Religious Discourse and Documentaries

Religious Discourse and Documentaries

by Kristin Battestella

These documentaries and series provide friendly starting points on broad biblical subjects as well as high concept theology and religious supposition.

Beasts of the Bible – This 2010 documentary starts off with unnecessary ominous and eerie foreshadowing alongside laughable CGI and animated critters crawling across the screen. An endearing host, animals, or zoo locations would have been better than the redundant prologue and slithering titles padding the run time. Fortunately, expert demonstrations, aquariums, and specimens in jars are more fun amid the medieval bestiaries, alternate scriptures, and scholars debating if the tempting serpent in the Garden of Eden had legs. Modern animal authorities showing lizards, boa constrictors, and monitors are far better than fake visuals as poison salamanders, prehistoric predators, skeletal evidence, and evolutionary changes make the reptilian connections. Moses' staff may have been a snake, too, however his brother Aaron's rod is describe as turning into a “tannin”– Biblical shade taking digs at Pharaoh, Egyptian gods, and the Nile crocodile. Archaeology and ancient ruins help investigate crocodile mummies stuffed with relics while Hebrew scholars compare Greek translations and original etymology to clarify the insects featured in the Ten Plagues. Frogs and locust, sure, but also gnats and mosquitoes rather than lice, dangerous swarms instead of just flies, and potentially killer bacteria like anthrax causing those infamous boils. The science does jump the fantastic shark with mermaid talk when suggesting Philistine temples to Dagon and half-man, half-fish gods were just manatees, seals, or sea lions conflated with myths and mistranslation. Was Jonah and the Whale really a mega mouth shark or merely metaphors for maritime constellations? Some of these Old Testament animal tales are more famous than others, but intriguing creatures such as unicorns, griffons, satryrs, and giants are missing. There's no mention of Noah's Ark, and the hippopotamus as the behemoth or oar fish as sea monsters and leviathan feel tacked on in the final twenty minutes before abruptly ending with cherubs, eagles, and Ezekial visions. The hyperbolic voiceover often negates the interesting theories presented, and embellishments or dated visuals waste precious minutes – every encounter has to have some kind of secret, shocking revelation. This Animal Planet presentation ends on unknown horrors and “Here be dragons” winks when the subject matter is entertaining enough to be a longer series. Fortunately, although the live feeding snakes may scare younger viewers, this eye catching style can be fun for kids who like creepy crawlies.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Voices from the Desert – There are so many old Dead Sea Scrolls documentaries streaming that I had to make sure this wasn't the same one I reviewed previously. Though dated 2016, this hour is obviously older, too, thanks to large computers, then new database analysis, and sharing the high resolution photographs or documentation on CD – recent academic strides nonetheless after decades of painstaking restoration work and study opportunities only open to a select few. Vintage newsreels of the discovery reiterate the history alongside fears and conspiracies that always seem to come in Dead Sea Scrolls discourse, and aerial views of the Qumran ruins and on location cave scientists better explain how the harsh climate helped preserve the documents. Carbon 14 proof pinpoints the first century when but not why as interviews with both Hebrew and Catholic scholars dissect the language, scriptures, and incomplete text. Varying language, penmanship, and reconstruction is not without controversy, however, as touching up the text or attaching fragments requires interpretative decisions. NASA imaging replacing infared mid-century photographs and new satellite technology reveal an elaborate Dead Sea complex while DNA sampling can help match texts from the same hide. Rather than the back and forth discovery history, the second half here improves with recent publications and academia studies detailing the Scrolls' contents – Community Rule for the Sons of Light, scriptorium organization, and obsessions with purification in spirit, ritual baths, and precious desert water. Special clay jars, sundials, and hasty construction suggests the Essenes knew what they were doing was for posterity even if their excessive military preparation failed at Roman hands – leaving no one to tell us about the wither tos and why fors. Although this doesn't really share anything new to those familiar with the Scrolls and doesn't have time to get in depth with all the angles it presents, this hour remains a good introductory piece or classroom starter and springboard to individual research.

How Jesus Became God – This 2014 twenty-four episode Great Courses lecture presented by the University of North Carolina's Bart D. Ehrman posits whether Jesus was divine or merely a dissonant rabbi prophet against Rome teaching to love god and your neighbor as yourself. The historical versus theological questions begin with earlier godly and human relationships – Roman gods, humans becoming revered in Greece, and elevations in Ancient Judaism alongside other miraculous births, Appollonius of Tyana, Nephilim, immortals, and mortals with magical children. From gods becoming human or coming down in the garden to call Adam and others elected as deified like Romulus or Julius Caesar to angels and Satan; the Old Testament is also rampant with all manner of intermingling between man and gods. While some lectures are broad, others are specifically focused on Genesis, Job, and the pyramid of divine hierarchy – a demimonde of saintly or fallen movement with which pagans were accustomed. “Son of God” and “Sons of God” were ironically common phrasing in early Jewish texts, and onscreen notations break down Jesus' ministry, his disciples, and the gentile spread thanks to the polytheistic ease in believing a man made god. Not believing in his resurrection means the Jesus movement would have remained a small sect of Judaism, so the question isn't necessarily whether he was or was not God but how early Christians themselves perceived Jesus. Paul's letters vary amid Trinity confusion and one god separating his divine partiality thanks to hypostatis and the personification of God's Wisdom or Word. Jesus' own ministry was about preparing for God's coming kingdom, not his own divinity, and the reverence came from others bowing down to a suffering messiah created after the fact. Crucifixion would seem to be a failure if not for the resurrection – whether he rose from the dead or not is almost beside the point because the spread of the belief in Christ's resurrection and the visions after his death are what spurred the Jesus movement to change history. The discourse, however, does get redundant in the middle – how many times can one say denominations bend the scripture to fit their beliefs? – and debating the fifty years plus between the crucifixion and the gospel writings is more interesting, combing Acts and Romans for earlier quotes and possible Q references common in the early movement but distorted like a game of telephone by time the New Testament was gathered. Exhalations of Jesus as the Son of God were adopted at the resurrection, but later ideologies move his divinity backward – his baptism, at birth, all eternity, existence at the beginning with God. Which is the truth when the gospels themselves present multiple cases? Docetism, Ignatius, non-canonical books, and disparate texts in the first and second centuries allowed for multiple points of view including Marcion ideas on the appearance of Jesus as a human rather than a bodily being and Gnosticism versus sacrifice. Despite Christianity originally being much more diverse, orthodox worship was ultimately dominated by Rome and the founding of the Catholic church, leading to persecutions for different beliefs before Constantine's conversion and Council of Nicea declarations creating today's somewhat more harmonious tradition. Had he not been raised from the dead, Jesus would have been a historical footnote about a prophet who's predictions failed, and at times the narrative favors Josephus and history over the spiritual, but our professor also admits that history is woefully inaccurate. Although confusing for a new believer and the deeply religious may balk at the idea of examining Jesus' divinity, this is nothing to be threatened by thanks to detailed timelines and texts breaking down fascinating first century sources. Should proving theories, scholars, or miracles one way or the other change what you believe? No, and this series remains a provocative supplement recounting historical facts as well as theological ideologies past and present for the faithful scholar or a higher education study.

Disappointing

Who Wrote the New Testament? – This 2016 two hours plus doesn't need opening re-enactments, scripture quotes, and famous lines montages bloating the time; the viewer is already here for the Word of God analysis, who collected the Twenty-Seven New Testament works, and the conflicts over which letters, gospels, and accounts to include. Why is there no definitive account of Christ? Why do no original manuscripts remain – just copies of copies written decades later in Greek? Despite the tantalizing opportunities, this documentary is all over the place to start with Mount Sinai monasteries, stolen documents, and arid preservation setting the scene with great on location tours and rituals but showing precious little on site researchers, modern cataloging, digital opportunities, and fellow academics. Non-canon texts such as Epistles from Barnabas and Clement or Thomas and Mary gospels help reveal the risk of following Jesus, his inevitable outcome in standing up to Rome, and the danger in following him to record his ministry – leaving oral traditions to carry the story when so many were illiterate. It takes over twenty minutes for all this background before we get to discrepancies and enigmas in Mark and how easy it is for later scribes making choices or transcription mistakes to change locations or verses. Matthew's account bridges the Jewish history of early Christianity while prolific Luke's Gospel and Acts of the Apostles take up a quarter of the New Testament to spread the Jesus Movement to the gentiles. Rumors of Luke's decapitation and burial in Padua are tested with exhumed bones, DNA analysis, and matching the skull to the body – fascinating stuff that is bizarrely tossed in here with less time spent on the purported Q source gospel and parchment pieces from John's Gospel. Odd editing makes it seem as if this was part of a larger series now condensed into one special, for the narrative is terribly haphazard in postulating one generic, problematic, or science related aspect to the scripture before dropping it in favor of Hitler's disturbing Bible translations. I was not expecting to see Holocaust footage when I tuned in nor Protestant Reformation scandals or Mary Magdalene gossip. The fast moving meandeing can't cover its own topic – lumping the New Testament Letters together for a few moments before splitting hairs over the controversies within them instead. James and Jude earn a mention before going back to Paul amid circumcision, pagans, and a throwaway line wondering which epistles Paul really penned or not. All this is thrown at the screen in the first hour alone, and I zoned out after that. If you are studying a particular part of the New Testament, this is really only worth the matching sampling if you can find it, for this is a thematic mess that ultimately never does what it says on the tin.