JASR 31.3 (2018) 225-226 JASR ISSN 2047-704X (print) https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.37832 JASR ISSN 2047-7058 (online)

Book Review

Richard Walsh (ed.), T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film. London: T&T Clark, 2018, pp. xii + 416, ISBN: 978-0-5676-6620-8 (hbk).

This text provides a ‘snapshot of current biblical film studies’ (p. 6) and sits comfortably alongside Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films (ed. Adele Reinhartz, 2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (Adele Reinhartz, 2013), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and its Reception in Film (ed. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, 2016, 2 vols), Close Encounters between Bible and Film: An Interdisciplinary Engagement (eds. Laura Copier and Caroline Vander Stichele, 2016) and numerous preceding others. Its authors are leading lights within the field who cover a wide array of themes, topics and tropes within multiple genres, countries and time-frames. Structure-wise, an introduction, three parts, and 31 well-crafted chapters are grouped as follows: ‘Part One: Contexts’; ‘Part Two: The- ories’, and ‘Part Three: Texts’, plus a ‘Filmography’ with ‘Film’, ‘Modern Author’, and ‘Scripture’ indexes. Content-wise, most chapters are excit- ing, such as Lloyd Baugh’s ‘A Revolutionary Passion Film: Giovanni Columbu’s Su Re (The King)’, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch’s ‘American Slav- ery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book’, Christopher Heard’s ‘In the Creator’s Image: Divine and Mundane Self-Reproduction in Science-Fiction Films’, and Adele Reinhartz’s ‘Reversing the Herme- neutical Flow: Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films’. Some chapters are too technical for lay persons (e.g., George Aichele’s ‘Deleuze on Film, and the Bible’, and Brian Britt’s ‘Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Films on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’), and others are problematic. For example, Sze-kar Wan’s Asian films that are ‘differ- ent from the biblical views’ (p. 93) borders on Christian appropriation of Japanese kami-based religion (‘Justice, Empire, and Nature: Deliver- ance, Covenant, and New Creation in East Asian Cinema’). In ‘Biograph- ical Approaches to Jesus Films: Prospects for Bible and Film’, Dwight H. Friesen’s biographical approach favoured a long-winded background over explication of his Indian Jesus film. In her ‘Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films’, Rhiannon Graybill claims

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2019. Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX. 226 JASR 31.3 (2018) only two central Old Testament female protagonists exist (p. 188), but ignores starring females within Samson and Delilah (1949), David and Bathsheba (1951), Solomon and Sheba (1959), Esther and the King (1960), The Story of Ruth (1960), Esther (1999) etc. She also claims: ‘we are still waiting for a queer messiah’ (p. 195), but overlooks The Garden (1990), Gay Jesus (2015) and Gay for Pray: The Erotic Adventures of Jesus Christ (2017). Puzzlingly, in his ‘Can We Try That Again?: The Fate of the Bib- lical Canon on Film’, Matthew Page’s Table 22.1 omits a contemporary Samson film (p. 278), yet Samson and Delilah (1984), Samson and Del- ilah (1996), and Samson (2018) qualify. Deborah W. Rooke identified films by release date not title in ‘“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”: Film Treatments of the Book of Esther’ (p. 323), whilst both Tina Pippin (‘Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert’) and Car- oline Vander Stichele (‘A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic After- life’) focused more upon novels than films. Production-wise, the volume is scholar-friendly, with quality printing, basic binding, 20 film figures, and some annoyances (e.g., ‘Gary Nelson’ directed The Black Hole not ‘Steven Spielberg’ [p. 394]). For monolin- guals, there are inconsistencies, especially in the index: foreign titles are confusingly listed (e.g., Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) under ‘C’ [p. 404], Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) under ‘H’ [p. 405], L’inconnu (The Unknown) under ‘I’ [p. 405]), whilst various alternative titles were not italicised (pp. 404–407); some foreign titles exist without English equivalents (e.g., Il vangelo secondo Matteo [p. 407] but no The Gospel According to St. Matthew); and English titles are given without their foreign equivalents (e.g., For a Few Dollars More [p. 405] but no Per qualche dollaro in più). ‘The Modern Author Index’ employs only one ini- tial (e.g., ‘DeMille, C.’ [p. 409], not ‘DeMille, C. B.’), whereas ‘Griffith, D. W.’ (p. 409) gets two, and ‘Von Trier, Lars’ (p. 411) is spelled out in full, amongst other inconsistencies. Missing but very desirable were ‘Direc- tor’ and ‘Subject’ indexes, thus forcing tedious manual searching for per- sons or topics. Overall, this companion is a must-have text, which will readily ser- vice undergraduates, postgraduates, and laypersons alike—albeit its high cost will deter many potential purchasers. Nevertheless, one looks forward to future editions that further explicate the fascinating connec- tions between film, Scripture, and modern-day methodologies.

Anton Karl Kozlovic Flinders University/Deakin University

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2019