"Bible Series" on History: Part 2 Wow, Where Am I?

I was going to say, "I'm back on the roller coaster called the History Channel's 'The Bible'".  But it is more like being in a Funhouse. You are often in the dark, but tableaus keep lighting up in front of you. Some of these surprise you, some delight, some scare. You turn a corner and there is a Bat with a human head dripping blood, then into the dark followed by another scene, perhaps a giant spider web with a huge arachnid at its center. Maybe as in the photo illustrating this paragraph you are plunged into a strata of Dante's Inferno. The depictions depend on stereotypical familiarity with certain stories. In a Funhouse they are used to startle and entertain, but not to edify.

This is how I feel watching "The Bible". I am going along some maze and suddenly action breaks out before me. The scene is one of a long popular tale in both Sunday School and secular Hollywood or TV. It tends to be entertaining, but never quite explains why it happened and why it was important

In "The Bible, Part 2" we begin with some repeat of where Part One left off. There is Joshua saying once more that all that stands between taking Canaan is defeating Jericho.

You know when I was a boy this Battle of Jericho was quite a popular theme. (Of course, I was a boy much closer to the actual event than many who may have been watching its reenactment on TV.) There was an old Spiritual created by slaves in the mid-1800s called "Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho." It seemed to be sung on radio and TV a lot when I was a child. Even Elvis did a version (see video).

(Elvis performing "Joshua Fit Do Battle of Jericho.)

Part Two rehashed Joshua sending the two spies to Jericho in its beginning sequence. It was exciting. These spies were like Navy Seals or something. They crept up to the city walls and threw a hook over the top then used the attached rope to scale the wall. Upon dropping down on the other side they are attacked by several men, who they fight off with swords while yelling, "For Israel". Running down a hallway they encounter Rahab (pictured right), who tells them where they can find escape. One spy gives her a rope from around his waist and tells her to tie it on her window and her household will be spared when the Israel army attacks. The spies escape the city and then, after Joshua speaks with an Angel, we see the city fall, amidst a clatter and shout, into a pile of dust.

Say what?

What is all this wall scaling and sword fighting? I don't recall reading this in Joshua Chapter 2, the book in the actual Bible. First of all, Joshua isn't standing looking at Jericho when he sends the spies. He and the Israelites haven't even crossed the Jordan River into Canaan yet when he sends the two spies over to "Search out the land". Actually they left out that whole march where the Jordan River opens up to allow them to cross on dry land and the priests pick up some rocks to make a monument. Yeah, God parted more than the Red Sea for Moses. I guess the producers felt another such crossing was too redundant.

And those two spies when they reached Jericho did not fling up some big old repelling device. Who were they supposed to be, Batman and Robin? They came to Jericho, went into the city and took up lodging in the house of a prostitute. You know that was pretty unsuspicious behavior, I bet, couple of guys going into the big city and heading for the local house of ill repute. It was certainly a lot less suspicious and risky as scaling the walls in the middle of the night. Oh, and guess who the prostitute was? Rahab.

Now the King of Jericho found out and sent men after them. But Rahab hid the spies and when these men demanded they come out,  she told them, "'True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.'” (Joshua 2: 4)

The King's men did just that, pursued, but the spies were still hidden on Rahab's roof and they escaped three days later. The rope the spies gave Rahab wasn't just a convenient belt, it was a scarlet cord, a symbol of salvation, but who has time for such details when you need to show the walls crumbling and then getting on to Samson.

Yes, turn the corner, and a commercial, and here comes the Samson tableau. It is introduced with the Narrator telling us that Joshua took Canaan, then Joshua died and local magistrates ruled the people, but a new threat arose called the Philistines. Jericho tumbled and out of the dust rode the Philistines. Wow! 

You know the Book of Joshua has 24 Chapters. Jericho fell in Chapter 6. A few more things happened before we get to Judges, and still more before we reach Samson. None of the ensuing battles under Joshua were mentioned, not even the one with the longest day. I suppose the allotments of land and the Cities of Refuge being named wasn't very film-worthy, so we skipped right to Samson. Samson was going to save Israel from the Philistines.

We got nothing about the evil Israel engaged in after Joshua died, how they turned to worshipping Baal and other Gods. Nothing was said about this sinning being why God allowed them to be under the hand of the Philistines for forty years. 

We also skip through Samson's life pretty lickety-split as well, so a few niceties like facts needed to be dropped. After an Angel stands whispering in the ear of the wife of Manoah (the parents of Samson), we see Samson, a bulky man with long dreadlocks, striding toward the camera. Keep in mind that in the Book of Judges Samson doesn't get even a mention until Chapter 13. Such people as Deborah, Barak, Gideon, Jephthah and others who came before Samson must have been left on the cutting room floor.

Samson tosses a couple people around and before you know it he is marrying a Philistine woman, much to his mother's chagrin, but the Philistines don't appear real thrilled about it either. 

In this film there are two Philistine big shots who go and demand Samson's wife tell them where he is. When she can't they set her house on fire with her locked inside. Samson is furious they killed his wife and attacks them, then flees into the hills. (Now this isn't quite the way I read it. They don't have Samson and his wife breaking up over a riddle, don't have a bunch of foxes with flaming tails, don't have an interfering father-in-law -- yeah, go to the source and look it up.) The Philistine big shots (the same two) now threaten the Israelites if they don't bring them Samson, which they do. He breaks his bonds and reaps havoc with a donkey's jawbone (pictured left). Oh, by the way, somewhere in all this action he notices this woman named Delilah.

Now that his wife is dead, he takes up with this Delilah and once again those Philistine big shots come along (the same two) and bribe Delilah to find out his source of strength. The big lug finally tells her it is his hair and falls asleep in her lap. She pulls out a big pair of scissors and begins snipping off his dreadlocks. (Uh, wasn't there this guy she called to do the dirty work of shaving his hair?) Speaking of snipping, let's cut to the chase, the two big shots and a bunch of soldiers pop in and Samson awakes and has no strength to fight. They grab him and the main big shot walks over and thumbs out Samson's eyes. Next thing we know Samson is in some building surrounded by people. He calls on God for one more burst of strength and then begins ramming these huge supports. Everything collapses and everybody dies. Samson's mother (she didn't die) brushes the debris off her dead son and cradles his head.



And we are off to the story of Saul and David. Yeah, there should be a story about a woman named Ruth in-between, a tale of redemption, but who has time for that. 

To tell the truth, I'm getting exhaused from the pace and this post is growing long. I'm not going to compress the lives of Saul and David into a few paragraphs as the film does in a few minutes. I will just make a couple comments.

I liked the actor's portrayal of Saul (pictured right). I think it captured a man who started out on a high note, got too full of himself and then became somewhat paranoid. You can see the struggle on the man's face.

It is interesting to learn that the Young David (pictured left), at the time he slew Goliath, spoke with a kind of near-cockney British accent. He lost this as he grew older. 

We have a scene when David, striped to the waist comes dancing into town. His wife Michal awaits, which seems to be something of a depiction of 2 Samuel 6:16-17, except on the way David runs into his very good friend, Uriah the Hittite and his lovely wife Bathsheba.  I mean, really? Bathsheba doesn't make her debut in David's life until 2 Samuel 11, and I don't know much about a close friendship between David and Uriah. At any rate, David has sex with Bathsheba, gets her pregnant and has Uriah killed. 

The remorse of David did not come through for me in this film. I also was confused by the prophets in the film. We started with Samuel, but I didn't get a sense of Nathan being properly introduced. At any rate, we were shown Bathsheba holding the doomed offspring of David's sin, which took emphasis away from the punishment David was suffering. 

I just feel the filmmakers keep missing the point.

I assume we will pick up with the remainder of David's reign next time, when his house is at war with itself, but am not certain. When we left off in Part Two, David and Bathsheba were with their second child, Solomon, who played with a small model of the proposed Temple. We were told by the Narrator that David would not build the temple, but his son would, but then Solomon would also fall from grace. So, I really don't know where next week will pick up. Maybe we will jump right to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and I dread how that might be portrayed. (Pictured left, the older King David.)

Again, I am glad this show is on air and doing well. I really hope it leaves people wondering why these things happened and they turn to their Bibles or to those who might answer such questions. And there are questions, the film leaves a lot more questions than answers. 

Magic and God

I developed an interest in magic at a very young age. In the photo I am performing an act for my family at age 12. This was not my first such show. I had the Howdy Doody Magic Kit several years before this. I also did magic with chemicals about this same time. In fact I could produce some very Biblical effects such as changing water into wine and the wine into milk.

Over the years I learned a number of tricks as well as how most magicians pulled off their stage effects. Speaking of magicians one of my favorites, or I should say two, are Penn and Teller. These guys do some amazing stuff.

Teller, despite his name, never talks in public. Penn Jillette does all the blatter for the act. They have been performing together for the last 38 years, which is longer than a lot of people stay married these days.

Penn is the big one. He is six foot seven inches tall and has put on a few pounds over the years. Teller is the little guy, but very athletic, agile (especially for a 65-year old man) and adept at slight of hand.

I haven't brought these guys up to talk about Teller or magic. I want to talk about a difference in religious outlook between Penn Jillette and myself, and why I bring this up is because we share a childhood experience so similar it is almost magic in itself.

Penn Jillette, who is a very intelligent and fair minded man, a reasonable Liberal and someone who can discuss issues without rancor or ridicule is also an Atheist and a vocal one. He wrote a book promoting his Atheistic views called, God, No!. We'll come back to that book in a bit. But first, Penn Jillette has explained how he became an Atheist this way.

As a boy, he tells us, his parents forced him to go to church, which he didn't like. He made a deal with his parents. He would join the church youth group if they did not force him to go to church. In youth group he began to argue with the others about the Scriptures. The minister originally encouraged him, suggesting he read the Bible, advise Penn took so he was better equipped to make his arguments. He did this until the minister suggested to his parents he should no longer come to the group. Penn asserts it was reading the Bible that turned him Atheist and insists anyone who read the Bible from cover to cover would also become an Atheist.

Now as a boy my parents forced me to go to church. I didn't like going. When I got a driver's license I made a deal with my folks. I would go to Sunday School, but not church. They agreed. I later switched from this to MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship). I even was elected President of the youth group. As such I started a series of discussions in which I claimed I would play Devil's Advocate just for the sake of argument. However, I wasn't playing. I was trying to attack Scripture. I wasn't asked to leave youth group. I was actually praised for making meetings so interesting that attendance grew. Like Penn Jillette I did eventually become an Atheist and a vocal one. But unlike Penn Jillette I am now a Born Again Christian. I have also read the Bible cover to cover, several times, and doing so has not turned me back to being an Atheist. I obviously did not see the content of Scripture that same way Penn says he saw it.

I do want to mention Penn Jillette's intro to his book, God, No!.

First let me say if you are going to do anything as extreme as kill your child because God told you to do it, you better be really, really, really sure it was God. And I'm going to tell you right here that if some voice told you this it wasn't God.

I have three children. They should not be here. My wife was told, assured, exhorted to even forget the idea, because she could never possibly have a child. She had all ready lost seven. But by the mercy of God she had three. I also want to point out that her having these children was not what turned me from Atheist to Christian. No, the first of these children came over a year after I turned to Christ. These miracles didn't lead me to believe in God, they simple confirmed it.

God is not going to ask me to kill any of my children.

Now I believe such a thing happened once to a man named Abraham. I admit, I have not memorized the Bible, so perhaps there is another such case I somehow forgot, but I think there was only Abraham. Abraham was told by God to take his son, the one promised by God to Abraham and his wife Sarah, his seed and her egg, and sacrifice the lad.

There are foreshadowings here pointing to the coming of Christ, God's only begotten son, who would be sacrificed for men, but unlike Christ, Isaac did not die. God told Abraham to stop as he prepared his son for death. In the film, "The Bible" on the History Channel, when God tells Abraham to take Isaac and sacrifice the boy, Abraham asks, "Why Lord, haven't I proved my faith enough."

Well, no, he hadn't. Abraham was promised a son by God, but instead of having faith this would happen, he took Sarah's advice and had a child by her maidservant, a boy named Ishmael. Ishmael would prove a thorn in Israel's side until this very day. So Abraham had not proven his faith at all by that act. His willingness to sacrifice Isaac did.

So you might ask, why wouldn't God ask the same of me. Well, for one thing God never told me to move from one place to another. God did not physically come visit my home, sit down to dinner and promise my wife she would have children. I never stood with God and argued with him about what he was going to do to some city (Reference Genesis 18). If you read the Bible cover to cover you will find God dealt with human kind in different ways at different times.

There is another reason. God talked with Abraham before the Law was given to Moses. That came a few hundred years later. The essence of the Law is the Ten Commandments. Although with the Resurrection of Christ many of the Mosaic Laws became moot, the Ten Commandments remains as valid now as then. One of the Ten Commandments is "Thou Shall Not Murder".

You see, my problem is not that love and morality are more important to me than my faith, because I am a human and to tell the truth my love and morality are not always what they should be. This is one of the reasons I needed forgiveness and salvation in the first place. No, it is that my faith in the mercy and justice of God is so strong that I know he would never ask one to break his own commandments. Thus I know God would never tell me to murder my children any more than he would tell me to seduce my neighbor's wife.

Now Penn Jillette says that reading the Bible cover to cover would make anyone an Atheist. He has said:

"I think because what we get told about the Bible is a lot of picking and choosing, when you see, you know, Lot's daughter gang raped and beaten, and the Lord being okay with that; when you actually read about Abraham being willing to kill his son, when you actually read that; when you read the insanity of the talking snake; when you read the hostility towards homosexuals, towards women, the celebration of slavery; when you read in context, that "thou shalt not kill" means only in your own tribe—I mean, there's no hint that it means humanity in general; that there's no sense of a shared humanity, it's all tribal; when you see a God that is jealous and insecure; when you see that there's contradictions that show that it was clearly written hundreds of years after the supposed fact and full of contradictions.  I think that anybody... you know, it's like reading The Constitution of the United States of America. It's been... it's in English. You know, you don't need someone to hold your hand. Just pick it up and read it. Just read what the First Amendment says and then read what the Bible says. Going back to the source material is always the best."

What I see is Penn picking and choosing from the Bible. When you do take the Bible in context from beginning to end you see these things, slavery, prejudice, hostility, war are the things of men not following the directions of God. God works within the framework of the real world, pointing us to what is better and right. Take for instance the statement, "When you see, you know, Lot's daughter gang raped and beaten, and the Lord being okay with that."  Really? Really? First of all, the offering of Lot's daughters (See genesis 19) to the mob came from Lot. This was a man's solution to the problem and the kind of wrong-headed thing we do when we take things into our own hands (just like Abraham and Hager producing Ishmael). The facts are that Lot's daughters were not gang raped and beaten. They were rescued, along with Lot and his family from that situation by the grace of God. God was not approving of such behavior. God destroyed Sodom for such behaviors.

I believe in God and Penn Jillette does not. I do not dislike Penn because of this. He has a God-given right to believe what he believes as do I. He says when he became an Atheist there were about 9% of Americans sharing his belief and now there are 20% and he calls Atheism "the fastest growing religion in America".  So we have twenty-percent who believe there is no God. So fine, for then if we take Penn's quote above they are left with no God, just rape and beatings and hostility and slavery and war and crime and all the other miseries that mankind inflicts upon itself and without hope. 

I have something even better than hope. I have faith.

"Bible Series" on History: My View

The Bible is large. It is divided into 66 book, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. It was composed by many authors, all writing under the influence and guiding present of the Holy Spirit, which is to say God (Father, Son and Holy Ghost). It contains many stories, histories, poems and personalities.

Needless to say it is a complex and layered volume. It is filled with thrilling tales that make for great drama. These contain the gamet of human emotion and struggle as well as battles and adventures of epic proportion. Many of these have had great allure for film makers since the birth of movies. Films based on the Bible go back to at least "Passion Play" (a series of shorts that equaled about an hour in length) in 1903 and Vie et Passion du Christ in 1905. Most have presented a singular episode such as "Adam and Eve" (1912), "Noah's Ark" (1929), "The Ten Commandments" (1956) and "The Nativity Story"(2009). Few commercial filmmakers have dared tackle the Bible as a whole.

In the mid-1960s John Huston announced he was filming "The Bible" in its entirety. In 1966, "The Bible" was released, but with the subtitle, "In the Beginning..." It included several parts of Genesis, such as Noah (played by John Huston himself). The others were Cain and Able, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah and the life of Abraham. I remember the hype for this film and most of the attention in the media focused on the Creation sequence, most notably that the actors portraying Adam and Eve would be performing in the nude.

This probably boosted ticket sales. However, as spectacular as many of the scenes were and as perfect as were Adam and Eve's bodies, "The Bible" never got further than "In the Beginning". None of the promised sequels were ever made.

On Sunday evening, March 3, 2013 the History Channel showed the first in it's series, "The Bible". Produced by Rona Downey ("Touched By an Angel") and her husband Mark Burnett ("Survivor") it promises to cover Genesis through Revelation in five two-hour long shows. Television might be the best outlet to present the dramatization of the Bible, but I don't think 10 hours is enough time to do it. My main criticism of this endeavor is the feeling of being rushed.

A brief synopsis of the first episode would probably be helpful.

It began with the Arc being tossed upon raging waters. Inside the boat Noah is reciting the creation story to his family. He tells this from when God said, "Let there be light", touching on the creation of man, Cain killing Abel up to God's decision to drown the whole world because of man's evilness. These scenes flash by as he talks with little explanation. For instance, we see Cain strike down Abel, but receive no explanation of why Cain did this or what happens to Cain afterward. We basically jump from that first murder to pictures of people drowning in the flood.

This portion begins with the arc in the middle of the water and quickly ends there. There is no sending out of birds, no olive branch, no landing on dry land. We are literally left adrift at sea. Perhaps the most effective part of this sequence is giving us a picture of just how enormous the arc was.

We go quickly from the Flood to Abraham. We have parts of Abraham's life, including the destruction of Sodom, up to the moment when he is stopped by God in mid-knife of sacrificing his son. At this point we are transported to Egypt and Moses. The stories of Jacob and Joseph are simply ignored. We see young Moses (pictured right) being egged into a sword fight with Pharaoh's son (a passage I missed somehow in Exodus). Pharaoh breaks this up and then tells his daughter she better tell Moses he really isn't her son. Moses goes out, wanders about, kills an Egyptian overseer and flees while Joshua hides the body (another passage I missed, I guess - the part about Joshua hiding the body that is).

And suddenly it is 40 years later and there is a burning bush speaking to a much older Moses (pictured left with Aaron).  Now Moses is much quicker to agree to the idea he must save his people than he is in my Bible. In my Bible he argues with God that he isn't up to the task, especially since he can't speak well. In my Bible, God tells him his brother Aaron will do the speaking for him, but in this film Moses accepts the challenge pretty quickly and he doesn't meet his brother until he returns to Egypt, and Aaron doesn't speak for him at all. Moses also walks about with this odd smile on his face most of the time.

We get a flip-book sequence of plagues -- frogs hopping about, locust swarming, burning hailstones, etc, and after each a picture of Pharaoh yelling, "No!" The Passover is passed over rather quickly and then Moses is parting the Red Sea. Once across the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's dead army floating upon the water, we are told that Moses led his people to Mt. Sinai and there received these stone tables from God. Moses shows the tablets to Joshua, declares they now have The Law and tells Joshua to lead the Hebrews to the Promise Land. There is no coming off the mountain to an orgy and golden calf, no wandering about the desert for forty years, not even a representation of Moses' death, let alone any explanation of why Moses couldn't lead his people into Canaan himself.

We simply leap to Joshua and his followers standing and looking at a walled city. "We must take Jericho," Joshua says and then sends two spies to the city.

We go inside the walled city and this man stops a woman on the street. He calls her Rahab and his "little whore". It comes across as a bully of a man harassing a young woman. Other than his calling her a whore nothing establishes that she just may be one. She goes on her way and the man laughs.

Right after this we see the two spies scale the wall, drop to the other side to immediately be confronted by about a dozen Jerichoians, who they rather easily dispatch, although a couple flee crying, "The enemy is within the walls." The two spies run about and meet Rehab, who directs them to an escape route. One spy pulls this rope from about his waist and tells her to hang it on her window and she will be safe with their army attacks.

And at this point we are told continued next week.

I am out of breath telling it here, which to me is the biggest problem with the series. It is rushing to get everything in on schedule, but not fleshing out the sequences with what they really mean. I wish they had decided to continue beyond five weeks and ten hours and develop the characters and plot more fully.

However, the initial presentation had the highest ratings of the night, even in the coveted 18-34 age group. It not only out rated everything on the networks, but was the highest rated show on cable this year so far. We will see if these ratings hold up through the next episodes. My hope is they do and it makes people curious enough to read the Bible for the full story or drives them to approach people of faith for more explanation.

There is some license taken, but perhaps not of such import to quibble. For instance, we all ready mentioned that Moses was much quicker to accept God's request than was so in Scripture. Another example was when Abraham was stopped from sacrificing Isaac. Scripture tells us God supplied a sacrifice, a ram that had its horns caught in a bush. In this film it was a lamb with its hind leg caught. I also don't know if the Angels sent to Sodom wore shining armor and were expert in martial arts style sword fighting.


I would mention that Rona Downing is playing the Virgin Mary. I don't know why there wasn't a younger actress hired to play this part at the birth of Christ. Rona Downing is 52 years old. She might pass for Mary at the Crucifixion when she would have been a woman in her mid-to-late forties (pictured right), but she does not look as convincing as the teenage girl who God chose to be the mother of Jesus (pictured left).

We saw they used a younger actor to portray the young Moses, so why not a younger actress to portray the girl Mary?

Nonetheless, I look forward to Part Two and I hope I have not been too picky in my comments about Part One. We need more shows that would portray the Bible stories in a truthful way. Still, we also need explanations of why these things were included in Scripture. Can we easily see how these pointed to the future Christ in this film?

It is also funny to me that Rona Downing and Mark Burnett have written a novelization of the series. Hopefully in this the meanings are explained, but at the same time I wonder why do we need a novelization when we already have the Bible and have it abundantly in many fine translations?