A PANEL OF EXPERTS will be convened tomorrow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to discuss the historical accuracy of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Here's the news release. The panelists are:

* Ronald Troxel, a senior lecturer in the UW-Madison Religious Studies Program and Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies. He has developed a three-course sequence on Christian scripture and will discuss how Gibson's film treats the Gospels.

* Judith Wimmer, vice president for academic affairs and professor of religious studies at Edgewood College. A historian of American Catholicism, she will explain the place of Gibson's sect within the contemporary Roman Catholic Church.

* Leonard Kaplan, Mortimer M. Kaplan Professor of Law, and professor of religious studies and Jewish studies at UW-Madison. He will comment on the film's theology from the Jewish perspective.