Finding Jesus– Review of Part One

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:46 pm by Ben Witherington

Finding Jesus– Review of Part One 2015-03-13T22:46:14-04:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When you are dealing with a docu-drama, sometimes it’s hard to get the balance right between education and what is dramatically effective on the screen. The first episode of Finding Jesus was indeed well filmed, the cinematography was excellent, and it involved a nice array of voices as the talking heads interspersed between the recreations of the scenes related to the burial shroud of Jesus. Obviously, the focus was on the shroud, now called the shroud of Turin. There was a nice balance of clergy and scholars involved, though no Jewish scholars were involved, which would have helped to have a different voice. David Gibson, whom I’ve worked with before, is really excellent in dealing with these kinds of subjects, and he has written the accompanying book, also entitled Finding Jesus.

As to the drama a few points: 1) despite Christian art, it is entirely unlikely that Jesus attempted to carry a 300 pound whole cross through the streets of Jerusalem. The normal practice was just to carry the cross piece, not the whole thing. Indeed, I would suggest no one in that condition could have carried a WalMart sized cross through Jerusalem after flogging; 2) the flogging of Jesus, it may surprise you to know, is barely mentioned in the Gospels, in some cases only in a half verse. Nothing in those verses suggests he experienced the ‘viberatio’ the most severe kind of flogging done with a cat of nine tails as depicted in this episode. Indeed, the Lukan account suggests a light flogging to teach a lesson, prior to Pilate trying to release Jesus. The crucial point here is when the flogging happened, before or after Pilate’s judgment that Jesus should be executed. If it’s before, then it’s unlikely to have involved the severe flogging, which was often done to hasten death on the cross. 3) despite various email exchanges from me, the drama part got the titulus wrong, in that it did not merely have the Latin word ‘inri’ on it. It had a phrase describing the crime he was accused of– in this case claiming to be king of the Jews in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew/Aramaic. 4) it was also surprising that there was no depiction of the women at the empty tomb, but perhaps that’s because they are not said to see the shroud as the men do when they look in the tomb.

As for the interviews, they were well done, whether one agreed with the judgments expressed or not. The point was to present something of a diversity of views but in a way that respected the seriousness of the subject matter, and the show was successful at that. Here are some of my concerns with what actually made the cut in the show: 1) if you are doing a whole show on the shroud of Turin, and you fail to mention the shroud went through a medieval fire that singed the cloth, and certainly could skew the carbon dating of the cloth, then you’ve left our something very important. There was no mention of the fire. This was a serious oversight, even with the time constraints of a 42 minute show. One can debate whether the fire changed the dating or not, but not that there was a fire that singed the cloth. 2) there was no mentioned of the tests done on the cloth in regard to pollen, the weave of the cloth etc. all of which point to a Judaean provenance for the shroud, not a European one. 3)my understanding is that when in 1988 the cloth was allowed to be carbon dated, obviously only pieces from the edge, not the image of the cloth were allowed to be snipped off and tested. Nothing is said about the fact that the cloth had been repaired after the fire around the frayed edges, but this is in many of the books written about the shroud. To this day, I do not know whether the portions of the shroud carbon tested were from the repair, or from the original. But someone should have checked. 5) I thought the comparison with the face cloth housed in the cathedral in Spain was well done, showing a possible similarity in the pattern of the blood stains which since the sudarion dates to well before the middle ages calls into question a medieval date for the shroud of Turin. 6) much less convincing but a new and interesting suggestion was the camera obscura suggestion. As David Gibson pointed out however, if this technology in fact existed in the middle ages, why is the shroud the only surviving example of it being applied? I found the discussion interesting but there were some dodgy bits as the British would say: 1) the image on the shroud is a double image, both front and back head to toe, toe to head. It would impossible with the camera obscura to reproduce such an image since it could only photograph one side of the body at a time. My point is that the shroud is not two pieces of cloth sown together, but one long piece of cloth with a frontal and dorsal image on it. There is also some question about whether in the middle ages they knew about the right chemicals and how to mix them and soak the cloth to produce any kind of image on the cloth. What was especially unconvincing was the argument that the blood would have been applied to the cloth after the image was created. But if that’s so, why is the blood stain (and it is clearly a blood stain, that’s been tested) only on the surface of the cloth. I was also unconvinced that someone concocting the cloth in the middle ages would have been satisfied with producing a ‘negative image’ on a cloth, if he wanted to pass it off as a holy relic with a possibly recognizable image of Jesus on it.

Finally, there have been some interesting art history documentaries done asking the question where exactly the standard depiction of Jesus first came from. The very earliest depiction I know of is of an image of Jesus as like Apollos, the sun deity. But well before the middle ages we have this standard image of Jesus, hair, beard, prominent nose, etc. and the question is where did it come from? One answer that some of these art history shows have conjured with is, that the earliest artist had seen the shroud. If that’s possible then a medieval date for the shroud is impossible.

Let me say again, that as a docu-drama, I thought this was better than many of them, and I look forward to the remaining five episodes.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 2, 2015

Forward Thinking on 'Reading Backwards'--The Interview Part Six

Next Post

March 2, 2015 Finding Jesus--- Reboot

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz