Hollywood loves making biblical movies and once in awhile there is one worth watching. Last night the so-called “History Channel” premiered a 10-part series with the novel title of “The Bible.” To cut to the chase, this is a really awful cinematic flop. It is definitely not worth watching, no matter what you think about the Bible as history. The first episode starts with Noah brandishing a Scottish accent in a leaky ark with pairs of animals, like giraffes, in the background. How giraffes migrated to Mesopotamia where Noah lived is, for historical accuracy, better left unmentioned. In between plugging up holes in the shittim wood, with water swirling in the air around the inside of the box-like ark, Noah tells the story of creation, day by day. We get a glimpse of Adam and Eve, but not with any full body frontal nudity. Our first sight of Adam is a guy literally caked with mud, not the dust of the ground. How Eve got there is left out. The bashed-in head of Abel is shown, but no one delivers the classic line “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The story jumps from Noah to Abraham, who convinces Lot to drag his wife along as the “tribe” moves to the promised land. The actor for Abraham could have taken lessons from Mel Brooks, who had Moses down pat in History of the World, Part One. There is a lot of hugging, but for the most part God is absent from the life of Abraham. Why anyone would want to believe in this bullying absentee creator is a mystery. Then one day three messengers appear, one looking Asian and another looking African and all three with full body armor. When Abraham hears that wicked Sodom is about to be destroyed, he asks the messengers to save Lot and his family. Sodom is a steamy and seedy place with little evidence that the young looking Lot was actually made into a judge and sat at the city gate. Good King Melchizedek of Sodom, who was saved by Abraham, is left out of the cast. Nor is the command for Abraham to circumcise, the sign of the covenant and a rather important part of the story, included. Beyond the drunken street carousing in Sodom, Lot’s willlingness to send out his virgin daughter rather than give up the messengers he had given shelter to is missing. He hardly needed to offer his daughter, as in this film the Asian looking messenger is a martial arts specialist and slices his way through the streets with Lot and family, after letting Jehovah (it is hard to tell because God is off camera much of the time) blind the evil doers. Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt, a historical item one should probably take with a pillar of salt, but the incest of Lot with his daughters in the case is conveniently omitted. Continue reading History Channeling “The Bible”
