Where's the passion over 'Da Vinci Code'?

When Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was released two years ago, something strange and unprecedented happened. The secular news media could not get enough of the Gospels. Of course, this mass Bible study had a twist and a purpose: to show how Gibson got it wrong. The criticisms began in 2003, well before the film's release, when a committee of scholars obtained a copy of the script. It issued a highly critical 18-page report, the views of which were summarized in a New Republic article by one of the committee members, Paula Fredriksen of Boston University. The article was called "Mad Mel" and centered on the issue of culpability for Jesus' death and purported anti-Semitism in Gibson's version of events. [More]