Abstract
Responses from ordinary English church-goers suggest that viewing filmed presentations of Bible passages can both elicit emotive reactions to the texts and promote a greater cognitive understanding of the stories portrayed. In some cases, differences between the viewers’ prior experience of the text and its interpretation in film provoked deeper engagement and lead to fresh and fuller understandings of the passages. However, the power of conveying the Bible through film is seen by some as potentially undermining an orthodox Christian view of the texts. A consideration of other visual presentations of biblical stories, past and present, supports the importance of such resources in promoting biblical engagement among ordinary English Christians. However, the context of their employment needs consideration and care should be taken to inculcate a healthy hermeneutics of suspicion regarding any film version as one possible interpretation of a text with more than one possible reading. Indeed, the very process of viewing the Bible on the screen can be used to introduce Bible-readers to the plurality of meaning inherent in these ancient texts and the different ways in which they may be understood.
Introduction
During a multi-denominational Bible Society programme promoting biblical engagement, small focus groups responded to audio-visual resources portraying dramatized scenes from the New Testament. The Miracles of Jesus (MJ; BBC, 2006), comprises a set of three television documentaries that was supported by Bible Society materials. 2 It includes period dramatizations of incidents from the gospels, acted out in Aramaic with English sub-titles. 3 The first episode explores how the miracles might have suggested, to Jesus’ contemporaries, links between him and incidents in Jewish history, for example, the feeding of the 5000, associating him with Moses with the quail and manna. The middle episode discusses how miracles, such as the calming of the stormy sea, might reveal what Jesus (and the disciples) thought about himself, specifically if he was believed to be divine. The third and last examines the role played in the spread of the faith by contemporary understandings of resurrection.
The second resource, ‘The Passion’ (Pass; BBC, 2008), is a ‘fresh re-telling of the story of Jesus’s [sic] final days on Earth, inspired by the Gospels and other contemporary historical sources, and seen from the perspective of all the main figures involved’; 4 this drama was also supported by Bible Society materials. 5
Six English church groups, across five different denominations (Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, URC and independent evangelical), responded to the documentary, MJ, while only two groups (Anglican and Baptist) made use of the straightforward narrative drama (Pass). Nevertheless, taken together the resources generated a coherent set of responses.
Responses to Visual Media Resources
Miracles of Jesus (MJ)
Much of the response to MJ concerned its focus on the significance of the miracles in relation to their context in Jewish thought, with several groups noting how they had gained fresh insight into the miracles’ Old Testament echoes. However, viewers also indicated that this resource made an impact at an emotive, not just a cognitive level. This related, in some cases, to its ‘very vivid’ depictions of events and the gritty reality of what life—and in particular suffering—was like in the first century Middle East:
the image that most people get of Jesus, is fair haired, blue eyed, with a little halo, floating about, doing nice things, and so the starkness …the reality: dark clothes, you know, sweat, beards, …very realistic as to when you think about it, how it would have been. It got people thinking and changing the images that are often there, which are all nicey nicey.
There were reservations as to the way in which some of the Bible stories were portrayed and a recognition that these portrayals were, in fact, interpretations; for instance, some were concerned that Jesus appeared fearful during the wilderness temptations. Generally, however, even the groups that expressed reservations still felt that MJ would be valuable for Christians who have familiarity with the texts; with others it should only be used with caution or guided by someone with greater biblical knowledge. Overall, this resource was found to provide a valuable and thought-provoking encounter with the texts, even if, as one noted, it ‘gave a visual interpretation of what you read’.
However, the very impact—and memorability—of a visual medium raised a few questions in some of the groups regarding the dangers of the visual ‘account’ superseding or over-riding the text upon which it is based; for example, one suggested ‘you see quite a powerful image on film, and that tends to be what you go away with remembering’ and ‘the film sticks in your head much more powerfully’. So the concerns were not simply that the visual depiction of the narrative was not faithful enough to the text but that viewers would take away the possibly distorted, visual depiction, even if they had previously been exposed to the text. A similar comment arose in discussion by a different group: ‘the visual images are more powerful than the written word’.
The Passion (Pass)
The Passion’s evocation of the historical context of the story and its script’s ability to generate dramatic tension elicited some emotive responses similar to those of MJ: ‘you could really feel the characters, you could feel the atmosphere. It was like you were being, almost like, sucked into it’, and ‘[i]t’s like you were a participant instead of just watching it. You were a part of it’. Others spoke of the text coming ‘alive’ or being made ‘more vivid’. One suggested that the Bible stories in film format ‘probably had more emotional impact’ but, as with MJ, the emotive was combined with the cognitive:
it hadn’t even dawned on me, although I’ve read the story hundreds of times, …Whenever I read that Jesus was in the temple it hadn’t dawned on me that it was during the run up to that week. How stupid, you know, but that just brought it home, which made it even more intense then, what he was doing, what he was teaching at that time.
Again, there were comments regarding how much interpretation was involved in adapting the biblical text to a film format, that the script had gone ‘beyond’ the biblical texts in a number of respects. One observed that it is
interesting in a way, in that, in these days if you read a book and then see the film, the film seems short because the book has all … but with the Bible it’s actually the other way around; the Bible just has the bare facts. It’s the film panning it out—total reversal.
Another noted that the dramatization ‘often didn’t agree with what the Bible said and I think that came up well in discussions afterwards. It was a dramatization with a bit of dramatic license thrown in’. In some cases this filling in of the ‘back-story’ had an effect upon how people understood characters within the story; one said it had changed her view of Judas while another commented that it had caused them to look more closely at the less central characters, such as Pilate and Herod.
Unlike MJ, with Pass there was no concern expressed about exposing people who had little Christian experience to the resource; Pass was seen as a useful resource for others. This may have been because this film interpretation of scripture was in a purely dramatic format, rather than a dramatized documentary like MJ, or perhaps it was that the resource followed more closely the viewers’ expectations and interpretations of the biblical texts concerned. One participant, reflecting both on her own viewing experience and that of the youth group with whom she had used it, noted that ‘children of today, that is their learning style that they’re used to and particularly with our young people …[who] have got very serious dyslexia issues and for them to be able to discuss based around a visual image was great’.
Summary of Data
Responses from these focus groups suggest that these ‘dramatic’ resources both inform and emotionally engage ordinary Christians who are familiar with the Bible; further, they communicate the biblical accounts in a fresh, sometimes provocative way that often drove those familiar with the passages back to the text, to re-view it with fresh insight and/or new questions. On the other hand, for those less familiar with the biblical accounts, these media constitute a means for communicating the Bible’s ‘story’; their accessibility to users of all ages and abilities suggests that it would be foolish to neglect the potential of such resources when attempting to promote engagement with the Bible.
However, there were concerns voiced by some participants who felt that the dramatization involved some unanticipated interpretive moves with regard to the original text. Thus, there are hermeneutical issues around any such visual adaptations.
Comparison to other Christian responses to the Bible on film
To what degree are the comments recorded here typical of English, and other, Christian responses to the Bible on the screen? The Bible and film is an area of research that has generated a good deal of scholarly interest over recent decades. 6 There is, however, little in-depth analysis of responses to Bible films by believers, although Tatum notes these can be very positive where the film is seen as being faithful to the text(s) and/or challenging to believers in a positive way, as was the case with The King of Kings from 1927 and The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1966). 7 Other films are found wanting, sometimes for the opposite reasons—they are not sufficiently faithful to the texts and/or theology or they are seen as conforming to and affirming the prevailing secular culture: King of Kings (released 1961), Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell (both released 1973). 8 However, aside from citing individual reviewers testifying to being personally affected or inspired, Tatum provides little clear indication of how ordinary Christians in general respond or, indeed, how it might have affected the way they subsequently relate to the texts.
When surveying critical responses to more recent productions of the Bible on the screen, to which web-based responses are plentiful, one sometimes finds the same film attracting very different comments from within the Christian community. For instance, in Trevin Wax’s article surveying ‘How Christians Are Responding to the Noah Movie’ there is an assortment of positive (a thought-provoking adaptation despite its theological weaknesses and extra-biblical material), negative (flawed by its unfaithfulness to the Bible including its portrayal of God’s judgment without his mercy), and mixed responses which echo both these opinions. 9
Reactions from Bible-users to Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (released 2014) also raised another important issue noted by some of the respondents here in response to the TV resources, that of emotional engagement in the story. Christianity Today reviewer, Brett McCracken, noted that ‘with the help of thousands of CGI artists and 3D technology, the supernatural onslaught of frogs, flies, hail and bloody water confronts the viewer viscerally in a way that written words or picture books cannot’. 10
Despite the lack of much analysis of the reactions of ordinary Christians, there is evidence that they may be drawn into such dramas by their realism, shocked by interpretations of the texts not previously considered, or emotionally engaged by the cinematic devices employed. They may also consider that cinematic interpretations fail to faithfully reflect the text. An analysis of the root causes of these differing reactions might enable better use to be made of such resources within churches.
Filming Issues Behind these Responses to Bible on the Screen
One reason for the powerful impact reported for these filmic presentations of the Bible may lie in the nature of the texts which are most often subject to film or televisual adaptation. Biblical stories have the power, it has been suggested, to draw people in and change the way they view the world. 11 The visual presentation of such stories in film gives them flesh and has the potential to enhance their effect. However, some of the other reactions noted to these two resources here are explicable in terms of common features of filmed versions of the Bible, arising as they do from the process of translating biblical texts to ‘celluloid’; a deeper understanding of these features may inform our understanding of these effects.
The Pictures in my Head
Some respondents were dissatisfied with the presentation of the Bible on screen. The reasons for such dissatisfaction vary but it may be that the production simply does not meet the viewer’s own preconceptions and prior expectations of the, to them, familiar story. 12 This resistance to a filmed version of a well-known text is not peculiar to the Bible; if one knows and loves any text, its cinematic ‘incarnation’ can disturbingly clash with the pictures one already has in one’s head. Some Christians have found dissonant filmed versions to be thought-provoking and ultimately fruitful as can be seen in this study and, for example, in some reactions to the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell and to the ‘Christ-figure’ film Jesus of Montreal. 13
Conversely, film and TV can also foster an image which then determines the way in which that character or person is viewed in subsequent reading of the texts:
If it seems preposterous that contemporary media (specifically television and film) could influence our Christian faith, one need only examine how images of Christ portrayed over the centuries in other media—painting and stained glass as examples—have influenced and been influenced by theological understandings of Jesus: who Jesus was, what he did. If you were asked to picture Jesus, the image that commonly comes to mind is likely that of Jesus as a thin-faced, brown-haired, bearded, blue-eyed slightly effeminate, and gaunt northern European. So pervasive is this image of Jesus as a European that much of the world pictures Jesus in this same fashion.
14
Seeing film presentations of stories with which one is familiar from reading texts might then, fruitfully or not, provoke the viewer to reconsider existing preconceptions and readings, or it may reinforce existing understandings; either way it can shape future understandings of the text. This effect was noted by a few of the respondents here, in relation to how they regarded figures such as Judas; the power of film in this regard should not be underestimated.
From Bible to Script
In other cases of Christian dissatisfaction, the complaint may be that the screenplay is not true to the original text; it may include words or events that are not found in the biblical texts or may juxtaposes things which are not found together in the original. 15 A number of commentators have noted the problem facing a screenwriter who is trying to use biblical narratives as their source material. 16 These cinematically determined and dramatically necessary changes obviously modify the articulation of the relevant text and may then influence the interpretations made of the biblical account. David Howell notes this need to fill in gaps in the narratives, concluding that ‘textual stories are mutated by the change of medium. Film must fill in some of the indeterminacies of the textual narrative and in doing so offers interpretations of the text’. 17
One of the respondents here had expressed the fear that the memory of an unsatisfactory filmed version of the Bible might over-ride the textual original, that viewers might remember the film’s version of the text rather than the text itself. We might re-phrase this as the belief that the film’s interpretation of the biblical account might over-write the reader’s pre-existing understanding of the passage, gained in some other encounter with the text. The tendency of visual memories or interpretations of books to over-ride the parent text is perhaps unsurprising. With regard to a literary adaptation for film, John Ellis observes, that it:
trades upon the memory of the novel, a memory that can derive from actual reading, or, as is more likely with a classic of literature, a generally circulated cultural memory. The adaptation consumes this memory, aiming to efface it with the presence of its own images. The successful adaptation is one that is able to replace the memory of the novel with the process of a filmic or televisual representation.
18
Ellis’s intuition receives support from some small scale studies on the effect of film in education. Jeffrey Zacks notes experiments where subjects read an essay of historical fact either before or after watching a film that changed some of the facts around the same events. When their memories were later tested, they accepted as fact around 40% of the historical inaccuracies present in the films, even when they had been fore-warned that there might be inaccuracies. 19 As Zacks concludes ‘[t]hese studies probably underestimate how influential bad information in movies can be, because most of the time when you watch a history flick you do not read an accurate history just before or after’. 20 The underdetermined nature of biblical narratives and the contingencies of script-writing would suggest that this danger of confusing textual and filmic accounts is just as great, if not greater, in the case of Bible films and underlines the need for critical evaluation of biblical interpretations put forward by producers and directors no less than those offered from other presentations and articulations of the biblical texts.
Every Picture Tells a Story (implicitly)
A third and related issue arising from filming—or performing—the Bible is the setting or context. Where are the events occurring and who else is present? The importance of these factors is illustrated by John Dominic Crossan in his attack upon what he sees as the anti-Semitism of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. 21 He notes that ‘the crowd’ at the trial of Jesus is indeterminate when you read the account but is determined by the director’s use of extras: should it be the same crowd as the one that cheered Jesus into the city the week before, and how sizeable is it? The answer will shape one’s understanding of the role of the Jewish people in the events portrayed. This provides yet another illustration of the way in which each presentation of a biblical account is a different articulation of the textual original and forms the basis of possible differences in interpretation. Once again, the need for critical reception of any film based on biblical stories is highlighted.
This section has looked briefly at three factors arising when attempting to film the Bible which may then become issues for ordinary Christians in their engagement with both film and text: their familiarity with the sources and the dissonance in ‘seeing’ them differently from how they had been imagined, the cinematically necessary process of fleshing out of biblical characters and conversations in the script, and the interpretation implicit in the direction and portrayal of scenes and characters. These factors each shape alternative presentations or ‘readings’ of texts; these can, in turn, each pose fruitful challenges of pre-existing ideas or mental caricatures arising from limited reflection on the texts and this feature was appreciated by some of respondents here. But the implicit assumptions made in the screenplay and scene-creation need to be identified and subject to critique rather than passively accepted. This also appears to have been appreciated by some of the respondents here. If film resources are to be of value in enabling ordinary Christians to engage more deeply with their text then training in critical viewing and evaluation of interpretations of all kinds needs to accompany their use.
Reflections on the Historical role of Visual Presentation of Bible Stories
While the focus here is on filmed versions of the Bible, historically Christians have ‘viewed’ their sacred texts in the form of religious statuary and stained glass windows, and in the acting out of biblical stories such as the nativity, Palm Sunday and foot washing, ceremonies around the sepulchre over Easter, and in Passion or Mystery plays. 22 What might these examples tell us of the potential role for visual representations of the Bible in today’s church?
Religious art in contexts of less widespread literacy was, for the Western church and for much of church history, seen as being the ‘book of the illiterate’, a notion traced back to Pope Gregory the Great. In his exploration of this idea, Lawrence Duggan cites Gregory:
Pictures are used in churches so that those who are ignorant of letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they cannot read in books. What writing does for the literate, a picture does for the illiterate looking at it, because the ignorant see in it what they ought to do; those who do not know letters read in it.
23
Duggan notes that it is unclear if Gregory anticipated the unlearned being able to learn from pictures alone or if he meant it in the sense of them being reminded of things they already knew because they had been taught them. Is the teaching assumed to be ‘active’ (the image alone can instruct) or ‘passive’ (they can be taught by the learned, employing the pictures as visual aids or aide mémoire)? Later in church history, some distinguish three different functions for religious art: to teach, to arouse devotion and to aid memory; meanwhile its accessibility (to both literate and illiterate), and its emotive power are also noted. 24 Stories of devotion from this period testify to the power of images to stimulate spiritual experience and contain acknowledgements of the role of art in the first stages of contemplation. 25 Although religious images came under attack from the Reformers, Duggan notes that Luther (in Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments) wishes he could persuade the wealthy to paint the whole Bible on the inside and outside of their houses so that everyone could see it. 26
However, alongside these arguments for the value of biblical images, other writers going back at least as far as Augustine, expressed concern that they must not be misinterpreted and the later Council of Trent stressed the need for instruction to which the religious art might be a teaching aid.
27
Duggan himself concludes that Gregory the Great was wrong if he meant that pictures alone could instruct as adequately as text; pictures have to be explained to communicate their meaning to the intellect although they might communicate well ‘to other parts of the psyche’. People viewing religious art
could be reminded of what they already knew, they might be moved to tears or wonder, they might be struck by a novel feature of the rendition, they might experience the presence of the divine - but these were all experiences open to the literate as well as the illiterate.
28
The illiterate need instruction because they cannot read, or learn anything new from, a picture without supplementary help and may easily misinterpret it if none is supplied.
Alongside these silent, immobile images, the Bible in the mediaeval period was also presented in the mystery play cycle. We may see today’s film and television adaptations of the Bible as the modern equivalents of these plays, which were performed in at least fifteen English cities.
29
The cycles covered biblical stories from Creation to the Last Judgment, including the Flood and the events of the Gospels, and, as dramatic presentations, they shared some characteristics with film adaptations:
characters are for the most part scriptural … the dialogue (usually in verse) is partly scriptural and partly invented, but always in contemporary idiom; and the costumes are likewise partly scriptural and partly contemporary. … the aim was the greatest possible realism and a determination to show the events as living, historical fact.
30
This realism was important since the intention was to engender belief 31 and a real sense of participation in the story for the audience; they may be viewed as sacramental theatre, a concept which may be seen expressed in the manner in which they were enacted in public space. 32 In their attention to realistic detail, their coverage of the Bible’s ‘big story’ and their involvement of large numbers of people it seems likely that the plays would have fulfilled a major and powerful role in conveying the faith to those watching. Indeed, Elliott notes that the later control and then suppression of the mystery plays was a result of political and religious changes in England, only later culminating in Puritan condemnation of the Mass as ‘theatre’.
The role of the stage as a teacher of doctrine was over – not because it had done its work crudely or badly, as Puritan critics of medieval plays were later to insist, but because it had done it so well.
33
These plays then, may be seen to have demonstrated some of the elements of reality, the conveyance of information about the story but also the emotional involvement, reported by the focus groups here with regard to televisual resources.
What do these reflections add to our consideration of the role of visual resources within a programme aiming to promote biblical engagement among ordinary Christians? Firstly, that consideration of the value—and dangers—of visual representations of Bible stories is not a phenomenon new to the age of cinema and television. Secondly, they support the observations made here, concerning both the emotional impact of watching the portrayal of biblical accounts and the possibility of gaining a fresh perspective upon them. Thirdly, they show that concern over possible misunderstanding of visual representations of texts has also, in the past led to a desire to mediate or supplement their reception with other forms of instruction. Pictures alone cannot tell the whole story.
The role of the Bible on Screen in Contemporary Biblical Engagement
The Power of the Image
The importance of film as a medium in our culture cannot be overstated 34 and it is central to pedagogy. 35 It is unsurprising, then, that one respondent had noted ‘how powerful a tool of visual image is for learning the Bible. I just wonder whether, because of the learning environment that we’re exposed to so much these days, we need to have a Bible in a visual form’.
In contrast to the mediaeval world, contemporary Western readers of the Bible are soaked in a multi-media dominated culture informed by narratives other than biblical. When they approach their sacred texts, Christians in this culture will inevitably be shaped by their prior encounters with other texts and world-views. However, some of this prior shaping will have occurred in their experiences of ‘imaged reading’ of biblical stories. What those encounters will have been, and how much they dominate the reader’s approach, will vary with age and background but some images have become so iconic they may be difficult to avoid. So Kreitzer suggests that
for a great many more people than we might care to admit, Charlton Heston is the dominant mental picture of Moses … Probably a great many people have their understanding of Old Testament characters framed as much by Saturday afternoon viewings of biblical epics as through any close contact with the particular stories they depict as they are recorded in Scripture itself.
36
Of course, over twenty years on, with far more recent renditions of the biblical epic, this will no longer be as true as it was, but it does illustrate the power of film. This study suggests that it is important to engage ordinary Christians in using good quality audio-visual resources in order to derive the benefits listed here: a greater degree of emotional engagement and an ability to enter in to the stories and have them come alive to a greater extent.
The Perils of the Image
However, there are also potential pitfalls in the use of visual resources. Any film is bound to present one particular articulation of its source texts—it is an inevitable effect of translating the Bible to film. It will insert or rephrase dialogue to make a decent dramatic script, juxtapose scenes and events from different texts or different times, and show some characters in particular lights depending on their portrayal, presentation and ‘back-story’. And, despite the danger of the imaged presentation of the Bible ‘consuming’ the memory of the text it is supposed to represent, in contemporary society it is almost inevitable that Christians will at some point view on-screen presentations of their sacred texts.
Present day viewers of such resources, at least in the West, may have more access to the text and may have more prior awareness of the stories of the Bible than their forebears in the faith; nevertheless, as representations of the Bible stories, films would seem to share not only the potential but also the drawbacks associated with their static forebears. Although they have a script which ‘explains’ the pictures they, too, should be accompanied by oral or written teaching to ensure that they are not misunderstood and thus interpreted. And this will be facilitated if they are discussed and evaluated within the community of faith.
Conclusions
Any programme proposed to encourage contemporary English (or perhaps any?) Christians to engage more deeply with the Bible should definitely make use of on-screen representations of their scriptures. The individual narratives and the ‘big story’ of the Bible may both be communicated effectively, both cognitively and emotively, through these media. Due to the impact of the visual and its endurance in memory, care needs to be taken in choosing appropriate resources. However, any resource offers the opportunity to challenge participants to re-examine their preconceptions and encourage them to develop their critical faculties in understanding both the nature and content of the biblical texts.
Therefore, the use of visual presentations of the Bible should go alongside training in critical analysis of the films and their underlying texts in an attempt to enable ordinary Christians to appreciate and evaluate both the filmed interpretation being presented and other readings of the text. One possible way in which critical viewing might be introduced is by the employment of a range of different on-screen articulations of a particular text, such as different film versions of the Moses-Exodus narratives or events in the life of Jesus. In the same way that reading a variety of different English interpretations may make readers aware that each interpretation is but one articulation or interpretation of the original language text so, viewers of the Bible on film may be alerted to the possibility of multiple ‘readings’ through seeing a number of them in a setting where critical reading is encouraged and fostered.
Consideration of visual presentations of the Bible, past and present, suggests that such forms of biblical engagement have a long history in the church and have proven fruitful for Christian formation. However, historically, these readings were employed within the context of a corporate wider church community, with the opportunities this offered for sharing and evaluating understanding. Pictures alone did not tell the story adequately. Contemporary usage could learn from this history to employ such resources in a corporate setting and enable ordinary Christians to critically encounter their texts as part of the community of the church.
Footnotes
1
This paper presents some material from my unpublished thesis: Isabel Cherryl Hunt, ‘Promoting Biblical Engagement among Ordinary Christians in English Churches: Reflections on the Pathfinder Project’, Exeter, 2016. Fuller details of the data explored here can be accessed when my thesis is fully published through the University of Exeter’s Open Repository: <
>. I should like to express my thanks to Bible Society, for the opportunity to engage with this project as part of my doctoral research, and to my supervisor, Louise Lawrence, for her advice on this paper. I would also like to express thanks to all the participants in the project.
2
Bible Society, ‘The Miracles of Jesus’, 2007 <http://web.archive.org/web/20120724044405/
>. Accessed 02/07/12.
5
Bible Society, ‘The Passion’, 2009 <http://web.archive.org/web/20110809035809/
>. Accessed 11/07/12.
6
See, for instance Clive Marsh, ‘Theology, the Arts and Popular Culture: An Annotated Resource List’, Expository Times 119.12 (2008): 589–95.
7
W. Barnes Tatum, Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 1997), 7, 44–57 and 112–15.
8
Tatum, Movies, 83–85 and 127–130.
9
See Trevin Wax, ‘How Christians Are Responding to the Noah Movie’ The Gospel Coalition, 2014 <>. Accessed 13/02/15. There is also a small sample survey of responses, largely from web sites regarding more recent productions, but also including some data related to that here: Cherryl Hunt: ‘How do “Bible-users” respond to the Bible on TV?’, forthcoming in Helen K. Bond & Edward Adams (eds), The Bible on Television (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
10
11
N. T. Wright, ‘How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?’, Vox Evangelica 21 (1991): 7–32, on 22–3.
12
Tatum, Movies, 6–12.
13
Tatum, Movies, 127–133 and 186–8.
14
Richard C. Stern, Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric Debona O.S.B, Savior on the Silver Screen, (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999), 8.
15
Tatum, Movies, 11.
16
See, for example, Moira Walsh, ‘Film Review: The Greatest Story Ever Told’, America 112.9 (27 Feb 1965): 296–97, who notes the need to add to the biblical texts to make sense of the story ‘in terms of character and dramatic context’ (on 297).
17
18
John Ellis, ‘The Literary Adaptation’, Screen 23 (1982): 3–5 on 3.
19
Jeffrey M. Zacks, Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, (Oxford: OUP, 2015), 95–6. The original study was Andrew C. Butler, Franklin M. Zaromb, Keith B. Lyle, and Henry L. Roediger III. ‘Using Popular Films to Enhance Classroom Learning: The Good, the Bad, and the Interesting’, Psychological Science 20 (2009): 1161–68. This paper also indicated that viewing the correct history reinforced the learning acquired by silent reading and that, when specifically told about an inaccuracy, they did remember it as such.
20
Zacks, Flicker, 96.
21
John Dominic Crossan, ‘Hymn to a Savage God’, in Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb (eds), Jesus and Mel Gibson’s the Passion of the Christ: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History, (London & New York: Continuum, 2004), 8–27, on 9–14.
22
Susan Boynton, ‘The Bible and the Liturgy’, in Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (eds), The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) 10–33, on 13 and 25; Isabelle Cochelin, ‘When Monks Were the Book: The Bible and Monasticism (6th-11th Centuries)’, in Boynton and Reilly, Practice, 61–83, on 63–64, 69–70; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd edn (New Haven, CN & London: Yale University, 2005 [1992]), 22–37.
23
Cited in Lawrence G. Duggan, ‘Was Art Really the “Book of the Illiterate”?’, Word & Image 5.3 (1989): 227–51, on 227.
24
Duggan, ‘Art’, 232 and 236.
25
Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth Century Devotional Painting, 2nd edn (Doornspijk, NL: Davaco, 1984 [1965]), 15–22.
26
Duggan, ‘Art’, 237.
27
Duggan, ‘Art’, 229, 234 and 238.
28
Duggan, ‘Art’, 244
29
John R Elliott Jr, Playing God: Medieval Mysteries on the Modern Stage, (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1989), 3.
30
Dorothy L. Sayers cited in Elliot, Playing, ix.
31
Jody Enders, Death by Drama, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago, 2002), 3.
32
Sarah Beckwith, Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays, (Chicago, IL & London: University of Chicago, 2001), 87–9, 100–103.
33
Elliott, Playing, 5–6.
34
See, for example, Robert K. Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 25–39.
35
Brian Goldfarb, Visual Pedagogy: Media Cultures in and Beyond the Classroom, (Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press, 2002).
36
Larry J. Kreitzer, The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, Biblical Seminar Series, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 13–14.