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The Hidden Gospels - Part 4: Gospel of Philip

31/07/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (8) Comments

“The companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth”.¹ It’s the most famous quote from the Gospel of Philip courtesy of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. Interestingly the scene plays differently in the movie. Arch-conspiracy theorist Leigh Teabing gets cut off with the final “mouth” not yet upon his lips. The reason for this discrepancy goes back to the ancient text itself. Apparently parts of the only existing copy of “The Gospel of Philip” got gnawed away², meaning that, at best, we can only speculate as to where exactly Jesus was supposed to have planted one on Mary Magdalene. More ...

Film Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

16/07/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (1) Comments

Since the relaunch of the rejesus blog at the start of the year I've been reviewing new movies that relate to Jesus in some way. Whilst it's not always easy to find films that fit into that category, Harry Potter should have been straight forward. After all it's humble hero is an exceptional miracle worker, who is born to be the chosen one. The problem... was me. More ...

The Hidden Gospels - Part 3: The Gospel of Thomas

30/06/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (1) Comments

Perhaps the most famous of the hidden gospels is the Gospel of Thomas. We've known about it ever since it was written, but it has only been more recently when we discovered what it actually said. In 1945 a copy of Thomas' Gospel turned up in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, amongst a collection of other ancient documents, and closer study revealed that a few fragments from it had already been found 50 years earlier. More ...

Film Review: Year One

27/06/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (0) Comments

With his beard and his stout figure Jack Black has often seemed a littel prehistoric compared to his liposuctionned, bodywaxed, Hollywood cohorts. So it was perhaps only a matter of time until someone offered him a role playing a caveman. Black plays the role of Zed alongside Michael Cerra's Oh in Year One, the latest film from producer Judd Apatow (Superbad, Knocked Up, Anchorman) and writer / director Harold Ramis (Analyze This, Groundhog Day). More ...

Film Review: Angels and Demons

15/05/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (1) Comments

Having banished his sacrilegious haircut and dumped Jesus' great great great granddaughter, Tom Hanks returns to our screens as academic turned action figure Robert Langdon. Dan Brown wrote "The Da Vinci Code" after he had already scored a hit with "Angels and Demons", but Sony and director Ron Howard presumably thought that the latter story would make the more popular film. Having established The Da Vinci Code as a hit movie, Howard and co. have taken note of the audience for Brown's religious thrillers and moved swiftly onto Angels and Demons. More ...

Film Review: Wolverine

30/04/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (0) Comments

Wolverine was always the most interesting and engaging character in the highly successful X-men trilogy. Somehow Hugh Jackman managed to offset Logan's physical toughness with suggestions of a hurtful past and a deep disappointment of the world around him. It's not a huge surprise, then, that his is the first character to be given a prequel film of his own as part of the new X-men Origins series. More ...

The Hidden Gospels - Part 2: Gospel of Mary

20/04/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (6) Comments

If a gospel is all about good news then it appears that the Gospel of Mary is barely a gospel at all. There’s no sacrificial death, in fact, there are not even any ideas on how to make the world a better place, at least, not in the parts of the book we have. More ...

Prophesy That

27/03/09 | Posted by MattPage | Permalink | (0) Comments

Film Review: Knowing
Of all the titles that Jesus was known by during his time on earth, "prophet" was perhaps more widely used than anything else. The crowds, the woman at the well, the Pharisees, the disciples and even Jesus himself all used the term. Yet it's one of the descriptions that we're perhaps least comfortable with today. It’s fine for Jesus to be a "good teacher" or even a messiah, but it's usually only the followers of Islam who will call him a prophet. More ...

Doctor Who and Jesus – 4 – New New New New Earth

07/03/09 | Posted by Andrew Wooding | Permalink | (0) Comments

The upcoming Doctor Who Easter special - (what is it with Doctor Who always coming back at Easter?) - promises to be a fun romp, with a London double decker bus plonked in the middle of a desert, a guest turn from comedian Lee Evans, former Eastender and Bionic Woman Michelle Ryan as the Doctor’s one-off companion, plus the involvement of UNIT, the Doctor’s soldier colleagues that go all the way back to his time as Doctor number two. The special is called Planet of the Dead … but which planet, and who’s dead? No idea! But while we’re waiting for this Easter extravaganza, maybe we could revisit another story where David Tennant’s Doctor landed on a planet of the dead. More ...

Better the devil you know…

20/11/08 | Posted by feihero | Permalink | (0) Comments

Leprous gay priest flayed alive in sauna (by demoniac). These are the kind of headlines even the Sunday Sport might hesitate to publish. So it is perhaps surprising to find them effectively summing up the conclusion of a new BBC Drama. Or, more chillingly, setting the tone at the beginning of one. Apparitions, which continues tonight, has managed to cause an unprecedented range of offence – with Catholics, Evangelicals, atheists on the Richard Dawkins Forum, and a host of newspaper reviewers, all stepping up to stone Martin Shaw et al. for sins ranging from dubious theology to ‘a silly plot’. But peel back the first impressions of this Buffy-meets-The-Exorcist thriller and you might find it possessed of something far older and more powerful than any of the critics have yet confronted. More ...

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