

2011-03-30T09:16:00.001+01:00

Having looked at whether David really existed, and whether God may have had a wife, BBC2's Francesca Stavrakopoulou moves back in time to tackle the question of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Or does she? Because at the heart of the final instalment of this series is Stavrakopoulou's hypothesis that the original Eden story had nothing to do with creation but actually referred to the Jerusalem temple and its fall at the hands of the Babylonian Empire.

I must admit that even having studied this passage quite a bit in my younger days this was not a theory I'd heard before. Perhaps because quite so much debate rages as to whether or not the passage should be really literally, or whether it's all disproved by science, that the origins of the story rarely get a look in.

The programme opens with a couple of talking heads, one a fundamentalist, the other a moderate, but we quickly move on to Stavrakopoulou's theory that "Eden was a real place built by human hands".

Travelling to the British Museum she is able to demonstrate, from the stone reliefs that hang on the walls in the museum's ancient near east section, what gardens in that place and time were like. A few other pieces of evidence to show that gardens were a combination of the natural and the human-made.

There's a brief foray into the understanding of Eden in Islam. Eden isn't on earth, it's heaven. Initially this might seem like a bit of a tangent, but the programme uses it to drive home the point that in the ancient near east gardens such as these were seen as places where heaven touched earth, and that the prevalent understanding of Paradise was that of a man made garden.

But not just any old garden Stavrakopoulou tells us, "Eden was a garden built by humans for their god". It was a place on earth where God could come and be. A garden where God could walk around.

If that's starting to sound familiar then the next part of the programme ratchets up the links still further. The only person traditionally allowed access to these gardens was the king. The king was considered to be a mediator between the gods and men, he was allowed into the garden to tend it and this is, of course, the role we find Adam take in Genesis 2. The conclusion? "Adam was originally a king too".

It's at this point that the first other biblical expert is consulted - Nicholas Wyatt of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity. Wyatt looks at Ezekiel 28 casting a fresh light on verses 13-19, which are sometimes applied to Satan rather than a human figure. It's argued that Ezekiel 28:13-14 locates Eden on the holy mount of God, which is understood as Mount Zion, where the Jerusalem temple was located. The links here are a little tenuous and the correct interpretation of this passage lacks any sense of consensus, so it's a shame that the argument here is skipped over rather quickly rather than being buttressed by further evidence.

In similarly brief fashion it's argued that the search of the whereabouts of Eden shouldn't be determined by the location of the River Tigris and the River Euphrates, but the River Gihon. This Stavrakopoulou tells us is in Jerusalem, where the water "bubbles up like a spring". The trouble is that, yet again, there is a wide divergence of views as to where the the Gihon is with numerous locations from Mesopotamia to Ethiopia being cited. I suspect that the way Stavrakopoulou is mapping out her argument is not the same route which lead her to the destination in the first place, which is probably fair enough. This is, after all, a mainstream television programme, on at a peak time. Whilst I would liked to have seen these things fleshed out a little more, there was only an hour available.

Stavrakopoulou's destination turns out, as it happens, to be the ancient Jerusalem Temple. The cherubs marked the outside of both Eden and the temple. 1 Kings describes the horticultural theme in the temple's decoration, evoking thoughts of a garden where heaven might touch earth. Solomon's temple was "both mythical and real".

Of course Stavrakopoulou would debate whether or not the first temple in Jerusalem was, in fact Solomon's, and there's a little blurring of the evidence here. We're told that the original temple was burnt, but it's also implied that it's this temple, rather than the one of the returning exiles and Herod the great, which stands in ruins today. But that's a minor quibble.

It's at this point that some of the scholars from previous episodes re-appear, namely Herbert Niehr, Judith Hadley and Walter Moberly, because the film turns to the question of why the Eden narrative includes a vilified serpent and a woman. Stavrakopoulou ties this into some of the theories discussed in the previous programme. Originally the temple was used for several kinds of worship, and among them, she goes on to say, snake-worship.

Such a proposal sounds controversial, but is, of course, largely based on the Bible. It's not until the reign of Hezekiah that we read of Moses' bronze snake being smashed because the people were worshipping it (2 Kings 18:4). The portrayal of the snake as the villain in the story of the Garden of Eden was a smear campaign to discredit such serpents worshippers.

A similar campaign is also suggested to explain Eve's presence. At various points in the Bible we find wives blamed for their husband's failings (Solomon and Ahab are cited). Perhaps whichever king it was that is being portrayed by the original story (Jehoiachin presumably) was being accused of being unduly influenced by his wife. This casts an interesting light on Eve's initial absence from creation in the second Genesis creation account, but casts a shadow across the treatment of women in the three monotheistic faiths.

So the thrust of Stavrakopoulou's argument seems to be that the story should never have been altered and inserted after Genesis' opening creation account. Rescuing it from this alien context may upset those of monotheistic faith, but it "allows us to engage with the real passions and the anxieties of people from long ago". The documentary concludes on a political note, if Jerusalem is where heaven touched earth and God came down "is it any wonder that no-one wants to give it up?"

Of the three films in the series, I think this was my favourite, perhaps because the theory was sufficiently new to me that I not only found it interesting, but also wasn't able to find as many disagreements as others found. That said, those of us that reject a more literal interpretation of the story, don't feel that connection with its historicity. What the story came to mean is of far more significance that its historical referent, and, to be honest, it's strange that the programme is more captivated by the kernel from which this impressive tree grew, than the plant itself.

However, I suspect that Stavrakopoulou just doesn't see the plant as being particularly impressive. Once or twice she suggests that it's this story that has caused Christianity (and perhaps the other monotheistic faiths) to take a negative view of humanity. Yet rather than the story creating our belief in the fallenness of humankind, its the other way around. The story resonates for us, and presumably whoever it was that ripped it from its supposed historical context, precisely because it reflects the fallenness we see as inherent in humanity.

That's not to deny that there's good in humanity as well. Indeed the coupling of the Eden story with Genesis 1 creates wonderful balance: we are made in the image of God and animated by his spirit, and yet we also bring evil into his world. If Eden is heaven on earth, then its understandable why we yearn for it so, and why the Bible ends with a glorious re-imaging of Eden housing a renewed Jerusalem.

Friends and Heroes Series 2 and 3

2011-03-28T19:42:00.005+01:00

Back in 2007 I spent quite a bit of time talking about the Friends and Heroes series that was being broadcast on BBC2. Four years on I've finally had a chance to see a handful of episodes of series 2 and 3.

The original series was set in Alexandria and followed the adventures of Macky and Portia (pictured above). Macky is a Jewish Christian who by chance befriends Portia, the daughter of Alexandria's Roman governor Tiberius. Series 2 covers a new phase in Tiberius' career. He is now the general in charge of the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 and has taken Portia with him. Macky on the other hand has travelled to the holy city to attempt to find the father of Leah and Rebecca from series 1. As with that series Portia and Macky are caught on opposite sides of the conflict as Macky fights with the rebels stuck in Jerusalem.

On the basis of the two episodes from this series that I've had a chance to see it's difficult to compare this series to the original. That said the animation quality is broadly the same, and the style of the programmes seem to be more or less the same. However, the stories don't seem to carry the momentum of the previous series, though that is an inevitable consequence of watching them out of the context of the series as a whole.

Series 3 brings things to a head as Portia and Macky find themselves in Rome. Macky has connected with the Roman underground church and the prominent Roman citizen, and Christian, Antonius. The series comes to a head with the Roman senate trying to execute Antonius whilst Macky and his new friends seek to free him.

The final few episodes of this series certainly carry the kind of plot tension that made the first series so addictive. In particular the last episode is surprisingly absorbing as Macky attempts to save not only Antonius but a large collection of early Christian writings.

The weak point of the first series was the 3D animated sections of the programme which portrayed the biblical episodes. Four years ago these sections were clearly inferior to the very best work in the medium, but not to the extent that it was a significant weakness in the series as a whole. Alas today, with the advances that have been seen over recent years, the 3D sections do look very dated now, to the detriment of the rest of the programme.

Yet overall the series still exhibits much of what made it appeal to me back in 2007. The way the story bridges the gap between the biblical narratives from the first century and today's culture is still a great way of making the biblical history accessible to younger children. The pacing and 2D animation are still very good. And even though its these final episodes which culminate in the stories of death and resurrection of Jesus, it avoids being preachy whilst still managing to explore difficult issues and challenge its young audience to a better way of living.

The Bible's Buried Secrets: Did God Have a Wife?

2011-03-23T16:35:00.003Z

As the internet seems to have proved time and time again the more tenuous a given hypothesis is, the more those who defend it resort to peppering their arguments with confident-sounding phrases such as 'certainly', 'clearly' and 'undoubtedly'. In a similar vein I suspect that those seeking to promote rather dull, and fairly obvious theories resort to describing them with phrases such as "grounbreaking" and "revolutionary". Then again, it would be a mistake to extrapolate too far on the basis of one programme.

Part 2 of BBC2's The Bible's Buried Secrets - Did God Have a Wife? didn't just resort to such melodramatic terminology in its opening abstract, but seasoned its entire run-time with such overblown metaphors. Time and again presenter Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou told us that what she was telling us "rocks [monotheism] to its core", is "the biggest secret of all" one that "shakes the very heart of monotheism" and "rocks the foundation of modern monotheism".

The source of all this rocking and shaking is Stavrakopoulou's revelation that Israel was not always monotheistic. Whilst this may shake some fundamentalists and those who have only paid passing attention to their Hebrew Bible, such a conclusion is the only reasonable reading of the books of 1 and 2 Kings, not to mention Judges, Samuel, Chronicles and the prophets. Israel and Judah were frequently being chastised for worshipping other Gods. There's less unity behind Stavrakopoulou's claim that monotheism didn't emerge until the Jewish exile in Babylon, but the evidence to support such a claim is relatively thin. The odd archaeological find showing "God's wife" only proves that some of the Israelites worshipped a female deity. It hardly proves that this was the belief of the entire nation, nor even a significant percentage.

Part of the problems here seem to come from a implied theory that the various parts of the Hebrew Bible present a united front. There are of course many who would hold to such a theory overall, but few who really knew the subject would insist that "the story the Bible tells us" is of a nation who were monotheistic from God's very first words to Abraham, apart from "occasional lapses".

In reality, the Bible accuses the northern kingdom (Israel) of being almost entirely idolatrous from the moment Solomon's Empire divided. What's strange about this presentation is that despite Stavrakopoulou explaining in the previous programme about the split between Judah in the South and Israel in the north, and about how Jewish writers may have attempted to smear their rivals in the north, none of this gets a look in. Israel is presented in the documentary as if it were a united nation from the time of Abraham to the exile. Yet Israel no longer even existed by the time of the latter event.

The experts were also a little disappointing this time around. In the traditional corner was Rabbi Ken Spiro, who is heard saying that his message is "not PC" before he has even been introduced. He pops up again and again to presumably to provide a bit of balance, but the excerpts included don't really present him as having credible reasons for his disagreement. There's also a couple of brief clips of Walter Moberly, who doesn't say a great deal, and of Islamic scholar Muhsin Yusuf in the programme's brief, and seemingly token, mention of Islamic monotheism. And there are also brief words from Judith Hadley and Ze'er Meshel. But the main scholarly contribution is from Herbert Niehr who is agrees with Stavrakopoulou to such an extent that at times they seem almost like an unlikely double act.

That's not to say that the programme was not interesting. I picked up several things that I had not known before from the nature of the archaeological artefacts at Ugarit to the pottery finds linking Yahweh and Asherah, though the latter didn't really strike me as "the most important artefact in the history of God". And it was good to see that the programme had made a late correction to incorporate the news that this once lost piece of pottery looks to have re-emerged.

As with the first instalment the technical quality of the documentary was very good: nice images, reasonably good pacing and catching an archaeological dig as they uncovered something must have been particularly pleasing. But the arguments here are just far too overblown so that rather than developing the understanding of a wide range of people, both believers and sceptics, the film is so couched in melodramatic language that only DanBrown-o-phile conspiracists will take its information seriously.

New Moses und Aron DVD

2011-03-22T10:05:00.006Z

I hadn't realised until just now that a new DVD of Schöenberg's "Moses und Aron" was released at the end of the summer last year. From looking at the Amazon blurb, it appears to be a filming of the live opera version from what I can make out, but I'm not sure whether it has audience applause or not. It was the Ruhrtriennale 2009 production that was filmed.

There is an earlier live recording of the opera but I can't quite work out from the costuming how dramatic the production is. This newer 2010 version looks to have more dramatic movement.

Hopefully this new version will be a little easier to watch than Straub and Hulliet's version. That version, which is more of a film in its own right, is a fine demonstration of ultra-formalism, which certainly has its own strengths, particularly given the themes of the opera, but it's also very though to sit through. Personally I'd be interested in seeing a version that could help me wrap my head around what Schöenberg is trying to say, which would help me understand the Straub and Hulliet film a little more.

BBC2's The Bible's Buried Secrets

2011-03-16T16:57:00.000Z

I'd somehow not really caught on that there was about to be a new Bible related documentary being broadcast on BBC2, despite reading Doug Chaplin's two posts and even commenting on one of them. I should also point out that this is not simply a re-hashed version of 2008's PBS documentary of the same name. Here's my review
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The Bible's Buried Secrets is the latest in a long line of modern BBC documentaries about the Bible going back to Son of God a decade ago. Like the 2001 series The Bible's Buried Secrets has been produced by Jean-Claude Bragard who also worked on The Miracles of Jesus, Moses and Mary.

This series starts with David and Solomon and presenter Francesca Stavrakopoulou starts off by asking "Can we even talk about a historical David at all?" There are a few introductory preview clips before Stavrakopoulou sums up what the programme will be about. "Is the biblical account of King David true, and what are the consequences if it isn't?"

As usual with this type of documentary the presenter tours round the relevant locations switching between speaking to experts and monologuing into the camera. Thankfully though Stavrakopoulou avoids the all too typical manner of presenting the programme as if she hadn't a clue about what she's just been told. Just as well given Charlie Brooker scathing dismantling of the modern day documentary in last Tuesday's final instalment of "How TV Ruined Your Life". Instead she played it smart, allowing the archaeologists to speak for themselves and then discretely offering her disagreements once they were off camera.

Such an approach typifies the technical quality of the programme. It was nicely shot, clearly argued and well structured, working through the different historical layers of archaeologists before Stavrakopoulou delivered her own conclusion.

Stavrakopoulou's journey starts in Gath in conversation with Aren Maeir. The Philistines he tells us weren't barbarians they were actually very cultured and we have found remains of their cities. If the Bible's history is correct then we would expect similar finds in Israel.

This is followed by a summary of the work of Yigael Yadin whose work in the middle of the last century concluded that biblical archaeology confirms the narratives found in the Hebrew Bible. Yet whilst Yadin's view were dominant going into the 1970s, his work was eventually re-evaluated, and shown to be rather limited. Israel Finkelstein takes up the story from there. Yadin's finds were significantly later than he calculated. The film rather skims over things here, and it leaves me with more questions than answers, which I suspect might pass many other viewers by.

Stavrakopoulou alternates between experts in and out of agreement with a simple reading of the texts. After Finklestein comes Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he describes as "biblical Pompeii". The large city gates are an indicator of some form of semi-complex statehood. But there are questions about the dating and so Stavrakopoulou investigates the evidence that it was Omri, not David, who was responsible for much of the building in the region from that time. This section includes discussion of the Tel Dan Stele which refers to the "house of David" but she remains rather sceptical.

After that diversion it's back to Jerusalem where Doron Spielman claims to have found David's fortress after taking a closer look at 2 Samuel 5:17. Finkelstein dismisses Spielman's whole approach but doesn't offer a great deal of evidence to explain why the site definitely isn't related to David.

Stavrakopoulou's penultimate interview is with Baruch Halpern. Halpern is clearly of great importance. Not only does he get to have a nice meal at the King David Hotel (geddit?) rather than having to explain his theories in a dusty archaeological site, but we also see Stavrakopoulou getting dolled up beforehand. It's the most disappointing moment in the whole programme and undermining her credibility as a scholar. We never saw Robert Beckford doing his hair or Jeremy Bowen trimming his moustache, so why this? We get that Stavrakopoulou is far better looking than the average Biblical Scholar; there's really no need to show us her doing her make-up. Doing so just gives further support to what many will have suspected: that she was chosen to front the series primarily because she's good looking. It's a shame to undermine her academic intelligence and skills as a presenter in such a, well, pre-historic fashion.

That said, interviewing Halpern inside does make a modicum of sense, as he discusses how to read the texts rather than simply deal with the archaeological evidence in a black and white fashion. Halpern's argument is that the type of warts-and-all material we have on David seems unlikely to be entirely fabricated. It's unlikely that someone would make a mythical character quite so flawed.

Ultimately things conclude rather disappointingly. Stavrakopoulou dismisses Halpern's theories, preferring to advance her own. The Mesha Stele tells us about the exploits of the Israelite king Omri, almost entirely ignored by the biblical authors. It was he, not David, that expanded the kingdom and built many of the structures we find in Northern Israel (though the identity of builder of the Jerusalem structures is not explained). It was the southern nation (Judah) that wrote the history and they largely expunged the prowess of Omri and invented a series of myths about their own great, expansionist king - David. As a theory it's not entirely satisfying to me. Why was the builder of Jerusalem's fort not named in the Bible and elevated to mythical status? Isn't it likely that the now carbon dated seeds found at one of the structures simply show that the site was still in use a century or so later?

This being the BBC things have to end on an ambiguous note, and as usual there are comments (this time from Yonathan Mizrachi) about how the archaeological evidence or lack thereof shouldn't be used to stake a political claim for the land and Stavrakopoulou concludes rather weakly that what's important is that its the "meaning of the story that has proved so resilient" and so on. It feels very token, somewhat like the unconvincing endings to various production code era Hitchcock films.

Whilst, based on the evidence I've seen here, I disagree with the film's conclusions, it's nevertheless one of the better made and better presented religious documentaries I've seen in recent years, and, aside from that one particular disappointing moment it respects its audience and doesn't talk down to them, covering a good deal of ground in just under an hour. Next week Stavrakopoulou will explore the possibility the God may have been assigned a wife.

Bible Films Facebook Page

2011-03-14T19:29:00.002Z

It's been very encouraging that people are "liking" my Bible Films Facebook Page. As I mentioned when I gave this site a facelift last week, I've been having a bit of a think about how to improve how people benefit from what I do. I see the facebook page as facilitating this in the following ways:

A place for everyone to share news items related to Bible Films. I'm indebted to the many kind people who send me links to new projects, or information about films that have just come on to DVD or are now available online. The problem is that when I get busy it takes me ages to post them up - for some bizarre reason I don't feel like I can just post links on my blog, whereas in Facebook this will work well. Best of all however, it will allow those who email me to tell me about something, just to post it direct on the page's wall. So next time, you discover something, please go to the site and post it.
A place to connect. One of the things I love about running my blog is making contact with others who are interested in the subject. But I'm aware that it's harder for those folk to connect with each other. Hopefully the people that "like" the page will also find it easier to connect with each other.

My intention is, of course, to keep this site running. Facebook has its advantages, but you get less flexibility and it doesn't suit longer pieces. The idea is, then, to continue to post reviews, scene guides, thoughts on particular films etc. here - hopefully giving this site a more in depth edge - and also running occasional news updates collating some of the things getting posted over at Facebook.

The hope is that those who already use facebook will find this is a simple and organic way to join in and contribute, without meaning that they have another site to keep tags on (as updates should appear in your news feed) without leaving those who "don't do Facebook" out in the process. It may well be that things don't quite work out as I envisaged and if so I'll look to adjust things as and when.

I'm open to hear any feedback or advice that people have, so feel free to leave any comments below.

Time for a New Look

2011-03-12T01:25:00.003Z

Most of you will probably have noticed on logging on that I've changed my blog design a little bit. It was only meant to be a tweak (I was well and truly sick of the old orangey colour down the sides), but it seems to have taken me a few hours! At some point I'm going to do a much bigger overhaul, but for now this looks a little less unfashionable.

I've also added icons towards the top left forfollowing me on Twitter and the newly created Bible Films Facebook page. I've got quite a few ideas for that so when I've categorised them a little more I'll share them here. For now this will have to do.

The Easter Experience

2011-03-10T21:51:00.000Z

It's amazing how quickly things change. When I was growing up the cutting edge of religious film was watching a grainy copy of Treasures of the Snow on VHS. These days things are very different, not only have laptops, projectors and video clips become commonplace, but slickly made DVDs have replaced the rather banal adventures of Lucien and Annetts.

For my money The Easter Experience series ups the stakes even further. It's very much made with the same kind of care, attention, evocative lighting and high quality cameras that are found in Rob Bell's Nooma videos, but since much of the footage is a recreation of 1st century Jerusalem, then there are all kinds of additional factors such as costumes, make up and sets that producers City on a Hill have managed to get right as well.

The Easter Experience is basically a 6 part DVD based small group course. The DVDs come with a resources CD, and a group leaders book, around which to structure the sessions. The core of each session however is the 20 minute film that explains the theme. The videos are fronted by Kyle Idleman, and whilst his voice plays throughout each film, the images change from shots of the action to shots of him sat on set as if he has entered Jesus' world. Some of the dialogue can also be heard in the recreated sections.

It's unfortunate that Idleman immediately reminds you of Rob Bell. The films exude the same quality and commitment to doing things right. Both Idelman and Bell are youngish leaders of big churches. They are both good-looking, fashionable and good in front of a camera. Their theology may differ, but it's hard to see The Easter Experience without thinking of Nooma even though the two projects are entirely different.

A more significant influence on these films would appear to be The Passion of the Christ. Certainly set design and lighting have been inspired by Gibson's film, and this is certainly not a DVD series that shies away from Jesus' suffering. Idelman's church is inerrantist so it's no surprise that those who had concerns over the portrayal of the Jewish race in The Passion will be a little uncomfortable with the occasional moment here.

The series works its way through the event leading up to Jesus' death and his resurrection. Part One - My Life has a Purpose - tackles Jesus washing the disciples' feet and contrasts it with the actions of Judas who is arranging to betray his master.(As an aside, Judas looks like the offspring of Colin Blakley and Peter Dinklage). Session Two - My Life Can Change - looks more at Peter's betrayal and (ultimately) his restoration. Three and Four - My Pain is Understood and My Life has a Plan - explore Jesus' suffering and crucifixion, partially through Mary's eyes in the latter episode. The fifth episode - I Have the Promise of Eternal Life - focuses on the repentant thief at Jesus' side. Idleman speculates here as to the thief's prior life, intending to ultimately enable the audience to relate to the character and make the link between him and them, and Jesus' forgiveness of both. Finally, as would be expected, the final session - My Hope is Secure - looks at what Jesus' resurrection means for us today.

Perhaps the series' biggest weakness however is the actor playing Jesus. Of course our opinions over portrayals of Jesus are highly subjective, but personally Shane Shooter's portrayal just didn't hit the mark. Sooter is also the film's director and I don't think is ability in front of a camera matches his talent behind it.

But overall this is a very good series of films, and perhaps the best DVD small group course I have ever come across. The theology is more conservative than my own, but its message is certainly communicated well and the images are beautifully shot. It might be pushing it to buy this in time to run a lent course this year, but it would be just as suitable for a Holy Week programme, or even small group seeker-friendly course at any time of the year. Trailers for each episode are available to view online.

Biblical Studies Carnival: Feb. 2011

2011-03-01T23:59:00.002Z

Photo by Tim Parkinson, used under a Creative Commons Licence

Matthew Crowe has posted February's Biblical Studies Carnival up at his A Fistful of Farthings blog. There were times in the past when I pondered whether I should offer to host one of these but no more. How anyone finds enough spare time to read, digest and create the links for one of these mega carnivals is beyond me. So full credit to Matthew for all his efforts.

The Top 10 (by vote) and Top 50 (by Alexa ranking) have also been posted.

The Guardian on "How Biblical Literalism Took Root"

2011-02-28T15:32:00.003Z

The Guardian has a good piece exploring the origins of Biblical Literalism today. In it Stephen Tomkins (Ship of Fools) looks of the roots of the phenomenon and at some of the problems it brings with it.

Bangladesh's Dancing Jesus

2011-02-23T22:21:00.004Z

Bangladeshi director Rafiq Mahmud has released a DVD exploring Jesus' teaching through music and dance. Mahmud, a muslim, debuted the film at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh Office earlier in the month to an audience of Catholics, Protestants and Muslims.

The production is actually an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's writings on Jesus. Tagore, was a Bangladeshi poet, author and playwright who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. His writings on Jesus tended to emphasise his humanity and his humanitarian message.

The DVD went on sale at the start of the month. More information is available from CathNewsIndia.

The Gathering

2011-02-19T07:14:00.005Z

A week or two back I went to see The Fighter. Our cinema quite often shows a short film before the main performance these days, although I often wonder why as the aspect ratio is often way out, as the projector is set for the main feature, and quite often, as was the case on this occasion, the audience just talked all over it. I did catch enough of it however to work out that it was some kind of modern take on Jesus coming. So after the film I had a word with the projectionist who very kindly dug out the name of the film and rang me later the same evening to let me know.

It turns out the film was The Gathering by director James Cooper. Jesus is portrayed as a postman who advertises a public gathering. I won't say anymore, but point you instead to the film itself which you can watch for free on Vimeo.

I must admit I'm quite taken by this little film, not least because it's kept me thinking about it for the last fortnight. It's also nicely shot, well acted, subtly made and gently humorous.

More on Aronofsky's Noah

2011-02-18T11:04:00.003Z

Darren Aronofsky has been taking advantage of the publicity he's been getting from Black Swan, so there have been a couple of articles recently about his plans to make a new version of the story of Noah (see my previous posts). Last week SlashFilm confirmed that not only has Aronofsky decided to make a comic book as a step to filming Noah, but also that there is also some footage on YouTube (though it says it is "private").

Movieweb are carrying a piece called "Noah Is Dirty and Not PG Says Darren Aronofsky". I couldn't get the actual page to work, but Google has it in its cache. Their article says that the project will actually be a mini-series and that it will be sci-fi adaptation of the graphic novel. Interestingly it also cites the 1976 Sunn Pictures documentary In Search of Noah's Ark as a source of inspiration, one that I've never seen, but that I know Peter Chattaway has fond memories of.

Where is my Father: New Job Film

2011-02-16T08:58:00.004Z

I'm still ploughing through my inbox at the moment so if you are STILL awaiting reply I should get to you soon.

One of the items in their was a message from the writer, producer and director of an ultra-independent film about Job based in Canada. Randy Hiebert was inspired to write a screenplay for Where is my Father after his "wife suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm during a Sunday worship service" and his "son suffered a concussion during a youth retreat". Whilst both have since made a full recovery it seems that this was a time when the book of Job struck a chord with him. 6 years later and the film is available to buy online. You can also watch the trailer at the Interlake Christian Films website. The website also gives details of a limited number of live screenings for anyone who is interested.

Reflections on 10 Days Bible-Filming

2011-02-15T08:35:00.004Z

...not, I should say, making a film about the Bible, but just running a number of different group sessions on Bible films. As most of you are probably aware it's 400 years since the King James Bible was released and many organisations are marking the occasion with a campaign to encourage more people to read the Bible. As a result the last ten days have seen me preparing and delivering a number of projects/ sessions/ presentations on the Bible films, and so I thought I would share some of my reflections here.

The first session I actually got to run three times, although the last time was slightly different. It was designed initially as part of an initiative run by the Loughborough Churches Partnership. People from the different congregations gathered and chose three out of six workshops looking at the Bible in a different way. Fearing that all six may end up using the gospels I decided to focus instead on Moses. I started getting everyone to read the story of the burning bush. Then I took clips from five film interpretations of Moses, and got those present to think through various questions relating to them. I'm planning to upload my slides for this talk so anyone who wants to can have a look at them.

For various reasons I didn't want to talk very much in this session so I restricted myself to a one minute intro where I explained about how Bible films force us to look at the Bible through someone else's perspective; explained what we were going to do and then just set a timed PowerPoint presentation do the rest. That worked pretty effectively. I had previously put the clips into PowerPoint using the methods I discussed last year, and during the questions used a PowerPoint timer tool I built to let people know how long was left before the next clip (as well as a beep). What I didn't do was leave any time for discussion as I only had 30 minutes.

The first two times around I used 5 clips and my work looking at portrayals of the burning bush last year came in very handy. In the end though I cheated a little bit. Wanting to include a silent clip, but knowing that DeMille's 1923 version of this story did not include this encounter I used a clip from Curtiz's Noah's Ark (1928) instead. Whilst this is a little cheeky, I would argue that Curtiz's scene of Noah hearing God's command atop a mountain with a bush bursting into flames as God speaks is an interpretation of the Moses story to some degree. I also used the scene from DeMille's later film in 1956, Moses the Lawgiver (1975), The Prince of Egypt (1998) and 2006's The Ten Commandments. This meant I left out the two films from 1996 - Testament and Moses. I didn't really feel they added a great deal and I didn't really have the time.

The session seemed to go down reasonably well first time around. That said not having time for discussion afterwards meant that it was hard to ascertain exactly how people had found it other than the handful of encouraging comments I got at the end. The second time around I did it at lunchtime, the audience was significantly older and I only got feedback from one person (I didn't know as many) so I didn't feel that it went down as well, but I think that probably reflects more on my state of mind than anything else.

The third time I opted to run this session was at church weekend away which I oversee (at least from an administration point of view). Here I had a longer slot - 45 minutes - which enabled me to reinstate the Moses (1996) clip and hold some discussion afterwards. Here the audience was entirely students which meant that almost all of them had seen The Prince of Egypt when they were around 6-7, and had, in effect grown up with this image of Moses. All of them stated that this was their favourite portrayal. There were also a couple of interesting observations that came out. One liked how the 1975 clip captured the fear of seeing a staff turn into a snake and a hand become leprous. Another commented on how it would take Moses a long time to adjust to God's call and how the 2006 clip bought that out for them. I enjoyed this session in particular. It's good to run it without human intervention but the feedback at the end can be pretty valuable, and brings further perspectives out for those who are there.

The second presentation I was doing was running a similar session at our weekend away only using clips from different films covering different parts of the life of Jesus. The preparation for this session was rushed due to family concerns, and as a result there were a few technical issues, notably the last clip which hadn't converted properly, and an annoying blue line around the edge of the screen. I did like the effect though, having not really done something before. It was "quite intense" (in a good way) as someone said afterwards, and moving from one film to another with the marked changes in styles was quite jarring, preventing us from slipping into passivity. The clips I used were as follows:

Gospel of John (2003) - John's prologue
Mary the Mother of Jesus (1999) - Jesus' mandate
Son of Man (1969) - Sermon on the Mount
Last Temptation of Christ (1988) - Sermon on the Plain
Jesus of Montreal (1989) - Miracles montage in play
Last Temptation of Christ (1988) - Raising of Lazarus
Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (1964) - Dispute with the Pharisees
Jesus of Montreal (1989) - Little Apocalypse
The Passion (2008) - Crucifixion
The Cross (2001) - Resurrection

Having not actually sat through this session before I ran it (which would have eliminated the technical problems) I really enjoyed it and would be keen to run a tweaked version of it again.

The final project was to compose 30 minutes of clips from the Bible as a whole that would be visual enough to work without sound. They also had to be child friendly. This kind of thing is always harder because the people there haven't necessarily wanted to see stuff like this this, (it was just on in the background during worship) and without the balance of other clips there's a higher demand for something that is roughly on a par with what they are used to seeing from films. The lack of sound also means the visuals have to be stronger than normal and, of course, many films on the Bible struggle here in particular. In the end I went for these five clips:

The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) - Creation
Testament: Abraham (1996) - Isaac on the altar
Ten Ten Commandments (1923) - Parting of the Red Sea
Miracles of Jesus (2007) - Widow of Nain's son
From the Manger to the Cross (1912) - Crucifixion
The Cross (2001) - Resurrection

This went down quite well, particularly with the older children. I also got someone asking me about the 1923 film, and various people seemed to access it across the weekend.

The nice thing about doing all of this is it gives me a few presentations (they were all done using PowerPoint) which I can access in future. I've also sorted out my laptop so I have more of a central area for this material from now on.

More Films on the Star of Bethlehem

2011-02-08T08:33:00.004Z

Back in 2008 I posted an article about The Star of Bethlehem on DVD. Whilst most of the post was about the release of the 1912 silent nativity film, I also mentioned 4 other films with the same title: a 1956 British TV movie; a 2007 documentary about the star itself and its potential origins; and two German films from 1921 and 1954, which both had the original title Der Stern von Bethlehem. Most of these were listed in my 2006 survey of films about the nativity (which could really do with an update).

Recently however I've become aware of a number of other films on the subject. The only one I have seen (and reviewed) is the 2008 BBC documentary, also called The Star of Bethlehem. This it turns out is an entirely different film from the 2007 one above. Whereas the BBC documentary took in a number of different perspectives, the 2007 film was a look at a specific theory about the star developed by legal professor Rick Larson. The film has an official website and Peter Chattaway reviewed its release on DVD in 2009, as did Christianity Today.

The next film to add to the list is the Italian film La Stella dei Re (pictured) which was made in 2006, though IMDb lists it as 2007. It seems to have been made by/for Italy's RAI, who have made some significant Bible films in their time and it appears to have been released on DVD in Italy. I can find this DVD cover which contains numerous bits of useful information, but no links for where to buy it (though I only carried out a short search). It also played on broadcast TV over Christmas. I should point out however that the title's literal translation is "The Star of Kings".

There are also a couple of Spanish films that a helpful reader passed on to me (as well as the above title): La Estrella de Belen (Star of Bethlehem) from 1998, and Los Reyes Magos (The Magi-Kings) from 2003.

Good Morning Eve (1934)

2011-02-07T09:07:00.003Z

Last Year I catalogued a fairly full list of films about Adam and Eve. One film I mentioned, but knew almost nothing about was Good Morning Eve from (1934). A while back Peter Chattaway emailed me this link which contained the following information:

Ralph Staub's "Good Morning Eve'' (1934), which by Leonard Maltin's reckoning beat "La Cucaracha'' into theaters as the first three-strip, live-action Techicolor short, is an especially racy Leon Errol musical about Adam and Eve traveling through history.

From a bit more research it seems that the film is available in two parts on YouTube. I've not seen it yet so you might like to take note of the use of the phrase "especially racy" above and that it was released in the pre-production code era. The IMDB also has a few reviews which mention that "Adam (Leon Errol) and Eve (June MacCloy) leave the Garden of Eden and stroll through history, stopping for production numbers in Rome with Nero and in England with King Arthur", and that the film was only the "second three-strip Technicolor film in history". It also ends with an early 20th century beach sequence. There are some nice photos of this scene (including the above) on Flickr courtesy of Kay Wrad.

Scene Guide for Friends and Heroes

2011-02-07T08:36:00.004Z

Back in 2007 I wrote quite a bit about the animated TV series Friends and Heroes. I'm going to post some thoughts on series two and three shortly, but for now I wanted to relay a couple of useful resources I've been sent:

Story Order
Bible Order
Episode Order
Churches and Schools Lesson material
Stills from the series

I'm wishing I'd discovered these a little earlier. In particular, the story order one and the Bible order one are particularly useful when trying to find a clip to illustrate a given passage. The former lists incidents covered in the Bible alphabetically (giving details of the relevant episode) whereas the latter does the same only by the biblical order.

More Apologies for Lack of Replies

2011-02-04T23:49:00.003Z

If you are one of the many people who have recently emailed me or commented on one of my posts, thank you and sorry. Things have been very hectic recently and once I get behind it gets harder and harder to catch up. On top of this I'm reliably informed that the way I handle my email is very last century, such that I only have most of my messages at work.

So if you're still waiting for an answer, apologies and hopefully next week I'll get something to you. Unless you left spam, in which case I might be a little longer.

Testament: David and Saul

2011-01-31T08:21:00.002Z

Give the average quiz show host the category "The Bible" and ask them to complete the following - David and - and you'd get the same answer every time. Indeed the working title for Scott Derickson's proposed film about events from the books of Samuel even omits David's name, opting simply for Goliath.

The giant everyone loves to hate does feature in Testament's David and Saul, but he's a relatively minor figure. Even David is not the film's greatest concern. The film might even have been called Saul and David - it's Israel's first king that is the leading character in this production, rather than his more famous successor.

I remember very little of David and Saul from my first viewing roughly eight years ago. It certainly didn't make much of an impression. This time around however it was quite different. Eight years on it seems like a complex and striking examination of a man fighting his demons. Whether or not "demons" should be taken literally perhaps accounts for the difference in my reactions to my two viewings of this film. Then I was open to the idea that when the Bible said demons it may, on occasion, simply be talking about something like epilepsy. Now I would tend to assume some form of health issue was what was being mentioned even if I remain open to the possibility that occasionally something supernatural might be responsible.

That the film is primarily about what is going on in Saul's head is apparent from the opening scene. Instead of seeing David in the fields chasing lambs, or wistfully playing his harp in the countryside, we start with Saul raving in his throne room. The location shot tells us that it's night, and it slowly pans up a dark rocky outcrop before reaching a foreboding prison-like castle at the top. The throne room itself is also dimly lit and sinister music accompanies Saul's deep seated paranoia. At the mention of Samuel's name there's a flash back to the last meeting between the two, king and prophet.

Samuel himself is a shadowy figure in this film. Dressed in a dark, hooded, robe he only appears in flashbacks, voices in Saul's head and as an ghostly apparition at the witches cave in Endor. Even Samuel's anointing of David is made highly ambiguous - David certainly doesn't realise he has been appointed king.

By placing Samuel's confrontation of Saul in the midst of this scene of his madness manifesting himself, there's an implication that it is this incident which is the cause of Saul's condition, be it mental illness or spiritual affliction. It's never entirely clear which way the filmmakers understand it. Certainly the characters in the film believe it's the latter, as is consistent with their world-view but the content of the film itself - aside from the narrator's opening mention of Saul being "seized by an evil spirit" - makes a fairly strong case the other way.

It's not until after this scene that David makes an appearance, killing a bear, playing for the king, being outraged by his countrymen's cowardice in the face of Goliath and then volunteering to slay the Philistine giant. But even as Goliath is hitting the floor, Saul is haunted by Samuel's voice in his head: "Another man, a better man than you...". This leads into a montage of David's victories, his adoration at the hands of the crowd and the evident love Saul's children have for him. Each moment is accompanied by Samuel's same words, "Another man, a better man than you...". One particularly enjoyable visual moment here is a pan across a stone relief depicting David's victories.

David continues to play to soothe Saul's turmoil and Saul attempts to kill him. David flees and Saul hunts him down. Whilst in his pursuit Saul hears of Samuel's death, hears the prophet's voice "we shall never meet again" and decides to outlaw consulting with the dead. The next scene is of David sneaking into Saul's camp and stealing his spear.

The final part of the film deals with Saul's death. His armies face the numerically superior Philistines and being unable to hear God's voice he seeks out the witch of Endor. Samuel's ghost appears - it's a highly ambiguous portrayal, Samuel's form is transparent and shrouded in green mist. The battle goes on and Saul and Jonathan die. The camera lingers on their dead bodies still upright and greyed out as if they are statues already yesterday's men being commemorated.

This is the true end of the film. There is a final scene but it's an epilogue accompanied only by the narrator's voice. David is crowned in the bright sun. It's pretty much the sun has been seen in the film. The occasional scene has been shot during the day, but the majority of it is portrayed at night, and dark colours dominate the film, particularly where Saul is concerned. The visuals throughout are striking actually. It would be easy to write off David and Saul as a mere cartoon, particularly as it lacks the expressionism of other films in the series, but the animation is far superior to most hand-drawn films: a true work of art. The use of colour is very strong, particularly the contrast between Saul and David, but also the evocative backgrounds, doing for this film what the scenery in so many westerns does for them.

David and Saul may not be a conventional take on the film, but it's all the better for it. Instead of a typical story of the underdog, it's a complex examination of the descent into darkness - mental or spiritual - of Israel's first king, and certainly the finest exploration of Saul that I have seen.

A.D. (Anno Domini) - Episode 5

2011-01-27T22:16:00.000Z

Of all the episodes of AD the final one probably contains the least biblical content and thus has the greatest concentration on imperial Rome. It opens with the conclusion to last episode's cliff hanger. Paul is taken into Roman custody to protect him from those in Jerusalem who are seeking to harm him. The film dates this towards the start of Nero's rule (played with relish by Brideshead Revisited's Anthony Andrews). This is a bit of a leap historically speaking (though possible), but it fits well the impressive way that the script is starting to pull-together the once seemingly disparate strands of plot that it started out with.

One of the key links in all of this is Roman soldier Julius Valerius, who now finds himself sent to Palestine to serve as Porcius Festus's second in command. Paul is not shown appearing in front of the Sanhedrin, and the interaction with Felix is also omitted. However, Festus visits the Jewish leaders (Acts 25) and Acts' unfortunate suggestion that the high priest is a key part of the plot to murder Paul is implied here as well. The veiled hatred in this scene is contrasted with the words of Paul in the next. Whilst he remains in his cell he repeats for his friends (that have assembled there) the words from 1 Corinthians 13. It's a superbly executed speech by actor Philip Sayer.

Paul appears in front of the court convened by Festus where matters are brought to a close by Paul's appeal to Caesar. We next meet him on a boat with Julius Valerius and Luke. This is the scene that I remember from my childhood (during its UK broadcast). Whilst Paul and Julius talk (pictured), Luke notes down the things that have happened / are happening. It was the first time I really thought about the fact that the gospels had authors. What I didn't appreciate at the time is that Julius who, as the programme has gone on, has gradually become more prominent, is also mentioned in this passage of Acts. Throughout AD he's been portrayed as a faithful and moderate Roman, rejecting the excesses of the empire in favour of open-mindedness and even-handed fairness. Now as he listens to Paul it's clear he's being drawn in. The film is about to underline the point that the noble qualities that Julius has displayed throughout find their home in Christianity. Acts records Julius as showing kindness to Paul. Both the memory of his name (which might otherwise be unlikely to be remembered), and his noted kindness give some support to AD's idea that Julius ultimately becomes a Christian. When they dock at Sidon Julius is baptised (this time in the sea).

Strangely Paul's shipwreck is omitted, this may be for budgetary reasons (though Jon Solomon mentions that this was considered an expensive production at the time). And so Paul arrives rather suddenly and is re-united with Priscilla and Aquila. He also meets Julius's wife and a number of others. But then he is released and heads off to Spain. My limited understanding is that tradition is divided at this point with some sources saying Paul was killed under Nero and others saying he survived it to preach in Spain.

It's at this point that the other part of this film I remembered (and indeed conflated with the episode above) occurs. As Paul heads off to Spain he says farewell to Luke. Luke feels that the future God is calling him to concerns "parchment, pen and ink". "I shall have to write down all that has happened. There are men and women as yet unborn who must know of the Acts of Paul." "Not just of Paul" says the man from Tarsus "but of all the apostles of the word".

As Paul sails out of Italy, Peter sails in. The two men's boats cross and Peter even enquires about Paul's boat. Peter immediately appoints Linus in charge of the church of Rome and whilst the film is very much done with Acts, it continues to depict much of early church tradition, namely the fire of Rome and the subsequent persecution.

The fire of Rome is portrayed fairly well. Nero is planning to rebuild Rome, but the fire is very much an accident - neither he nor the Christians are responsible, though Nero blames them nevertheless.

The persecution scenes in the latter part of the film are actually very disturbing. Peter is crucified upside down and Paul returns to Rome only to be executed by decapitation. This allows the film to support both strands of the traditions about Paul. Nero himself is present for Paul's execution which seems rather unlikely. Also as Peter raised on the cross the camera gives what is meant to be a point of view shot, though it rotates on the wrong axis.

But it's the scenes in the Colosseum which are particularly uncomfortable. Whilst their parents are being eaten alive by tigers and leopards we see a shot of their children playing joyfully dressed in lamb skins, seemingly unaware of the trauma they have in store. That scene is actually more disturbing by the scene of them getting ravaged by dogs moments later. The tension is heightened by Julius's daughter being amongst those sent into the arena, and for a moment is appears that she has been killed. When it's revealed that it was a similar looking girl who died instead the sense of relief, both for us and him, is somewhat slight.

The result is however that the remaining heroes finally become Christians, and take on orphaned Christians as their own. They return to Jerusalem remembering the words of Aquila "soon it will be night and we will be questioned about love". The film ends with a shot of Roman soldiers taking down the scaffold from Peter's cross in the sun. Words come up on screen "The Beginning". And so it was.

Through the Bible with Film

2011-01-25T23:15:00.005Z

I've been thinking for a while about whether to do anything Bible-filmy to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible seeing as there is quite a focus on promoting the Bible this year both in my own church and further afield. I think I'm going to host a series of film screenings working through the Bible. Ideally I'd like to get a nice mix. Rather than doing 9 biblical epics I'd like to mix styles, genres, countries of origin and so on. I'd also like them not to be too long (well under 3 hours where possible).

So I'm starting to form a list, which I thought I would share, partly as it might encourage some people to post their own lists/suggestions, and partly just because it makes the list-in-progress easier to find next time I want to look at it. I'm looking at about 6-10 films and so far this is my list:

Early Genesis - The Real Old Testament
Later Genesis - La Genèse
Exodus - Prince of Egypt
(Joshua/Judges - Samson and Delilah [DeMille])
Samuel/Kings - David and Bathsheba
Exile - Jeremiah
(Post-Exile - Esther [Gitai])
(Wisdom/Poetry - Solomon [Young])
Jesus - The Miracle Maker
Acts - Peter and Paul

That's between seven and ten depending on how many of those in brackets I do. I'm also slightly concerned that showing two films based on Genesis and only one about Jesus might be a bit imbalanced, but then again there's very little overlap between the two. Perhaps I should do one Jesus film that fits the Synoptics (Miracle Maker still) and something else that reflects John a bit more. Perhaps the two hour version of The Gospel of John might fit the bill. Now all I need to do is to figure out where to host it...

Does anyone else want to share their ideas?

An Interview With Me

2011-01-24T08:24:00.003Z

Back in the autumn, Kevin C. Neece interviewed me for New Identity Magazine. I've been meaning to mention this for a while, but have been rather busy of late. The interview was included in the Winter 2010/11 issue, where it can be found on page 23.

As Kevin is based in the US, we spoke on Skype, and the only slot we could get together was at about midnight my time, so part of me dreaded the interview coming out; I'm tend to ramble on and say silly things at the best of times. Thankfully Kevin's done a great job, managing to take my meandering words and make it sound like I have some level of understanding. That must have been some task, and I don't think I could have wished for better.

I should also mention that Kevin's new regular column commences in the same issue on page 32.

A.D. (Anno Domini) - Episode 4

2011-01-23T08:55:00.000Z

The start of this episode is mainly concerned with the goings on in Rome. Claudius has defied the senate's expectations and found his voice, and wants the Jews driven out of Rome, whilst Herod Agrippa has now been appointed in charge in Judea. (There's some conflation here between the Herod in the first

Paul has made it as far as Antioch and there he meets a Greek physician called Luke and baptises him. At the same time Paul, Barnabas and Agabus discuss the coming famine in Jerusalem and Paul and Barnabas set off to gather a collection from the various churches for those in Jerusalem.

Priscilla (pictured) and Aquila leave Rome for Corinth whilst back in Jerusalem Peter is arrested by Herod. Whilst in prison he hears of James's execution prompting him to pray for his life. The scene showing his escape is quite effective. There's no angel, all we see is a bright light shining through the window in the middle of the night. But as he looks out through his open cell door he can see the streets of his city where previously there were only the walls of the prison. The somewhat comical scene of him being left locked outside the prayer meeting petitioning for his release is omitted however. We hear of Peter's escape as Herod is told. There's a brief reaction and then a cut to the next scene where we are introduced to Linus, a recent convert, destined to the the second pope.

The key moment in this episode is the council of Jerusalem, which is opened by Peter announcing that James is to be leader of the Jerusalem church. It's a rather low key affair
with Paul seemingly absent - he's shown in Corinth preaching and there meets Aquila for the first time. Aquila is a great character in this production in part due to Tony Vogel's warm portrayal, and partly due to the way that the script expands the references to Priscilla and Aquila's generosity and hospitality to make these central parts of their characters. That said it's very much Aquila who is to the fore here, which seems to contrast with the picture we get from the New Testament where, very unusually, Priscilla is names first on four of the six occasions their names appear together. Vogel is something of a Bible film regular also starring in The Day Christ Died, Jesus (1999) and Jesus of Nazareth, not to mention his appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The three eat together and there's a passing reference to Paul's reception in Lystra and Philippi. It's somewhat surprising that the latter isn't shown. It's one of the more famous stories from the middle of Acts, and most other films about Acts show it. We're also not shown Paul's split from Barnabas which happens in between these other two incidents.

The second half of this episode is rather light on New Testament content, we see Paul preaching in an unnamed synagogue deftly summing up some of the places he has visited, and there's a scene of Priscilla and Aquila talking to three of the fictional characters in the story about how conversion can be quick or "a lingering slow sweet skill".

The episode ends however with Paul's return to, and arrest at, the temple. The episode ends on a bit of a cliff hanger in this respect. There's no mention of Paul sponsoring the ceremony of the 4 Jewish Christians, simply he and Luke appearing in the outer courts of the temple while his opponents round up the people they need to affect his arrest...

A.D. (Anno Domini) - Episode 3

2011-01-22T08:21:00.004Z

Saul may have been converted at the end of the last episode, but word has been a little slow getting around the Christian community, and even those who have heard are understandably sceptical. Leading the charge for the doubters is, of course, Thomas, who continues to be rather short in the joy department. In the meantime fear of Saul has driven the church further afield. The opening scene in episode three finds Peter (pictured) in Samaria, exorcising a man and scolding Simon the magician. The idea then comes to Peter that going around in threes isn't as effective as it might be, and so whilst Peter returns to Jerusalem, Philip is sent off to Gaza encountering the Ethiopian offical en route. Things are slightly different from Acts - the Ethiopian's chariot (a carriage really) overtakes Philip on the way. The scene is quite effective though and it's quite an interesting depiction of members of the early church coining fulfilment interpretation off the cuff. The baptism scene - shot from below - is one of the best so far, and it's the first time the emotional theme in the soundtrack fits rather than cheapening the moment.

Meanwhile Paul sees his companion on the road to Damascus killed by zealots and heads to Jerusalem to try and convince Peter and the others that he has been converted and to gain some instructions.

There's plenty going on in the Roman side of things. Caligula is continuing to be as mad a March, April and May hare, and the Jewish brother (Caleb) and sister (Sarah) are starting to fall in love with Romans. Caleb is falling for a Roman gladiator which doesn't really ring true, but it does bring some much needed sexual tension. Sarah is smitten by a prominent centurion who conveniently finds himself with access to Caligula, Claudius, Priscilla, Aquila and later on Paul. His experience watching Caligula order his army to collect shells on a French beach rather than invading Britain drives him to plot his emperor's assassination and it's not long until he and others carry out their plan and crown Claudius.

Peter then appears in Jaffa, and is called on to bring Tabitha back from the dead. There's a great scene of him and Thomas trying to remember what Jesus did in this kind of situation, and it's nice to see Thomas being the faith filled one rather than Peter. It all brings a nice angle to these events capturing the humanity of Peter which often seems absent in Acts. We also see him struggling with the fame that comes with his ministry.

The film's low budget (big name actors aside) is occasionally apparent, and it's here that it's most notable. We first meet Cornellius at the start of the episode in a sea side villa that looks suspiciously like the one in Capri Tiberius had retired to. Similarly Peter's vision is not shown, only his experience of it. Cornellius is converted and is baptised in a dirty looking rock pool by the lusciously blue sea.

Sarah's love (Julius Vallerius) is trying to buy her out of slavery and in so doing goes to Priscilla and Aquila for help (they have already helped him locate her). Aquila and Priscilla are two of the best characters in this production. Since not a lot is known about them from the New Testament, the scriptwriters have pretty much free reign in terms of how to use them and how to develop their characters, but there;s just enough in the pages of scripture to make their characters interesting. Not only is it through them that we see things such as the purge of the Jews from Rome, we also get to see them grow from a couple not really sure if they are Christians to people leading others to faith.

Peter's experiences in Joppa lead to another meeting of the church in Jerusalem where they try to come to a consensus on admission into the church and the relationship between them and mainstream Judaism. In the background here is Caligula's attempt to install a statue of himself of the Jewish temple. But the very next scene shows Caligula's assassination and the episode ends with the statue, which was still outside the temple, being toppled and destroyed in celebration of the news. Watching it today I couldn't help but think of a similar statue meeting a similar fate not to far away in Iraq. The fact that it's purely coincidental (unless this series was big in Iraq) is a useful reminder not to read too much into similar looking images.

On the Ideological Convenience of Q

2011-01-21T08:28:00.007Z

Having taught on Matthew, Mark and Luke in the autumn, I've been mulling over various issues related to the synoptic problem. One thing that I've been thinking about in particular is the ideological convenience of Q (the hypothesised sayings gospel which the majority of scholars believe was the source for the material shared only by Matthew and Luke).

Precise applications of the Q theory vary widely, but generally speaking it's held to be earlier than (or at the latest contemporary with) Mark, and having its roots in the first recollections of Jesus' words by those that followed him during his ministry.

Whilst New Testament studies is a broad field, there are nonetheless two major camps, though there is considerable divergence within each. On one side we have what we'll call the conservatives. Broadly speaking they hold to the position that the gospels are, if not actually infallible, an historically accurate representation of what occurred in the life of Jesus. On the other hand we have the liberals who reject this position, believing that the best way to access Jesus and his teaching is by historical reconstruction using the gospels as key sources.

Now I should be clear that I am not claiming that those who believe in Q do so purely because it suits their ideological beliefs. Nevertheless, it is interesting that Q theory does suit both groups rather well. For this latter group the presumed antecedence of Q suggests that it is also more historically reliable. As a result the ethical teacher Jesus we would find were a copy of Q ever to be discovered is a supposedly more likely reconstruction than Mark's apocalyptic exorcist and miracle worker. In a context where exorcism and apocalypticism seem 'a bit weird' but the power of words is greatly appreciated, it's not hard to see the appeal of the Q theory.

Conversely were the Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre theory to be correct (i.e. that Matthew used Mark and then Luke used both Matthew and Mark) then this would suggest that the miracle working Jesus we find in Mark is the most historically probable, and that there's an increased chance that the ethical teacher is the invention of the early church.

For the conservatives the appeal is slightly more straightforward. Agreement with Q theory not only gives them a degree of academic credibility - they agree with the scholarly consensus on this crucial issue - but it also bolsters the reliability of the later gospels. The gap in time may remain the same but Q acts as a crucial stepping stone providing reassurance that the Jesus of the gospels really does correspond to Jesus as he actually was.

As I said above, the convenience of the Q theory isn't necessarily the reason why any given scholar believes in the theory. It does mean however that Farrar theorists (and other Q-sceptics) have their work cut out in overturning such a sizeable majority.

Edit: In the comments, Mark Goodacre mentioned something that I meant to say when I originally posted this. It stands to reason, of course, that those who reject Q may also be doing so for ideological reasons, myself, no doubt, included.

A.D. (Anno Domini) - Episode 2

2011-01-17T19:26:00.003Z

In terms of the events depicted episode 2 of A.D. is probably the most momentous. In Roman terms there is the death of Tiberius (at the hand of Caligula according to AD as with Tacitus), and Caligula's sucession. In Biblical terms we have the conversion of Saul, doubtless the most significant event in Christian terms since the resurrection.

Before all that however we start with Peter and John and all the other apostles up in front of the Sanhedrin as a result of what they said after healing the man at the temple. Most of the Sanhedrin are livid and wanting to persecute but Gamaliel (who is usually the tolerant, if Christo-sceptical, member of the council) making his famous argument that they should be left alone. Gamaliel also adds (here and elsewhere) that he is impressed with their deeds such as helping the poor.

Others however are less impressed. The Hellenistic Jews are shown complaining that they are being neglected by the disciples in favour of the Jerusalem Jews. This leads Stephen and Philip to go to Peter suggesting something be done. Peter names Stephen and Philip as two of the seven deacons and leaves Philip to choose the rest. He does rather more than that however, also talking about a mission to the Greeks. Peter is seemingly against this. Whilst he tries to laugh this off with a joke about having already spent too much time on boats, the film does a good job of highlighting both the rift between the Hellenistic Jews and those from Jerusalem and the shortfall in Peter's thinking.

Stephen takes his commissioning as carte blanche to preach as he likes, and even Saul has to admit he is incredibly good at it. In fact he's so good that many are following him and he is beginning to be seen as a real threat to mainline Judaism. Saul, despite earlier having been Stephen's friend, reports him to the Sanhedrin. Stephen is pulled up in front of them, and much of his sermon from Acts 8 is reproduced here. It doesn't go down well and Stephen is imprisoned and later stoned (without giving a sermon). The filmmakers add some fake tension into this scene by showing Gamaliel rushing to the execution to try and spare Stephen's life - this is not an official execution, the mob has broken into Stephen prison and dragged him off - but to no avail.

This incident and Saul's sudden turn to zealotry is a bit of a worry for the Sanhedrin. Concerned with stirring up trouble in Jerusalem they commission him to go to Damascus where it's thought his mission will cause less problems with the Romans. Saul is on his horse with only one other companion. There are some rather poor special effects here (copied in the Bible Collection film on this story) and we hear no voice. Paul is led to Damascus, is restored by a seemingly unafraid Ananias and tells his companion that his mission is over he has become a Nazarene.

Meanwhile Caligula gets straight on with being insane, and also seems to be having some kind of homosexual relationship with Herod Agrippa, whilst the budding Roman - Jewish relationship has moved onto Rome.

A.D. (Anno Domini) - Episode 1

2011-01-13T23:56:00.000Z

I've been trying to get a copy of the full version of 1985's AD for four or five years now and having finally got hold of it I'm going to share a few notes as I go. I'll post some details about the DVD a bit later, but for now I want to focus on episode 1 and in particular the parts concerning the trials and triumph of the early church.

The series actually begins before the start of The Acts of the Apostles" with a story from Luke's first volume, the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24). Cleopas and his companion are quickly joined by Jesus as they hide behind a tree from some Romans. Jesus is rather annoying. He's quite smug and speaks in an Eddie Izzard-esque "Hello, we are the Romans" voice. The incident is shown at some length across several scenes and leading in to Doubting Thomas confession. Thomas's portrayal is even more extreme than it is in most such films. Not only is he a sceptic, but he's also very grumpy.

Interestingly though there's no ascension scene. Thomas's confession is followed by Jesus' promise of Matt 28:20, and a final dose of bread and wine. The camera pans round the disciples who are sat in a circle but when it returns to Jesus' spot, he has disappeared. At first it appears that he has simply disappeared in a similar manner to his arrival. However he's never seen again, and the next scene involving the disciples is the day of Pentecost.

Before then however we get a very nicely done introduction to Gamaliel and New Testament ers Judaism. Gamaliel is holding some kind of discussion with a number of men representing a good swathe of Jewish sects from the period. Present is Paul who is somewhat likeable if detached from the others, and Stephen who is yet to be converted but is still well on the way. A zealot contingent is also present. It's obvious from this episode alone that this production is at pains to provide a sold context for its story. Scenes like this and little details here and there do well at educating without being teachy.

The portrayal of Pentecost isn't very satisfactory. There's a build up with a mysterious blowing wind (despite all being calm outside) and then some kind of orange lighting effect whilst the disciples dance around. The accompanying music is terrible too so it's all rather disappointing.

This is followed by some kind of spontaneous procession into the temple (replete with people waving palm branches) and Peter delivers his sermon. He gets another chance to preach to a crowd in the final incident from the Bible in this first part. Peter and John appear in the temple and heal the man there. Peter gets to speak, as watched by some of the high priests and Paul who does definitely not approve.

The final glance we see of characters from the Bible is Stephen (pictured) converting and being baptised in the river. In many ways this episode is as much about Stephen as it is about Peter or Paul. The majority of the programme follows a paranoid Tiberius at Capri and a bunch of zealots trying to free one of their number from Roman arrest. Stephen is not a zealot but is determined to free the man (Caleb) as the two were wrestling prior to Caleb's arrest. But having introduced us to Saul/Paul the porgramme has been set-up nicely to learn more about Paul and his conversion in part 2.

Derrickson to film Goliath

2011-01-12T23:50:00.000Z

Both the Hollywood Reporter and deadline.com have the story that director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is to make Goliath, about the death of the Biblical giant.

Ryan Kavanaugh of Relativity Media is teaming up with Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen of Temple Hill to produce the film. Godfrey and Bowen previously worked together on the 2006 telling of The Nativity Story. The script has been written by John D. Payne and Patrick McKay. The Hollywood Reporter article says that the new film will be aiming to have "a modern vibe that harkens to the spirit of films such as 300 and The Bourne Identity. That makes it the second such film in production to aspire to be like the 2007 comic book-esque epic, the other being Fox's Moses movie.

The deadline.com article features a brief synopsis:

When the fierce warrior Goliath is sent to track down the foretold king of the Israelites, the young shepherd David gets thrust into an epic chase and adventure fighting for his own life, and his loved ones, in a battle between the young man and the giant.

That sounds a little different from the biblical account, so it will be interesting to see how this ends up.

I'm also interested to see what the film does with the fact that the more reliable Hebrew Bible manuscripts describe Goliath as about 6'6" rather than the more famous 9'6". I can't imagine, particularly given the citation of 300 above, that this is something the film will be looking to incorporate (although it would make casting a lot easier). Not only would it upset some Christians, but it will also be derided by those outside of the church, particularly those whose knowledge about Goliath only extends to knowing that he was a giant. That said, some kind of nod in that direction would be fun.

Old Thoughts on Peter and Paul

2011-01-10T14:00:00.005Z

Over the next few weeks there will be a number of posts on films based on Acts, mainly the two 80s TV programmes, A.D. (1985) and Peter and Paul (1981). I've now seen the first episode of the former, but writing up my thoughts on that will have to wait until I have a bit more time. So for now I thought I'd edit and post a few thoughts I wrote back in December 2004. Please be warned this is not he best, or most well informed, writing I have ever produced!

=============

Watching Peter and Paul is rather like reading the book of Acts. Obviously that's the intention - although the film is much more than a simple reproduction of Luke's second great work - but it also reflects the way Acts starts off well, but peters out towards the end (pun most definitely intended).

Hopkins is, as you'd expect, great value and he produces a really good mix of Paul the hothead that comes through so clearly from his writings. At the same time he avoids playing Paul as the kind of vitriolic bigot that he's so often caricatured as today. This view always seems a bit out of context, and casts him as someone who would be unlikely to achieve what he did. Hopkins does this better than any of the other actors I've seen play Paul, although surprisingly he delivers Paul's most vitriolic line ("why don't they just go and castrate themselves?") coolly and calmly, as if he's talking about removing a slightly annoying toenail clipping.

What I liked most about the programme was the way the script made constant biblical references like little extracts from the prophets, Psalms or now-familiar Pauline Hebrew Bible was pretty staggering when we consider that for him it wasn't all in one convenient little volume, he didn't have a concordance, and he didn't have the luxury of being able to leave a gap and cut and paste the quote in later. He seems pretty steeped in the Old Testament - I imagine he would have had to have memorised large parts of it to be able to pull out all the passing references and connotations he does - and the film portrays this rather well.

Paul is also shown referring to Jesus' teaching and here I was less convinced, particularly as he doesn't really do this much in his letters. We know he was familiar with bits of it, but he doesn't seem to use it that often and I'm not sure he would have known bits verbatim in their canonical form as the film suggests, particularly as some of those bits probably hadn't found this form when Paul was writing. But it is interesting how that as Paul goes on he uses Jesus' words less and less and starts to use his own words more. Perhaps this is suggesting that Paul's teaching started to drift from the message of Jesus, but it could simply mean that as Paul went on he had more and more confidence in his own material.

There are however a few moments in the second half, which particularly focus on Paul, which let things down. Dramatically the shipwreck in Acts 27 is potentially an exciting scene, but all we get is reference to a storm that is coming followed by a cut to a scene of the shipmates arriving on the beach clinging on to bits of driftwood. Likewise, the legal drama is left to the scene with Festus and Agrippa. I do find this a bit tedious in Acts, but I couldn't help wondering how much better these scenes might have been is they had been made by someone with good experienced of making legal dramas.

That said, the real let down is the depiction of Peter. Early on he seems to have decided he couldn't lead people despite a great Pentecost preach and called James in to do it for him. Peter then feels unhappy about the situation but tends to moan about it rather than getting on with the business in hand. He and Paul get on well and he seems to inspire Paul at the start but then doesn't speak to him for 8 years, and then there is the Council of Jerusalem and the clash of Galatians 2, and they never speak again. After this Peter wanders around going to Babylon (rather bizarrely) and eventually re-tracing Paul's steps, and only returning to real, on-the-edge, preaching once Paul dies. By this time it's only a matter of weeks before he'll die too, and it just seems like a dithering old man desperately trying one last attempt to make something of himself.

This is wrong for a number of reasons. Firstly Peter is played into a weak role. It's not Robert Foxworth's fault he can't match Hopkins, but the script for Peter is poor too. Key Petrine moments are erased completely - notably Peter's last main solo narrative with his vision and Cornellius. But later on we delve into fiction (or perhaps its less well known legend with the closing scenes) whilst ignoring more popular "legends" such as the Quo Vadis moment. Fatally ending on the weak Peter, means that the film ends really badly. Once Paul goes, so does any resemblance of interest.

Reconciling the Nativity Accounts

2011-01-06T08:39:00.003Z

A number of people have commented (both on this site and, in particular, at the end of my rejesus review) about the way that BBC1's recent The Nativity showed the magi arriving at the stable very shortly after the birth and the appearance of the shepherds. Whilst this is the most popular view (taking the nation as a whole) the majority of these comments considered this depiction to be incorrect. So seeing as today is the day traditionally associated with the arrival of the magi, I thought it would be a good time to tackle this particular question.

To start with I want to define three possible interpretations, and, despite what some might say, they are definitely interpretations.

What I'll call the popular view is the one that the average person on the street might describe, particularly (though certainly not exclusively) if they were not given the time to look at the texts or think it through. Essentially this pictures the shepherds and the magi arriving in the stable in the same evening - the night Jesus was born.

The traditional church view (which is something of a simplification) is that the shepherds arrived on Christmas evening, but that the magi didn't make it until Epiphany twelve days later.

The modern church view (and again this is just a name, though I deliberately use "modern" rather than "contemporary") is that Luke's shepherds arrived at the stable on the night of Jesus' birth but then Mary and Joseph stayed on in Jerusalem for a while. Eventually, when the census had passed and the inns had cleared a bit, they moved into a house and were visited by the magi some time (perhaps up to two years) later.

Those have objected to Jordan's portrayal of the popular view have, it seems, tended to come from either the traditional church view, but, in the main from the modern church view. Indeed this was a view I first heard when I was a child and it wasn't until 2001 when I heard any serious alternative interpretation.

It does make good sense. Luke's shepherds clearly visit on the night of the birth ("this day" v11, "with haste" v16) and, to modern eyes at least, there does seem to have been a change of scene by the time the magi arrive. Whether this change occurs within 12 days, or 2 years is seemingly less critical so the two church views are actually fairly closely linked.

The basis for the modern church interpretation rests on three critical points:

1 - Matthew (in English translations) uses "house" whereas Luke (again, in English translations) says there was "no room in the inn" and that the baby was laid "in a manger".

2 - Herod orders the deaths of not just the newborn babies, but also all infants two and under. This suggests either that there was some doubt in Herod's mind as to Jesus' precise age, or that the events were happening some time later (say one year) and Herod wanted to be certain that the child wouldn't escape simply because his soldiers couldn't tell the difference between a one year old and a two year old.

3 - The use of "child" in Matt 2:10 opposed to Luke's "baby" (2:16).

(There are potentially other supporting evidence such as the appearance of the star and travelling time, time consorting with Herod and so on, but these, even in the English translations, don't really present any difficulty to one side or give much support to the other).

In my opinion none of these create too much a problem. I'll take them in reverse order.

3 - Even in English the meaning of the word "baby" is a subset of the potential meanings for the word "child". Indeed Luke himself, in verse 17, switches to using "child" (paidiou).

2 - It doesn't take much to see that the logic of this point suggests that a cautious/paranoid Herod might command death to the twos and under even if he knew that Jesus was much younger. How big a margin of error would a paranoid, violent king want to ensure the threat to his power was removed?

1 - So this is really where the weight behind the interpretations lies, but, as is often the case, it comes down to our understanding of the culture and the Greek words used. And here we start to see both the popular view of the birth in the stable with everyone arriving together, and the two church views converge.

The first point is that neither gospel writer mentions a stable. You can see that even in the English.

Secondly the word translated "inn" (katalyma) covers a range of meanings. In the NT it occurs three times here and in Mark and Luke's accounts of the Last Supper (Mark 14:14 and Luke 22:11) all of which could be translated "inn", but in the latter two cases it's usually translated "guest room". Outside the New Testament it is more usual to find it translated "guest room", and conversely when Luke wants to talk about what we would call an inn, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he uses an other word entirely.

Thirdly, these varying translations of the Greek are bolstered by what we know about houses in those days and in that place. Rather than our prim and proper houses with neat, tidy and clean living rooms, things in first century Palestine were rather different. The houses often used to have two areas, an area where the animals lived, and an area where the humans slept. The advantage of this was that not only did you give your animals somewhere safer and warmer to sleep, but they also gave a bit of heat to your house in the middle of the night.

It's not hard to draw up a scenario, then, which joins all this together. Mary went with Joseph to his home town. As it was Joseph's ancestral home it's likely that they would be expecting to stay in their relatives house, as would generally be the case today. But when they arrive they find that the guest room is already taken (perhaps with other relatives harbouring the same idea) and so they bed down with the animals. This would be far more normal to them than it is to us today, after all they let their farm-type animals sleep in their houses. It's the modern equivalent of going to see some relatives and sleeping on the sofa bed in the lounge. In the middle of all this the baby came.

Of course whilst that means that the BBC don't necessarily lose points for having everyone arrive together, you could argue that they lose them instead for resorting to having the birth in the stable as per tradition, particularly as their 2001 documentary Son of God made this precise point. I think that would be churlish though, apart from the fact that it would probably alienate much of the general public, the film gives a massive nod in this direction by having Joseph go first to his relatives only to be rejected because of his pregnant not-yet wife.

So whilst I'm hoping that one day there will be a film which shows the scenario I've described above I don't think this was the project to do it, and the way that they did it broke new ground in a way that will make it easier for future versions of the nativity story to build upon.

All this does of course raises the question of whether this was what actually happened, or merely what Matthew and/or Luke had in mind when they wrote/edited it, but that would be another long post in itself.

Lastly, Sacrificium Laudis gives a more detailed and more informed perspective on what I've written above. Feel free to suggest any other relevant links in the comments.

Biblical Studies Carnival: Dec. 2010

2011-01-04T06:42:00.003Z

Photo by Tim Parkinson, used under a Creative Commons Licence

Joseph Kelly has posted a massive Biblical Studies Carnival for December 2010. It contains a link to one key post on The Nativity, which I had missed - an article by Helen Bond who acted as historical consultant for the programme.

Bible Films Blog Review of 2010

2010-12-29T07:29:00.004Z

2010 was a comparatively quiet year for Bible films, distinguished only by a couple of good TV series at the start and the end of the year. The start was Channel 4's series The Bible: A History, a seven documentaries that covered Creation, Abraham, The Ten Commandments, Daughters of Eve, Jesus, Paul and Revelation. Although it was Howard Jacobson's take on Genesis 1-2, a pre-Strictly Anne Widdecombe's defence of the Decalogue and, most of all, Gerry Adams's examination of the gospels that grabbed the headlines, it was the other programmes that proved the most interesting (Rageh Omar's tangential look at the Abrahamic faiths aside). Bettany Hughes's look at the women of the Bible, and Tom Holland's re-appraisal of Paul that stand out and Robert Beckford was, as ever, good value on the Apocalypse.

The length of Channel 4 series meant that it didn't end until early March, just a few weeks before Easter. The Easter period this year was certainly a disappointment. The last few years have seen a number of productions targeting Easter 2010 as a potential release date. Alas none made it through. The one exception was Eric Idle and Co's one-night-only screening of their oratorio Not the Messiah. It had been broadcast on New Year's Day in the UK, and didn't really grab me. It's funny enough in its own way, but most of the humour, for me, lay in remembering how funny the corresponding parts of Life of Brian are. Mark Goodacre disagreed.

One of the promised productions that was not released as originally suggested was the new Ben Hur mini-series. In the end it was only broadcast in Canada, which is funny because when I finally reviewed it, I did kind of like it.

And that was pretty much it until Christmas. While the world was preparing to celebrate Jesus's birth and the magi's journey to discover the new born king, the silver screen was being graced by what is, I suppose, another story of the same ilk. The story of the magi and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader are both stories about long journeys to seek the face of Jesus/Aslan which reflect our own journeys of faith. But despite having one of the longest titles in the history of popular cinema, Dawn Treader struggled at the box office. It was a shame given that it is arguably the best film in the franchise so far.

Top billing for 2010 however must go to the BBC's The Nativity. The four half hour episodes were striped across the week leading up to Christmas gaining decent viewing figures and good reviews. As much as I liked it, many of those I've read or spoken to seemed to like it a great deal more than me. For me, and this is probably just my rugby player side coming to the fore, it was just a little bit trite in places, a weakness easily forgiven in light of the other strengths the film displayed. It will be interesting to see what the BBC do with this. There was talk a while back of them releasing a series of animated films on the Bible, but it's been a long time since I read anything about that project.

There were a couple of other things worth mentioning about the last year. BBC2's series Rev, a humorous look at the life of an inner-city vicar was wince inducing and hilarious. Series 2 has been commissioned and hopefully we will see that next year. There was also a sad note as we lost one of the most prominent actresses from the (second) golden age of the biblical epic, Jean Simmons. Simmons starred in some of my favourite films and her versatile body of work will live on as testament to her talent.

Update on Kingdom Come

2010-12-28T08:03:00.003Z

Just a quick update on the planned New Zealand Jesus film Kingdom Come. According to The Dominion Post. The production owes $5.8 million (I assume that's NZD, each of which is worth about half a UK pound) to its 275 creditors, but has come up with an anonymous donor who has put up $1 million to pay off some of them and delay the rest for a year so that they can find the rest. The hope is that this donor, or others, might not only help the production clear its debts, but also provide enough money to see it through to completion. It seems like quite a big ask, but at least story isn't dead yet.

Review Round-up for The Nativity

2010-12-23T23:38:00.004Z

The fourth and final part of the BBC's Nativity aired earlier this evening , so I thought this would be as good as time as any to link to a few reviews. I'll start with my own review at rejesus.co.uk. It's shorter and more concise than my review for this blog and as I didn't have to leave out too much detail then it seems to have benefited form being re-edited.

Generally the series seems to have been something of a hit. The broadsheets (ignoring the pay-walling Times for obvious reasons) all praised it. The Independent praised Jordan's script. "He has done a proper stand-up job on The Nativity, pulling off the considerable trick of making the miraculous sound credible". The Telegraph is also in favour particularly the "impressive performances as Mary and Joseph by Tatiana Maslany and Andrew Buchan, who wear the haunted but determined looks of humble people suddenly endowed with terrifying responsibility." Their editorial also praises the production and they have a few photos from it in their Nativity Picture Gallery. The Guardian was similarly positive:

That's what is nice about this new telling of an old story: it will resonate, and it's relevant. It's very human, too, because that's what it's about, the characters and what happens to them and between them, rather than the message. In short, it's not preachy, and that's a relief.

The paper also had a story about an objection to the programme by Rabbi Jonathan Romain. The BBC denied Romain's claim that the portrayal of Nazareth's synagogue leader was anti-Semitic citing his overall role in the story. And it's not just Romain who's objecting. According to the Daily Express, the media's go-to Christian-nutter-spokesman Stephen Green of Christian Voice is criticising the programme for using its "imagination". Whatever next! To give Green his due, he also raises a number of other objections, all of which are equally ridiculous.

Back in the real world. Doug Chaplin has been reviewing each episode straight after broadcast (see 1, 2, 3, 4). I'm really glad Doug has done this, not only because it's far more in-depth than my own reviews, but also because going through episode by episode results in a very difference approach and discussion. Overall Doug is positive about the drama but not about the history.

It's also got good marks on the IMDb: 8.6 at present. I think that's a little high personally, but I'm kind of pleased to see it doing well. It also did well in terms of ratings. According to digitalspy.co.uk the first episode was watched by "an impressive 5.21m" placing it second for the night behind only David Jason's Come Rain Come Shine's 5.78 million. This is slightly higher than the audience for 2008's The Passion which peaked at 4.9 million viewers. The Nativity has held on fairly well too. Episode 2 recorded 4.8 million.

If you've not yet had a chance to watch it, all four episodes are available from the BBC's iPlayer for another week. I'm fairly sure that this will be UK users only.

You can read my previous posts on this production here. I've had a few comments on the assumed inaccuracy of the magi and the shepherds arriving at roughly the same time. If I get time I may devote a post to this question, but for now allow me to point towards a sermon by Ben Witherington III and Mark Goodacre's podcast, both of which (indirectly) explain why this is at least a possibility.

Christmas UK TV Schedule 2010

2010-12-21T13:27:00.000Z

Regular readers are probably sick of me saying this but, at Christmas and Easter I like to do a little preview of any Bible films or related programmes showing over the festive period. All times are GMT (24 hour clock) and anything starting after midnight is listed under the next day.

MON 20th DEC
The Nativity: Part 1 [2010] BBC1 19:00
Star attraction for this year is BBC1's four part mini-series The Nativity. My review of the film went up earlier, but I'd recommend that you watch it and judge for yourselves. Episode 1 intrioduces us to Mary, Joseph and Mary's parents Joachin and Anna. Parts 2-4 are showing from Tuesday 21st to Thursday 23rd also starting at 7:30pm.

TUE 21st DEC
The Nativity: Part 2. BBC1 19:00
Part 2 of the BBC1 drama that started on the 21st. Mary takes a trip to see her cousin Elizabeth and gain her advice. Part 3 is broadcast on Wednesday the 22nd December.

WED 22nd DEC
The Nativity: Part 3. BBC1 19:00
The penultimate episode finds Mary's father begging Joseph to take her with him on his census trip to Bethlehem.

THUR 23rd DEC
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [2005] BBC1 15:50
With the latest instalment of The Chronicles of Narnia franchise Voyage of the Dawn Treader currently doing the rounds in cinemas, the Beeb is showing the two previous films in the series, starting with Lewis's Jesus parable The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Prince Caspian airs on Christmas Eve.

The Nativity: Part 4. BBC1 19:00
Final episode of the mini-series, and the strongest bringing together all the strands from the previous three episode with a fitting climax.

Jesus Christ, Superstar [1973] ITV1 23:50
It's a passion play set to music so it's hardly Christmassy, but it's still probably the Jesus film that has the widest following (excluding Life of Brian) and so it's good to see it getting a run out in the lead in to Christmas. Fans of Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd-Webber's musicals based on the Bible should also tune in on Boxing Day for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

FRI 24th DEC
Prince Caspian [2008] BBC1 17:15
Part 2 of the Narnia franchise is the worst of the three in my opinion, not least for the terrible span-eesh accents that were mercifully dropped for part 3. If they ever get Ben Barnes to re-dub his role I'd be keen to see it, but otherwise for all it's profundity and impressive CGI, Caspian is still somewhat painful to watch.

SUN 26th DEC
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Channel 5 17:10
I'm never quite sure whether Technicolour should have a "u" in it or not. It's the kind of question that might keep one entertained during this terrible version of the Joseph story. This version starts off set in a school and is super, super camp. Bizarrely, the only other version of it I've seen was that performed by my own school over twenty years ago. I suspect that may have had the edge over this, although Donny Osmond fans will no doubt treasure it.

Aside from the above on the main terrestrial channels there are a few films on the satelite/cable channels that will be of interest to Bible film fans including a good number of Cecil B. DeMille films. Here are some highlights:

Fri 24th Dec - Indie: A Serious Man [2009] (20:00)

Sat 25th Dec - More4: The Robe [1953] (09:00); Sky Movies Classics: Cleopatra [1934] (06:40), Ben Hur [1959] (12:10 and 22:45) and The Bible, In the Beginning [1966] (18:05)

Sun 26th Dec - Sky Movies Classics: The Bible, In the Beginning [1966] (04:35), Samson and Delilah [1949] (09:20), The Crusades [1935] (11:30), Spartacus [1960] (13:45 and 22:40), Cleopatra [1934] (17:00)

Mon 27th Dec - Sky Movies Classics: Samson and Delilah [1949] (01:50), The Crusades [1935] (04:05)

Thu 30th Dec - Film 4: The Ten Commandments [1956] (11:00); Sky Movies Classics: Ben Hur [1959] (17:30); Indie: A Serious Man [2009] (11:35 and 18:30)

Review: The Nativity (BBC1)

2010-12-20T09:40:00.003Z

I think I’ll always remember the Christmas of 1981. My little brother had been born just a couple of weeks before and landed his first acting role, as baby Jesus in our church’s re-enactment of the first Christmas. This year has provided another similarly unforgettable moment when my daughter Nina performed in her first school nativity play.

Given how many people have taken part in a nativity play, it seems strange that professional actors so rarely get the chance. The 2006 film The Nativity Story was the first time an English language film on the subject had been cinemas since 1914. Television has proved a more popular medium with a couple of US TV movies from the 1970s and 2007’s Liverpool Nativity among them. Nevertheless, a decent, recent, historical attempt at explaining the origins of our culture’s most widely celebrated seasonal festival is long overdue.

Whilst The Nativity isn’t flawless it certainly goes a long way to addressing the imbalance. Tony Jordan’s script skilfully blends together the two differing accounts from the gospels of Matthew and Luke, weaving in scientific theory and cultural exposition with great ease without ever being ruled by them. Take for example the trouble that Mary and Joseph have finding accommodation in Bethlehem despite it being the town his family is from. It somehow manages to answer queries such as this, whilst simultaneously nodding to some of the now cherished traditions that have grown up around the text.

The biggest problem with the programme is that while Jordan’s experience in writing a soap opera gives it a realistic ordinariness, things occasionally feel a little bit twee. This is primarily the case in the opening episode where Joseph and Mary spend a little too long during their betrothal party starring gooily into one another’s eyes. That said, it certainly improves thereafter.

This may in part be due to the actors. Andrew Buchan’s turn as Joseph is overall very good, but I only bought into his character once Mary had revealed she was pregnant. From there he undergoes an emotional journey which mirrors his physical journey, drawn towards his destiny step by step, one small act of goodness at a time. In contrast Mary (Tatiana Maslany) spends most of the series trying to formulate exactly what it is that she is involved in, only for all the pieces to drop into place once Jesus is born.

If the first episode is the weakest, then the last is certainly the strongest. It’s here we see Jordan pulling together the film’s three main threads into a quite moving finale. Wisely Herod’s slaughter of the innocents is excluded which means that the story’s climax is Jesus’ birth and the arrival of the shepherds and the magi. Jordan has talked about this being a “love story” (a genre of which I must say I’m not hugely appreciative) but making this aspect of the story culminate at the same time as the more important story does underlines the latter’s importance. God’s son has come to Earth.

At its heart The Nativity is a very human take on the story. When Gabriel appears to Mary it’s very low-key. There’s no dazzling light, indeed as he appears to Mary outside, and during the night, it leaves open the slight possibilities that this might not be an angel at all or that she may only be dreaming. Joseph’s encounter is stripped down even further. Gabriel remains off-screen, so we only hear about what has happened because Joseph tells us next morning. This is, for me, is actually one of the best and most inventive parts of the series, holding very closely to the biblical text, and yet offering a very fresh interpretation of it that seems very plausible in such a sceptical age.

The human emphasis on the story is apparent in other ways. The only parts of the gospel accounts to be excluded are the announcement of John’s birth, the encounters with Simeon and Anna, and the songs of Mary and Zechariah. Then there’s the birth scene itself which breaks from certain traditions in order to deliver a fairly realistic portrayal of the child’s birth. Of all the attempts to depict the moment that Christ came into the world this is definitely the most plausible. And added into this mix are the back stories of the Magi and one of the shepherds.

Overall, I think this is probably my favourite portrayal of these events on film. Whilst it doesn’t quite match up to the best aspects of The Nativity Story, it certainly stays well above that film’s worst. The Nativity Story never quite knew what it wanted to be. This production is much more sure footed, and, as a result it’s more consistent. Jordan and director Coky Giedroyc are content to take their time over the first few episodes to build their characters, setting up very effective cliff hangers at the end of each episode in an attempt to pull the audience back the following night. Those who take the bait will find it well worth the wait.

Part 1 of The Nativity airs tonight at 7pm on BBC1, with parts 2-4 showing from Tuesday to Thursday at the same time

Trailer for BBC1's The Nativity

2010-12-14T10:10:00.003Z

Mark Goodacre has the news that a trailer for BBC1's The Nativity has gone online at YouTube. The trailer is definitely going for that traditional family feel, and Jordan's soap-operaexpertise is very much to the fore in the snippets of the confrontation between Mary and Joseph. I have to say I really like what I've seen of the annunciation. The Angel Gabriel is really quite unremarkable and naturalistic, which should prevent the programme dating as others that have gone for a more supernatural angle have in the past. This even makes Pasolini's young girl look a little showy. It will be interesting to see whether that opens the door for any of the characters, not to mention the audience, to view this event sceptically.

There's also a piece on this in print edition of the Christmas Edition of The Radio Times with a brief capsule review of each episode available online.

Jim Davila has linked to an article on the programme in yesterday's The Independent. It's by Gerard Gilbert, who was actually an extra in The Jesus Film (1979), and he goes on to discuss a few of the well-known Jesus films, including this witty line on The Passion of the Christ: "At least the actors spoke in subtitled Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic, so we didn't have to listen to English being turned into a dead language, as it is in most Jesus films."

Lastly, there a small website on the film courtesy of the Church Media Network.

The Nativity: Broadcasting Dates

2010-12-10T22:26:00.003Z

Mark Goodacre has the news that Red Planet's website finally has the broadcasting times and dates for the BBC's The Nativity. The four episodes will be screened on BBC1 from Monday 20th to Thursday 23rd December 2010, starting at 7pm. Each episode will be half an hour.

There doesn't seem to be anything new on the BBC's website. Even the Christmas highlights page on the Religion homepage doesn't mention it.

I did come across an article by Peter Graystone of the Church Army who saw the film at a press preview screening in October. He talks about some of the details of the programme, and is incredibly positive about it. Here's a quicjk excerpt:

It is not just moving, it is funny (very), believable (totally), sexy (yes!), tense and profoundly full of the grace of God. And the awe of God too - the writer Tony Jordan has worked a miracle.

I'm hoping to get in touch with someone regarding this film soon, but I've barely had a chance over the last fortnight to try and contact the relevant person.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Ten Commandments

2010-12-10T21:21:00.003Z

I saw the new Chronicles of Narnia film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, yesterday and my review went up at rejesus this afternoon. I'm always limited to around 500 words which means that I often don't get to make all the points I'd like to in these reviews.

One such point regards the green mist that kidnaps slaves from the Lone Islands never to be seen again. Now this mist isn't itself found in the novel - the book is rather episodic and so would lend itself much more readily to a TV series. It actually seems to be drawn from two elements of the next book - "The Silver Chair". Here the main plot is that Caspian's son has been kidnapped, and later on it emerges he is kept sedated / enchanted by a witch using green mist.

What struck me in watching this device in play was the similarity of the effect with Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film The Ten Commandments. There a similar looking mist crawls along the ground, only rather than an undisputed force for evil, it's intended to represent God's Angel of Death, only rather than entrapping slaves as it does in Dawn Treader, it is liberating them. The parallel highlights the troubling nature of the text and, as a result on this occasion, DeMille's adaptation.

I don't have much to add to what I said in my review about the link between Aslan and Jesus. The Jesus/Aslan of this film at least is much more the divine figure / Great Lion of faith than the Aslan of history. That's fine, although it doesn't interest me quite so much. The film loses some of the point of the book which is very much about a voyage of faith anyway, although I was pleased to see that the line about Aslan being known by another name in our world remained intact.

There's one final thing to say about this film. After watching it I watched the review of it on Film 2010 starring Claudia Winkleman. She ended with the astonishing statement "We should also warn people... there’s a lot of religious symbolism...". I'm pretty miffed about this in honesty. I get that it's probably a "joke", and I worry that by objecting to it I might end up sounding like Lord Carey, but for goodness sake.

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode gave her a bit of stick about this today, mainly along the lines of it being such an obvious statement that a CS Lewis film would contain religious symbolism.

For me though, it was the implication that religion is such a bad thing that people need to be warned off it which left a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth. People are of course entitled to their views (however snarkily phrased) but this programme isn't about discussing religion per se, nor is it about Winkleman's personal opinions.

To be fair she may have been intending to criticise the film for it's heavy handed handling of the religious themes and the lack of subtlety it displays in this regard. I do agree actually agree with this, sort of, although this trait is more down to the book than the film. But if this was her intention then it was expressed most clumsily, which does rather reinforce the low opinion I formed of the show's new approach during the first programme in the series.

Gospel of John:4-6

2010-12-08T08:14:00.004Z

(From a series os posts looking at Visual Bible's Gospel of John).

Chapter 4 of John's Gospel starts with Jesus taking a short cut through Samaria and his meeting with a Samaritan Woman. It's a fairly rare scene in Jesus films. On the one hand this is a surprise: most films try to up the involvement of women to widen their appeal to both sexes. However, at the same time one of the ways that they do this is to enhance the role of key women (notably the Marys of Nazareth, Magdalene and Bethany) in order to make them into more fully rounded, fleshed out characters. This women is clearly not any of those three. She's not even Jewish.

So whilst it's not the realms of possibility that a filmmaker might try and mix her in with her Mary Magdalene it hasn't happened yet (as far as I can recall at least). Only a handful of films have shown this scene although it does appear in the earliest Jesus film I have seen La Vie du Christ (1899) and its subsequent updates (Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1902-1905) and Son of Man (1915)). I think its significant that these films were more tableaux than films about people with developed plots.

Since then only the Living Christ Series and Il Messia have covered this story aside from the Gospel of John. It's disappointing then that this scene is relatively poor. Perhaps its just me, but I don't find the actress playing the Samaritan to be at all convincing. She seems fairly at ease with her state in life (whereas I think she would be far more broken), she looks Jesus in the eye, and whilst there is a hint of flirtatiousness there's little to connect her to her past. Even the way she runs through the disciples rather than around them suggests confidence.

One of the differences between John's Gospel and the Synoptics (only Matt and Luke in this case) is that whereas they have a centurion asking Jesus to heal his servant, John has a basilikos (translated variously as courtier / royal official / nobleman). Given that this occurrence happens in Cana, Galilee (Capernaum in Matt/Luke) it seems likely that a courtier would be from Herod's court, rather than a Roman. Yet here, either sub-consciously or in a deliberate attempt to harmonise John with Matthew and Luke, the official comes in the garb of a Roman soldier.

I've commented on the this film's portrayal of the healing at the pool before, and I've nothing more to add this time around. What follows is a confrontation with the Jewish authorities (as the Good News translation, and therefore this film, has it). This ends in the shot above which is meant to be artful, but ends up feeling rather contrived. I am interested however in the contrasting use of black and white clothing for Jesus' opponents. I've been noticing recently how often Jesus' opponents wear black - which certainly goes a way to suggesting that they are the "bad guys", and therefore is rather unhelpful. Is this, then, an attempt to restore some balance, or a way of showing that Judaism was actually rather diverse at this point with different parties with strongly opposing views? For most of the rest of the film the Jewish authorities wear black, but this perhaps ties in with the opening title card explaining that the gospel perhaps exaggerates / invents some of the enmity that existed. By depicting these opponents in such a caricatured fashion it encourages the audience to take the extent of their opposition less seriously.

I quite like the portrayal of the feeding of the five thousand here, barring the moment when everyone all gets up at once, which is a little unconvincing. But the lack of fanfare surrounding the miracle itself is a nice piece of understatement.

Rather more showy is the scene of Jesus walking on water. This film is now 7 years old, but it holds up reasonably well. Of course we know that some of this was done with a blue screen, and other bits are done in a water tank, but it works reasonably well.

Gospel of John:1-3

2010-12-05T09:16:00.005Z

(From a series of posts looking at Visual Bible's Gospel of John)
Having worked my way through all of Visual Bible's Matthew and half of the Genesis Project / New Media Bible's Luke the group I lead is now on to John and so I'm going to work through the Visual Bible's Gospel of John in a similar fashion.

The first thing I notice is that John is very much a step up in terms of quality. Christopher Plummer is a better narrator than Richard Kiley, widescreen is better than 4:3 and just the quality of the filmstock and sets makes this a better viewing experience. The script is less adaptable however, and I suspect that will start to grate sooner or later.

A couple of observations on the first couple of chapters. Firstly, John is the only gospel where Jesus isn't baptised (or at least John doesn't tell us about it), but the film puts in in anyway, as a flashback as John the Baptist is speaking.

Secondly, the clearing of the temple scene is really good here. Whilst I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of a Jesus quite as angry as this one (particularly as it's not really clear why) this is pretty much the only film to depict this scene plausibly in my opinion.

Lastly, it always seems strange to me that Jesus doesn't get to deliver the immortal :) words of John 3:16. Plummer gets these, but I'd always thought (perhaps wrongly given some modern translations) that these are words spoken by Jesus rather than the author. I might have to look into that one.

Biblical Studies Carnival: Nov. 2010

2010-12-04T08:25:00.000Z

Photo by Tim Parkinson, used under a Creative Commons Licence

Never quite got around to posting the link to last month's Biblical Studies Carnival and now November's is upon us. (I never know whether they should be named after the month which they review or the month when they are published. Ever since they went on a temporary hiatus the numbers seemed to have stopped!). Deane Galbraith has compiled a very thorough summary of the month's news including some coverage of the SBL Conference. Thanks to him for all his work.

In a twist to the usual procedure he has also compiled a top 30 list of Biblioblogs based on quality rather than traffic. (And no, I don't make that one either...)

The Albert Schweitzer Movie

2010-12-03T23:05:00.004Z

Not many historical Jesus scholars have had films made about them, in fact biblical scholars generally tend to live lives that offer little to Hollywood screen writers (though Raphael Golb may prove to be an exception). So I was surprised to find that last year there was a film made about Albert Schweitzer. True it seems to be about the period of his life after he wrote "The Quest for the Historical Jesus", but nevertheless I can't think of many others. I know one of the enemies in Star Trek was called the (Marcus?) Borg...

Interestingly, it features a handful from Jesus films. Schweitzer is played by Jeroen Krabbé who played Satan in Jesus (1999), Barbara Hershey plays Schweitzer's wife here having, of course, played Jesus' wife (Mary Magdalene) in Last Temptation of Christ and then Samuel West played King Caspian in the BBC edition of Voyage of the Dawn Treader (not actually a Bible film, but topical so I'll toss it out there anyway).

Has anyone seen it? It doesn't look like the greatest way to spend 114 minutes, particularly as his ground-breaking book is unlikely to feature. Still, will they be making films about Jim West in the years to come? I rather suspect not.

Bulk Buy Marchiano's "Jesus, Yesterday, Today and Forever"

2010-12-01T19:57:00.003Z

I should really have posted this when I first got it, but it's been a little busy recently (I know I always say that!). Anyway Marchiano Ministries are selling boxes of 24 copies of Bruce Marchiano's coffee table book "Jesus, Yesterday, Today and Forever" for just $49 including P&P, which works out as a little over $2 per book (or 78¢ if you exclude the seemingly arbitrary amount for P&P).

The book is 112 pages of images from the Visual Bible's Gospel of Matthew which I discussed in some detail a couple of months back.

The offer runs out on Friday, so anyone who is interested needs to get their skates on. Cheques to Marchiano Ministries, 11333 Moorpark St. 171, North Hollywood, CA 91602 or email marchiano.ministries@gmail.com.

Pasolini the Wheat and the Chaff

2010-11-30T22:02:00.003Z

I've just been writing a piece for The Reader magazine on the political aspects of Pasolini's Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo. I'll hopefully post that article here in time, but for now just one observation that I picked up watching bits of it tonight.

The observation comes in part from thinking about Pasolini's politics and part from reading Mark Goodacre's thoughts on Matthean phrases that occur in the double tradition. Anyway, throughout Matthew the harvesting imagery is fairly prevalent. So it was interesting to notice that as Jesus leaves the wilderness, the first people he encounters (albeit passing them in the field) are a group of men with winnowing forks separating the wheat from the chaff (c.f. 3:12). This is to be a key theme in the ministry of Jesus the film portrays.

On a related note, last month the Guardian did a number of Top 25 film lists, and this film ranked number 10 in the Top 25 Arthouse Films and, as a result, got a new write up by Andrew Pulver. It's a good summary though I must admit I prefer Derek Malcolm's review for the same paper from ten years ago.

More on The Nativity (BBC)

2010-11-27T22:53:00.005Z

The BBC have just released their press pack for next month's The Nativity. There are still no dates for the broadcasts, although in the interview for the press pack writer Tony Jordan says it will play in prime time the week before Christmas. There are also interviews with Tatiana Maslany (Mary) and Andrew Buchan (Joseph), as well as Al Weaver who plays Thomas the Shepherd.

I've written a piece previewing this production for rejesus.co.uk and there was a brief mention of it in Monday's Daily Telegraph. Christianity.org.uk has a couple of extra photos, including one of Peter Capaldi.

Thoughts on the Synoptic Problem

2010-11-26T06:19:00.002Z

As regular readers will know, I teach a course which tackles a different book of the Bible in order each month. The last three months have seen us discuss Matthew, Mark and Luke a key part of which has been the Synoptic Problem. It actually works fairly neatly. In the first session I introduced the idea of the Synoptic Problem without going into solutions, and we looked at how Matthew might have adapted and added to Mark. The next session enabled us to go into the two main options over which book came first, and I put the case as to why I believed in Markan Priority. The final session, therefore, allowed me to go into the last stage of the problem, and the existence of Q.

One of the things Mark Goodacre dislikes is the way many people give their solution to the Synoptic Problem (usually Markan Priority and Q) before ever presenting the evidence around it. Since I agree with Mark's principle, I thought it was important to present the questions around the double tradition as neutrally as possible (whilst still, ultimately, giving my own opinion). What this led me to, however, was the realisation that there are actually three possible explanations to the double tradition (assuming one accepts Markan Priority as we had established last time).

The most well known of these is that Matthew and Luke worked independently using a now lost source (Q). Goodacre also argues for the possibility that Luke knew and used Matthew. But, theoretically at least, there's a third possibility: that Luke was written first and Matthew used it as a source. What surprising is that not only does no-one appear to believe in this option, no-one even gives it any consideration. Indeed in trying to draw up a list of arguments for and against, I had to devise/derive them all myself. That in itself, is obviously one argument against, but I also managed to come up with some more based on the texts than scholarly consensus.

I came up with two main types of argument "for" the idea that Matthew used Luke. The first are those that are also used to support Luke's use of Matthew. So into this camp fall arguments for simplicity, lack of evidence from church tradition for Q and the major (Mark-Q overlaps) and minor agreements.

The second group were harder to come up with as I couldn't just borrow them as I had done with the first type. One of the arguments here is the idea that Luke is more primitive than Matthew. In honesty, I offered this one with the large caveat that I was only aware of a couple of prominent examples ("Blessed are the poor in spirit" and "Our Father in Heaven") and had no idea how representative they were of the differences between Matthew and Luke in General. But if Farrer theorists can argue away the "alternating primitivity" argument from their side , then it was possible that the same might be ture from this side. The next argument was that Matthew's theology is more developed than Luke's. The example I cited was the church discourse in Matthew 18, but a case could also be made for the apologetics we find after the resurrection, not to mention the corpses raised from the dead at the point of Jesus' death. Lastly I argued that since Matthew's structure was the most developed (5 key discourses mirroring the Torah) that this also would support the theory that Matthew wrote last.

When it came to the arguments "against" I could only find two (aside from critical unanimity against), but they were fairly decisive. Firstly, the fact that Luke is almost never the middle term in the triple tradition. Most of the time its Mark. Not infrequently it's Matthew. It's almost never Luke, which is not what we'd expect if Matthew had used Luke.

The second main argument is that of editorial fatigue. When one double tradition author tries to adapt the other but lapses back into the original wording it's always Luke failing to coherently adapt Matthew, never the other way around (despite frequent instances of editorial fatigue when Matthew is using Mark). That said, there are relatively few examples here (at least that are cited in Mark Goodacre's paper), and even then not all of them are convincing. (In the case of Matt 13:16-17 / Luke 10:23-24, whilst given the broader trend of Matthew to Luke this seems the most feasible option, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Matthew was tidying up Luke rather than vice versa).

Having done the session on Monday I returned to the question of the minor agreements as I had argued that fairly poorly (having forgotten some of the details) and did, in fact, uncover an argument against from another piece by Mark Goodacre. Here he argues that the language used is so typically Matthean in certain passages of the double tradition that it's hard to ascribe it to anything other than Luke using Matthew.

Ultimately, I still hold to the Farrer theory, but it seems strange that there is so little material exploring the possibilities in the direction of Matthew's use of Luke. Does anyone have any others, for or against?

One other point I wanted to raise, apt for this time of year, was regarding Luke supposedly erroneous citation of Quirinius's census. I didn't research this thoroughly at all, but in the main it seemed to be taken as read that because Josephus disagreed it was taken that Luke was wrong. I wanted to ask, are there any other sources for this verifying Josephus, and if not why is it so widely accepted that he is right? Can anyone help me with this? Even most of the conservative arguments defending Luke seem to accept that Josephus is right, resorting to arguments over the precise wording to defend Luke.

Warner Bros. to Make Moses

2010-11-22T08:34:00.002Z

Over at Arts and Faith, Peter Chattaway has linked to news from NYmag.com about two new Moses films in production by major studios. I reported on Fox's plans for a 300-style Moses film last year, and the NYmag piece doesn't really add much to what was known then.

However, the Warner Bros. project, is something that neither Peter nor I had heard of before, and seems to have a reasonably strong team behind it. Dan Lin (The Departed) and Matti Leshem are going to be producing the movie and British screenwriter Stuart Hazeldine and US writer Michael Green (Heroes) are said to be supplying the script any minute now.

There are a few more articles on this story available via this IMDb page, but I doubt any of them beat NYmag's headline. First-class pun-ditry.

Genesis Project: Luke Ch.1-4

2010-11-18T08:33:00.004Z

Having worked through Matthew's gospel a couple of months ago with the Visual Bible series, I've now moved onto Luke. (Last month was Mark for which there is no word for word version). I'm not going to have the time to write on this one as extensively as Matthew, so this will be in four or so parts (one per video cassette) rather than 14.

The story behind this film is rather complicated, and the signs of this complexity are most obvious in these opening chapters. Back in 1974 John Heyman founded the Genesis Project, also known as the New Media Bible (not in the sense New Media means today). He wanted to film the entire Bible, and began work in 1976, but only got as far as making chapters 1 and 2 of Luke before he realised he was going to need a lot more money. So Heyman decided to team up with Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ. Bright and his organisation would help fund Heyman's project and in return he'd make them a shorter Jesus film that could be used as an evangelistic tool. The film was to become known as The Jesus Film and it was released in 1979. Heyman figured the film would help promote his project as well as fund it. John Dart has written a more detailed account on the back story to this project and that film, and there's a 2003 thread at Arts and Faith where Peter Chattaway and I discuss how the two projects relate.

What's strange is that the two productions have different nativity scenes. By the time the movie came to being released, the films of the first couple of chapters of Luke had been around for three years. In the meantime the actress that played Mary was now unavailable and Heyman decided not to use the new footage to spruce up the start of the word-for-word film.

The series starts with Luke on a hill reading from a scroll. We get an establishing shot of Zechariah and Elizabeth so we know who he is in the following scene at the temple. Both Zechariah and Mary are visited by an angel with a big afro-style hair cut. This is shot quite effectively with the light behind him in order to give the impression of a halo.

One of the curious aspects of this film is that, in contrast to the later Visual Bible film, it appears to be entirely narrated. What's even more unusual is that we can here that the film also features a background track in Aramaic. So Mel Gibson was not exactly breaking new ground by using Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ despite what some people claimed at the time.

These comments aren't so much a formal review as just some extended notes on the film as I watch it, so I'll just chuck in a minor observation here that when Jesus is presented in the temple and meets Simeon and Anna, we also see Zechariah. This links nicely to the next scene where Zechariah's son, a particularly scraggly John the Baptist, in baptising people in the River Jordan. We see Jesus baptised, and an actual dove land on his shoulder. According to Brian Deacon (Jesus) this scene was horrendous to film as it involved him standing in cold water for hours whilst they tried to entice the dove to land on his bird-seed covered shoulder. That anecdote however does serve to highlight a subtle change that Luke makes to Mark (and Matthew's text). Whilst in all three gospels the dove is only a simile - the Holy Spirit descends "as a dove" - only Luke stresses that this happens "in bodily form". In the other three gospels the implication is that this is imagery, rather than an actual bird.

One of the biggest hurdles in filming Luke is the genealogy. True it's not as potentially problematic as in Matthew, where it's right at the beginning and so likely to scare some people off before they even get started. Nevertheless it's very easy to make such a scene deathly boring. What Heyman and Sykes do is narrate the list of Jesus' ancestors over an action shot of him walking. In contrast to the Visual Bible version only rarely do we see "Luke" and as this is our first introduction to Jesus and he is almost marching through a rugged terrain, it's actually fairly engaging.

Jesus' destination is the desert where he will be tempted. The devil is represented by a snake, which, it could be argued, is perhaps the best physical approach to portraying Satan in a Jesus film. It's not time bound, or so open to interpretation as many other approaches. That said I don't think I can recall a film which portrays this as all being in Jesus' mind, although Scorsese's take might be interpreted that way. The latter two temptations are depited by frosting in an inset of relevant images. It turns out that these are actually taken from the model of Jerusalem and the temple from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. As I've been using the stills of this model found at the IMJ's website it was strange to see the model pop up so obviously in the film. It's a good way of making this sequence more interesting at a very low cost however.

One of the best scenes in the Jesus film also occurs in these opening four chapters: Jesus delivering his gospel manifesto and his resulting rejection at Nazareth. I made some comments on this scene a few weeks back which I'll reproduce here for ease:

This film is an adaptation of Luke so it's not surprising to find that it's the one that most closely corresponds to that gospel. We see Jesus sitting on the floor and covering his head and kissing the scriptures before reading them. The wording here is pretty much as per the gospel. It even includes Jesus being brought to the cliff edge though whilst the narrator describes Jesus walking through the middle of the crowd we only see him walk away from them.

This film differs however in one crucial way. Whereas in the Jesus film an audience member links Jesus' words with a claim to be the messiah, in this production no such claim is made. The narrator sticks to the text which, in fact, doesn't link Jesus' declaration to a claim to be the messiah . In the text, Jesus causes an uproar not because of any messianic claim, but because he anticipates his rejection by the Nazarenes (and, by implication, the Jewish people in general) and predicts God working amongst the Gentiles instead.

The tape ends at the end of chapter 4 with the healings of a demon-possessed man, Simon Peter's mother-in-law and the crowds that come to Jesus when words of these miracles gets around.

(This production is only available on VHS, and it's pretty rare, although there is one copy for sale at jesusonscreen.com).

Death of Dino De Laurentiis

2010-11-11T23:49:00.003Z

I was sorry to hear of the death of Dino De Laurentiis, producer of Barabbas, La Biblia and a few other minor Bible films. It was only last year that I reported on the celebrations for his 90th birthday.

De Laurentiis produces over 160 films including the Hannibal series, Conan the Barbarian, Flash Gordon and Fellini's La Strada, but I will remember him for The Bible: In the Beginning. It was a pivotal Bible film for me and one which contains some of the best ever scenes from Bible films.

Comparison: Good Samaritan

2010-11-10T07:48:00.003Z

Last week I looked at various Jesus film portrayals of Jesus' Gospel Manifesto from Luke 4, as part of trying to find a suitable clip for a session on Luke I'm taking. I also want to include a clip of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so I thought I add a few notes here as well (times indicate the point at which the relevant clip begins).

Kings of Kings (1961) - 1:28:20
Whilst Ray's Jesus is one who speaks about "peace, love and the brotherhood of man", the story part of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is missing. All that is left if the question "I'm a camel driver, who can I call my neighbour?" and Jesus' answer "He to whom you show mercy and compassion, whether you know him or not. This is all part of the Sermon on the Mount scene.

Godspell (1973) - 35:08
One of Godspell's strengths is the way it creatively re-tells the parables, reflecting the fact that when Jesus first spoke them there was a freshness and vitality about them. Here the Godspell trope act out the story with their hands. There's a slight change to the characters here, We get a priest, a judge along with the Samaritan, rather than a priest and a Levite. Curiously however there's a suggestion that the Samaritan is drunk.

At the end of the parable, the Samaritan is then hoisted onto someone's shoulders and paraded along until Jesus interjects with Matt 6:2-5 ("So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets...").

Il Messia (1975)
This is the only film to show Jesus telling the parable in standard fashion. In fact it's a fairly unremarkable sequence, in keeping with the off-hand way Rossellini has Jesus deliver much of his teaching. Sorry I didn't note down the starting time for this one.

Jesus (1979) - 60:48This was, for me, the most memorable moment. Initially we see Jesus being questioned as per Luke, but then there's a watery dissolve into a dramatised version of the story. It's wordless, accompanied instead by a incredibly memorable little jingle, before we dissolve back to Jesus and the crowd. A couple of points here. Firstly, all three of those who approach the beaten man do within a very short period of time. This keeps the story brief, but it does rather let the first two off the hook to a small extent. The road looks busy, so the hurrying by looks less like desertion and dereliction of duty than it looks like simply leaving it to someone else. Secondly, here it's a woman who asks Jesus the initial question rather than an expert in the law which makes the scene softer and less confrontational. Likewise it's a young girl, not the original questioner, who answers Jesus' closing question, leading Jesus into "suffer the little children" passage.

Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999)
This version has Mary telling Jesus the story as a boy in keeping with the high view of Mary the film has. Jesus ends by asking "so the Samaritan was good?" to which Mary, rather curiously replies "yes, even though he was a Samaritan". The scene following this one links in, showing Jesus getting beaten up by a group of boys but refusing to fight back.

Miracle Maker (2000) - 45:50
This is one of the sections in this puppet animated film that switches to 2D, hand drawn animation, and it's done in a rather angular spiky style, which might actually be quite scary to younger children. It also explains some of the cultural reference points such as how the priest believed it made him unclean to touch a dead body, the Jewish people's hatred of the Samaritans (even showing one the children shouting out that he hates them). In the context of the film this is probably my favourite portrayal, but for a free-standing clip I don't think it would work so well.

So none of these are ideal really. What I probably will do instead is show the Mitchell and Webb version of the story, which never fails to amuse me, and ties in somewhat with Mary's response in Mary, Mother of Jesus

Book Review: Exodus And Leviticus for Everyone

2010-11-09T12:42:00.005Z

Exodus and Leviticus for Everyone
John Goldingay

Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: SPCK Publishing (21 Oct 2010)
Language: English

ISBN-10: 0281061262
ISBN-13: 978-0281061266

Tom Wright’s New Testament "...for Everyone" series of Bible commentaries have proved to be very popular, so it was only a matter of time before someone decided to try the same approach for the books of the Hebrew Bible. Step forward John Goldingay, professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in the US and former principal of St. John’s College Nottingham (UK).

Having dealt with the first sixteen chapters of Genesis in volume 1, Goldingay, along with SPCK - who are also the publishers of the Wright series - have moved onto Exodus and Leviticus for the second volume. Part 3 - Numbers and Deuteronomy - is due out in the UK later this month.

As the series’ title suggests, its aim is to give an overview of the books that is accessible to all-comers. Like Wright’s series, and William Barclay’s similar series from the middle of last century, Goldingay offers his own translation of each passage before attempting to summarise it, typically offering personal anecdotes to enlighten often obscure parts of the Old Testament. Some of these stories work better than others. At times the links are a little too tenuous, or require such a deal of explanation that the advantage gained is fairly minimal. That said, they did draw me into the explanations that were to follow, and give me a greater appreciation of the author and his life.

Goldingay’s translation, on the other hand, sustains a real freshness throughout. I don’t know a word of Hebrew, so I can’t vouch for the legitimacy of his choices, but they are often bold, causing certain nuances to leap out. Part of this is because such a large proportion of popular translations are essentially re-workings of the King James Version, but even the choices made in translating individual words give a new angle on familiar passages. It’s a shame that not all of the text is translated - often one part of a passage is translated whilst the other is merely summarised - but this is understandable given the nature of the project, and the length of the Old Testament relative to the New.

The difficulty in housing Exodus and Leviticus under one introductory roof is that typically most people are far more familiar with the former than the latter. In particular, many of this book’s target audience will have grown up with the stories of Moses and the exodus from Egypt. It’s difficult therefore to provide an introduction to Exodus which is consistently both accessible and informative. Most readers turn to commentaries seeking fresh insights, and whilst I recognise that Exodus is one of the books I have studied in more depth, I think the average church-goer, at least, will have heard much of this in one forum or another. Whether this is his failure, or merely a small flaw in what is a strong concept overall, I remain unsure.

Leviticus however is entirely another matter. Here, and to a lesser extent in the later chapters of Exodus, Goldingay’s work is excellent, managing to explain one of the Bible’s most impenetrable books in a way that makes it seem fresh, accessible, and, dare I say it, fascinating. Time and time again I came away feeling that I had gained a whole new perspective on the book and it’s implications for today. I’ve only dipped into commentaries on Leviticus before, but I feel I would recommend Goldingay’s work here to all but the most seasoned Torah-expert. Given that the average Christian gives a wider berth to the majority of the Hebrew Bible than a fictional Levite on the Jericho to Jerusalem road might give to a heavily beaten man, the outlook for the rest of the series looks promising.

That said, one of the problems with working through the Old Testament in order, particularly for a series that aspires to being wide reaching, is that the first few books contain a number of hurdles that risk alienating large swathes of readers. Genesis is the first - your take on creation will often cause some readers not to progress. This second entry in the series again it comes into contact with a number of controversial texts: how will the author handle God’s violence against the Egyptians in Exodus or the verses often cited from Leviticus as being anti-homosexuality?

On the first, Goldingay seems a little troubled by Exodus’ anticipation of the conquest of Canaan, covering the issue in his section on Ex. 23:20-33, but ultimately he’s seemingly content to accept the text’s reasoning. But the anti-homosexuality verses (18:22 and 20:13) are passed over. It’s possible to infer Goldingay’s take on the issue from his careful explanation of how similar passages function, but not to dealing with this issue specifically is an error. Whilst it’s no more than a passing reference as far as Leviticus is confirmed, in our culture this is Leviticus’ most well known / discussed verse (as any search engine will quickly confirm). To ignore these verses in a commentary aimed at the average person on the street is undoubtedly something of an oversight.

Another omission that will surprise many experts on the Hebrew Bible is the absence of a detailed discussion of the documentary hypothesis and the hypothetical sources behind the text. Goldingay makes a number of passing references to there being various sources behind Exodus, particularly when there seems to be some kind of conflict between them, but he avoids mentioning JEDP, Graf-Wellhausen or redactors. Whilst this is unusual, I think it’s the right call. Opinion on the sources behind the Pentateuch have become so diverse over the last century that there is very little consensus. Indeed many of Goldingay’s target audience will come from backgrounds where it is still widely agreed that Moses wrote the Torah almost single-handedly. To wade into such a complex issue would risk alienating many of the “Everyone”s who might choose to read the book. It could be argued that at least mentioning J, E, D and P might be useful, but again, if there’s to be no specific analysis of those sources, then simply explaining that there different sources seems a wise approach.

Goldingay’s approach to this issue typifies the way that the book consistently pitches things at the right level. Whilst this arguably leaves the Exodus section of his commentary seeming a little pedestrian, it results in a superb and insightful explanation of Leviticus, and the translation means that even without the commentary more seasoned students of these two books will find plenty to chew on.

'Jesus Christ, Superstar' at 40

2010-11-08T23:25:00.003Z

This week's The Culture Show on BBC2 featured a short piece on the 40th anniversary of the release of the original 'Jesus Christ, Superstar' album. Such was the popularity of Rice and Lloyd Webber's concept album it was only 3 years until it was adapted for the film. The programme includes an interview with Rice and Lloyd Webber as well as a closer look at the artists involved in the original recording including a few excerpts from Murray Head (Judas).

Viewers in the UK can catch the show on iPlayer. Everyone else will have to satisfy themselves with listening to the original album on Spotify's smarter younger brother, we7.

Audio Interview on The Nativity

2010-11-07T07:32:00.004Z

On Thursday I picked up on a post from Mark Goodacre about a soon to air programme from the BBC, The Nativity.

I got an email shortly afterwards from Raspberry Rabbit and an anonymous comment telling me towards an interview with the series' writer Tony Jordan from this year's Churches Media Conference. You can listen to the mp3 at Raspberry Rabbit's blog. Thanks to both of them for pointing me towards it.

This seems to be exactly the same forum that Nigel Stafford-Clark was interviewed at in 2007 in the run up to the BBC's The Passion. This is further evidence to support Mark's theory that this production will be very similar to that one.

News on BBC's The Nativity

2010-11-04T21:51:00.007Z

Mark Goodacre has just unearthed news of a new BBC drama called The Nativity which will (presumably) be going out this Christmas. I'm a little surprised not to have heard anything about this before. Mark links to a BBC press release from April which was quickly picked up by both The Telegraph and The Guardian and, of course, the BBC's own website.

Top billing seems to be going to The Thick of it/In the Loop's Peter Capaldi who will play one of the wise men (Balthazar). Quite how much screen time Capaldi will get remains to be seen. The programme, which will be shown in four parts, will "focus on the love story between Mary and Joseph and their 'emotional turmoil' over her pregnancy".¹ I can't help but think that, come the broadcast, I might find myself hoping that the wise men will get sufficiently lost to enable Balthazar to really lose it. But in all seriousness a more restrained performance is probably what he needs right now.

Other actors include Art Malik as Nicolaus, Andrew Buchan as Joseph, Tatiana Maslany as Mary, and Vincent Regan as Herod. I've long been a fan of Malik's and thought he would be well suited to a role in a Jesus film. 2010 has obviously been his year for that: he also features in this year's Ben Hur. Buchan was good value in Cranford and I suspect he'll be a good, if a little traditional, Joseph. I thought Maslany and Regan were both new to me, but Maslany provided a voice in Eastern Promises and Regan has good epic-film form having had smaller parts in Troy, 300, Jeremiah, Clash of the Titans and Joan of Arc/The Messenger.

The Nativity has been written by former Eastenders writer Tony Jordan. Three years ago Jordan revealed, in an interview with The Guardian that he'd been working on the script for two years, which means that it's been a five year project for him. Stark contrast with Mike Rich who penned the script for The Nativity Story in just 6 weeks (although had researched it for a year before hand)². Jordan's Red Planet Pictures are producing and there are a few pictures showing there on their page on the programme.The first photograph here appeals to me more than the second. The blue dress gives a strong nod to tradition, but a weaker nod to historical probability. I think I prefer the grittier approach to the material as found in the earlier parts of The Nativity Story. Mind you all that had evaporated by the time baby Jesus arrived so it's not a fair comparison, and this is just a publicity shot, so I'll withold judgement until I've actually seen it, particularly given so many of the other quotations surrounding the film seem so positive.

All in all it seems that this film will be something of a prequel to the BBC's The Passion (2008). Certainly more in that direction that The Liverpool Nativity from 2007. Hopefully I'll be able to find out a bit more about this over the next few weeks. Roll on Christmas.

Comparison:Jesus Gospel Manifesto

2010-11-03T07:50:00.004Z

I want to use a clip to illustrate Luke's portrayal of Jesus' rejection in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30). Luke is the only gospel to depict Jesus reading a particularly apt text from Isaiah which narrows my focus somewhat. Whilst a few more versions of this episode are out there I'm going to focus on those below as the quality of the other films overall is too poor to make them a serious possibility. So these are those listed in Staley and Walsh from which I will also cite start times and chapters in brackets (Region 1). The unbracketed timings are my own (Region 2). I've excluded Pasolini and Saville's films here as they are based on the accounts in Matthew and John respectively. I've also included the scene from Mary, Mother of Jesus which is not included in Staley and Walsh's book.

Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
From 1:33:30 (1:36:51)
Instead if shooting this scene from inside a synagogue, Stevens films out in the open air, next to a pool where a number of people have gathered. There are quotes from all 4 gospels, but particularly John (e.g. 10:24), and the critical quotations from Luke. When the confrontation is over Jesus walks away with his back to the camera and we see someone throw a stone at him that hits him squarely on the back

Jesus of Nazareth (1977)
From episode 2 10:33 (1:43:00)
This takes the scene almost directly from Luke alone. There are a few dramatic flourishes, but the location of this clip (right at the start of Jesus' adult ministry) and its inclusion of the fulfilled OT prophecy both suggest Luke. After Jesus has made his statement, Mary repeats the key phrase "today in our hearing the scriptures are fulfilled". We also see Jesus being ejected from the temple and there's a similar shot of Jesus' back as was found in Greatest Story. This time however no stone is actually thrown. This is certainly the version that came to mind when I started thinking of portrayals of it and so I may well use this one.

Jesus (1979)
From 13:00(0:15:11)
This film is an adaptation of Luke so it's not surprising to find that it's the one that most closely corresponds to that gospel. We see Jesus sitting on the floor and covering his head and kissing the scriptures before reading them. The wording here is pretty much as per the gospel. It even includes Jesus being brought to the cliff edge though whilst the narrator describes Jesus walking through the middle of the crowd we only see him walk away from them.

Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999)
From 0:56:55
This film is usually pretty dreadful, but Bale is capable of turning any scene into something memorable so I thought this might be worth a try. And so it turned out. There's a bit of an underemphasis on the words Jesus speaks, but a few nice touches. For example, as Jesus is reading from the scroll another man moves a pointer along the text to help him keep his place. When Jesus begins to close the scroll in the middle of a section the man gives Jesus a shocked look. The confrontation that ensues goes on quite a bit, but it's still a fairly good scene. There's also a visual nod to Jesus of Nazareth as we see Jesus in the synagogue from behind the screen that separated off the women.

Overall it's interesting that other than Greatest Story all these portrayals are keen to show Jewish customs relating to synagogues. All 3 of these other films also join up the dots for the audience by explaining that Jesus was claiming to be the messiah.

Alexandr Dovzhenko in Cambridge

2010-11-02T09:01:00.003Z

A while ago I mentioned in passing my brother Geoff Page. On top of writing musicals (such as one on Burke and Hare which played at the Edinburgh Festival a year or two back long before the current film version) he also occasionally accompanies silent films.

This Friday Geoff is providing a live accompaniment to two Alexandr Dovzhenko films in Cambridge (UK). I'm trying to see if I can get there, but the 7pm start will make it a bit tricky. The films he'll be playing along to are 1926's Yagodka Lyubvi (Love's Berry) and the following year's Sumka Dipkuryera (The Diplomatic Pouch). Together they last about 75 minutes in total.

The films will be showing at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse which rather disappointingly has an extensive write up for it's screenings of Peppa Pig but no information on these rare films. There is however a promo video which contains some footage, as well as a facebook event page.

Incidentally, Geoff and I have talked about doing a silent Bible film event together - him doing the playing and me doing the talking, so if anyone would be interested in putting something like that on, please let me know.

Some Apologies

2010-11-01T17:47:00.005Z

I know I quite often find myself apologising for longer periods with no new posts, but I think my recent hiatus has been the longest since I first started this blog almost 5 years ago now, so sorry!

Annoyingly it's not for want of content - I have stacks to post about and hope to resume normal service shortly - it's just been a bit crazy over the last fortnight. Thanks to all of you who have sent me bits and pieces of news I hope to get them up shortly. Please do keep them coming.

Apologies also that I've not replied to any emails or comments lately. I hope to get onto that shortly as well.

Lastly, my last post here was all about using video clips in PowerPoint presentations. Well, I should have that the moment you think you have got something sorted and start telling people about it something pops up to prove you wrong. And so it proved. Days after making the post I tried to use a clip from Life of Brian and one from Jesus (1979). I could have done these using clips from youTube in the manner described but I decided to aim a little higher, go for the second method and found it was a little trickier than I had imagined. In the end I did both, but (for some reason) I had to do my trimming in Windows Movie Maker which is now free to download. It's not great for making your own films, but it's another way of doing this when other programmes mysteriously don't work. So sorry to anyone who tries what I talked about last time and found it hard going. I'll be reply to the comments on that thread as a matter of priority.