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Miami Herald: Gibson film may spark tensions in Christian-Jewish relations
A Mel Gibson movie about the final hours in the life of Jesus Christ, which opens next spring, is already stirring up controversy in a number of areas, including charges of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. The script for The Passion, which was cowritten by Gibson, was read by Paula Fredriksen, a CAS professor of religion and William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture. She is also the author of From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus and received the 1999 Jewish Book Award for Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity. Fredrikson was one of nine New Testament scholars (five Catholics and four Jews) who were assembled by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Anti-Defamation League to examine a copy of the script, reports the August 30 Miami Herald. Fredriksen says that the script “was written extremely vividly with a lot of directorial comments. This is one from our report: ‘The crowd is frenzied . . . It screams for his death.’ That’s a Jewish crowd, and that’s not in the Gospels. Descriptions like that are in the script throughout.” She predicts the film will offend Catholics as well as Jews because its telling of the Crucifixion diverges from the Catholic Church’s current teachings. She also thinks it will not do well at the box office. “There is no plot, no character development, no subtlety,” she says. “The bad guys are way bad, the good guys are way good.” A spokesman for the movie said that the script read by Fredriksen’s group was outdated and had been revised. Fredriksen was the author of an in-depth piece about the film called “Mad Mel,” in the July 25 New Republic.
Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.): Teens need vitamin D
Today many teenagers don’t often exercise outdoors, opting instead for indoor activities such as watching movies and playing videos, and they also prefer drinking sodas and flavored drinks rather than vitamin-fortified milk. Such habits, says the September 2 Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.), have contributed to a vitamin D deficiency that might affect millions of American adolescents. Such a deficiency can lead to a weakening of the bones and a propensity to bone fractures and puts teens at risk for stunted growth and debilitating osteoporosis later in life. Michael Holick, a MED professor of medicine and a vitamin D specialist, says that a chronic vitamin D deficiency might also be linked with high blood pressure, some cancers, and diabetes. He believes that as many as 30 percent of teens nationwide might be affected, with percentages among young African-Americans even higher. He recommends that children spend about 10 minutes a few times a week in the sun without sunscreen.
Christian Science Monitor: Bequests to baby boomers shrinking
Because of stock market dips, an increase in life expectancies, and chronic-care expenses for an aging population, fewer seniors are leaving inheritances to their adult children, says the September 2 Christian Science Monitor. “Baby boomers are going to get hit with a series of bad economic shocks and bad reality checks, one of which is relatively low inheritances,” says Laurence Kotlikoff, a CAS professor of economics and department chairman and an expert on bequest trends. Experts say that today’s seniors will leave as much as or less than previous generations did, but this will be shared with more siblings. Kotlikoff, who coauthored a 1998 paper in which he determined that bequests as a percentage of lifetime earnings were about the same in 1997 as in 1962, now says it will probably drop because the paper was written as the stock market was going up.
Boston Globe: Hope for those with schizophrenia
People with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia should not
give up hope of returning to a high-level, intellectually competitive
life, as drug companies introduce a new generation of antipsychotics
that improve mental function and reduce side effects such as stiffness
and trembling, reports the September 2 Boston Globe. In fact, one company,
Eli Lilly, has begun paying tuition for people with schizophrenia-spectrum
disorders through a program called Reintegration Scholarships, which
enable former students to return to part- or even full-time competitive
work. Such a program supports the work of Courtenay Harding, a SAR professor,
who with a small group of researchers has been gathering evidence that
suggests schizophrenia is not a disease that is irrecoverable. In 1987,
Harding reported the results of a three-decade study of 269 schizophrenia
patients from Vermont State Hospital. After an average of 32 years, 45
percent had no psychiatric symptoms and 23 percent had symptoms of less
serious mental illnesses, but not schizophrenia. That kind of long-term
improvement, she says, was almost invisible to doctors. “What happens
when people lose their symptoms and cope with them effectively, they
melt into the general population,” she says. “You don’t
know they’re there.”
5
September 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations