Some contained material deemed heretical, though much of it posed no doctrinal problems in the eyes of church authorities. A few of them, in some times and in some regions, may have been accorded quasi-scriptural status before the contents of the Christian canon were fixed in synods at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419). Most of these stories were regarded as nothing more than pious entertainment. Mystery plays of the Middle Ages recount the story of Lazarus becoming bishop of Cyprus but never laughing again until his second death, so traumatized was he by the sight of the unredeemed souls he saw during his four days in the grave. Orthodox Christianity has passed down stories about the Samaritan woman at the well according to which she proselytizes several relatives as well as Nero’s daughter before being killed by being thrown down a dry well shaft. Medieval legends alluded to in William Blake’s “Jerusalem” tell of Joseph of Arimathea traveling on business with a teenage Jesus to visit England. In the Revelation of Stephen, Rasputin has nothing on Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who dies only after being crucified, having molten lead poured in his ears and mouth and nails driven into his feet and heart, and then stoned. Many of these stories are preserved in documents that purport to chronicle their later careers, after the resurrection when Jesus sends them out to evangelize the nations.įor example, in the second-century Acts of John, the eponymous hero causes a pagan temple in Ephesus to collapse and uses his miraculous powers the next day to ward off an infestation of bedbugs. This predates most of the “Lives of the Saints” material that will be familiar to many Catholic readers.
Beginning in the second century (if not earlier), apocryphal stories about the apostles and other figures circulate far and wide throughout the Mediterranean. While many viewers will be uncomfortable with any effort to expand on the sparse details of the Gospel narratives in the manner of devout “fan fiction,” the undertaking is not a peculiarly modern one. Peter, for instance, is portrayed as hotheaded and bossy, while Matthew, about whom the Bible says almost nothing, is somewhere on the Aspergers’s spectrum. Some of the artistic choices made by the director in interpreting the story and characters will resonate with viewers more so than others. These and other characters are fleshed out far beyond their profiles in the Bible, as happens with any exercise in translating a written text for a visual medium. As much as Jesus, they are “the chosen” to whom the title refers. Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus, along with Peter and Matthew, receive nearly as much dialogue as Jesus through the first two seasons. No other production puts as much focus as does The Chosen on the apostles and other minor figures from the Gospels. Ben- Hur’s subtitle- “A Tale of the Christ”-is misleading since the story, based on the 1880 novel by Civil War general Lew Wallace, is really about Jewish resistance to Rome, with the story of Jesus as little more than a tangent. Only Ben-Hur, the 1959 blockbuster starring Charlton Heston, gives so little of the spotlight to Jesus, and it is really the exception that proves the rule. More unusual, however, is how much time Jesus spends off screen in The Chosen.
Given the constraints of the two-hours-and-change movie format, it is surprising that so few longform attempts to tell the Good News have been made until now, though the lower distribution costs made possible by the internet may be a factor in the timing.
For better or for worse, the most memorable cinematic Jesuses are those in movies that diverge sharply from the standard plotline constructed from a harmonization of the Gospels, such as Norman Jewison’s Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). This is especially true when it comes to such a singular figure as Jesus. Movie-length productions rarely have the space for developing characters in the depth necessary to make them as compelling as authors can accomplish on the page. With so much spare time on their hands, viewers have made it the most successful crowd-funded project of its kind, with nearly 300 million streams and counting.
#The passion of christ movie length series
Projected to unfold over seven seasons, The Chosen is a bingeable TV series about the life of Christ that debuted in 2019, just in time for the pandemic. The Chosen is the brainchild of Dallas Jenkins, an evangelical filmmaker who has cast a Catholic actor as the ostensible lead. Two things stand out about the latest “Jesus movie.” First, it is not actually a movie, and second, Jesus does not seem to be the main character.