Three scholars asked 820 Chinese, English, and Semitic-language speakers to listen to the Cru-produced Jesus film in 228 different languages and rate those languages’ attractiveness.

Tok Pisin, an English creole spoken in Papua New Guinea, ranked highest, while Chechen ranked lowest. But the difference between them, on a scale of 1 to 100, was only a few points. The scholars could not find any inherent phonetic feature, such as fictive consonants or gliding vowels, that were consistently considered beautiful. People preferred women’s voices and ranked languages they thought they recognized an average of about 12 percent higher than those they didn’t know.

The Jesus film, with text taken from the Gospel of Luke, holds the world record for the most-translated film. In 2023, it was translated into Waorani, a language spoken by a few thousand people indigenous to the Amazon.

Spain: Evangelicals critique misogyny of Eurovision song

Evangelicals are upset that the song that will represent Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 uses a derogatory word for women. The word zorra is sung a total of 45 times in the song, which is also titled “Zorra.” Literally, it is the feminine form of the word fox and was translated for English-speaking audiences as “vixen,” but it more commonly means “b—” or “whore.”

“The song extols a term that is a cause of violence and humiliation for women, and repeats it ad nauseam,” said Asun Quintana, an evangelical pastor in Madrid and a leader in the evangelical feminist group Seneca Falls.

Ghana: Assemblies of God plans aggressive evangelism

The general superintendent of the Assemblies of God in Ghana announced plans to plant 12,000 new churches and build a convention center that can hold centenary celebrations in 2031, when the Pentecostal denomination will mark 100 years in the West African country.

Israel: Coin weights challenge Temple Mount history

Three archaeological experts say ancient coin weights, found while siftingthrough the dirt removed from the Temple Mount in 1999, indicate that Christians occupied the much-contested religious site before it was taken over by Muslims in the seventh century. Muslim records say that before they came, Christians had been dumping trash at the Temple Mount.

Many historians think church leaders pointed to the desolation as the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecies about the destruction of the temple and built a church only after seizing the mosque during the First Crusade. But the new evidence suggests Byzantine Christians had an earlier church there, challenging historic claims of Muslim priority. At least one scholar, however, thinks the weights could have been left later.