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David Shepherd (ed.), Images of the Word: Hollywood's Bible and Beyond (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).

Abstract

"Images of the Word: Hollywood's Bible and Beyond" is a collection of essays by leading international scholars in the field of Bible and film. Recognizing the increasingly global nature of both media and religion, the volume focuses on the ways in which the Bible is interpreted and visualized not only within Hollywood but also far beyond it. Cutting-edge analysis of films from France, Canada, Sweden, India, and elsewhere reveals that the Bible's visualization is culturally rooted and contributes to the shaping of a particular culture, including its perception of the Bible itself.Essays range across the canon from "Exodus" to "Ecclesiastes" to "Revelation", interacting with films of various national traditions and periods from Blackton's "Life of Moses" (1909) to "Karunamayudu" (1978) to Cronenberg's "eXistenZ" (1999). The volume engages the breadth of current scholarly interest in this interdisciplinary field, including the critical reading of 'Bible films', the exploration of biblical motifs and themes within contemporary cinema, and concluding responses to the essays from both a biblical scholar and a film scholar."--Publisher description.

Contents

Hollywood's Bible and beyond /; David Shepherd --; Prolonging The Life of Moses: from spectacle to story in the early cinema /; David Shepherd --; The big sleep: strategic ambiguity in Judges 4-5 and in classic film noir /; Eric S. Christianson --; Perversions of food: Revelation and eXistenZ /; Jan Willem van Henten --; Local heroes /; George Aichele --; The apocalypse of Andersson: Biblical echoes in Songs from the second floor (1999) /; Reinhold Zwick --; Barabbas rewrites the cross: parody or parable? /; Richard Walsh --; Caiaphas on camera /; Adele Reinhartz --; Camera as character in Philip Saville's The Gospel of John /; Jo-Ann A. Brant --; Karunamayudu: seeing Christ anew in Indian cinema /; Dwight H. Friesen --; "The beginning of a beautiful friendship": a response from film studies /; Richard A. Blake, S.J. --; Decoding, meta-narrativizing, and making analogies: a response from Biblical studies /; Rosamond C. Rodman.

External links

• [ Google Books]