I just finished watching the History Channel miniseries “The
Bible.” I’ve been busy on the nights
when it was broadcast, so I’ve had to catch up by viewing it “on demand.” I realize this review is coming late, but in
case anyone is still assessing its merits, or perhaps didn’t see it but is
considering buying the DVD set, I thought I would share my thoughts. I posted reviews to Episodes One and Two
earlier.
Episode 3
In my judgment, Episode 2 had done a pretty good job with the early history of Israel, particularly in its portrayal of Kings Saul and David. That episode ended with David giving his young son Solomon a toy version of the temple that Solomon was destined to build. I was looking forward to how Episode 3 would characterize Solomon’s rule and the building of the temple.
Imagine my surprise, then, when the next episode began with the invasion of Jerusalem by Babylon some 370 years later. The narration explained that “heroes had built a great nation on faith,” but that the relationship between Israel and God had become strained. As this part of the story unfolds, King Nebuchadnezzar mercilessly burns Jerusalem to the ground and carries off its citizens to serve him in exile in Babylon. The exile is presented as God’s punishment – but for what? If this miniseries was your only exposure to the biblical narrative, you might think that the sins of Saul and David had led to this calamity. But of course, that doesn’t even begin to explain what happened. We learn nothing about how the Temple was built with slave labor, and how Solomon’s lust for wealth and power led Israel astray. There is no mention of how, after Solomon’s death, the nation split into two smaller, weaker kingdoms, Judah and Israel. There’s nothing about Assyria’s destruction of Israel. Nor do we hear any of the words of prophets like Amos, Hosea, Micah, or Isaiah who pronounced God’s judgment on both kingdoms for mistreating the poor and ignoring its most vulnerable citizens. We get not even a whiff of the persistent problem of idol worship, often sponsored by the kings, two thirds of whom are judged to have done “what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
Much of this episode focused on the story of Daniel, a leader of the Jews in the Babylonian exile. While somewhat faithfully relating the most famous stories from the book of Daniel, the writers also took huge liberties by making Daniel a friend of Cyrus, King of Persia, who defeated the Babylonians and freed the exiled Jews. In the movie, Cyrus’ friends convince him to issue a month-long edict against prayer under penalty of death by mauling in the lions’ den. Daniel, of course, refuses to obey this law and is thrown to the lions. Cyrus is overcome with guilt and hurries to rescue his friend, but finds that the lions have not harmed Daniel. The problem with this story is that Cyrus had nothing to do with Daniel in the lions’ den. In fact, he didn’t even know Daniel. Darius, King of the Medes, signed the law prohibiting prayer.
The script then leapt from the end of the exile to the time of Jesus’ birth. The narrator explained that during that 500-year stretch, the Jewish people were dominated by one power after another and finally succumbed to the might of the Roman Empire. As the drama continues, Herod rules as “King of the Jews.” He boasts that he has built the temple in Jerusalem. That’s not quite accurate. The temple had been rebuilt with funds supplied by Cyrus soon after the exile. Herod renovated and expanded the Temple. Those years after the exile, when the people disagreed about the importance of the Temple, were important to the history of the Jewish people and also to the emergence of the early church. But they didn’t fit into the story being portrayed in “The Bible.”
I found it interesting that the script employed material found in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, presumably to help give some historical context to the birth of Christ. But why do that when the history of Jesus’ people up to that point had been oversimplified and at times rewritten to make a good story? When the magi and the shepherds all crammed into the stable with the holy family at the time of Jesus’ birth, creating a scene that was both historically and culturally impossible, I was ready to give up.
Episode 4
Because I was disappointed in Episode 3, I didn’t have very high expectations of Episode 4. But I have to say that these two hours were the best of the entire series. What was true about the previous episodes was true here as well – the constraint of time necessitated the writers being highly selective in what they chose to dramatize. There is simply no way to represent the entire narrative of Jesus’ ministry in only 90 minutes (the amount of time left after the commercials have run). And this problem is further complicated by the fact that the New Testament contains four gospels that are impossible to fully harmonize. Given those difficulties, I found the portrayal of Jesus to be thoughtful and creative. Simply put, the writers got a lot of things right – especially the political context of Roman occupation, which we don’t always appreciate. (Pilate was effectively portrayed as the brutal prefect history tells us he was.) I admit that I winced a few times when particular gospel stories were refashioned to the point of obscuring their meaning. But overall, I found episode 4 to be moving and thought-provoking.
The only glaring weakness in this episode is one that has plagued every film portrayal of Jesus since Max von Sydow starred in “The Greatest Story of Ever Told” in 1965, so I don’t blame “The Bible” for it. The Jewish religious leadership was portrayed as one monolithic group of people. Pharisees in Galilee and Sadducees in Jerusalem all looked pretty much the same and they all hated Jesus. In reality, the situation was far more complicated. Jesus’ teachings were amazingly similar to the teachings of many Pharisees of that time. Jesus had sharp disagreement with some Pharisees, but not all. Many of them were among his followers, as the gospels attest. The Pharisaic teachers were called “rabbis,” as was Jesus. Furthermore, the Pharisees hated the Sadducees, who controlled the temple and its priesthood. The rabbis shared with Jesus the conviction that the temple system was hopelessly corrupt and under God’s judgment.
You may wonder why it is important to make these distinctions in a basic retelling of the gospel story. Here’s why: Judaism as we know it today descends from the wider Pharisaic movement of which Jesus was a part. The only Jews of that time who were intent on removing Jesus were the wealthy elite in Jerusalem (the Sadducees) who were in collusion with the Romans and were despised by most of the Jewish people. When we fail to appreciate these nuances, we fall into the error of blaming “the Jews” for Jesus’ crucifixion – a misreading of the gospels that has resulted in centuries of persecution and discrimination of the Jewish people.
Episode 5
The final installment of “The Bible” fell into two distinct parts. The first hour portrayed the passion of Jesus. The second hour dealt with the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection, giving particular attention to Peter, Paul and John.
The first hour, therefore, really belonged to episode 4, and was as good as the previous two hours. Since this miniseries was created from a confessional Christian perspective, it is not surprising that the writers would give an entire hour to the trial, sentencing, and crucifixion of Jesus. But doing so left precious little time to tell the rest of the story. To be honest, I found the last hour to be anti-climactic. The material felt rushed and disorganized. The apostle Paul – whose work transformed the Jesus movement from a Jewish sect into a world religion – did not receive near the attention he deserved. And the painful conflicts and fissures within the early church were completely glossed out of the story. Those early disagreements are critical for understanding how Christian tradition developed, and are also instructive for how contemporary Christians manage the cultural and ethical challenges of our own time.
After viewing the entire series, I was left wondering if it wouldn’t have been more effective to concentrate solely on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the same way the Franco Zeffirelli miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth” did back in 1977. “The Bible” crammed 2,000 years of history into six hours, then spent three hours portraying the three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry, before giving one hour to the first two generations of the church. I understand the intent of placing Jesus in the context of the whole Bible, but I don’t think this miniseries succeeded in accomplishing that ambitious goal. Too much of the biblical narrative was either left out, glossed over, or re-written in order to make it fit into the allotted time.
Still, I’ll repeat what I wrote after watching the first episode. If “The Bible” prompts people of faith and no faith to ask more questions or read the Bible more closely, then it is has served a good purpose. The best-case scenario, then, is that the miniseries will whet viewers’ appetites for more. Despite it’s title, this TV production depicted a scaled-down version of only about 10% of the Old Testament and about 25% of the New Testament (or 12% of the whole Bible). The truth is, there is no visual substitute, not even with elaborate sets and special effects, for the written Word of God.
Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson
Comments