The Chosen - worth watching.

This TV show, 3 seasons, portrays the gospels in their historical context.

One of my obsessions in my twenties and thirties was the historical, literary and archaeological context of the New Testament. It began with a desire to establish for my own peace of mind that the gospels were historically dependable documents, and developed into delight and joy, really, that they are. First century archaeology, history, literature, and the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic languages are interwoven completely with the gospels; the New Testament as a whole belongs completely to the historical context in which it occurred. Even the Greek language is completely of its time: the Alexandrian dialect from before the first century and from after the first century changes, and the New Testament writings linguistically speaking belong firmly to the period of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, and soon afterwards. The epistles, the Acts of the apostles, and the gospels confirm each other on every minor detail, and even such facts as the sea currents and winds in various seasons and the places Paul visited in his ministry are verifiable and credible. The more I’ve come to know about the First Century, the more I’ve seen how firm the historical foundation of the New Testament is. Who am I that you should listen to me about this? Well, I am a rather obsessive fact checker who tends to be very thorough, and the New Testament is something I fact checked far more thoroughly than anything else, ever!

The Chosen is a television show about Jesus, based firmly on the gospels, and it dramatises the New Testament record of Jesus in a wonderfully human way; in a wonderfully Jewish way as well.

For instance, in season one, episode 8, Jesus heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, and the gospels report that she immediately got up and began serving them. This little scene is realised in such a Jewish way; Peter’s mother-in-law reminds me so much of some Jewish mothers and grandmothers I’ve known through the years, who are always so busy caring for others, and whose lives are dedicated to showing hospitality. Praise the Lord!

Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well in Samaria, in the episode 8 as well, is a splendid scene also. Her distress when Jesus tells her everything she’s done, multiple husbands etc, and then her joy and freedom after knowing he’s the Messiah and that he accepts her as she is, laughing and skipping on the way into the town to tell everybody. What a wonderfully joyful show!

The historical context is splendidly realised: I have long been convinced by the evidence that the apostle Matthew must have been the source of the written record - many scholars cast doubt on this idea but one of the earliest church fathers, Papias, says that Matthew wrote the first written record and Luke and Mark used it as a source. And the fact that they had shorthand in Graeco Roman times - indeed, a Tax Collector (as Matthew was) would certainly have known shorthand. To my great delight, those who made the Chosen have portrayed Matthew as a talented, Ashburger’s-autistic savant with the ability to calculate figures and keep records; he goes around with his ledger keeping notes on Jesus’ sayings and the events, which I think is precisely how the gospel records came to be. It makes sense, and it is such a delight to see the apostle Matthew dramatised in this way!

This wonderful show in its own way reminds me of the paintings of Rembrandt on Biblical themes; just as Rembrandt’s paintings portray the life of Jesus and other biblical stories and parables in a very human, down to earth context, this show does this in an even more wonderful way, with all the technological and historical tools available in the twenty first century. It is a beautiful show, a very human show, and a wonderfully accurate historical portrayal as well.

Do yourself a favour and watch the Chosen - the website is here. The iPhone/iPad app is available on the app store, the google app on the google play store.

I really praise the Lord for this TV show! It has replenished my faith, to see Jesus portrayed in the social context of His time, in which He is so refreshing and so human and awesome and divine, all at once.

H/T to F.H. for encouraging me to watch it again (I gave up during the first season because of glitches in the downloading and streaming to my TV, but if you get the Chosen app (rather than the Angel TV app, which was the one I had) you’ll find that everything works well even with my setup, an iPhone streaming to a Samsung TV, so long as you have set up the TV to use Airplay and give the app all the permissions it needs.