| ISMagazine.com | Religion on the Net |
May, 1999 |
FRONTLINE ONLINE's "From Jesus to Christ" web site,
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion>, has been awarded the 1998 international Prix Italia, the oldest and most prestigious of international radio and television competitions. It is the first time the prize has been given for a web site. FRONTLINE's site received the award "for the depth of its probe in a culturally pertinent subject, a very intuitive navigation style, the connection of the site to the programming, and the level of public participation it commanded."
Launched in April
1998 as the companion site to "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians," the
FRONTLINE documentary which examined the origins of Christianity, the site received over
1,140,000 page views during the first six days following the broadcast and has been linked
to by hundreds of church, university, and divinity school web sites.
"This web site is a gem and a valuable educational resource that I hope you will maintain for the foreseeable future. It makes American New Testament scholarship instantaneously accessible to anybody anywhere in the world," writes Mahlon H. Smith, associate professor, Department of Religion at Rutgers University.
While "From Jesus to Christ" continues to be among FRONTLINE's most popular web sites with up to several thousand visitors a week, traffic is expected to sharply increase with the rebroadcast of the program. The documentary will be aired again on consecutive Tuesdays, December 15 & 22, at 9 p.m., on PBS, (check local listings), and as before, includes on-screen webmarkers indicating where additional information can be found on the web site.
To coincide with this rebroadcast, the "From Jesus to Christ" site is being updated to include a report on the iconography of the cross, examining the image and meaning of the cross throughout the centuries, and an edited transcript of a two-day June 1998 symposium at Harvard University. The event expanded on the issues covered in the program and was led by some of the New Testament scholars who appeared in the FRONTLINE film.
o Why are there so many different images of Jesus in the Gospels?
o Why did early Christians have many different understandings of Jesus and his message?
o How do scholars reconcile Christian faith with a historical approach to Jesus and the Bible?
The "From Jesus to Christ" site is organized into several thematic areas:
o A Portrait of Jesus' World; exploring the historical, political, and religious backdrop for the emergence of Christianity.
o Jesus; examining how recent archaeological findings are part of a new, more historically accurate portrait of Jesus' life and work.
o The First Christians; tracing the growth and development of the Jesus Movement and how early Christians struggled to understand Jesus and the meaning of his message.
o The Story of the Storytellers; tracking the emergence of the four canonical Gospels, the disputes among scholars over what can be inferred from the texts, and a report on the relation of Hebrew scriptures to the New Testament.
o Why Did Christianity Succeed?; exploring what factors allowed the Jesus Movement to triumph despite persecution and political opposition.
o Reference Sections; offering a master chronology from the birth of Jesus to the dedication of Constantinople as a Christian capital; archaeological discoveries that have fueled the intellectual revolution in New Testament scholarship; maps; an anthology of ancient texts; and a New Testament quiz.