Peter T Chattaway

Award-winning writer with a special interest in film and faith, and in the Bible movie genre specifically. 'Aqaba is over there. It's only a matter of going.'

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 Believing in divine inspiration does not require us to believe that the gospels represent *one* kind of genre, or *one* set of literary presuppositions, and none of the others. So I can appreciate them as theology while also analyzing them historically.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 To put this another way: If we assume that the gospels are *divinely inspired* and not just the product of human memory or note-taking, then there is no reason *not* to believe that they engage in something other than video-camera-accurate recording of the past.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 If there was a gospel that *mentioned* two cleansings -- the way Mark and Matthew mention two feedings of multitudes -- I'd be more open to that theory. As it is, we know the Synoptic cleansing prompted the arrest of Jesus. And the cleansing in John didn't...?

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@MarlaKramer @megbasham You're confusing temptation with sin. You can be tempted and still obey scripture. Jesus certainly did.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@elrambo In fairness, Wikipedia says there are something like 25 other pubs with that name in the UK (or there were, in 2005). So this could be one of those *other* Eagle & Childs.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

I visited the Eagle & Child in 1994 and I don't believe it was on a street corner. The pub in this scene might be *named after* Lewis's favorite pub but it is not that pub itself.

[Brandon Lansdown @BrandonLansdown]

In Greta Gerwig’s Narnia, Jadis uses magic to shatter the Eagle & Child. This is the real Oxford pub where Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings actually met and where the Narnia books were shaped. There is no narrative reason for it to appear. Its inclusion isn’t an accident, but a deliberate choice.

In an adaptation already altering the source’s theology and metaphysics, the destruction of the physical site where those ideas were forged functions as a symbolic act: the origin point of the story is targeted and erased by the very antagonist the books exist to defeat. That is the definition of desecration, not homage.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 As for John, obviously he (and/or his editors) left stuff out. And it seems very, very likely that he (and/or his editors) moved the cleansing of the Temple to a very different point on the timeline. That's the starting point. Discerning his motives comes after that.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 I already explained why it's only "natural" to believe that the latest gospel would be more reverent than the earliest gospel. Just within the Bible, you see that trajectory in Kings > Chronicles. See also how Acts papers over some of the fights in Paul's letters, etc.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@megbasham Well *I* for one am not inclined to bail on CT, and I'd think less of anyone who bailed on *me* because I still contribute to them.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@SlowToWrite @CTmagazine And which continent is Bethlehem on?

It ain't Africa. It ain't Europe. It sure ain't Antarctica, Australia, or either of the Americas. That leaves...?

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

https://t.co/Mxpnknr29G

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

Legendary makes a bid for Lionsgate, distributor of Kingdom Story films (Jesus Revolution, Best Christmas Pageant Ever) and Mel Gibson's Resurrection films, while Netflix fires openly "religious" film chief Dan Lin. Possible implications for faith-based films? Link in next tweet.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

https://t.co/pjrgkQpAfU

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

#TheChosen S5E5: Notes on what "moving mountains" means, what "kingdom of heaven" means, the return of a major character, the introduction of a man who will one day kill Jesus' brother, the new "reveal" about the show's timeline, and more. Link in the next tweet.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 (I hasten to add that I wouldn't apply "plagiarism" to first-century writing, as they didn't have the same concept of ownership or copyright that we do. But the telltale signs that a text has been copied and edited from another text? Yep, been there, seen that.)

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BMcGrewvy @CheekyJesterton @pentamom65 I dunno, pretty much everything else in my argument has chapter-and-verse references I could make. If you're questioning whether any of the gospels copied-and-pasted from the others, all I can say is I've been plagiarized, and I recognize how it's done. :)

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@tedolsen Really? The guy whose son's company now runs Paramount, the studio that almost made the modernized, Americanized Narnia movie that Doug Gresham complained about online in the 1990s?