Biblical Allusions, Biblical Illusions: Hollywood Blockbuster and Scripture

Depending on to whom you listen, religion in America is either in big decline or is doing just fine. On the one hand, over half of all Americans (56%) count themselves members of a religious institution such as a church or synagogue. On the other, actual belief may be in the doldrums. One year ago, Gallup reported that the American public held organized religion in the lowest esteem in six decades. A year later, however, the numbers have rebounded. Who\u27s to explain the change, or what it means? Surely, the nation\u27s culture-makers - including a powerful film industry that controls billions of dollars and exports ideas and culture across the globe - must play a central role. Just witness the recent furor over Mel Gibson\u27s cinematic life of Jesus, The Passion of the Christ (2004). Is Gibson\u27s reverent recreation single-handedly resurrecting American Christianity? Or is it just another episode in Hollywood\u27s long passion for themes biblical

Tomb Raider

This is a review of Tomb Raider (2001)

Emending the Teacher : From Marcus the "Magician" to Valentinus and Back

akzeptierte Manuskriptversio

The noise-lovers: cultures of speech and sound in second-century Rome

This chapter provides an examination of an ideal of the ‘deliberate speaker’, who aims to reflect time, thought, and study in his speech. In the Roman Empire, words became a vital tool for creating and defending in-groups, and orators and authors in both Latin and Greek alleged, by contrast, that their enemies produced babbling noise rather than articulate speech. In this chapter, the ideal of the deliberate speaker is explored through the works of two very different contemporaries: the African-born Roman orator Fronto and the Syrian Christian apologist Tatian. Despite moving in very different circles, Fronto and Tatian both express their identity and authority through an expertise in words, in strikingly similar ways. The chapter ends with a call for scholars of the Roman Empire to create categories of analysis that move across different cultural and linguistic groups. If we do not, we risk merely replicating the parochialism and insularity of our sources.Accepted manuscrip

The Bone gatherers: The Lost worlds of early Christian women

Boston, MAxxi, 290 p.: bibl., index; 20 c