Produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett
A.D.:
The Bible Continues is, of course, billed as
the even-longer sequel (of sorts) to the 2013 miniseries, The Bible, which aired as ten episodes on The History Channel. In
reality, it is more properly a sequel, albeit with different actors, to the
feature film that was adapted out of The
Bible as Son of God (2014)
[reviewed here: LINK].
That’s because its narrative would have to be inserted within that of The Bible while it follows directly from
the conclusion of Son of God. But
that’s really a minor distinction, except in the sense that it was an attempt to
recapture the high ratings of The Bible
on a weekly basis. Judging by the numbers reported in the Wikipedia articles [LINK and LINK],
however, that didn’t really work out as hoped.
Our Monday evening Bible study group has watched and
discussed every episode of A.D.: The
Bible Continues for the past twelve weeks (finishing our discussion up
tonight), using it to pace our reading of the first ten chapters of the Acts of
the Apostles, which are the scriptures behind what was portrayed. The Biblical
narrative is, however, wedded to an attempt at some larger historical context as
well as a whoppingly big dose of imagination. Now that the series has concluded
its original airing as of last night, I have some comments to make.
Like either of its prequels, this series ends up being
a mixed bag of good and bad features. Frankly,
I would say the ratio is more skewed toward the latter, when all is said and
done. Although on balance my viewing experience has been enjoyable, part of the
“enjoyment” has sadly come from guffawing in near-hysterical laughter at their
portrayal of some of the events and their increasingly mangled time-line. Ultimately
I found it a much overblown and inferior retread of a task that was
accomplished much more elegantly a generation ago in the 1985 TV miniseries
also entitled A.D. [LINK], which is unfortunately
available for purchase today only in a heavily “edited” (by approximately half)
– in reality, butchered – form on DVD.
More spectacular special effects and 21st-century storytelling sensibilities
do not necessarily make a better portrayal of the events of the early Church against
the larger backdrop of first-century imperial history. Carried over from The Bible into the latter-day version were
such things as what we nicknamed two years ago the “Ninja Angels” as well as
almost random race-bending of major characters, both of which I could live with
if the overall story had been better than it was. Unfortunately, it was not. And
once again, Pontius Pilate – in reality very likely a mid-level Roman military
bureaucrat caught up in a politically impossible situation (admittedly, my
rather sympathetic vision of Pilate is formed by Paul Maier’s excellent “documentary
novel” biography) – comes off as an increasingly inhuman monster over the
course of the series. This is despite what I considered to be a fairly good
portrayal in the first episode, which retold the events of the Passion and
Death of Christ. By the end, however, Pilate literally spits venom in his
hatred for the Jews and Jerusalem as he contemplates his next move against them.
(Of course, I’m deploying “literally” here in its contemporary idiomatic usage for
emphasis while meaning the diametric opposite of its definition.) I found
Caiaphas’ a much more balanced portrayal across the whole of the series. He
seemed about as hapless as one would expect of a native but imperially-appointed
(something the miniseries seemed oblivious to, at least last night) official of
a people subject to Roman imperium.
In order to pad out what ended up being only the first
ten chapters of the book of Acts (for twelve hours of viewing time, as opposed
to 1,189 chapters – in the “abridged” Protestant Bible – for ten hours in the
case The Bible), a great deal of what
I call “expandaptation” had to be employed, based on increasingly unlikely
speculation as to what might have been going on “between the scenes” of
scripture. This included a good bit of bad soap opera when it came to the
portrayal of Pontius Pilate’s and Caiaphas’ relationships with their respective
wives, complete with an ongoing subplot of an unlikely flirtation between the Centurion
Cornelius and Pilate’s wife Claudia that does not turn out the way she expects
in one of the climactic scenes of the last episode.
Of course, as a historian, I was increasingly dismayed
by the chronological chaos into which the series descended in the latter half
with its major plot leading to the series climaxing with the attempted
placement of the statue of the mad Emperor Caligula in the Temple. This is
besides the ridiculous notion halfway through that the notoriously reclusive
Emperor Tiberius would have left his refuge on the island of Capri and indeed
Italy altogether to make a trip to the distant province of Judaea – but he did
in this miniseries, in events helping to set up his assassination by his
successor Caligula. The death of Tiberius and the accession of Caligula
happened in AD 37. The incident of the Emperor’s statue – which did happen –
occurred a few years later, in AD 40. But besides the fact that there was no
real sense of the passage of seven to ten years (depending on whether the
Crucifixion occurred in AD 30 or 33, the two most likely candidates) from the
beginning of this series to the end, and even here at least three years from
Caligula’s taking power to his ordering the statue erected as a rebuke to the
Jews for their continuing unrest and resistance to Roman rule, the fact remains
that we know that neither Pontius Pilate nor Caiaphas would have been around to
try to negotiate the political powder keg that the order would create (only to
be defused by the assassination of Caligula himself early in AD 41). They both
were out of power – Pilate recalled to Rome, Caiaphas perhaps by death or at
least replaced as High Priest – in AD 36. Except here they were both still present and conniving – and continue
to be in the last scenes of the last episode. There were plenty of other such
time-line discrepancies that I noticed as time passed, including telling a
number of scenes from the Bible out of sequence, but this was the one that I
continually railed against because it was so monumental.
Were there good parts of A.D.: The Bible Continues? Yes, as I indicated above although I
went on to dwell on the negatives. As far as those good parts go, speaking only
for myself at least, I would point to the portrayal of the Apostle Peter (most
of the time – early on, his indecision and self-doubt were played rather
heavily). In the end, I would also mention the portrayal of Paul, whose portrayal
overcame what I found to be a really odd speech cadence that almost at times
seemed to rise from a slight speech impediment with a hint of a lisp, but who
went almost instantaneously from being an over-the-top “villain you love to
hate” to that same over-the-top enthusiasm making him almost believable as the
Apostle-come-lately who did more than any other figure to spread the gospel to
the ends of the known world of the first-century Roman Empire. Finally, and far
more abstractly, there was the fact that in spirit, at least, the events of the
book of Acts covering the first half-dozen or so years of the life of the
Church were played utterly if bombastically straightforwardly and in an
unabashedly positive light that may well, God willing, inspire someone to read
the original for themselves. As Fr. Bill Byrne in his Youtube series, A Catholic Take on A.D.: The Bible Continues,
ended every two-minute installment: “The Book is always better!” [LINK]
And then, this: The final episode ended with a
cliffhanger! As I half expected all along once I learned that this series would
cover only chapters one through ten of the 28 in Acts, the producers are at the
least leaving it open for a sequel, obviously focusing more on the wide-ranging
evangelization of the Apostle Paul whereas this series centered largely on
Peter in and around Jerusalem. Although I’ve seen no such announcement, I fully
expect to be sitting here, God willing, watching Paul chew up the scenery in “A.D.: Son of the Bible Continues” a
couple of years hence. But can I really take another twelve hours of this?
Cheers! – and Thanks for reading!
+ + +
In preparing our weekly study of the Acts of the
Apostles following along with our viewing of A.D.: The Bible Continues, I made up study sheets, both as handouts
for the group at large and a “leader’s copy” with “answers” to the various
questions that I posed for the various passages of scripture. Although the
nature of these evolved over the course of the series and I have not (and
probably will not, since the series is over and done with) gone back and
incorporated ideas that I used in the later weeks to the earlier sheets, I’ve
decided to make these all available via a link to the folder in my Google Drive.
Use them as you see fit, although I make no guarantee how long the link will remain
active or that the documents will remain available. [LINK]
No comments:
Post a Comment