First: Reading Koine Greek is a great help, but it will take training as exegete, which I do have, and familiarity with the lexical and philological tools for exegesis, which I have used, to open up the texts. There are perhaps a few literal-leaning (except for Revelation) evangelicals who'd like to think that there is some pristine Greek text — that a facile Greek reader might master — but the commonly used Nestle-Aland is after, is the work of committees drawing on variant manuscript traditions. All that being said, modern English translations are quite good (though admittedly, the sentence structures are those of English, which depends on sentence order to convey syntax).

But it takes far more to exegete the gospels than simply reading Greek. An understanding of the historical critical approach that has dominated NT studies for a hundred years is required. And today there are a plurality of critical approaches that yield various results — a single hermeneutical angling could miss crucial information. (Examples: structural criticism, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, social science criticism.) A simple example: the prevailing view among mainline scholars is that Jesus' conflicts with "scribes and Pharisees" in the gospels are either retrojections of early Christian conflicts with their fellow Jews put into the mouth of the gospel character Jesus, or they are exaggerated. For the sake of space I'll simply refer you to E. P. Sanders' "Jesus and Judaism." But you'll never get to this simply because you know Greek. Only a naive reading, Greek or English, of the gospels would conclude that because the character Jesus in a gospel did or said something, therefore it surely happened.

The important question, if one wishes to take Verhoeven seriously, is: what is the methodology with which Verhoeven arrives at the positions I've mentioned about the Historical Jesus? (As I indicated he seems familiar with some of the major literature and mostly likely gets some things right. ) But his desire to portray Jesus as 1) the result of a rape by a Roman soldier presumably putting a rebellion at Sepphoris, and 2) as a violent revolutionary, whose 2) career began with the Temple incident and continued as a life fleeing the wrath of angry priests, is unsupported by any rigorous methodology. He makes barstool arguments based on ostensible hunches, or rather, forced arguments derived from the outcomes he'd like to find — because they'd make exciting drama. That's what I meant by "moviemaker logic."

He was drunk off his ass when he got in the car accident and killed somebody. That's murder.

Love how you write about it, using such phrases as "his friend perished" etc. You make ol' Roger sound almost like a hero.

I bet the so called friend's family sees it a whole lot differently than you.

THOSE ARE THE FACTS! Oh, and there is one more, Lars (hope I'm spelling your name right). By making light of the whole situation shows me you are as vile a person as he is.

His view of Jesus as a violent revolutionary has no support among the major Jesus scholars who treat the sociopolitical situation of Palestine as a subjugated "colony" of the Roman empire. His depiction of Jesus as the result of a Roman soldier's rape of Mary is sheer fantasy, roughly analogous to the utterly unsupportable nonsense about Jesus and Mary Magdalene as lovers, or Judas as the secret ally of Jesus. There is one minor scholar who raised the THEORETICAL possibility of rape, but she herself denied that one could clearly conclude this from the evidence (or her scholarship). This fiction of a Roman soldier "Panthera" is based on anti-Christian vitriol from Jewish quarters long after Jesus' death, and some verbal wordplay. Verhoeven also argues for the rape from the fact that military routed a revolt led by Judas ben Hezekiah at Sepphoris, about AN HOUR'S WALK from Nazareth. This is children's logic. His claim that the scene in the Temple courtyard occurred early in Jesus' career, and that Jesus thus spent the significant part of his career on the lam from angry priests is found (to my knowledge) nowhere in the vast literature of Jesus studies; it's part of Verhoeven's make-believe version of Jesus.

As early as 1980-81 I had been studying N. Perrin and J. D. Crossan and attended a mini-course on the Historical Jesus with John P. Meier, now the author of the magisterial Jesus scholarship, "A Marginal Jew." More recently I have attended courses at Yale Divinity School in Historical Jesus and related biblical studies and exegeted gospel material myself. I have personally consulted some of the most influential biblical scholars on the planet, including scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar. And I am member of the academic Jesus studies forum, crosstalk. I find Verhoeven's claim to be making a movie about the Historical Jesus a deceit. Verhoeven MAY have SOME exposure to the scholarship, but his desire to do a remake of Spartacus, dressed up as Jesus, and to force-fit the rape story, overrides his knowledge of the material. And his portayal of Jesus is too often based on on titillating "moviemaker logic," not critical historical thinking about Jesus and his times.

youshallbelieve.com / loveandmercy.org
directionforourtimes.org
holylove.org