Bible Mysteries

(After my last two monster posts, I think from here on out I’ll just post my comments on television series as I finish them, rather than save up all my thoughts on everything for one long post.)

            I was cautious when I saw this in the DVD shops by the riverside.  I’m - generally - interested - in - programs - about - the - Bible, but when you pick up an unknown documentary, you’ll never guaranteed any sort of quality.  Especially in this day and age when once reputable cable television channels are making an industry of churning out documentary series on all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories regarding bigfoot, aliens, or other crazy supernatural theories.

            Given a subject with as many viewpoints as the Bible, you never know which way it will go.  Will we get the orthodox Christian view, or the crazy New Age view, or the historical critical view?

            The fact that this series was produced by the BBC reassured me somewhat, so I decided to give it a try.  (Plus DVDs are so cheap in Cambodia that I’m encouraged to just take the gamble whenever I’m in doubt.)

           

            The series was originally produced in 2003, and consists of 9 episodes. 
Who Killed Jesus
Joshua and the Battle of Jericho
Joseph and his Multi-coloured Coat
The Real Mary Magdalene
David and Goliath
Herod and the Bethlehem Massacre
The Disciples
The Revelation: The End of the World?
Peter the Rock

            The series wasn’t as bad as it could be, but it still skewed toward credulity and largely ignored the scholarly evidence.  Although admittedly some episodes were worse than others in this regard.

            I expected more from the BBC, but a British friend told me that, despite their reputation, the BBC can actually be just as guilty of sensationalist documentaries as anyone.

            I’m also reminded of what David Starkey, in the interview accompanying the audio book of Monarchy, said about the evolution of history programs on British TV.  David Starkey said that at one time, it was common to have on several different historians who represented several different points of view, and to let them debate the history as if it were Crossfire.  Audiences, however, never warmed to this, because the average person wanted to hear history as a story.  So the trend recently has been to just choose one narrative and not confuse the audience with conflicting points of view.

           This series seems to embody that principle.  Each episode seems to just pick a point of view and stick with it, and then try and smooth all the other facts into line.

            Interestingly, though, it’s not the same point of view for each episode.

            The episode on the trial of Jesus takes the Gospel narratives at face value, and doesn’t really bother with the many historical problems posed by the Biblical account or the contradictions within the Bible itself (see Bart Ehrman, Robin Lane Fox, or Dale Martin at the above links for historical problems with the trial of Christ as presented in the Gospels.)

            The episode on Mary Magdalene is even worse.  It pursues a Dan Brown style conspiracy theory about how Mary’s prominent role in Christ’s ministry was deliberately left out of the Gospels.  The entire basis for this claim was apocryphal material from the second century or later, which any reputable historian should have flagged as completely unreliable.  But the BBC presented it as credible historical testimony.

The episode on Peter also relied heavily on unhistorical apocryphal material.

           The episode on Herod the Great and the Bethlehem massacre starts out by acknowledging all the historical problems with the story.  (It’s not mentioned in any other ancient source, Josephus never mentions it, and even within the Bible it’s only mentioned in Matthew, and is completely left out of Luke’s birth narrative.)  But then, after acknowledging these problems, they spend the rest of the episode examining Herod’s character, and then at the end of the episode allow Christian apologists to claim that the incident has historical validity because it seems like the kind of thing Herod would do.  (Of course it seems like the kind of thing Herod would do!  That’s why the story was fabricated in the first place! No one was going to fabricate an incident that was completely out of character for Herod.)

            The episode on Jericho has the opposite trajectory.  It starts out by entertaining various theories which might prove the battle of Jericho has historical validity.  And then, suddenly in the last 20 minutes, the documentary suddenly reverses course, and finally reveals the latest scholarship that disproves everything the episode had been talking about until the point. 

            They reveal that actually the battle of Jericho and the conquest of Canaan couldn’t possibly be historical because no outside historical source mentions the conquest of Canaan; all of the archaeological evidence contradicts the account in Joshua and shows no evidence of these cities being destroyed at that time; archaeological evidence, and DNA evidence, all seem to show that if you go back far enough in history the Israelites were originally Canaanites themselves, not an outside invading force.  (And while I’m on the subject, linguistic evidence—the fact that ancient Hebrew seems to be a dialect of ancient Canaanite—also supports this view, although the program doesn’t mention this.)

            So the conquest of Canaan, and the Exodus from Egypt, are not supported as historical events by current research.  (The authors at the links above also support this view.)

            But then the episode on Joseph spends the whole time grasping at some very sketchy straws to try and prove that there might be some historical evidence for Joseph’s time in Egypt.

     But you can’t really have both.  If there was no conquest of Canaan, and no Exodus from Egypt, then how can you argue for a historical Joseph? 

            Apparently no one was over-seeing this documentary series to make sure that the episodes didn’t contradict each other.

            The episode on David was interesting.  It was an interesting exercise in taking the Biblical text largely at face value, but then trying to read behind it to seek out what’s not being talked about.  (For example they conclude from the speed with which Absalom’s rebellion took off that David must actually have been a much hated ruler in large areas of the country.)

            I have a few nitpicks about this episode—I’m not sure the Goliath account should be taken as historical—but I’ll leave that alone for now.

My biggest complaint, however, isn’t so much with the accuracy of this documentary series as with the pacing.  Each question is teased out why too long before the answer is revealed, and I barely had the patience for it in the end.  I would have preferred facts and information coming at a faster pace.

            All in all, I wouldn’t really recommend anyone go out of their way to track down this series, but if you ever catch it on TV, you might as well watch an episode or two.

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