The Martyrdom series

Joel of Pax Nortona sent me an e-mail announcing part 5 of his martyrdom series. The last time I read his blog beyond just glancing through and thinking "Gee, I wish I had time to read this" was when I read pretty thoroughly through part 1. (I did not even then have time to follow all the links.) But I managed to pick up that the series was inspired by a BeliefNet article by John Dominic Crossan (radical theologian, author of books on the historical Jesus, in case you don't know him) which made a distinction between victimhood and martyrdom. And that article was, of course, a review of The Passion of the Christ. Now here's the thing. I still haven't read Joel's stuff straight through (it's a lot of stuff) and followed all the links. (And here I am blogging about it; how arrogant is that? Well, I don't mean to be; I'm just trying to be efficient.) But I am going to. Mainly because my impression is that I don't wholly agree with him, but I see where he is going (I think) and I want to get his whole case in my mind before maybe responding. So watch this space, or his space, because if I do a further blog on this, I will also comment there to link them together.