The American Spectator : The Bible: Beyond the Pale:
The Bible: Beyond the Pale
The History Channel’s inaccurate, relativist treatment of the Good Book.
Ever since medieval mystery plays, the Bible has offered a lucrative playground for show business. The Good Book’s engrossing stories and a guaranteed audience provide the ingredients of success for a profession wedded to ratings. Believers rightly approach these attempts with trepidation. After all, not a little Christian blood has been spilled over the correctness of artistic forays into the spiritual. Jews and Muslims, Abraham’s other children, even ban such projects altogether.
It is sensitivity to these issues that makes the brazen approach of the History Channel’s mini-series The Bible so lamentable. Rarely does a program manage to cheapen its subject matter so effectively without being intentionally satirical. Replete with summer blockbuster narrator and scenes, a strung-out one-dimensional narrative, and a promiscuous use of artistic license, the creators ofThe Bible have a lot for which they can be held accountable.
For starters, religious profiteering is crassly on display. Besides making possible the memorable phrase “The Bible, brought to you by Walmart,” the show is accompanied by multiple advertisements with a religious angle: from ChristianMingle.com (find God’s match for you) and the smartphone Bible App, to Joel Osteen’s latest book and even a plea spot from CatholicsComeHome.org. This combines with a pitch for local churches to purchase The Bible’s accompanying study kits and books, of course written and produced by the series’ creators.
One could just about ignore the marketing if it weren’t for a disturbing factor that renders the creation positively dangerous: a complete disregard for what is actually in the Bible.
This is a consequence of the show’s scope. Being in an almighty rush to get through its material, the first episode speeds past the Pentateuch in a breathless two hours. To accomplish this on budget, the producers obviously had to be selective regarding the text. To fit the disparate stories into some kind of narrative, they obtusely invented scenes and dialogue. Lot’s wife becomes a contrary nag who doesn’t like Abraham and wants to live in a city (Sodom will do), so she convinces Lot to leave against Abraham’s wishes. Later, when the Israelites are slaves, Pharaoh’s son has an inferiority complex and gets a scar from a tussle with the adolescent Moses, who didn’t know he was a Hebrew until the peevish youth blurts it out in anger.
These narrative sandwiches combine with an annoyingly needless alteration of details. Abraham, who should be Abram to begin with, actually encourages Lot to go his own way (c.f. Gen. 13:8); Abraham is the one told to name their child Isaac, not Sarah; the lamb eventually sacrificed in Isaac’s stead should be a ram caught by its horns (production couldn’t find one for the right price?); Moses should have a speech impediment and a wife from the Sinai, to name a few obvious changes. The result amounts to a streamlined mix of fact and fiction that manages to make the Bible seem like bad reality television, its characters worthy candidates for Big Brother or Survivor (all with British accents, to add the needed exoticism).
This precedent of telling half-truths and stringing along fairy-tale narrative chains is precisely what makes the television series so toxic: post-literate society can now glibly say of the Bible as it has increasingly of literature in general: “I didn’t read it, but I did watch it on TV.”
Sadly that seems to suit the purposes of producers Mark Burnett and actor Roma Downey of Touched by An Angel fame. In an interview on Context with Lorna Dueck, the couple gave their tell-all concerning this latest project.
Burnett sets the bar: “Many people hear different kinds of calls. If you’re a believer, it’s a call from God. If you’re a non-believer, it’s an instinctual call, you know, the question is who answers that and is willing to go forward and who’s willing to take the risks. Nobody likes to fail, but I’ve got news for you—if you’re not willing to fail, you won’t do anything. And that’s all I’ve done.”
Whether this radical sort of relativism stands up to reason, Burnett finishes the interview revealing why he felt free to liberally work over the Bible: “There’s a little difference there sometimes when there’s different ways to explain the Bible: one’s kind of like telling you—don’t do this, don’t do that and it’s kind of threatening. I don’t think it’s the most helpful way. The other is the more loving way of—here’s why it’s the most important story.…They’re realizing—we’ve humanized our story. It’s not told from a distancing, lecturing point of view with one-dimensional characters. These are real people who really lived this.”
Wife and co-executive producer Roma Downey backs Burnett up: “We’ve tried to make it gritty and real and authentic and all of our casting too, and the way that we’ve told the story so that you can find the place where you can relate to the character, which is very important that (as Mark says) we weren’t preaching, that it didn’t come across as something holy and distant, that you could appreciate the lives. This was a tough place that these people were living in.”
It’s not surprising that vacuous statements like this make for a vacuous production. As someone once put it, you can judge the tree by its fruit. The true misfortune will come when people mistake this production for the real thing, but that will suit the devil’s purposes well enough. Why go to the trouble of telling lies when half-truths work so much better? It breathes new meaning into the Greek word for actor: hypocrite.
'via Blog this'
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quercuscontramalum (http://quercuscontramalum.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "The American Spectator : The Bible: Beyond the Pal...":
The project had Joel Osteen and Rick Warren on the Board. What did people expect?
Let's take a poll on the number of pastors who have warned people against it?
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GJ - I mentioned it was coming because I saw Mark Burnett and Roma Downey promote it, live. They did not mention their board members.
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raklatt (http://raklatt.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "The American Spectator : The Bible: Beyond the Pal...":
The History Channel product almost makes one yearn for a new Cecil B. DeMille.
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Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel has left a new comment on your post "The American Spectator : The Bible: Beyond the Pal...":
quercuscontramalum -
You stated:
>>>>>> The project had Joel Osteen and Rick Warren on the Board. >>>>>>
I think those 2 names say it all about the accurate credibility of this History Channel "Bible" mini series!
I knew that this big media splash about the History Channel Bible mini series was all hype. I never believed that it would amount to a credible hill of beans. The History Channel has too much past history of screwing up the divine revelation!
Nathan M. Bickel
www.thechristianmessage.org
www.moralmatters.org
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| Joel Osteen and his abs. |
BOARD OF ADVISORS - The Bible TV Series
Joel Osteen / Lakewood Church
Joel Osteen is the Pastor of Lakewood Church in Texas, America's largest and fastest growing church. Osteen's message reaches 47,000 weekly church attendees and millions watch his weekly TV program which airs in over 100 nations around the globe. Osteen has written multiple New York Times Bestsellers and since 2004, his over 100 "Night of Hope" events have routinely drawn near sellout crowds to venues across America and the globe including both Yankee and Dodger Stadium.
Rick Warren/Saddleback
Rick Warren is the founder and head Pastor of the Saddleback Church in California, reaching over 20,000 individuals every week. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller A Purpose Driven Life, selling over 30 million copies. Warren is the founder of Pastors.com through which his bi-weekly newsletter reaches a network of over 100,000 pastors and ministry leaders in the US. Saddleback's P.E.A.C.E. Plan helps millions in need worldwide by promoting spiritual, social, medical and educational development in area of need. In 2009, Barak Obama asked Pastor Warren to give the invocation at his Presidential Inauguration.
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez/National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Rev. Rodriguez is head of both the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (America's largest Hispanic Christian organization with over 30,000 member churches) and the Hispanic National Association of Evangelicals. CNN named Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, “The leader of the Hispanic Evangelical movement". The Wall St. Journal has identified him as one of America’s 7 most influential Hispanic Leaders, and the only religious leader on the list.
Donald William Wuerl/ Archdiocese of Washington D.C.
Cardinal Wuerl is the sixth and current Archbishop of Washington, serving since 2006. He previously served as Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle (1986-87) and Bishop of Pittsburgh (1988-2006). He was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. Cardinal Wuerl attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he was a Basselin Scholar at Theological College. He there earned a Bachelor's degree (1962) and Master's degree (1963) in philosophy. He continued his studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He earned a master's degree in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1967. After ordination, he studied at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, obtaining his doctorate in theology in 1974.
Bishop T.D. Jakes / The Potter’s House - Has Problems with the Trinity (embedded link)
Bishop T.D. Jakes is the Founder and Senior Pastor of The Potter’s House of Dallas, a global humanitarian organization and church with over 30,000 members and 50 outreach ministries. Television coverage of his weekly church services and sermons can be seen nationwide on, "The Potter's Touch," airing weekly on Trinity Broadcasting Network, Black Entertainment Television and the Daystar Television Network. Jakes' annual ministry event titled "MegaFest" boasts more than 100,000 attendees. On top of having authored more than 30 books, Jakes was named "America's Best Preacher" by Time Magazine and was honored with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award.
Dr. Cynthia Hale/Ray of Hope
Dr. Cynthia Hale is the Senior Pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church and one of the nation's leading ministers. Selected by, then Senator, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, Dr. Hale gave the opening invocation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Dr. Hale was inducted into the African American Biographies Hall of Fame and the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers of Morehouse College. She also served as Co-Chair for “Women in Ministry for Obama.” In July 2009, Dr. Hale was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.
Richard Mouw/Fuller Theological Seminary
Richard Mouw is the President and Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, one of the largest multidenominational seminaries in the world. Mouw also serves as the President of the Association of Theological Schools. A philosopher with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he is the author of 17 books and a panelist for the Washington Post/Newsweek online forum “On Faith.”
Dr. Miroslav Volf/Yale University
Dr. Miroslav Volf is a Professor at the Yale Divinity School and founding Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Volf studied at Fuller Theological Seminary. His book ‘Exclusion and Embrace’ was selected as among the 100 Books of the 20th Century by Christianity Today. He regularly teaches and lectures in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and across North America. Professor Volf is a fellow of Berkeley College, Yale.
Anthony Basil Taylor/ Diocese of Little Rock
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor was appointed Roman Catholic Bishop of Little Rock in the USA by Pope Benedict XVI on 10 April 2008. He was ordained a priest on 2 August 1980 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He earned a Ph.D. in biblical theology in 1989 from Fordham University.
