Most Christian-faith-based media is overly saccharine or unrealistic. The Chosen is one of the few pieces of Christian media I’ve not just watched, but thoroughly enjoyed. It focuses on characters rife with their own set of personal issues who are changed by their encounters with Jesus. It portrays a realistic world full of problems we can all relate to. Ironically, it is a breath of fresh air precisely because it has a bit more grit.
I concur. As a believing Christian, if somebody comes along and says “hey do you want to watch this Jesus show/movie?” my honest answer is…not really! I went into the Chosen expecting it to be awful and have been very impressed by the story telling and production quality . You pinpoint part of the problem: in an attempt to be reverent, shows or movies will make it all so pious as to remove anything earthly or real about it. And, surprise surprise, that’s dreadfully boring. Or if there is some grit/problem, there’s a “once saved always saved” bent to it where the problem is fixed and then the movie ends…as of life isn’t full of hardships after baptism/whatever!
I think the second problem for Jesus films is due to the nature of the gospels themselves: outside of the Passion narratives, they are strung together stories with little narrative connection. (I know, I know, it’s more nuanced than that…but the point being that a film director just can’t make a film about the gospels without making it seem like a random string of events with largely different people/places). It is this problem that the Chosen so masterfully addresses: make the focus on the characters in the story, not Jesus, and thereby give a narrative form to what are otherwise brief, well-known stories. The healing at the well, whose brother is made to be a militant apostle, is a great example.
There have also been some flourishes in the show that have indicated some real artistic meditation/thought by the writers, for example when Jesus and John discuss the Torah and John is given the first insights into his eventual theology.
> ... outside of the Passion narratives, they are strung together stories with little narrative connection...
It may seem this way given the style of books we're accustomed to reading in the 21st century, but there are clear narratives to each Gospel, and the events are amazingly well arranged.
You might enjoy a book like Reading the Gospels Wisely.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve read NT Wright and Bauckham and others on this topic, but I haven’t heard of Pennington. Will check it out! Wright in particular has really helped me to see each gospel in its own narrative form.
I agree that the gospels do have narrative structure when considered as products of the first century. Perhaps the closest to a “modern” narrative would be John’s gospel, but even that is very difficult to tackle given the heavy theology interwoven throughout. In fact, it was seeing scenes from John’s gospel in The Chosen that really alerted me to the talent of the filmmakers. Seeing them pull of John 3 in a meaningful and natural way was phenomenal, as they avoided the potential for dry/impersonal theology by wrapping it in the deeply personal experience of Nichodemus.
It’s a challenging tightrope to walk: You either have to take a lot of creative liberties about Jesus (for lack of explicit background) or you limit your content to just the source material, and end up with a very limited depiction.
Everyone (or at least every Christian) has their own version of Jesus in their head and when media is produced about him, they correlate that version with their own.
The esoteric philosophical background of Jesus and early Christianity is obscure, but it’s not that complicated. Let me share a quick take—which might be interesting to people on this thread.
To start, as with esoteric Judaism, Islam and Platonism, God is conceived as an ineffable oneness. Not a person in the sky, but a divine perfect ”One god” or principle. Hard to talk about, but many books have been written on the topic. The diversity in the cosmos comes from the emanation of the One; this emanation is known as the logos. The logos is typically translated (very poorly, IMO) as “the word.” The logos, as eternal emanation of the one, is therefore metaphorically conceived as “the son of the father.” Jesus is the logos, or in some interpretations, he is the incarnation of the logos (ie, “the word” made flesh).
What’s important to realize here is that this belief in the one (god the father) and the emanation from the one (the logos) is completely orthodox across Catholicism, eastern orthodox and most Protestant interpretations. I think most Christians and nonChristians would find that surprising.
In Acts 18:24, Paul says that Apollos of Alexandria was able to preach this philosophy without even knowing about Jesus. That’s likely because of the massive influence of Philo of Alexandria (b. 25bce) who wrote extensively about the logos as “the son of god.”
Philo also wrote prolifically about the early preChristian communities around Alexandria, the Therapeutae, which Jesus likely encountered as a child—he also wrote about the Essene sect that most resembles the Judaism of Jesus. I’ve assembled and highlighted some of those texts here. At the end, there is also a text from Pope Benedict that formalizes the connection between Jesus and the Essenes.
I'm hoping that more pre Christian Jewish texts will be found. The dead sea scrolls and similar finds did so much to enrich our knowledge of second temple Judaism, helping to support or undermine existing conjectures.
I read recently an excellent discussion on the Samaritan penteteuch, a masters thesis from 2008 - the first direct to English translation ever done from Samaritan oral language. There are clearly an evolving set pre-masoretic texts in pre Christian antiquity and we can see some of the not-quite MT types being used in the vulgate and others.
I suspect, like how the dead sea scrolls illuminated some factional rivalries in second temple Judaism- if we can find more texts from this period it'll better flesh out when, how, and to what extent Greek philosophy influenced the various sets. there is an old idea that the synthesis of Logos and Judaism occurred in John's gospel but this seems undermined already...
Amen. The story continues to evolve. Did you hear about the discovery last year of THC/cannabis residues on an 8th century Jewish temple? It just about guarantees that the billowing smoke from the Mosaic tabernacle was psychoactive.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1...
When I get more time, I want to invest in reading the Mandaen literature. They worshipped John the Baptist —and their religion still exists!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism
'The Passion of Christ' is a great example of something that can be truly emotive for some, but not for others. I found it barely interesting and frankly not sure how much it has to do with Christianity, or rather in a pedantic way. It was nice production design, neat to see 'what it would have looked like' and I'm actually sympathetic to why 'it's good in a way' ... but to me it's all kinds of besides the point.
Populism is perhaps more real in Faith than it is in politics, there are various lowest common denominators that can appeal to broad audiences and suck a lot of wind out of the situation.
I remember being 5 or 6, many years before I became Christian, seeing a depiction of Jesus hanging on the cross. It was grotesque, and fascinating in the “I don’t want to look, but I kind of do” way that is especially appealing to kids. I was shocked and dumbfounded that it was anything someone would have on their house.
Though the Crucifixion is part of Christ’s sacrifice, I continue to find it an odd thing to focus on, especially in the context of the resurrection.
It was interesting to me as someone who's been adjacent to, and by necessity somewhat versed in Christianity, for 20 years, but the need to make the audience sit through all 40 lashes, that felt very hardcore "if the Mass isn't in Latin, it doesn't count" Catholic to me.
As a Protestant, none of it made any sense to me at all on the level of Religion or Faith. It seemed like one of those big budget 'History Channel' re-enactments of an important moment, with a big focus on the violence, for what I can gather are reasons of ratings, and that's it. Without offending anyone who liked it, it seemed to almost offensive to me.
It had an obvious focus on the suffering of the Christ, then the victory. It's obviously Catholic derived.
If you've not had the experience, I strongly recommend attending a Stations of the Cross in a Catholic cathedral on a Good Friday if possible. You'll see what the movie is derived from far better, and the Catholics know how to put on a good show.
I mean considering the extreme amount of creative liberties in the source material which started as an example of the genre of bios which is both biography and propaganda written decades if not centuries after the death of their subject, was then heavily edited (Origen already complained about that in the third century), before being carefully handpicked and arranged by the Roman church as a political tool, a bit more creative liberties would not change much things.
Most critical scholars dont really think the gospels are centuries after the fact anymore, that's a 20th century position that's largely lost support. Atheists love it tho!
The general consensus is that Mark was written fifty years after the fact, Matthew and Luke à century after mostly based on Mark and John at least a century after with some thinking even later from who knows what source but with a clear political goal. We are clearly in the decades if not centuries range.
Most scholars date Mark to c. 66–74 AD, either shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD
This is essentially a few decades after the fact.
It's very challenging to really try to push Mathews gospel much further than 80s AD - and even that date has some serious problems.
You seem to have cherry picked certain (older) views... it was certainly popular in the last century to try try push the dates well into the second century but this approach is very fraught and can't be well supported at present.
> This is essentially a few decades after the fact.
That’s literally 75 years after the fact. Scholar put Mathew between 80 and 110 years after the fact so a century as I correctly pointed.
I understand you don’t like being faced with the fact that the gospels were written with a clear political agenda long after what they depict and that the canon is mostly an exercise in late Roman politics. The fact remains.
One of us must be using a different form of math - I take 66 AD, subtract 33 AD and get a mere 33 years
You can try to push out mathew to 110 but it gets kinda tough....if there is that much of a gap between mark and mathew why do we have lots of mathean quotes in the early church and virtually none from mark? Kinda stretches credulity, for me at least.
I feel that if Mark really did enjoy a lengthy period as the of extant gospel it should have acquired a sort of prominence.
33AD?! You can substract zero. No one believes that the event of the gospel happens in 33AD apart from Colin Humphreys and his arguments are completely bogus.
Can you elaborate on this? I had no idea that a date of roughly 33AD was controversial, and Wikipedia seems to say that the consensus is that 30AD or 33AD are when the later events of the gospels occurred.
When I google Colin Humphreys, he seems to be a physicist who dabbles in bible studies. According to Wikipedia, his argument was that the Last Supper occurred on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday, not that he disagreed with anyone about the year.
I was raised Catholic, am now an atheist, but I'd watch this too. I also highly recommend "Jesus of Nazareth". It's a more traditional telling of the New Testament but the cast and performances are truly outstanding.
There's also The Gospel According to St. Matthew, by Pasolini. It's currently in my to-watch list, but many people claimed it's a step above Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth
I think it would accurately be described as Christian derived (being Western) but, given the exponential growth of published writing over time, I doubt the majority of written media is Christian based. Just my hunch..
Does the grit extend to Jesus himself? That is to say, do we get the Zen monk-style Jesus from modern Western media or do we get the anger-issues Jesus from the Bible?
> That is to say, do we get the Zen monk-style Jesus from modern Western media or do we get the anger-issues Jesus from the Bible?
Both of those are your interpretation of others' interpretations, and I question whether either of those is a widely held view. Personally, I don't see the media as depicting him as zen-like and I definitely don't read him as having anger-issues in the Bible.
Give it another read. He gets pissed off all the time and for the most bizarre reasons, like the time some people he was teaching don't understand his parable and he's asked why he teaches in parables if people have trouble understanding them and he throws a shit-fit.
I understand how someone could come to this conclusion, especially if you read the Old Testament and believe that Jesus and Jehovah are the same being. But I do think The Chosen has successfully captured the essence of the Gospels and made them much more relatable.
Man, that webcomic was supremely thoughless - no willingness to engage at all with the text, unlike Life of Brian.
That passage appears in the context of Jesus and his disciples making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passa, which takes place in April. Just after the fig tree incident comes the purification of the temple.
Everyone who has a fig tree in the garden knows that some varieties bear an early crop, which is what Jesus was hoping to find. And no one swears at trees, as the webcomic helpfully points out.
The only possible interpretation is that that tree wasn't a fruit tree at all but some random wild tree from the fig genus that doesn't bear edible fruit. The Jesus that appears in the gospels is averse to showy and thoughtless practice, and this is yet another instance.
I think it's clear in context that the fig tree is symbolizing the kingdom of Judah, who's leaders Jesus is very critical of. In the gospels, he says they will be disowned and their kingdom given over to another. The fig tree is a symbol of the kingdom of Judah and it really works in context.
You'd like to see a willingness to engage. "You are all dumb" never was a good argument, you get many more points for "Dogma X is outrageous".
You can make fun of the anti-homosexual tendencies of evangelicals as much as you like and they'll just reply that queers are gross and the bible says it. But if you point out that the prohibition of homosexuality appears in the context of cultic practices you meet them on their own ground and imply that they don't understand their own foundational text.
Funnily enough, I've seen similar arguments to "proof by mortification" in apologetics around historical Jesus - basically, if you were going to invent a Messiah, you wouldn't do it like this e.g., the first witnesses to the resurrection being women, in a very patriarchal world.
I'm fascinated by this view, where do you find support for it in the texts?
To me, and most Christians, it looks like jesis is appropriately angry, sad, happy and generally experiences a full range of human emotions in the gospels.
Jesus had his angry moments, but he's not an angry figure in general, but more specifically I'm pointing to the populist imagination: Jesus is generally not viewed as an angry figure, but rather overwhelmingly empathetic.
Whereas the God of the 'Old Testament' has some harsh actions and policies, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, threatening to punish the Israelites if they didn't follow his commands, telling Abraham to sacrifice is son, banishing Adam and Eve from Eden, etc. There's nothing comparable to that at all in the New Testament. The New Testament is fundamentally different in tone from the Old Testament in this manner.
At least up until recently, it would have been 'Old Testament Fire and Brimstone' , 'Jesus / New Testament, Peace and Love' in popular imagination.
> There's nothing comparable to that at all in the New Testament.
There certainly is. In fact, at one point, Jesus even brings up Sodom as an example!
See Matthew 23, where Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees "children of hell" and says that all the righteous blood shed since Abel will be required of them, prophesying the Siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple ("not one stone will be left upon another.") Or the famous incident where he drives people out of the temple with a whip. Or when he says hate is the same sin as murder and lust the same as adultery, and those who commit them will end up in hellfire (in the Sermon on the Mount, no less.)
Or the reason he so enraged the Jewish authorities, he repeated claims that they were going to lose the kingdom. For example, after he healed the centurion's servant: "When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Or when he says the Capernaum is going to have a worse time than Sodom: " And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee."
Or his comments on people that don't forgive: "And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."
Or the Parable of the Vineyard.
Or this particular memorable castigation from John: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."
This is a view in the popular imagination, but it isn't really supportable after reading the gospels.
I don't agree at all, and your examples actually prove my point.
Yahweh was literally flattening cities, killing Egyptians with plague, destroying Cannanties by force, requiring his followers to sacrifice their children (!).
None of the 'hard advice' given by Jesus in the examples are remotely equivalent to this, nor do they paint a picture of an angry or despotic figure at all.
Jesus is laying Moral Judgment. That's not the same thing we see in the Old Testament.
I guess I fail to see the difference between God destroying Sodom in the Old Testament for their wickedness, telling Abraham he would spare the city if he could find even ten righteous men in it, and then Jesus claiming to be God in the New Testament (John 8) and saying that soon, Capernaum will be judged and face a fate even worse than Sodom because Sodom was morally better than Capernaum.
Don’t most other Christians (Trinitarians) believe Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, just also the (only) God, period?
(Also HN seems to have a fairly high tolerance for pedantry, so I hope nobody gets angry if I interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Mormon, is in fact, Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, the Restored Church. Mormon is not a religion unto himself, but rather another prophet of a fully restored Christian church made complete with the other apostles and prophets of the past and divinely inspired direction as continuously revealed by prophet Russel M. Nelson.
Many people have heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints today, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the nickname for members of Church which is widely used today is “Mormons,” and many of its users are unaware that they prefer to called members of the Church, of Jesus Christ.
There really is a Mormon, and members of the restored church believe his teachings, but they are just a part of the gospel doctrine they believe. Mormon compiled the Book of Mormon; another testament of Christ that complements, confirms, and clarifies the Old and New Testament. The Book of Mormon is the cornerstone of the religion, but arguably useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete religion. The Book of Mormon is normally studied in combination with the rest of the restored gospel, the whole system is basically Christ’s church with the fullness of the gospel revealed. All the so-called “Mormons” are really members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
I think that's the most well-executed and on-topic mapping of the GNU+Linux diatribe onto a new subject that I've ever seen. I didn't realize what was happening until I got suspicious around "there really is a Mormon" and started reading from the beginning again, more carefully. Bravo.
What you’re referring to as Mormon, is in fact, Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Everyone knows this. They're just not going to use an awkwardly-long term to refer to them. We don't refer to "members of the Roman catholic church", we just say catholics.
Mormons do have a distinct take here in attempting to distinguish Yahweh (Jehovah), who they call Jesus, from Elohim, who they call the father. To say they're two distinct beings, and that all the Old Testament prophets were talking to Jesus and NOT the father, is uniquely Mormon.
Sort of. The trinity is a confusing concept as taught by mainstream Christians: three in one in three. But the God of the Old Testament is the Father, not the Son, IIRC.
I’m an exmo, so I’m well aware of what Mormon means. Including that it was widely accepted as an informal demonym for many years by LDS church leaders, and only recently became officially anathema. The reasoning presented for the change has not been terribly sound, I’m afraid, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a future prophet reversed it, as other decisions have been reversed.
> Don’t most other Christians (Trinitarians) believe Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, just also the (only) God, period?
It was divisive in the early church. Marcion of Sinope who compiled what might be the first known canon was a proponent that the god from the Old Testament and the one from the New Testament are different in the second century. He had quite a following but all his writings are lost. He was excommunicated for this view but Marcionism had a lasting influence on the church.
Just did a deep dive into the Bible, several versions (King James, etc.). No "Mormon" shows up anywhere in the text of the Old or New Testaments.
"Mormon" only shows up in the Book of Mormon, which most Christians do not accept as doctrine.
Through a peculiar turn of events, the nickname for members of Church which is widely used today is “Mormons,”
Because this was the term that Mormons themselves used to refer to themselves for over a century, see for example the (fka) Mormon Choir, the Mormon College, etc. It is only very recently that they began shifting their own self-identification away from the use of Mormon.
Agreed! Matthew is such a great character. I relate a lot with him too. I get the same feeling watching the character as I do reading the book of Matthew, which makes me appreciate the gospel even more.
The best 'faith based' stuff focuses on the content or experience, not Disneyfied characterization of the Bible.
U2 is a Christian band, they make Gospel music. They just stopped saying that back in the 1970's but if you look at their lyrics it becomes immediately obvious. In fact, blatant. Literally their hit song "He Works in Mysterious Ways". They don't even hide it, yet, nobody is really aware.
That to me is mind-blowing: how something can be so obvious, right in front of our eyes, not even denied ... and we don't see it.
Mr. Rogers Neighbourhood is 100% Ministering without apparent Ministering.
'Children of Men' is possibly my favourite film, it's literally a Nativity Story.
... but the last thing on the planet I would ever want to listen to is a 'Christian Band' that calls themselves a 'Christian Band'.
There's a huge difference between The Chosen and LToC -- while both may present a "gritty" and imaginative narrative including fictionalized accounts that are not canon, The Chosen does it in a way that does not contradict anything canonical while LToC depicts a sinfully lustful Christ who abdicates his role as savior by stepping down from the cross. As such, it should come as no surprise that The Chosen is popular and well-received among believers and LToC was widely criticized.
Depends whose canon you're talking about because there is no canonical canon. Kazantzakis was very influenced by Gnosticism which set him at odds with the Orthodox and Catholic versions. Personally I found the story to be the most accessible and human version of the story.
Where does the LToC contradict the gospels? They aren't a comprehensive diary of his every thought. You can't say Jesus didn't fantasize about a life with Mary, because that's proving a negative. It's just a proposed fiction to imagine Jesus in a more human way than the vagaries of the canonical gospels. I can see how that would upset some people, but I'd be interested to know where the contradictions exist. It made me really consider the gravity of being the son of god in a way that the gospels simply aren't equipped to deliver.
The Last Temptation shows Jesus’ deity as imperceptive and impotent, contradicting his nature: not a sin so much as a denial of Jesus’ nature.
The imperfect human desires before and during the vision also carry on well past harmless observation and affect the man in a way that would have concerned the one who figuratively(?) advised to pluck out an eye rather than be burdened by sin caused by it. The temptations are incongruent with the refutation of temptation and self-knowledge displayed in the wilderness.
That said! I agree the film is a marvelous examination of human weakness and faith in this life.
I'll admit to being biased against the show from the start, but your description of it sounds like Jesus is just a constant deus ex machina. Is there more to it than "Jesus shows up and everything's cool now?"
"but your description of it sounds like Jesus is just a constant deus ex machina." - there is no reasonable way to infer this from the given comment. Thee 'bias' may be a bit stronger than imagined.
Not particularly. Their description was that everybody has real problems that are changed by coming in contact with Jesus. Real problems, solved by a solution suddenly showing up in the third act. A deus ex machina.
I think it's wonderful this show is happening, and I'm an atheist. It's also wonderful to see, on this techie platform, people aren't afraid to call themselves a "believing Christian."
I'm going to check The Chosen out. The bulk of Christian movies or Old Testament bible stories are unwatchable, as a lot of people have noted.
I went to Israel four years ago [1], and there was something really special about actually seeing the Jordan, the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, the sites of the loaves and fishes, and the Sermon on the Mount. Places I grew up hearing about. (Yes, I know those last two are only the conventionally believed sites, and no one knows for sure.) I've gotten really interested in the rise of Christianity since going there.
Swimming in the Dead Sea was worth doing once. You come out feeling all oily and you have to take a shower. But you can float on your back and raise both arms up in the air, and you don't sink. Getting lost in the Old City and having to ask directions was fun, too. Google Maps was no help.
By the way, I think the best genetic estimate of what Jesus looked like is: what people in Syria and Lebanon look like now. Darker skin than, say, Swedes, but not black.
> It's also wonderful to see, on this techie platform, people aren't afraid to call themselves a "believing Christian."
I am a progressive (not in the current US sense) religionless athiest and I am very glad that people can safely say that they are Christians in this platform.
Ya the first episode is not the best. They tried to show what they were doing before Jesus comes but it doesn’t work well. If you can, keep watching, or else try later. It’s not really representative of the rest. In fact next time I will advise people to skip.
I haven't watched The Chosen, but given how people are describing it here, I'm going to strongly recommend Dorothy Sayers' serialized radio play "The Man Born To Be King."
Most adaptations of the Gospels make Judas an evil caricature of a human being. Sayers' Judas strikes disturbingly close to home, leaving one with the thought "There but for the grace of God go I."
Every one of the characters in her adaptation feels plausible and real. Whatever you think about the Gospels' historicity, I think it would be hard to read these plays and not understand why so many people try to follow Jesus, even today.
Speaking of Judas, I think he was pretty great in Jesus Christ Superstar. They definitely managed to portray him as a sympathetic character who was doing what he thought was right.
It's been quite a few years since I last looked for the radio plays.
IIRC, the tapes of the original productions were lost, possibly mislaid somewhere but more likely destroyed in a BBC archive fire.
I've not personally listened to a performance of these plays (though I will say that "Kings In Judea", the Nativity story, makes a great piece of Christmastime readers' theater, speaking from personal experience).
Looking around the web a bit, it looks like some more recent productions may be available.
Wait really? I haven't watched this but I seem to recall some throwing a shit fit at the Last Temptation of Christ for that very reason. I even recall the same thing at Life of Brian, which doesn't even show Jesus except for a very far shot out of focus depicting the service on the mount?
I guess times have changed...
The Last Temptation of Christ is, mildly speaking, complete garbage when it comes to theology. It actively subverts the gospels and tries to lower Jesus into the realm of natural man. The film has a few nuggets that might be interesting for those learned in religion, but it serves more as a reflection of Paul Shrader's personal struggles with faith at that point in his life. The latter point isn't all that unusual; Kevin Smith (Dogma) and Trey Parker/Matt Stone (South Park, Book of Mormon (musical)) likewise do the same.
The Chosen takes a reverent interpretation. It makes no apologies for having creative license, the Bible isn't meant to be a screen play after all, but it does so in a manner consistent with the character of Jesus both in the Bible and as believers understand him to be. He is fully human and fully God. He weaves the qualities of both throughout the show with the way he handles emotions, miracles, passing down wisdom, and so forth.
Aye, growing up in a church that teaches teetotalism I heard people say that ① wine was less alcoholic back then becaue you had to ferment by leaving things out to gather yeast from the air and not from industrially produced active dry yeast powder, and ② what alcohol wine may have contained was then a necessary evil because of pathogens in water before the proliferation of treatment plants.
I'm curious how true ① is, and/or if lack of distillation made wine weaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquor#Distillation_of_wine makes it sound like the process might have been uncommon knowledge still in the process of refinement).
As a non Christian I have enjoyed talks and writings on Don Knuth on faith and Bible and how it has influenced him and his work. A sample is the Pascal lecture he gave at Waterloo[0]
It's nice that something like this happened without big studios being implied.
Maybe this will inspired others to crowdfund interesting TV series and films. Productions of big studios and TV networks began to be boring and too politically involved to the point that historic truth was satisfied in order to match trendy political movements.
Anyone know the best way to watch The Chosen? The last time I tried maybe a year ago, I think I was forced to use some sort of custom
App and casted to my TV, but the quality was so wretched I couldn’t bear it and stopped watching within a few minutes..
Ah ok I remember now. I did originally attempt watch it on YT and it was the same “from the livestream” that you linked to, and the quality is indeed (just looked at it now again) very very bad.
I replied to my own comment with some other streaming options, of which, the Peacock one is good quality. Not sure about the Tubi one but it’s bound to be better than the YT stream which is utterly terrible.
It is fascinating even for the secular among us to consider the aspects of human history that have resulted in billions of people dedicating their lives to follow Jesus.
The upending of the family structure that ended up converting the Roman Empire after 300 years might be analogous to what the world is starting to experience again (with slow universal demographic collapse except in subsets of practicing religious).
W.r.t. that article, while Christianity does emphasize the value of the individual (Imago Dei), individualism (emphasis on "-ism") is a feature of liberalism and therefore a Christian heresy. Human beings as social animals and individualism is as much of a departure from the human good as collectivism.
There is a terrible tendency in Christian TV / movies from the US I've seen to hire actors like Dean Cain, Kevin Sorbo and Kirk Cameron. I suspect it's because they're politically correct (In the original Leninist sense) for their target audience - or cheap, or both.
And none of them are renowned for their acting chops.
For most any value of creative "X", "Christian X" is going to be populated by those retreating into the niche because they're emphatically not good enough at "X" to achieve mainstream success, to the point that chasing a built-in but significantly smaller audience looks attractive.
I think there are Christian artists who could make it in the mainstream, but who focus on Christian themes out of devotion/passion, in spite of the smaller audience.
I do have to give the actor who played the kid on 2.5 Men credit for walking away from acting and renouncing that role when he got back into religion.
From my reading of the NT, there's a lot of walking away from worldly things by those who chose to follow Yeshua, so I do respect it when those to talk the talk actually walk the biblical walk.
> so I do respect it when those to talk the talk actually walk the biblical walk.
Self sacrifice can be noble, though in my experience it can also become destructive. Biblical teachings--sometimes explicitly--proscribe things like putting unverifiable authorities above ones closest family and friends, poverty, never closely associating with non-believers, and faith without evidence.
The problem is the amount of liberties Christians will allow in the portrayal of Jesus. This show works around the problem by making it more about his disciples and immediate followers, and how their lives are impacted by him.
I think most mainstream Hollywood studios are not interested in depicting extent religious mythology because it's bound to incur protests from someone or other. So it stays on the margins of the industry with only True Believers willing to tie their career prospects to material that's bound to be so polarizing and opinionated.
> I think most mainstream Hollywood studios are not interested in depicting extent religious mythology because it's bound to incur protests from someone or other.
Why? Maybe it just doesn't sell. The fastest growing religious belief in the US is agnostic (or was as of a year or two ago).
The surprising thing is there hasn’t talk really been anything like this. Christian content is almost universally inauthentic for a variety of reasons.
I believe one of the main people behind this series is Darrel Eves, who seems to be partnered up with some bigger YouTubers (most notably MrBeast) and puts on VidSummit.
Just an interesting connection, and I wonder if the success of The Chosen might be related to it being produced in a more "secular" way.
I wondered briefly if someone was making a retelling of The Wheel of Time from the point of view of the Forsaken. That would make for an interesting uncanonical novel.
I read the bible every day and found the Chosen strange to watch at first. As in, "That's not in the bible". I really enjoyed it however when I parked the idea that it isn't a word for word retelling of the biblical text. I would encourage anyone to watch it. Bible reader or not.
Why don't big studios produce content that people clearly want to see? It seems like capitalism should dictate that they chase lucrative markets. Studios regularly produce much more niche content than a Jesus origin story.
You see it occasionally. In the last decade there was Noah, an Exodus movie with Christian Bale, The Shack, and Breakthrough. Probably others. Other than Exodus I think they were generally considered successes.
Go back a little further and you see the Narnia series, which while profitable and generally well received, did not quite turn into the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter level of success that they were shooting for. There were also a couple of Bible mini-series by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett that were huge hits.
The big studios tend to be like investors though; they are looking for content that will turn into smash hits and spin off even more profitable sequels. There are only so many Biblical accounts that fit the bill, and non-Biblical Christian movies are typically more about personal conflict.
9.6 (23K) - That's artificially/impossibly too high, but bad Christian movies get knocked down quickly so there's something to it.
RT is garbage, as you can see from the fact reviewers simply are not reviewing what is obviously something important to a lot of people and that would be their job bringing new things to the average person, but it scores well for what it has - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_chosen
Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here, and this is a noticeable step into it. Ditto for ideological and political flamewar.
> the brown skinned, middle eastern opponent of oppression and intolerance that I always imagined him to be
That’s a totally weird and absolutely anachronistic description of Jesus. He wasn’t a POC fighting against white supremacy, your description of him sounds like a parody of a millennial who sees everything through their narrow American-centric view that puts race, defined by skin color, in the center of everything.
He was in an occupied country ruled by two sets of rulers: the imperial occupiers and those who were willing to collaborate with the oppressors. Jesus often spoke up for the downtrodden and condemned those with wealth and power. Those rulers tried to silence him and eventually executed him. There's a reason why the oppressed sometimes look to Jesus for inspiration.
And the skin color may not have been important in Jesus' time, but it is now. At least in terms of the American religious experience. Here, they almost universally portray Jesus as white. In a country where churches are the most racially segregated institutions, that means something.
The anticolonialist narrative is not sustainable based on all available literary evidence, including the noncanonical texts. Jesus, repeatedly, and in his most well-attested sayings, refutes that narrative, often to the disappointment of his disciples.
This is what the "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" aphorism is about - the Pharisees try to bait Jesus into supporting the "anti-oppression" narrative, and he declines, instead telling them that yes, the material things of this world (such as taxes) are in fact due to the Romans. This is a consistent theme throughout all the gospels. In one case, large numbers of disciples leave Jesus, because he tells them that he's not here for that.
When the Pharisees bring him to the Romans for violating Jewish law, all accounts are that Pilate is dismissive of the charges and Jesus tells him that "his kingdom is not of this world." And of course, Jesus famously prophecies the total destruction of Jerusalem and tells them they deserve it and have it coming. This is generally held to have been fulfilled during the Siege of Jerusalem by the Romans a few years later. This is not exactly "anti-oppression."
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
We could go on and on about this - Jesus associating with the hated (Roman) tax collectors, Jesus saying the centurion has greater faith than anyone in Israel, etc. Jesus is not pro-Roman in a greater sense, because he is not "on" anyone's side. But he explicitly withdraws himself from the "Jewish oppression by Romans" narrative.
The apostles do double down on it, by insisting that earthly authority is to be obeyed and that God put them there. One might suspect that's to help alleviate potential persecution.
> Here, they almost universally portray Jesus as white.
I hate even addressing this, because theologically it's totally irrelevant - all that matters is Jesus was Jewish. But to lump everyone in the Middle East into a "brown" category using some kind of 2021 racial ideology is quite silly. Many Middle Eastern ethnic groups are "white", or "white passing", or whenever the preferred nomenclature is today. "White" is not really a meaningful term. But if you saw the average resident of Galilee or Judea in 30AD on the streets of 2021 NYC, you would probably lump them into the "white" bucket.
If you doubt this, you can look up the Samaritans, for example, a highly insular ethnic group closely related to Jews that never left the region.
Of course, there are many, many other examples as well - Assad is a reasonably notorious concrete example. That said, people of Jesus's time also probably spent much more time in the sun and developed a healthy tan. The people insisting "Jesus was brown!" are weirdly racializing something that doesn't need it. And at any rate, it's not uncommon for Asian people or Black people (in sub-Saharan Africa) to depict Jesus more in those terms, which I don't think anyone has a problem with.
My point wasn't about Jesus' actual racial appearance in history but how the image is used in the current church. Apparently most Christians, at least in the US, like the white Jesus. I suppose, technically, it's white Italian Jesus since the modern depictions are usually based on the old paintings.
I have no idea of the tone of Jesus' skin. Of course, there are paler people in the Middle East. When I traveled there, I met many people who fit that description. But practically none of them looked like the modern portrayal of Jesus. And how could they when the modern portrayal is based on European paintings with European models?
This does bring a racial perspective into play. Especially in a country where the churches are almost entirely segregated. I grew up with the evangelicals. They thought of Jesus as one of them. Not as a Middle Eastern man.
And I'm quite familiar with Jesus' lack of resistance in the Gospels. But, for better or worse, many oppressed people have taken comfort in his story. Seeing him executed by the occupiers and collaborators gave a point of common ground by those facing horrendous regimes. And since Jesus stood up to the religious leaders, and went out of his way to attack the wealthy, there's some comfort and support found there as well.
Which makes it unsurprising modern people with their modern struggles would use Jesus as an example or as someone who would supposedly support them. They're part of a long line of people who have done so.
Jesus goes further than "lack of resistance", one of the reasons the people you call "collaborators" (they weren't) were so enraged by Jesus was by his appearance of active support for the "occupation" and him telling them to their face they deserved to have it all taken away from them and given to another people, as for example, in the Parable of the Vineyard.
Another reason they hated him is because Jesus associated with actual collaborators, like the tax collectors.
I am really baffled about how this can be twisted into comfort for people oppressed by occupying forces. Especially the part where he tells them Jerusalem is going to be destroyed and that they’ve earned it! Prophesying the destruction of the Temple and mass death and telling them they’ve earned it is comfort for other oppressed people?
> They thought of Jesus as one of them. Not as a Middle Eastern man.
The whole point is none of them think of Jesus as a man at all. Certainly not evangelicals. What do you mean by this?
Of course they think of him as a man. According to the doctrine, he was supposedly God in human form. He was here as a man. Artistically, he's always presented in a male physical body. What else would they think of him?
In a nation frequently obsessed with race, the racial identity of Jesus as it's presented matters. I'm not sure why that's controversial to you.
As is the identification of the oppressed and downtrodden with Jesus. That's common enough to be cliche. Maybe it's correct or incorrect, depending on how you look at the old stories, but it's done so often that it's strange to me that someone else would find it strange.
Of course, the oppressors have also frequently used Jesus. So I guess the one thing we can agree on is that the gospels are quite flexible.
They think of Jesus as the Son of God, the Word made flesh and able to experience all the usual privations and sufferings of the mortal frame.
They do not see him as having some sort of racial consciousness or national provincialism…because God would naturally as the maker of all nations transcend that.
Evangelicals are typically the ones that go perhaps too far with that themselves. See for example the controversy over their proclivity for trans-racial adoptions.
>” Jesus as represented in the US seems more like an authoritarian, gun toting, intolerant, white washed perversion of the brown skinned, middle eastern opponent of oppression and intolerance that I always imagined him to be.”
I find this whole “Republican Jesus” image to be held by people on the left and its existence is a caricature that is a result of contempt and/or unfamiliarity.
You'll most often see "Republican Jesus" brought up by the people who were born and raised in the evangelical church. People quite familiar with the subject. I am one of those people.
I guess if you want to ignore the movement of evangelicals to the right wing over the past 40+ years, then perhaps you could pretend it's just an invention of the "Left". But as someone who was alive for this transition and was once deeply embedded in American fundamentalist culture, I can tell you it's no invention.
There are countless books on the subject if you want to understand the history. "Jesus and John Wayne" is a recent release on the evangelical move to the right, and the evolution of "Republican Jesus". It's a good introduction if you're not familiar with the background. Written by someone who was once a member of such churches, and is still a practicing Christian.
It's true that not all Americans have this particular view of Jesus. Non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist denominations will give you a different viewpoint. If the Christians you know belong to those faiths, then "Republican Jesus" would seem quite alien. But the evangelical faiths have had much more success in broadcasting their version. Which makes their version of Jesus the one most prominently seen in the public square and the one currently in use by one of the political parties.
>” The people hanging out outside abortion clinics and gay clubs with all caps boards such as "GOD HATES F*S" and "YOU WILL BURN IN HELL"?”
Do you believe the majority of churches have attendees like this? Westboro Baptist is not at all representative of the local congregation but plenty of people think that kind of behavior you mentioned is common. I believe it is due in-part to unfamiliarity.
No, but I also have never seen a self-professed christian come out to call those folks out. I was raised christian and one of our new pastors was forced out because he was gay, and some of the charities our denomination supported got canned because they also ministered to gay people.
I don't think it's at all weird to point out that christians have a long and robust anti-gay streak going for them, and that's just one type of intolerance.
>”but I also have never seen a self-professed christian come out to call those folks out.”
To this I would say, the number of Christians who would enthusiastically denounce Westboro-Style beliefs and hostility to LGBT in the name of Christianity is very high. Especially in the contemporary era. There are plenty of reports in the news where Baptist churches have denounced the signs, slogans, and actions of the repugnant “god hates ***s” Westboro Baptist types and copycats.
At the end of the day, this is all anecdotal and the sheer number of Christians means you will find people that I mention, and people like you have mentioned. But based on the faithful I interact with as a non-Christian, I asset that the tolerant ones are far larger in population than the intolerant ones.
I grew up in highly religious (calvinist) farming country, then did grad school in highly religious (mostly baptist) west Texas , and since then have had many highly religious coworkers (a variety of denominations). I say this to give context to the next paragraph.
It is my sincere and honest belief that for an awful lot of churchgoing people their disagreement with Westboro Baptist is not the content of the message but rather how they go about spreading it.
This isn’t just about the Westboro church. And yes, albeit less explicitly homophobic or such, there are a LOT of churches and movements in that style. Can find lots of street corners with someone preaching by guilt, telling you this is your last chance not to burn in hell, and indeed not at all following in Jesus’ footsteps.
American Christianity is gross. Megachurches are gross. It’s all capitalistic, a massive industry, and consistently knee deep in homophobia, misoginy and more. Everyone uses God as a way of justifying whatever shit they’re into. “Guns are my god given right! God is on my side!”. It is all the absolute opposite of what Christianity supposedly stands for. And just because some cute little hometown church in the south only has sweet old ladies and is super tight knit etc doesn’t mean this doesn’t apply at scale.
Please stop posting flamewar comments. I don't want to have to go back to penalizing your account but this is the kind of thing that makes us do that, and it looks like you've been swerving back into ideological battle comments lately.
Are my comments pushing a particular ideology, or are they pushing a different way of thinking about ideological matters? Is what I say incorrect? Is the phenomenon I refer to not an example of the very thing that causes you problems moderating this site?
HN (and the world it is contained within) is not perfect dang, and if we ideologically refuse to even contemplate how we go about discussing and thinking about things, should we expect it to change? Might some of your pain be caused by us "doing it wrong"?
Climate change, racism, wealth inequality, general pain and suffering throughout the word...are these things going to go away on their own? Is democracy and rules going to save the day?
If the sole goal of this forum is to establish and maintain a safe space for mostly privileged people to discuss the problems of the world in a purely pleasant, conflict free manner, that's fine, but I think it would be more optimal and honest if we all admitted to ourselves just what it is we're actually doing here.
I ask that you consider this deeply.
Thought Has Produced Our Problems - David Bohm (the physicist)
Are your views about crises, pain, and suffering in the world incorrect? How should I know?
All I can tell you is that internet ideological battles are tedious and repetitive. That already makes it boring, and it evokes worse (and eventually, considerably worse) from others. This is why we ask HN users not to use the site primarily for this.
That category includes grandiose ideological rhetoric in general, even if you're not battling for a particular ideology. It doesn't much matter what people are battling for, actually, because it's not the high-order bit—these threads all end up being the same kind of thing in the end, and it's not the kind of thing this site is for.
> Are your views about crises, pain, and suffering in the world incorrect? How should I know?
I mean my comments that you are complaining about. Are the things within the comments you say are unacceptable actually incorrect? And in those conversations, are the things my counterparts in the conversation say correct?
Correctness and incorrectness is rather important when programming computers, might it also be important in other aspects of life?
> All I can tell you is that internet ideological battles are tedious and repetitive. That already makes it boring, and it evokes worse (and eventually, considerably worse) from others. This is why we ask HN users not to use the site primarily for this.
They certainly can be, according to the manner in which they are currently conducted (a habit we have fallen into, and never bother questioning). But what if we addopted a different approach? Like for example, if instead of engaging in the repetition of lazy, half-correct memes, we actually applied strict logic and epistemology, and incorporated awareness of relevant psychological and neuro-scientific principles into our discussions. For example, science tells us that there is a distinction between reality and our perception of it, and that the delta between the two is sometimes vast. Might it be beneficial for HN to disallow just making stuff up, to saying things with utterly no concern whatsoever if they are actually true?
For fun, imagine if this policy actually passed, and was enforced - do you think that people's behavior would not adjust accordingly? Do you think the quantity of tedious, repetitive arguments you complain about would remain constant?
Or in the interests of efficiency: there are some subreddits whose moderators already enforce these sorts of rules, and as a result know quite about how human beings react to rules. Answers to many of these questions already exist, assuming one is actually interested in solving the problems that one complains about that is.
> That category includes grandiose ideological rhetoric in general, even if you're not battling for a particular ideology.
Are you suggesting that I engage in "grandiose" ideological rhetoric, even though there is no ideology contained within it?
> It doesn't much matter what people are battling for, actually
People's behavior (which derives in part from emotions) does not change according to the topic of discussion?
> because it's not the high-order bit—these threads all end up being the same kind of thing in the end, regardless of that, and it's not the kind of thing this site is for.
What is this site "for", dang? Is it a sort of theatre, where a bunch of highly intelligent people burn billions of dollars of extremely valuable biological compute time engaging in faux-serious concern for the problems of the world? Because if the literal policy is to enforce agreement with prevailing opinions (do not rock the boat), then I have trouble seeing how it can be anything other than that. As I said, this is fine, but I get a very strong feeling that the people on this site think they are engaging in something other than theatre.
And regardless: do you not care about the future of the world? Do you not care about people who are less well off than you? You control a substantial amount of power. You are in a position where you could make a difference. I think you should think about what you're doing with this power, especially the next time you read some article about the latest tragedy du jour in the world. Mildly spoiling the mindless fun just a little for a bunch of first world tech darlings on a forum is one thing, but there are literally billions of people in the world who have actual problems.
If you want a longer definition, it's a site for substantive discussion of topics that gratify intellectual curiosity. That appears to have nothing do with any of the things you've listed, including "tech darlings", "prevailing opinions", and all the rest.
Inflated rhetoric, like what you've been posting, has nothing to do with curiosity and actually drowns it out. By "inflated rhetoric" I mean dramatic claims about big things that don't come with real information to make them interesting, let alone back them up. If you'd please stop that, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: it looks like you've been posting mostly unsubstantive and flamebait comments, unfortunately. Would you please not do that? I don't want to ban you because your good comments are fine, but they're also hard to find amid the bad ones, and that sort of imbalance is the sort of thing we end up having to ban accounts for.
While I have you: could you please stop posting unsubstantive and flamebait comments generally? You've unfortunately been doing that repeatedly, and it's not what the site is for. I don't want to ban you because your good comments are good. But the bad comments take out more than the good comments put in.
