The third episode of the miniseries The Bible on the History Channel opens by recapitulating the roles of Abraham, Moses, and David. The theme: “The nation of Israel has been forged in faith by heroes.” The episode rather effectively begins by means of a brief narrative summary of the story up to the time of King Zedekiah. This means that they have skipped much of the history of Israel (including its division into two nations) and even the stories with Elijah and Elisha (which are very exciting stories) to get them to the brink of going into exile. The episode continues all the way until the arrest of John the Baptist, the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and John’s death.
The miniseries effectively summarizes the international relations mess that the nation of Judah has gotten into under King Zedekiah. The main thing that Scripture stresses, which the miniseries did not, was that the LORD considered the alliances with these foreign nations as being unfaithful to Him. Yet the scene with the prophet Jeremiah was helpful in reminding the viewer that the mess was the result of not listening to the prophets. We see King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquer Jerusalem, burn the Temple, put out Zedekiah’s eyes, and lead the nation into exile in this episode.
Next the miniseries indicates that they will need a different kind of leader if they are to survive in Babylon — someone like Daniel who interprets the king’s dream. We see the large statue and the demand that the people worship it (and thus the king). But the three friends of Daniel refuse to bow and are put in the fiery furnace. The miracle leads to Daniel saying what has become like a mantra in the miniseries, which is a major theme of the Scriptures too — “God is with us.” We even see Nebuchadnezzar become a madman, though we do not see him regain his mind and praise God as in the Scriptures. Instead the miniseries uses the event to fastforward and say that King Cyrus of Persia arrives a few years after Nebuchadnezzar’s death. But we do see that the miniseries understands the prophecy in Isaiah about Cyrus, naming his name, as written by Isaiah the prophet unlike many modern interpreters. And we get to see Daniel in the den of lions. The miniseries leaves King Darius out of the picture and instead makes King Cyrus respond to the story of the lions by saying that the people of Israel can return to their homeland. And then Daniel tells us a dream about the coming of a mighty nation (Rome) and the coming Messiah.
In the next scene we see the removal of a golden eagle installed above the Temple. This eagle had been put there during the reign of Herod the Great. The miniseries indicates that the people removing this abomination were simply not willing to wait for the coming Messiah. They have set up the expectation that the people will have of what kind of deliverer Jesus will be — they will be looking for a military leader. This scene in the miniseries The Bible is not actually found in The Bible, but something that happens before the New Testament opens.
In the next major scene we see the angel tell Mary that she will give birth to the Son of God. Next we see an angel tell Joseph to marry Mary. They have taken a bit of creative license with the way that the story is told even with a crowd accusing Mary of being a whore. Part of the “problem” is that the Gospels, just as with the Old Testament gospels and prophets and writings, are simply not written as movie scripts. Thus the miniseries combines stories from Matthew and Luke and does their best to make sense of it, yet they appear to concentrate on the opening of Matthew’s gospel for the bulk of the opening of the New Testament and they supplement with Luke. No doubt many will note the ways that they fall short of this goal to make sense of it. Without any doubt this part of the story has to be the hardest to tell in a miniseries because of everyones’ preconceptions of what happened. It was interesting to see how the scene ended with Joseph and Mary returning from Egypt with a young Jesus to see bodies on crosses.
I somewhat rather liked the way that they told the story of John the Baptist and the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. This part may be worth watching again. One of the confusing things about the Scriptures is distinguishing all of the different Herods, especially since the Bible often calls each one simply Herod, but they have done well thus far. They cover John’s arrest by Herod Antipas and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Yet the only reason that the miniseries gives for John’s beheading is the threat of the Messiah’s ministry and there is nothing of the daughter of Herodias.
Of all the episodes this one I have liked the least thus far…it simply covers too much ground to work. It would have been better to tell the story of Kings and end with the nation of Judah going into exile and then fastforward to the New Testament as the real end of the exile. Of course, then they would not be able to tell the story of Daniel, but they did not do that very well anyway.
One of the downsides of presenting Scripture in a miniseries format is that it reinforces our culture’s desire for visual gratification rather than for the study necessary with reading. Unfortunately we are becoming a people who are only going to be “biblically literate” about those parts that we can see depicted in video and know nothing else. Perhaps that is better than nothing, but still I would prefer that we show the value of reading the Scriptures. This is especially the case because the Scriptures do not just tell the story, they tell the story for a purpose. One of the problems that we face is that people watching this miniseries might think that the written Scriptures are boring by comparison (they are not of course, but it is nevertheless a real concern). Thus preaching will have to show people how exciting the whole of the Scriptures are, not just the parts that make for good visual-action sequences.
Recent Comments