The History Channel ran the third installment of The Bible earlier tonight. After each of the first two episodes, I posted reviews highlighting the “good” and the “bad” in how the filmmakers portrayed the Scriptures on the screen. So here are some of my initial thoughts on tonight’s program (this is not intended to be an exhaustive review so I won’t cover everything).

The Good

The first hour covered the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. It focused on King Zedekiah, Jeremiah the prophet, and then Daniel and his three friends: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (better known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego). As with the depictions in other weeks, many of the events were compressed for the sake of time (and budget), so many elements were cut. However, there were still some good things here. Although it was hard to watch, the horrors of the siege (such as cannibalism in fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28) were effectively shown.

I’m always interested to see how Daniel is portrayed. It is one of my favorite books of the Bible, and Daniel is one of my heroes of the faith. Perhaps the best part of the way the Daniel account was shown here was the emphasis on how God fulfilled His promises to the Jewish people. It was mentioned several times that God had promised to bring the people back to the land of Israel, even though they had been exiled in Babylon. I also thought it was interesting how the wise men convinced the king to sign the decree that would lead to Daniel being thrown into the den of lions.

The second hour of the program showed the birth of Jesus and the early stages of His adult life, including His baptism, the temptations, and the calling of Peter. I liked that Mary expressed some emotion in this portrayal and that she clearly loved Joseph. Oftentimes, she is too stoic and doesn’t seem to care much about Joseph.

Just as with the other episodes, the program offered viewers a great opportunity to compare the movie with the Bible. This is perhaps the best part of the program—if viewers will take advantage of it. Since so many people are watching this show, Christians can use it as a springboard to discussing Scripture, particularly the gospel message.

The Bad

I’ll try not to critique the program’s errors that were made for the sake of compression. Instead, I’ll focus on the errors that were actually portrayed rather than the false impressions made because events were skipped (which were numerous).

The scene with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego in the fiery furnace was inaccurately shown, although it was interesting to see Daniel at these proceedings (the Bible doesn’t say where Daniel was during this time, but we can be quite confident that he would not have bowed to the statue if he were there and the program didn’t have him bowing). In Scripture, Nebuchadnezzar ordered the furnace to be heated seven times hotter than normal and the men who threw Daniel’s friends into the fire were killed by the flames. In this show, they were covered with some sort of oil and Nebuchadnezzar himself threw a torch on them.

A similar mistake was made with Daniel in the lions’ den. The film had Daniel thrown into the den through a door on the side. The Bible tells us that Daniel was cast into the den, and later that the other wise men who set Daniel up were crushed by lions before they even hit the ground (indicating they were dropped in from above). Not only does this make sense (who would want to open a door with hungry lions on the other side?), but archaeologists have found dens in the region of Babylon that were probably used for this very purpose, and the holes were on the top.

There is some question about whether or not they properly portrayed the Persian ruler who took over after Babylon fell. The program called him Cyrus (a Persian), while the Bible calls him Darius the Mede. There are a couple of possible solutions to this dilemma. One views Darius as another name for Gubaru, the governor of Babylon under Cyrus, the king of the Medo-Persian Empire. The other (and probably better) view sees Darius the Mede as the same person as Cyrus the Persian. I don’t have time to get into the arguments here, but there are several good commentaries on Daniel that address this point.

There were several problems in the portrayals of Christ’s birth and early ministry. As expected, the magi were shown at the birth of Jesus, yet they really didn’t show up until a while later. I’ve addressed this in detail elsewhere (We Three Kings, A Matter of Time, Timeline Twisting, More Timeline Twisting). Also, Herod rudely sent the magi away before ascertaining from the scribes where the Messiah was supposed to be born. Yet the Bible has the scribes telling Herod the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and Herod sends them away, asking them to report back so that he could go and worship (which he had no intention of doing).

The film also had Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee Bethlehem right away, presumably on the night he was born. This does not fit into the Bible’s timeline. They presented Jesus to be circumcised on the eighth day. They also went to the temple after Mary’s purification time (forty days). It wasn’t until after these things that they needed to flee. See above links for more details.

In the temptations of Jesus, the second one showed them at a high point in the wilderness, but Matthew 4:5 and Luke 4:9 state that they went to the pinnacle of the temple. The final scene in the show was the beheading of John the Baptist. The program made it seem like Herod wanted to kill John because he was announcing the coming of the Messiah. In reality, John was arrested because he spoke out against Herod’s adulterous relationship and Herod grudgingly beheaded John to fulfill a promise to his wife’s daughter.

Conclusion

As with each of the other programs, I think there is some value in watching this series, but I would encourage viewers to keep an open Bible at hand. Each scene needs to be compared with Scripture. At the same time, all of us who have read these passages (or are familiar with them) have in our mind a certain image of how we think it probably looked. One of the interesting things about watching these accounts on screen is seeing how someone else pictures these events. I’ve found myself thinking a few times, “I never thought of it that way.” Each time this happened, I would compare it with the Bible to see if what was shown was plausible. Too many Christians are overly critical when something doesn’t conform to how they think it should look, but we should be more concerned about whether or not it matches Scripture.