2 of 6

That's exactly the kind of overstatement that Gibson says he's so upset about. There are "big realms that are warring and battling," he said. "You stick your head up and you get knocked. … I didn't realize [criticism] would be so vicious. The acts against this film started early. There is vehement anti-Christian sentiment out there and they don't want it."

Still, he says, "All the problems and the conflicts and stuff - this is some of the best marketing and publicity I have ever seen."

Of interest as well are Gibson's comments about why he left out that line from Matthew: "His blood be on us and on our children!"

"I wanted it in," Gibson told Boyer. "My brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. But, man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house. They'd come to kill me."

Since that verse appears in Matthew, The Gospel of John, another new Jesus movie, won't have to deal with it. But as a word-for-word portrayal of the biblical text, the film still had to deal with some of the Jewish-Christian issues. A Canadian Press article explains a bit more how it works. First, it uses the American Bible Society's Good News translation, which refers to "Jewish authorities" rather than the more literal translation, "the Jews." Second, it kept the crowd yelling "Crucify him!" small and contained.

It also contains a disclaimer in the beginning of the film, noting that crucifixion was a Roman punishment not sanctioned by Jewish law, that Jesus and all his early followers were Jewish, and that the gospel was written "two generations after the Crucifixion," during a time of increasing conflict between early Christians and Jews, er, Jewish leaders.

Christian higher education is still booming
During a Newsweek.com live chat, Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews received this question:

There seems to be two different types of schools, those run by beer swilling Greek systems, and those run by the last extreme Marxists who, if they noticed the Berlin wall falling, would blame it on the ghost of Joe McCarthy and bad dental hygiene. I would really prefer to send my daughter and my dollars to a school where the faculty doesn't hate the United States and the student body doesn't think huddling over the toilet, saying 'Coming right up, two beers,' passes for a civil engineering course. … Other than BYU, or Notre Dame, where can a socially conservative family send their children without supporting either Marxist dinosaurs or power puking muscle heads? I turn to you in our hour of need.

"The questioner was exaggerating the problem, of course, perhaps just to wake me up," Mathews wrote in Tuesday's Post. "But it is true, given the nature of American youth culture, that most colleges seem a bit too leftist and liquorish to parents like me. I thought the Carlsbad parent deserved a better answer than I could come up with that morning."

Mathews recommends the Princeton Review's The Best 351 Colleges, and a few other college guides, but he in addition to these he should have turned to the other newspaper in town. The Washington Times just finished an excellent three-part series on Christian colleges. The hook is the not-so-new fact that enrollments at such schools are booming, but there are many good insights and stories here. Those interested in higher ed—especially Christian higher ed—will want to take a look:

Part 1: A higher grounding | Today, Christian colleges are outfitted with gleaming glass buildings, modern science departments and, often, a more worldly joie de vivre (The Washington Times)

next page... |  2 of 6

share this page

September (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47