Saturday, December 27, 2008

PBS Documentary On-line

Maybe I'm a bit late on this, but the PBS documentary From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians is now available on-line. Not a bad doco; sober commentary, narrator referees some of the competing views, no crank scholars, and good visuals.

1 comment:

Mason said...

Michael,
I don't think your all that late on this, I just found it myself and posted a link to it yesterday on my blog.
It was filmed a while ago, but my impression is that it is newly available online.

At this point I'm about 2/3rds of the way through and am quite enjoying it.
There are points I disagree with, for example the series is a bit too skeptical and assumes a number of 'facts' I disagree with like the post 70AD dating of the synoptics, and that each Gospel was written for a diverse isolated community (Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" and "The Gospels for All Christians" seem to make that position less than tenable to me), but as you pointed out the scholars are gracious and referee each other to a point.

The focus on the political side, the influence of the Roman empire, the Jewish resistance movement, and how Jesus and his followers fit into that is something that I think really adds a lot to the series.
Plus, as you said, quite good visuals.