'John' tells Gospel truth, word for word (GoErie.com - Erie Times News)

Carter Lumber

By RICHARD N. OSTLING
Associated Press

TORONTO � Mel Gibson take note: There's another new film about the life of Jesus that also depicts Jews' involvement in the events leading to the Crucifixion. But this one has several Jewish producers and has attracted much less controversy.

While Gibson's "The Passion" won't be released for months, Jewish and Christian commentators already are debating whether its gory treatment of Jesus' death will rouse anti-Semitism. By contrast, there's no advance acrimony surrounding "The Gospel of John," which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on a symbolically chosen Sept. 11.

"John" is a Canadian-British production made for $15 million, roughly half the cost of Gibson's film. It opens in four U.S. markets Sept. 26, then 75 others through the autumn, mostly in cinemas across the southeastern Bible Belt.

Gibson's movie, which he funded, co-wrote, produced and directed, puts all the dialogue into the ancient Aramaic and Latin languages. "John" has a different oddity. The script is in English but consists entirely of John's Gospel, word for word.

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Garth Drabinsky, the Canadian producer who heavily shaped "John," is Jewish. He thinks John's Gospel, which most scholars believe was written around the end of the first century, is an inspirational masterpiece in which one of the themes is the conflict over Jesus among Jews.

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In making the film, Drabinsky hired University of Toronto retiree Peter Richardson to enlist an advisory board of scholars consisting of five Protestants of varying views, a Roman Catholic sister and two Jews.

One of the Jewish scholars, Alan Segal of Barnard College, told a Toronto media preview that "it's a stunning and illuminating film." But Segal also acknowledged that, of the four Gospels, John is "the most Jewish in its subject matter, and the most anti-Jewish in its perception."

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Jim Davila posted my Counterpunch on the controversy surrounding �The Passion� on this site, generally praising it (thanks, Jim) but indicating that he had �serious problems� with three points in particular. I�d like to briefly respond to those below, at his invitation.

8. Mel Gibson is a devout, if dissident, Catholic. Anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, and accused of hostility to feminists and gays, Gibson is no model of tolerance.

Davila found this unfair, and on reflection I basically accept the criticism. Being anti-abortion or pro-death penalty is not to lack tolerance but merely to have an opinion. And I don�t know how Gibson relates to feminists and gays in his personal life. Feminists and gays have criticized aspects of some of his films (for example, the depiction of the homosexual relationship between the prince and his lover/advisor in Braveheart, and its impact on his princess-bride, although I personally have no problem with it). What I wanted to say is that Gibson is associated with conservative views that are in fact held by many anti-Semites, and for the ADL or anyone else to be concerned about his intentions in his film is thus especially understandable.

11. Objective historians consider the "real" history underlying the Passion storyline unclear. Most concede (although some scholars contest this) that there was a Jewish man living in the Roman province of Judea in the early first century CE who, killed ca. 30, became an object of worship of the Christian faith.

Davila says he knows �of no living, serious scholar in historical Jesus studies (and by �serious� I mean people who publish in the major peer-review journals and present papers at the major conferences) who holds the view that Jesus never existed�. If Professor Leupp has specific people in mind, I'd be interested in hearing names and references.�

First of all, my piece, appearing on a political website, was not intended as a thoroughly scholarly discussion, which I (as a Japan historian) am not best-qualified to produce. My point was to encourage a dispassionate approach to the question of Jesus and his representation by people holding different points of view. In that context, I think it was reasonable to include the parenthetical note that not all scholars concede Jesus� historicity. I did not specify that I referred to contemporary, peer-reviewed scholars. But Albert Schweitzer was surely a �scholar,� and he wrote that the Jesus who said he was the Messiah and preached the kingdom of heaven upon earth �never had any existence.� G. A. Wells (who is, whatever else, surely a scholar) in several works challenges the thesis that a Jesus remotely similar to the figure in the Gospels ever existed. One may dispute their scholarship, and it isn�t my point to uphold it. (My own view is more along the lines of Crossan�s.) But the alternative to expressing myself as I did would be to say, �All scholars agree that there was a Jesus such as is depicted in the Gospels.�

32. This concept of a god undergoing a horrible death, descending to the netherworld, the rising from the dead, offering salvation to humankind (or to select believers), is not unique to Christianity but occurs in other religions once popular in the Middle East. The Babylonian god Tammuz (earlier, the Sumerian god Dimmuzi) rises from the dead, due to the actions of the goddess Ishtar, on the third day.

Davila says the Sumerian god was not the object of a resurrection cult. But it�s my understanding that his cult led to that of Tammuz, who was dead & resurrected. A scholar of classical Egypt wrote me in response to that piece that �one might make the case that� the dead-god-rising �is the standard pattern,� listing also the cults of Adonis and Antinous. I happily leave the details to specialists. My modest point (which I think Christians in particular need to hear) is that the death and resurrection drama is not unique to their faith and that the latter may have borrowed from pre-Christian cults.

I�m glad these issues are being debated on this site. Gary Leupp

Traveling the Silk Road (by "S.B." in Archaeological Odyssey via Archaeologica News)

In the 1870s, the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the name die Seidenstrasse�the Silk Road�to refer to the 5,000-mile-long trade route that connected China and the Mediterranean in ancient times.

Richthofen thus imbued the immense terra incognita of Central Asia with romance. But he also created something of a misnomer: There was not just one route connecting East and West, but several; and silk�craved especially by Roman women�was just one of the treasured commodities transported along these routes. Intrepid caravans carried spices, gems, gold, ivory, works of art, furniture, garments, perfumes, exotic animals and much else across the Eurasian steppes.

Even more important, the great east-west highway carried knowledge: ideas about medicine, printing, engineering and cosmology. Along these routes, monks traveled side-by-side with merchants, instructing those they met in the secrets of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity or Islam. From about 200 B.C. to the 15th century A.D., the oasis towns of Central Asia witnessed an exchange of cultures that had no precedent in human history.

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The Silk Road�s greatest legacy is the exchange of religious beliefs and ideas that took place along its caravan routes�the teachings of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Confucianism and others. Who knows how long it would have taken Buddhism, which originated in India, to reach Central Asia and China had it not been for the merchants and monks, those early cultural ambassadors, who stopped at the oasis towns on the Silk Road�places such as Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, Bactra and Kashgar�bearing scriptures and winning converts?

I would guess that there is one, and only one, chapter of the Bible that most people in the English-speaking world know by heart. We may remember a lot of stories about Adam and Eve, Noah, Joseph, and Moses. We may be able to recite the Ten Commandments, parts of the Sermon on the Mount, and other passages that have entered into our literature. But when it comes to an entire chapter, I suspect that the only one we remember completely is chapter twenty-three of the Book of Psalms, the Twenty-third Psalm, �The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. . . .�

Even if you cannot recite the entire psalm perfectly, you know it well enough to say it along with a congregation, the way many of us sing along with �The Star-Spangled Banner� at a baseball game. We are so familiar with the Twenty-third Psalm that when a new translation of the Bible comes along, using archaeological and linguistic evidence to help us understand more accurately what the original Hebrew and Greek meant to say, we are uncomfortable with the �improvements.� We welcome the rewording of the stories, stripped of the Elizabethan vocabulary of the four-hundred-year-old King James translation (done in the time of Shakespeare). We don�t miss the use of �begat� and �wouldst� and �thee� and �thou.� But when it comes to our favorite psalm, we crave familiarity more than accuracy.

Why do we love this psalm so much, more than any of the other 149 psalms in the Bible? Why do we reach for it at moments of personal distress, cherishing its recitation at funerals and memorial services? It is a beautiful literary creation, but the anthologies are full of beautiful writings, and they don�t capture our hearts as the Twenty-third Psalm does. In just a few lines, it conveys the distilled wisdom of generations, offering us a way of seeing the world that renders it less frightening, teaching us to deal with the loss of people we love and with conflict with people who don�t like us or who treat us badly. It shows us how to recognize the presence of God at times and in places where we might think God was absent or when we might be so distracted by our own concerns that we would overlook God�s presence. It has the power to teach us to think differently and, as a result, to act differently.

Dwindling sect attempts to rebuild in Iraq

By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
Published 9/2/2003 7:43 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- The end of the short war brought long-awaited news for the Mandeans, an obscure religious sect that follows the teachings of John the Baptist and takes a somewhat dim view of Christ and Mohammed though it respects all religions.

Documents recovered from the vaults of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided answers for what happened to 69 of the sect's members who disappeared. They were executed. A mass funeral laid their souls to rest Aug. 8.

The Mandeans, or Sabeans as they are known in Iraq, are still awaiting news of 73 others, all of who disappeared during the 40 years Saddam's Baath Party was in power. It's a paltry number compared to what other groups have lost to political violence in Iraq, but when you are among 20,000 like-minded believers, each one counts, says Alaa Dhlh Kamar, the spokesman for the church in Baghdad.

The U.S. led war exacted its own toll -- 31 Mandeans died in the bombing of Baghdad, 13 of them in a single house, Kamar said.

Despite the losses, which are felt grievously, it is a great relief for the Mandeans to be free of Saddam. The regime made a big show of allowing the Mandeans to practice their religion unfettered, as they were considered "people of the book" -- actually mentioned in the Koran -- but Kamar says it was just that: show.

"We practices freely in the public media only," he said.

The Mandeans were a periodic stop for the international media as it trouped through pre-war Baghdad. Their unusual baptismal ritual -- often once weekly, with the adherents in glowing white robes -- and multiple simultaneous weddings made for good television and good public relations for the regime, which systematically slaughtered Kurds, Shiites and political opponents.

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The Mandeans were not allowed to have schools for their children to teach them the ancient Aramaic in which their sacred texts are written. Al-Ginza Raba, which means "the greatest treasury," their holy book was translated into Arabic by a famous Iraqi poet two years ago after more than 2,000 years in the lost language. The religion will have a hard time recovering from 40 years of oppression.

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8. Mel Gibson is a devout, if dissident, Catholic. Anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, and accused of hostility to feminists and gays, Gibson is no model of tolerance.

11. Objective historians consider the "real" history underlying the Passion storyline unclear. Most concede (although some scholars contest this) that there was a Jewish man living in the Roman province of Judea in the early first century CE who, killed ca. 30, became an object of worship of the Christian faith.

32. This concept of a god undergoing a horrible death, descending to the netherworld, the rising from the dead, offering salvation to humankind (or to select believers), is not unique to Christianity but occurs in other religions once popular in the Middle East. The Babylonian god Tammuz (earlier, the Sumerian god Dimmuzi) rises from the dead, due to the actions of the goddess Ishtar, on the third day.

The extreme revisionist position, as summarized by William G. Dever in the March/April issue of Biblical Archaeology, is that the Hebrew Bible is the product of the religious and cultural identity crisis of Judaism in the Hellenistic era, dating from the fourth to the first centuries B.C.

This was a period in which Judaism came into full contact with Greek culture, and needed desperately to form a clear sense of its own identity in order to survive. According to the revisionists, the Torah is essentially literature, and is a "social construct" reflecting the religious interests and propaganda of a late, elitist theocratic party within Judaism.

According to these critics, there was not an "early Israel" as a distinct ethnic entity from the 13th to the 11th centuries B.C., as described by the Torah, no Judahite state before the late eighth century, and no significant political capital in Jerusalem before the second century B.C.

Even Dever himself, once thought of as a traditionalist, does not believe in the full accuracy of Hebrew text. In his Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 280 pages, $25), Dever says that while the Exodus stories "may rest on some historical foundations, however minimal," the Israelites did not spring primarily from the people who fled Egypt, as the Bible maintains.