This Chosen is the Jesus TV show, not the adaptation of the novel about New York Jews hitting each other with baseballs, though that one will come up, inshallah. Feel free to suggest a future topic in the comments or on Discord!
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Io Saturnalia! Welcome back to Sects, Lies, and Videotape, where we look at the role of religion in film and—on very special occasions—television. And this month is one such occasion! At the time of writing, it is not yet Christmas but the preparatory season of Advent. According to the medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas, Advent has four meanings. First, it commemorates the birth of the Lord. Second, it anticipates the Second Coming, when Jesus will return to annihilate anyone whose religious and political beliefs differ from your own. Third, it means the imminent arrival of lots of candy, which, according to Aquinas, has purely medicinal value and absolutely does not break fasting rules, which might explain Aquinas’ physical appearance. Fourth, it means a new season of The Chosen has begun.
What is The Chosen? It is a crowd-funded, multi-season television series on the life of Christ directed by Dallas Jenkins, the son of Jerry B. Jenkins, one-half of the writing team behind the Left Behind novels. So it’s an Evangelical joint, much like the last time Jesus featured in a major English-language television show, the limited series The Bible (there is also an Iranian show about Jesus, based on a movie; that one was not produced by Evangelicals). Despite its genealogy, The Chosen has a much more ecumenical bent than its End Times forebear. There is Mormon money behind it, for one, giving the production team special access to locations normally reserved for LDS pageants. Furthermore, the actor playing Jesus, Jonathan Roumie, is a Catholic. The show also avoids stirring the pot too much. Its perspective on Jesus is staunchly orthodox. If you’re Christian, that is.
I have been aware of The Chosen for a couple of years now, but what really hit home for me was seeing an advertisement for the show in the Paris metro and thinking that, if this thing has migrated all the way to the modern Babylon, then it must be big. This was confirmed when my parents, apropos of nothing, asked me about it because it was showing at their Catholic church during Lent, which is like Advent for Easter. Since I was obsessively watching Jesus movies at the same time, for the same reason, I decided to give the Christmas specials a go.
I was not amused, but this did not stop me from pressing on with the first two seasons of the show, with a third (of seven) having just debuted at the time of writing. In this time, they have managed to cover an excruciatingly small amount of Jesus’ ministry, taking us all the way to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) as well as covering the first five chapters of John. The title refers to the calling of the disciples, and the first two seasons have a “getting the band together” vibe, from Mary Magdalene (Elizabeth Tabish) in the very first episode to Judas Iscariot (Luke Dimyan) in the Season 2 finale. So how does it fare as a portrayal of (exclusively non-Christian) religions, as a depiction of the remote past, and, above all, as an aesthetic object? It’s in this column, so you probably know the answer!
Sects!
There are actually two religions at play, the one behind the camera (different kinds of Christians) and the one in front of it. That would be the Jews. And the Samaritans. But mainly the Jews. This is a timely reminder that not only was Jesus himself Jewish, but so were all his initial followers, and they continued to be Jewish even as they formed the first Christian communities. The New Testament itself has come to be used as a prism into the world of ancient Judaism due to the paltry amount of information for the period between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE. I say “prism” because prisms refract and distort, and the New Testament is hardly an objective source (neither are Philo, Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or any other written sources from this period). But the New Testament, divorced from its historical context, has given rise to a negative view of Judaism that has been inherited by Christianity, what Jules Isaac called the “teaching of contempt.”
The Christian attitude to Jews and Judaism has changed drastically since the Holocaust and other events of the 1940s (*cough cough*), but that doesn’t mean the teaching of contempt no longer applies. Rather, it often sits alongside an aggressive, bizarre philo-Semitism emphasizing just how Jewish Jesus and his followers were. This is the case in The Chosen, where extracanonical markers of Judaism coexist alongside many of the old stereotypes.
As I mentioned, the New Testament is mined by scholars of Judaism as a historical source, and there is a remarkable book, the Jewish Annotated New Testament, with notes and essays exclusively by Jewish scholars. In one such essay, “Bearing False Witness: Common Errors Made about Early Judaism,” Amy Jill-Levine outlines ten stereotypes about Jews and Judaism:
- The Mosaic Law was unduly rigid.
- Jews observed the Law out of fear or for a reward.
- Purity laws created a class of social outcasts.
- The Law was especially burdensome for women.
- Jesus forbade divorce to protect women.
- Jesus ministered especially to the marginalized.
- Jews expected a militant Messiah.
- God was viewed as transcendent and distant.
- Jesus objected to the Temple.
- Judaism is tribalistic, but Jesus preached to everyone.
How many of these stereotypes appear in The Chosen? Not all of them, thankfully. But it hits four of them very hard, namely the first, third, fourth, and seventh. The one that sticks out the most for me is the scandal occasioned by Jesus’ inclusion of female disciples. “He has three women with him!” some Pharisaic authority declaims throughout the second season (the second season is notably worse than the first in its depiction of Judaism). “THREE?” his interlocutor responds, as if one or two or five women would be acceptable but not three. Incidentally, they are not the same three women named in Luke 8:1–3, a strange adaptation choice.
Next there is the treatment of purity laws. One episode opens when a leper (the one from Mark 1) is trying to sell his worldly goods to a pawn shop. Once the shopkeeper guesses his customer’s predicament, he immediately starts repulsing him with cries of “Four cubits! Four cubits!” (not a biblical prohibition, but a rabbinic one). Apparently, we are supposed to be sympathetic to someone who freely exposes others to degenerative, communicable, and incurable diseases. Which, considering the target audience, maybe we are. Maybe one day leprosy—like a miracle—will just disappear, and, well, this leper got lucky. It even happened before Easter! The cubits thing comes up again and again. I would mock it if it weren’t so distressingly topical.
Season 1, Episode 3, “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” hits a whole bunch of these stereotypes all at once. A group of children encounters Jesus hanging out in a clearing (because the Son of Man has no place to lay his head; and the son of Jenkins has no money to secure a set), and he has an extended discussion with them. Topics include whether the Messiah will be a warrior, whether “An eye for an eye” should be interpreted literally, and whether girls should go to Torah school. These are leitmotifs throughout the series. Jesus’ female disciples express frustration and rage that they can’t attend Hebrew school. At the same time, the boys talk about how they learned the prophecy of Gog and Magog in Hebrew school, which conditioned them to expect a Messiah that kicks ass and takes names. I’m not even sure if the institution of “Hebrew school” existed at this time, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
We have some positive markers of Judaism, but they are almost unfailingly anachronistic. The working assumption is that if Jews do it now, they must have done it in the time of Jesus. Heck, if they do it now, they must have even done it in the time of Solomon! So we are occasionally treated to flashbacks to events from the Hebrew Bible where children address their parents as “Imma” or “Abba,” terms of endearment that are sure as heck not as old as 964 BCE. In Jesus’ time, Jews attend a “bris,” touch the mezuzah, get married under the chuppah, dispute about the “get” and “agunot,” sit shiva, and recite the prayer Eshet Hayil. Most, if not all, of these practices, are later, even much later, than the time the show is set. The coup de grace is when Mary Magdalene, in Season 1, Episode 2, hosts a Sabbath dinner and sets a chair for Elijah. Not only is this custom associated with Passover and not the Sabbath (as pointed out by the characters), but it is attested for the first time in an eighth-century CE work called Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, the subject of my thesis. Nothing like kicking back after a long day at work and being reminded of your thesis.
A word about pagans. There are none. Well, there are the Romans, always portrayed as cynical and disdainful, but you would get the impression from watching this series that no one but Jews lived in the land of Israel, even though this was not the case in the time or Jesus or at other times in world history *cough*.
Lies!
Thus far we have discussed religion. Now I want to talk about language. The first episode of The Chosen opens with this title card.
The first two paragraphs let you know that this is a work of religious propaganda and that they are making shit up. Fine, that’s their right. We know precious little about the time Jesus lived, and I would be afraid to write a fictional story about Jesus for fear of getting some historical detail wrong.
The last sentence is a real conundrum. I’m not sure what it means. I don’t think it even has a meaning. Okay, what it means is “We don’t have Mel Gibson’s money and are just going to use English.” What it says is total nonsense. Transliteration happens at the written level. Torah is the English transliteration of a foreign word, as is Evangelion and Qur’an. What the title card presumably means is that the show’s script was translated into English, which is also nonsense. Translated from what? From Aramaic? I don’t think so because there is scarcely any Aramaic in the show. And when things show up in Aramaic (i.e., Hebrew) script, it’s barely literate.
All the characters do indeed speak English—with exaggerated faux Israeli accents, I should add. Apparently, they watched Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan the same way the Thermians watched Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island. That is, they didn’t heed the titular warning of the Sandler movie and trill those R’s like there’s no tomorrow. It is a constant sonic aggravation and plays into my primary complaint from the above section: The showrunners seem to think that not a damn thing has changed in Jewish life and culture over the past 2000 years.
The show does want to communicate, however, that Jesus lived long ago in a foreign culture, and to that end we will see fleeting shots of signs and other things written in square Aramaic script. Which, as I stated above, is the same as Hebrew script. Indeed, every shot of written language is not only in Hebrew but in Modern Hebrew. The one that really made me sit up and pay attention is a letter Jesus carves on wood for a little girl in Season 1, Episode 3:
Here is my transcription of this letter:
אביגיל אני יודעת
שאתה יכול לקרוא
את מאד מיוחדת
זה בשבילך
לא באתי רק לעשירים
And here is my translation:
Abigail, I know [feminine singular]
that you [masculine singular] are able [masculine singular] to read.
You [feminine singular] are very special [feminine singular, but incorrect word order].
This [viz., a wooden toy] is for you.
I did not come only for the rich.
There is plenty of evidence here—from the use of participles, infinitives, and the choice of prepositions—to indicate that this is not the Hebrew of Second Temple Judaism. More pointedly, it appears that the Son of God should have paid more attention in Hebrew school, since he confuses his genders more than once. Maybe this is further proof that Jesus spoke Aramaic and not Hebrew?
There are so many other shoddy examples I could put here, but I want to reserve this space for only the very best. At the beginning of Season Two, Jesus is chilling with the Samaritans as if their conquest and constant humiliation by Judeans was a misunderstanding (if only there was something current that we could compare it to *cough*). The high priest—the high priest—invites Jesus to the Samaritan synagogue so he can read from one of their five Torah scrolls.
Now, I can’t tell you if ancient synagogues wrote out the Five Books of Moses on five separate scrolls or on one big scroll (as is the current practice). What I do know is that whoever labeled the Book of Numbers (bottom right) wrote the title upside-down. I can see why the Samaritan scribe made this mistake. He did write it in a cursive version of the square script (another anachronism) instead of the distinctive Paleo-Hebrew used by the Samaritan community to this day. For a point of comparison (and to stay on theme), here is the “Our Father” written in Samaritan Hebrew:
And here is Jesus allegedly reading from the Samaritan Book of Genesis:
That is not Samaritan Hebrew. Also, it is not even the Book of Genesis. The text is from Isaiah, a book that the Samaritans do not even hold to be canonical.
Videotape!
In order to keep this section short, I am going to focus on the positive. The show consistently puts its limited budget to good use, even though the seams are showing if you know where (or how) to look. Something like 75% of the show takes place outdoors, in what appears to be an average Midwestern backyard (appearances are deceiving, however; it’s actually Texas). At the same time, it gives a sense of scope and the illusion that the characters are traveling places. The sets and costumes are serviceable, or at least colorful. I can’t comment at all on their accuracy, which is way beyond my comfort zone. That Mormon money really helped things in the second season.
For example, the Season 1 finale focuses on the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4). The incident takes place outside of Shechem, the Samaritan capital. This is modern-day Nablus (Roman Neapolis), now a bustling metropolis. If you have seen the Israeli show Fauda—the show that turns war crimes into good times—the first two seasons take place in and around this city.
Here is what it looks like now.
And here is how it looks in The Chosen.
Granted, a lot has changed in the region in the past 2000 years, but Nablus/Shechem is the sacred city of an entire religious community. It’s not some Podunk outpost in the middle of nowhere.
Season Two improves on this aspect a lot. We finally have some episodes set in Jerusalem, my favorite of which is the dramatization of John 5, Jesus healing the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda. Unlike Nablus, I have seen this (currently empty) pool with my own eyes. It is very impressive:
The Chosen can’t quite recreate the size and depth of this structure, but the set they used is quite beautiful to behold, and they get a little arty with the cinematography:
The cinematography is not always so commendable. Like much film and TV these days, there is a perpetual crusade against visibility. In particular, night scenes are criminally underlit:
While we’re still on the positive ledger, I should mention that it uses colorblind casting, some of which is historically nonsensical (How likely is it that the Samaritan high priest was Black?), but I can’t bring myself to care. First century Judea was a diverse place, and if you aren’t going to do the necessary research to depict it accurately, you might as well do it at random.
The acting, beyond the accents, is surprisingly decent, and I personally find Roumie to be a likable Jesus. It’s to the show’s merit that the different apostles are imbued with distinct personalities, but some of those personalities are obnoxious. Matthew (Paras Patel) is supposed to be autistic, and I haven’t come to terms with how I feel about that yet. I am more certain how I feel about Simon (not yet) Peter (Shahar Isaac), who carries himself like the captain of the football team and spews out anachronisms like “I’ve got this!” while wearing a wife-beater tunic. Peter doesn’t have to be like I imagined him, but he also doesn’t have to look like this:
Worst of all is the depiction of John the Baptist (David Amito), here given the moniker “Creepy John.” He is so far removed from how I envision John the Baptist that I basically don’t recognize him. He’s less of a political gadfly and more like some 4Chan Edgelord, with all the attendant social graces.
The most curious incident is that, in between stints in prison, John tells Jesus that he is going to call out Herod Antipas’ questionably legal marriage to his sister-in-law not because of any religious zeal but because he wants to ruffle some feathers. Jesus reproves him for meddling in the sex lives of politicians, as if Herod and Herodias were a regular Meghan and Harry.
The measured pace of the show means there are long stretches where literally nothing happens. Some of the manufactured tensions (like the marital problems of Peter and wife Eden or when Mary Magdalene backslides, apparently by hustling strangers at gambling) reach This Is Us levels of melodrama.
The best episodes are the ones which simultaneously hit the twin peaks of sublime and ridiculous. The standouts are clear. They are the wedding at Cana (Season 1, Episode 5) and the healing of the paralytic (Season 2, Episode 4). If you are curious, start with those two and see how you feel. If you enjoy them—ironically or unironically—you should be good for the rest.
Christmas Surprises!
I can’t sign off without mentioning the three things that most surprised me about the show—three things I have NEVER seen in Jesus movies.
First, during the leper episode (Season 1, Episode 6), Jesus encounters a young Ethiopian woman who grew up in Egypt. “Ah! I grew up in Egypt too!” Jesus responds. He then breaks into a few lines of Coptic. My jaw hit the floor. The producers couldn’t foot the bill for an Aramaic consultant (a real job that exists) or any of the millions of people, including Evangelicals, who can compose grammatically sound Hebrew, but they got a Coptic guy? I have never heard Coptic—the language of the “Gnostic Gospels” and a bunch of other stuff you, the educated non-specialist, have likely never heard of—spoken before, so there was at least a novelty factor.
The second thing occurs in a bottle episode (Season 2, Episode 3) where the disciples talk among themselves while Jesus holds a receiving line of the sick and possessed. In one of the many moments where they bring up the Pharisees and their expectation of a militant Messiah, one of them cites a “prophetic poem” from the rabbis: “And there shall be no unrighteousness in them on his day, for they shall all be holy, and their king shall be the Lord Messiah.” I had to pause to take a moment because this was truly extraordinary. The “prophetic poem” is from the Psalms of Solomon (17:32), one of the so-called “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.” This is a rather amorphous category of literature consisting of books about or attributed to biblical figures but not forming part of the Bible (the Book of Enoch, probably the most famous example, is one). It is a subject of great interest to me, but one that is so far outside mainstream culture that I would never have expected such a work to be quoted in a crowdfunded Evangelical Jesus show.
The third surprising thing takes us straight into rabbinic literature. In the Mishnah, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism (if you have never heard of it, it forms the core of the Talmud), there are scattered references to the “School of Hillel” and the “School of Shammai,” two first-century proto-rabbinic groups that had opposing interpretations of the Jewish Law, Hillel generally being more lenient and Shammai much stricter. An illustration of their differences can be summed up in this Talmudic anecdote (b. Shabbat 31a):
On one occasion it happened that a certain Gentile came before Shammai and said to him, “Make me a convert, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder’s cubit which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.”
In the Season 2 finale of The Chosen, Shammai appears as a mustache-twirling villain. He intends to use Jesus as a wedge issue against the Hillelites (now led by Shimon, the son of Hillel) to depict them as “soft on Jesus.” I wish to God I was making this up.
Depicting Shammai as a villain is kind of an ingenious move. On the one hand, it gives the target audience the expected Jewish villain. On the other hand, the opinions of Shammai are not normative in rabbinic Judaism (and, hence, contemporary Judaism), deftly setting up a rhetorical evasion against any accusation that the show stokes anti-Semitism.
Then again, this same series attributes Hillel’s most famous dictum, “If not now, when?” (m. Avot 1:14) to Mary, the mother of Jesus, so perhaps the references to Hillel and Shammai are not so considered after all.
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.