A.D.: A Bible Soap

by Gunther Simmermacher · July 14, 2015

Over the past few months the TV series A.D. The Bible Continues, a sequel to last year’s popular The Bible, was broadcast on DStv.

The series looked promising, with its focus on the Acts of the Apostles, an exciting but often undervalued part of the New Testament. It is great source material for a TV series.

With the show being produced by the Irish actress Roma Downey, a practising Catholic, and her husband Mark Burnett, we could be sure that the Christians were not going to be bizarre caricatures.

Indeed, the Christians in the series are good. Some, like Simon the Zealot, battle between secular aspiration (in his case the struggle against Roman occupation) and discipleship in ways that many Christians can empathise with.

The universality of the Church is expressed in the casting of the disciples: John, James and Philip are black as is Mary Magdalene, played by Zimbabwean actress Chipo Chung, who was educated at Harare’s Dominican Convent High School.

The message of acceptance and forgiveness runs strong throughout the series. It culminates in Mary Magdalene taking the tearful and newly-converted centurion Cornelius in her arms after he admits to having killed her friend Joanna.

The contrast between the Christian community look at how they loved one another on the one hand and the ruthless power games within and between the Roman and Jewish authorities on the other makes an emphatic point; one which Christians today need reminding of.

But as an account of Christian history, the series is not instructive. The producers have sacrificed historical accuracy for drama, sometimes of an unedifyingly violent nature.

Too often, A.D: The Bible Continues is Vikings with the sign of the cross. Whole storylines were invented or distorted to justify dramatic tension and its accompanying violence.

Some of these bordered on the bizarre. By some unlikely quirk of circumstance, the emperor Caligula turns up in Jerusalem and instructs Pontius Pilate to install an oversized golden statue of himself in the Temple.

The story borrows from real events, as reported by the 1st-century historian Josephus Flavius. Caligula did order, from Rome, that a statue of himself be placed in the Temple, but the wise Roman governor of Syria, Publius Petronius, and peaceful Jewish opposition averted this. The statue never even reached Jerusalem.

In the TV show, the statue is wheeled to the outer court of the Temple. The ensuing stand-off allows the producers to have Peter and the disciples save the day, albeit in the midst of another gratuitous and fictional Pilate-ordered massacre.

The sub-plots of the suitably sinister Pilate and an incongruously blue-eyed Caiaphas politicking while Mrs Caiaphas schemes behind the scenes like a proto-Lady Macbeth might be justifiable as a way of giving a context to Roman-Jewish relations in apostolic times.

However, what are we to make of a show that purports to give an account of the Acts of Apostles but goes on to invent stories, distort history and gloss over some of the events in the Bible?

With that concern, and some others, in mind, A.D. The Bible Continues is not an instructive record of the early years of the nascent Church. It is a drama-soap with blood and some piety. Viewed as such it is not much more than entertaining and occasionally edifying viewing.

The season’s final episode ends on a cliff-hanger: the Romans arrest Peter (SPOILER ALERT: Peter lives!). Whether we’ll get to see what happens next is unclear. After a strong start, ratings in the US slipped from 9,68 million for the first episode to 3,54 million for the finale – so there might be no next season.

That would be a pity, because for all the liberties A.D. The Bible Continues took with history and even with its source text, it was good to see a TV series in which the Christians are the heroes.

And if it sent viewers to the New Testament to check for the facts – did Peter really have a daughter? Then it even serves a catechetical purpose.