Mel Gibson's Bible: Religion, Popular Culture, and Passion of Christ Timothy K. Beal and Tod Linafelt, Editors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Afterlives of Bible Series. Religion and Cyberspace Morten T. Hojsgaard and Margit Warburg, Editors. New York: Routledge, 2005. Blackwell Guide to Theology and Popular Culture Kelton Cobb. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Each of these books contributes significantly to study of religion's place in cultural matrix of United States and beyond. Mel Gibson's Bible brings diverse disciplines and personal perspectives to a single film that now appears to be world's most commercially successful religious blockbuster. Religion and Cyberspace targets a more diffuse cultural phenomenon-the steady, evolutionary convergences of religious life mediated by Internet; it reflects multidisciplinary/multinational approaches that are predominantly philosophical and sociological. And finally, single-authored Blackwell Guide offers an ambitious critical synthesis of at least sixty years of thinking about popular cultural expressions of theological viewpoints. Together this group of books suggests a maturing in depth and versatility of religion-focused scholarship. Left far behind is end-of-religion optimism that accompanied demythologizing, God-is-dead movements of 1960s and 1970s. Mel Gibson's Bible presents twenty one pieces, eighteen of them new for this volume's publication. Catholic, Jewish, and assorted Protestant viewpoints are represented in three thematic sections: (1) The Passion as Interpretation, focused on how Bible and other historical sources are construed in film; (2) Ethical and Theological Responses; and (3) Passion, Media, Audience, focused on how audience sensibilities or preexisting dramatic models shaped content of experience. exegeses are tours de force that will surprise and delight readers by taking them so far below surface of Gibson's torturous realism. For college students especially, essays will succinctly and gracefully demonstrate how informed cinematic and historical interpretations can affect a viewer's experience. Jack Miles, whose linguistic training allowed him to hear and Aramaic dialogue, observes that Jesus speaks perfect church Latin to Roman Pontius Pilate, who answers him in Aramaic. John Dominic Crossan examines contextual elasticity of New Testament's Greek words for crowd and suggests a lack of textual justification for film's portrayal of numerous and highly vocal Jewish opponents of Jesus. Susana Heschel argues that film shows a pro-Roman, American-identified imperial agenda, in which Pilate and Claudia (pegged as George and Laura Bush) emerge as more sympathetically treated characters than any of Jewish religious figures, who come off as repulsive swishes. Richard Rubenstein provides important biographical background on Mel Gibson and his father Hutton Gibson, a crusading, well-known ultraconservative Catholic who reportedly locked Mel in a room at a time when young man seriously explored a personal conversion to Judaism. Jane Schaberg, a Mary Magdalene scholar, argues that film conflates the woman of many sins in Bible with Mary presented as a female leader of great understanding among followers of Jesus-the way in which she is presented in Jesus of Montreal (1989) and several of noncanonical gospels. Margaret Miles is among several in observing that film is emphatic in focusing on Passion of Christ as sacrificial atonement-as opposed to finding salvation through Christ in adherence to his teachings about care for others. Jose Marquez shows how conventions of action genre film have provided template for Jesus as master of physical suffering who finally exacts revenge rather than teacher of pacifism. Not all treatments in this volume are negative toward film. …