BC News|March 04, 2013 12:05 EST
The Bible Miniseries: Episode 1 Revisited
The first episode of History Channel's, "The Bible" miniseries aired Sunday, March 3rd 2013. The 10-hour series builds towards an Easter conclusion, March 31st and will cover the book of Genesis to Revelation. Each episode will feature several biblical stories told through live action and CGI.
Roma Downey, Monica from "Touched by an Angel", and husband, "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett, created and produced the series. Downey also plays Mary, mother of Jesus.
With the first episode under their belt, critics are claiming the show is too breezy, casually passing through stories that viewers without a Bible-background may not understand. Essentially, good television doesn't always translate to informative Christian content.
After the first episode, I felt like I was left hanging without knowing what happened. For example, when Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert, it is not shown what happened to them. What happened to them is such a beautiful story that's not shown in the series.
This writer's biggest concern about the first part of the series is that there is a big gap from the Mount Moriah scene to the next scene where the Israelites are in Egypt. The series shows no evidence of how they got there.
The generations of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were omitted...altogether! Joseph is the reason the Israelites even made it to Egypt!
All Burnett and Downey can hope for is to provoke viewers to study scripture for themselves. Unfortunately, "The Bible" miniseries does not achieve the full measure of God's word.