Thursday, October 31, 2013

Bible Secrets Revealed, History Channel

Candida Moss in Bible Secrets Revealed
Over on his XKV8R blog, Robert Cargill announces a new six part documentary to air soon on History Channel.  He writes:
I’m pleased to announce that a new documentary series will begin airing on History beginning Monday, November 11, 2013 at 10:00pm / 9:00 Central
The series is entitled, Bible Secrets Revealed, and is produced by Prometheus Entertainment for the History channel. 
The titles of the six episodes and their schedule of appearance are as follows: 
“Lost in Translation” – November 11, 2013
“The Promised Land” – November 18, 2013
“The Forbidden Scriptures” – November 25, 2013
“The Real Jesus” – December 2, 2013
“Mysterious Prophecies” – December 16, 2013
“Sex and the Bible” – December 23, 2013 
The documentary features dozens of the world’s top biblical scholars, religious studies scholars, archaeologists, and historians, who offer different points of view while addressing some of the more difficult readings in the biblical and extra-biblical texts. 
It is also worth note that portions of the documentary were filmed on site during the 2013 season of archaeological excavation at Tel Azekah.
There is a 30 second trailer available here:

Bible Secrets Revealed: Sneak Peak

The picture above is a screen grab; here are two more faces you may recognize:

Bart Ehrman in Bible Secrets Revealed

Francesca Stravrakopoulou

I have not yet seen this myself, though I was interviewed for the programme last summer here in North Carolina.  It looks like we will also see James McGrath and Robert Cargill (who was also a consultant) among many others.

Update (4.29pm): Robert Cargill provides a list of some of the scholars who will be appearing in the series.

16 comments:

  1. I hope that the History Channel won't spin this as ancient aliens/templars/palnet x/nibiru/etc as they do on other shows.

    Dave Lewis

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  2. I was mildly hopeful until I saw that they included Bart Ehrman. So much for scholarship.

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  3. Well Jimmy, they have to have somebody who knows what he's talking about!

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  4. I think that films where one scholar after another gives an opinion are not helpful.

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  5. This series will probably be the only thing on TV worth watching over the next several week (which isn't saying much), so lets make the most of it, shall we? Because Markan priority isn't sexy enough for the History Channel (to mention at least once) let's count how many times they cite the fictive Q.

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  6. Hell yes the World needs to hear this and I hope they go all the way back and cover the Council of Nicea! Time to erase some ignorance from this world!! <3 you History Channel <3

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  7. Time to stop watching the History Channel. Most Christians are aware that there are some translation discrepancies in the Bible, although they are not significant enough to debunk it or the beliefs of Christians no matter how the "scholars" try. How tasteless of the History Channel to air it during our Christian holy month of Christmas. Time to turn off the History Channel and pull out the Christmas DVDs.

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  8. Scholarship? Your joking! Real scholar's will easily debunk this series. And the History Channel will lose a lot of loyal viewers.

    C.F.Wiley

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  9. You're writing in English. English! Why not Spanish? Or Swahili? Clearly -- using the brilliant reasoning offered by Francesca Stavrakopoulou when explaining why the Gospel-writers wrote in Greek -- you are in this for the money. Well, I'm not going to give you any money. Your greedy plan will fail. So there.

    The first episode had lots of problems. So many that I think it's obvious that this series is pure, concentrated secularist propaganda designed to inculcate doubt about the Bible's reliability, not to really resolve historical or interpretive questions. When the narrator asks, "An Emperor authoring the Bible?" -- that is not scholarship and it is not educational television.

    It would have been nice if, in the first five minutes, the talking-heads had been introduced: Here's Bart Ehrman, agnostic; he thinks Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. Here's Robert Carhill, agnostic humanist. Here's Reza Aslan; he thinks that Jesus was raising a military army. And so forth.

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  10. Its ironic they didnt actually pick any actual Bible scholars to be in the show. They are all "religious" scholars. My New Testament instructor would have walked all over those guys.

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  11. Lighten up Fundamentalist Christians and consider the logical idea that the Bible was written by less evolved people of over 2000 years ago. People who believed the world was flat. If the Bible said the world was flat, the spiritually and apparently mentally un-evolved Fundamentalists Christians of today would claim that as fact too. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslums are why there are still wars.

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  12. Mark,

    I finally finished my video-review. (There were a lot of points in the show that needed correction and clarification, so it took a while, and even then I had to skip some.) You're welcome to watch/listen at
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vwXpawpgYE .

    Yours in Christ,

    James Snapp, Jr.

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  13. Mark,
    Video-reviews for episodes 2, 3, and 4 are also online now at YouTube. They should be easy to find via simple searched for the episode-titles plus my name.

    Yours in Christ,

    James Snapp, Jr.

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  14. Love this show..just watched the latest episode. .so when ruth uncovered FEET she was being sexual...but when mary WASHED jesus FEET she wasnt??? Im sure ill get the learned response of times were different ..I say its interpretation should be the same

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  15. ALSO..david tells his lovers husband to go home and WASH YOUR FEET so noone would know she was already pregnant by him

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