I watched a movie about Paul, and I must say I only almost really enjoyed it, but within the first few minutes it had me asking, "Did they even try to research this?"
The movie introduces Paul as a tent maker wrestling with a priest in an arena. They are in nothing but loin cloths and are jocularly insulting each other much to he entertainment of the crowd. Reuben, the priest, is a Sadducee though also a friend of Saul, the tent maker and Pharisee. Reuben does not lose well,so it does set up dramatic personal tension between these two who are friends though having differing beliefs.
On their way home, Saul stops an armed robbery rescuing a man named Barnabas and his wife Hagar. This Barnabas says he does not have much, but gives Saul a couple of melons. And here I thought that Barnabas was supposed to be very wealthy. In any case this scene serves to tell us that Jesus is dead over a month ago, and that Barnabas and his wife had hoped to meet him.
The apostles and the mother of Jesus are introduced praying for the power that Jesus had promised them and a wind blows in and the menorah is suddenly lit and they're in awe and thank God. Next thing you know we are in what is supposed to be maybe the outer courts of the temple and Peter and John are there praying. Peter expresses a desire to know if they really have the power Jesus promised and then gets up to speak to the people. The sermon given in Acts 2 is way more interesting and convicting. Peter is told he is blaspheming, he "proves" Jesus is really alive and God is with him by healing a lame man. He is promptly arrested along with John and the lame man and dragged before the Sanhedrin then and there.
In this sequence, they have Gamaliel at one point saying that the Pharisees believe God allows each man to interpret Torah's meaning. I decided to read up on the Pharisees. That does not seem to be a good representation of their beliefs. Oddly enough, the more I read about the Pharisees approach to Torah and Tradition, I am reminded somewhat of the Catholic Church, with the emphasis on the traditions of the fathers helping to explain the Torah.
Anyway, so the film combined a couple of trials before the Sanhedrin, and stuff, but they kept on not allowing Jesus followers to actually speak as articulately as they did in Acts. They seemed to reduce the message to, "Jesus is really alive. He ascended into heaven and will come again soon. He's the son of God. You need to believe on Him to have eternal life. He really is the Messiah!" Say all of this in a few different patterns and with much emotion, and that sums up the teaching of the apostles as presented in this movie--wait, one more thing. They also regularly insist that Jesus taught that now nobody need follow the law of Moses, all we need is faith in him. This was particularly frustrating, since that is not what was taught, but from Pentecost onwards in the movie, it emphasizes that Jesus was the end of the law and the only thing that matters is faith.
Then we get to Stephen, standing up in the temple court and preaching. Reuben goes and confronts him, and seems to do a good job of bewildering Stephen with accusations of polytheism based on claiming that Jesus is God, but also that Jesus is the son of God. Reuben also mocks the idea of Jesus being present. Ultimately, Stephen is not brought before the Sanhedrin, he does not see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God, but is dragged off straight from the temple court to be stoned. Saul is presented as saying he agrees with the denunciation of Stephen and the followers of Jesus, but being loathe to participate in the stoning. He is handed a stone, but does not throw it. Reuben, who had handed him the stone, reproaches him with weakness, takes the stone from him and hands him his coat, at which point others give Saul their coats as they set about stoning Stephen.
Saul feels guilty and sets about his active persecutions. It has him get permission from Herod to go to Damascus. Of course there is the falling off the horse scene, interestingly done. The movie then has Reuben be the driving force behind all attempts to kill Paul. The Hellenists are secondary, and the Judaisers are not even named as such. There is a representation of the council at Jerusalem on the situation with the Gentile believers, but it does not do the council justice.
Ok. If this were just based on some random book, I would still be a bit dissatisfied. I understand dramatic decisions like combining events, presenting a physical conflict to initiate the philosophical conflict, making a minor character take on multiple roles from a story to have fewer introductions, combining characters, chopping dialogue, but--they left the followers of Christ as having nothing to offer in the way of explanation or reason, only emotion and statements to be accepted on faith. They focused on jealousy as a motivating factor for people. They made James the spokesman for the Judaisers. They had Saul be more a reluctant persecutor; he had to do this arresting stuff to prove his loyalty to the law to Reuben because he had made an oath to defend truth. I had hoped they would play on that when Saul became a defender of faith in Jesus, but they did not. They relied on theatrics, burning the letter given to him for authority to make arrests before a select group of believers in Jesus. That's another thing, in Acts Saul/Paul at least initially taught very openly in the synagogues. There was none of that in this movie.
I have no particular complaints about the acting, dramatically I suppose it worked, but theologically and historically it was full of error. I could not recommend this film except maybe to a class who was planning to do a point by point analysis comparing it to what is actually said and done in Acts.
