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.
