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June 28, 2007
Bible and Popular Culture
How does the "greatest story ever told"what C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein referred to as "true myth"get picked up and echoed in the popular stories of Western culture?
The Bible and the Arts collection brings together four books with more than 1,300 pages of material exploring the intersection between popular culture artifacts and the Bible. This collection has been gathering interest for some time and is now under development in our electronic text department.
If you're a fan of the silver screen, a preacher who likes to illustrate or punctuate a sermon with examples from literature or film, or simply a person who enjoys literature and art, this collection is for you.
These four books would make for a great read straight through. Do a word or phrase search to zero in on an idea. Put the books into a defined collection within Passage Guide to serendipitously discover any references to your Bible passage when running the Passage Guide report.
For example, using a prototype build of Gospel Images in Fiction and Film, I ran Passage Guide on Matthew 2 and came up with 8 links to discussions in the book that touch on that passage. (click for a larger image)
Here we find some great discussion of how the visit of the Magi is treated in four different films: Pier Paulo Pasolinis The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964); Franco Zeffirellis Jesus of Nazareth (1977); William Wylers Ben-Hur (1959); and George Stevens The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
There are insightful analyses, comparisons between the various treatments, and reflections on how the movie makers use the Magi's visit to foreshadow Christ's Passion. Earlier in the chapter, the author provides a brief survey of the Visit of the Magi in art and popular imagination and offers some thoughts on T.S. Eliot's 1927 poem "Journey of the Magi."
Here, then, is a rich abundance of ideas that would enliven your study or teaching of a well-known Nativity passage. And much more awaits those who add this collection to their digital library!
Posted by Daniel Foster at June 28, 2007 6:00 AM