Best and worst biblical movies: What are your picks?

wiredraven82 said:I’m not making a mistake here—because I am speaking strictly in terms of cinema (since that is the subject of this PDF at hand)—so:

You’re getting the cinematic details wrong, even if you’ve actually got the history straight.

You’re right about that—I’m not disputing your point. But honestly, did you really expect them to obsess over specific Latin dialects from that era? Give me a break. You should be grateful they even bothered using official Latin at all, especially when you look at the track record of other "linguistically authentic" period pieces out there. 🙂

silentviper19 As I was saying:
Everyone can get behind the idea that Aramaic was the spoken tongue, but trying to reconstruct its exact nuances is a massive uphill battle—it would be like claiming we know precisely how ancient Germanic tribes spoke just because we have the records left behind by Cyril and Methodius.

If we’re going to follow that line of reasoning, then we wouldn't be able to claim that so many extinct languages have been "reconstructed"—but they have. They're dead, sure, but they aren't gone. We can bring them back enough to make sense of them—not perfectly, mind you, but sufficiently to grasp their structure. Take the Etruscan language, for example; unfortunately, we still haven't quite cracked the code on that one.

I could agree with you there—but let’s be realistic. During that specific window of time, maintaining stability in Judea was absolutely not in Rome's best interest from a purely pragmatic military standpoint. If you look at the sheer logistical nightmare a rebellion would have caused their legions, it makes sense. Besides, we all know exactly what happened to the Jews just a few decades after they decided to stage an uprising.

P.S.: I really hope that while we’re hashing this out, you understand my intention here—I am not bringing Jesus into this discussion at all. We are sticking strictly to the linguistic, archaeological, and historical facts. 🙂

👍

That sounds a bit harsh, and I'm sure that wasn't his intention. Even if we agree that the Romans in that era wouldn't have been speaking official Latin, you'll have to admit—both you and I would much rather hear something resembling the period than standard modern English.

No, I don't find that quasi-authentic Latin or quasi-authentic Aramaic any better, because they just aren't authentic. That hack Gibson just declared them authentic because he's banking on the audience having empty heads—and, of course, on the believers.

That’s why I much prefer that good old California accent used in the old classics where both Jesus and Dracula spoke; there isn't that fake pretension of authenticity that was pushed so hard for the Passion.

When it came out, I immediately heard people saying, "Wow, it was exactly like that in the movie! The film is just so incredibly authentic!".
Personally, I’d say that 60s film with the styrofoam sets and the standard American accent was more authentic than this one, because the very attempt to be authentic ended up costing him all authenticity. And don't even get me started on the interpretation of the story itself, which is just plain nasty.
Technically, it’s okay, but he stuck to that old rule where all the white actors play both Jesus and the apostles. Meanwhile, the Romans are portrayed as pure Western European whites, rather than some Greek, North American, or Middle Eastern face wearing a Roman uniform—Gibson didn't slip up there like he did with the Jew.

Now we just wait for the new Gibson film about Dracula, where everyone will be wailing in medieval Old English, and the audience will just soak up the "authenticity."😁

About ten years back, I remember seeing this really unusual movie about Jesus on some major American network. In their version, the Romans basically acted like Nazis—they were incredibly condescending toward the Jews. Jesus was portrayed more like an arrogant bully (the only one with dark eyes, while all the apostles had blue eyes), and Judas was actually framed as a good guy who just took the money to send soldiers to the wrong location to find Jesus. 😁

I honestly have no clue what the title was. But man, I’d love to watch it again. 🙂

So, I was mentioning Augustine, Christian DuGuay
Alessandro Preziosi—who, by the way, was in that series Un Amore e Una Vendetta 😁—is such a talented actor.
It covers the life of Saint Augustine, his path to becoming a judge, and his whole conversion story. Plus, the movie is woven together with all his deep philosophical musings.
Highly recommend. 👍

Best:
King of Kings
The Bible : in The Beginning
Passion

Life of Brian The Last Temptation of Christ dogma :klap:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/

Samuel Robinson2 said:Best:
King of Kings
The Bible : in The Beginning
Passion

I caught a screening of it recently. It feels like Huston went through and meticulously transcribed the dialogues and the actual sequence of events straight from the Bible. The casting is spot on and everything else follows suit perfectly. My only real gripe was his portrayal of Noah; he felt a bit too whimsical for my taste. Shortly after that, I sat down with Huston's Moby Dick, and once again, it seems he captured every single detail of the plot and dialogue with precision, even though I haven't actually read the book itself...

So I just realized the BBC has a new series out the ark
it's a fresh take on Noah's story.
I definitely need to check this out—fingers crossed it's actually as good as The Bible.

Noah Roberts46 said:Better than what? ☕
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095497/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_37

Personally, I’d say yes—and even if I already explained my reasoning, I’ll tip my hat to that particular film, but for me, nothing touches Passion when it comes to this subject matter. 🙂

silentviper19 said:No, I don't find that quasi-authentic Latin or quasi-authentic Aramaic any better, because they just aren't authentic. That hack Gibson just declared them authentic because he's banking on the audience having empty heads—and, of course, on the believers.

That’s why I much prefer that good old California accent used in the old classics where both Jesus and Dracula spoke; there isn't that fake pretension of authenticity that was pushed so hard for the Passion.

When it came out, I immediately heard people saying, "Wow, it was exactly like that in the movie! The film is just so incredibly authentic!".
Personally, I’d say that 60s film with the styrofoam sets and the standard American accent was more authentic than this one, because the very attempt to be authentic ended up costing him all authenticity. And don't even get me started on the interpretation of the story itself, which is just plain nasty.
Technically, it’s okay, but he stuck to that old rule where all the white actors play both Jesus and the apostles. Meanwhile, the Romans are portrayed as pure Western European whites, rather than some Greek, North American, or Middle Eastern face wearing a Roman uniform—Gibson didn't slip up there like he did with the Jew.

Now we just wait for the new Gibson film about Dracula, where everyone will be wailing in medieval Old English, and the audience will just soak up the "authenticity."😁

Well, looking at it genetically (via Y-DNA), the original Latins/Romans were actually closer to the Celts than to Mediterranean Europeans. Later, of course, through the expansion of the Republic and Empire, anyone who gained Roman citizenship was practically Roman.

But honestly, from an anthropological standpoint, those guys in Roman uniforms in the movie (based on phenotype) don't all belong to the Western European white category; they look more like they're from northern or central Italy, or maybe even parts of the North America.

Sure, he could have cast someone Semitic in a Roman uniform, but whatever—it was still a time when the Empire was just beginning; it hadn't reached that level of multi-ethnicity (racially and continentally speaking) that it saw in later eras.🙂

Just watched King of Kings and honestly? Not feeling it. It doesn't feel like the ultimate biblical movie at all—I mean, Jesus feels way too theatrical in certain spots, and his whole story just seems a bit surface-level.
I guess there’s some cool stuff to see, though.

To me, this feels more like a movie about the Roman Empire than anything about Jesus. I really don't get how anyone could call this the definitive film about him. 🤔

Passion, then miles of wasteland, then an Exodus that takes a bit of a different approach ☕

I still love all those others too, though, because the subject matter is just too powerful to ignore, especially those old Hollywood classics.

As for those modern TV series? I don't watch that kind of stuff at all.☕

Patrick Martin said:Passion, then miles of wasteland, then an Exodus that takes a bit of a different approach ☕

I still love all those others too, though, because the subject matter is just too powerful to ignore, especially those old Hollywood classics.

As for those modern TV series? I don't watch that kind of stuff at all.☕

shows 🙄
Don't knock it until you've actually seen it—this show is awesome. ☕
The set design feels so much like the Exodus era.
And hey, it wasn't just some random hit for nothing.
I get that the subject matter is pretty intense 👍
__________________________________________________

Starting today...

http://www.nbc.com/ad-the-bible-continues 🙂

Honestly, this movie captures the reality of the situation better than almost anything else—even if a lot of people choose to look the other way...www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470?ref_=nv_sr_1

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And nobody even bothers to mention the movie Quo Vadis

Larry Walker24 said:And nobody even bothers to mention the movie Quo Vadis

Classic...😍

They made plenty of movies about this stuff during Hollywood's golden age... The Robe, Samson and Delilah, The Ten Commandments were all alright...

But Quo Vadis is still my favorite. 😍

https://gfycat.com/AltruisticSilentIbex

Main actors seem a little old for the parts, but I dig the script and how Taylor and Kerr handled it...

I find it absolutely incomprehensible that not a single soul has mentioned Jesus Christ Superstar!

And don't even get me started on the signatures for Last Temptation and Brian. Atheistic Easter FTW, I suppose.

Gethsemane

silentviper19 said:Sorry, but I think you're missing the mark on a few things here.

First off, it's just totally impossible to claim official Latin was the everyday tongue for soldiers and common folks. Even back then, Roman citizens were always speaking their own specific Latin dialects. And since the soldiers stationed over in places like Plestina were mostly coming from Crete, their speech would have been some sort of Latin-Crete dialect mixed in with Greek.

I can give you the win on Aramaic, but honestly, trying to reconstruct that language is a massive stretch. It would be like claiming we know exactly how ancient Slavic tribes spoke just because of how Cyril and Methodius recorded it. It's a bit of a leap, right?

What really bugs me about this whole narrative is that hidden, old-school Christian antisemitism bubbling under the surface. It makes it look like the Roman soldiers were basically just working for the Jewish kingdom, and like the Romans were merely bystanders in a Jewish state ruled by clerics in their own complex way. It's a weird vibe.

As for the clothing, sure, maybe, but we don't exactly have direct records or photos of what ancient Jews wore. We *do* know how the Romans dressed, though, so I'll give Gibson credit where it's due—he nailed that part.

At the end of the day, this whole idea of "linguistic authenticity" feels a bit silly to me. It feels more like a trick to dazzle the casual viewers and, of course, the religious crowd, just to make the movie feel more "authentic."

You are writing falsehoods.😉
The Legendary 9th Legion was destroyed precisely in Judea. Therefore, it is untrue to suggest that only soldiers from Crete were present in the region of Judea. A Roman legionary wrote and spoke in the Latin language. What would the world look like if every single person spoke only their own local tongue? You are overlooking the process of assimilation, wherein people adopted a Roman identity and conducted themselves as Romans. The longer a territory remained under the control of the Empire, the greater the degree of assimilation became, until the local population was entirely Romanized.
Even today in Syria, there exists a community of Christians in a remote mountainous region who speak Old Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. That language is not such an enigma that it cannot be reconstructed.
The clothing, weaponry, and other details are also accurate, though you aren't complaining about those.

Life of Brian The Last Temptation of Christ dogma
Last Temptation
Life of Brian The Last Temptation of Christ dogma.
Passion
Passion Jesus Christ vampire Hunter Jesus Christ superstar The Messiah The King of Kings
Jesus Christ Superstar
The Messiah.
King of Kings (that 1927 one).

Kyle Campbell4 said:You are writing falsehoods.😉
The Legendary 9th Legion was destroyed precisely in Judea. Therefore, it is untrue to suggest that only soldiers from Crete were present in the region of Judea. A Roman legionary wrote and spoke in the Latin language. What would the world look like if every single person spoke only their own local tongue? You are overlooking the process of assimilation, wherein people adopted a Roman identity and conducted themselves as Romans. The longer a territory remained under the control of the Empire, the greater the degree of assimilation became, until the local population was entirely Romanized.
Even today in Syria, there exists a community of Christians in a remote mountainous region who speak Old Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. That language is not such an enigma that it cannot be reconstructed.
The clothing, weaponry, and other details are also accurate, though you aren't complaining about those.

Everyone seems to be getting quite a bit wrong regarding the Latin language and the actual nationality of Roman soldiers.

Back then, almost all Roman soldiers came from the Apennines and were of Italian descent; they didn't start recruiting from all over the Empire until much later.

As for Latin, there wasn't just one version, but two: high-class Latin and the vulgar Latin spoken by the lower classes. The former eventually evolved into what we call Classical Latin with a few tweaks, while the latter naturally developed into today's Romance languages.

Classical Latin differs from high Latin mainly in the pronunciation of certain sounds. In high Latin, "C" is pronounced as "K," diphthongs like "oe" or "ae" sound like "oy" or "ai," and "s" sounds like "s," and so on.

"Caesar" is pronounced as "Cezar" in Classical Latin.

In high Latin, "Caesar" is pronounced as "Kaiser." Now you see where the Germans got their "Kaiser," which is pronounced "Kaiser."

Gibson made a mistake here; we are listening to Classical Latin, which didn't actually exist in that form until the 9th century. I really wish we had the chance to hear high Latin, vulgar Latin, or even some of the Italian dialects.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned "Jesus of Nazareth"? 🙂

mistyseal8 said:Everyone seems to be getting quite a bit wrong regarding the Latin language and the actual nationality of Roman soldiers.

Back then, almost all Roman soldiers came from the Apennines and were of Italian descent; they didn't start recruiting from all over the Empire until much later.

As for Latin, there wasn't just one version, but two: high-class Latin and the vulgar Latin spoken by the lower classes. The former eventually evolved into what we call Classical Latin with a few tweaks, while the latter naturally developed into today's Romance languages.

Classical Latin differs from high Latin mainly in the pronunciation of certain sounds. In high Latin, "C" is pronounced as "K," diphthongs like "oe" or "ae" sound like "oy" or "ai," and "s" sounds like "s," and so on.

"Caesar" is pronounced as "Cezar" in Classical Latin.

In high Latin, "Caesar" is pronounced as "Kaiser." Now you see where the Germans got their "Kaiser," which is pronounced "Kaiser."

Gibson made a mistake here; we are listening to Classical Latin, which didn't actually exist in that form until the 9th century. I really wish we had the chance to hear high Latin, vulgar Latin, or even some of the Italian dialects.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned "Jesus of Nazareth"? 🙂

Man, you’ve completely missed the mark here—no offense intended, brother, but this is a massive blunder on your part:

First off, during the era of the Western Roman Empire, people spoke CLASSICAL LATIN/used Classical pronunciation. Period.

That’s the version with: Kaiser (not Caesar), Lunae (not Lunae with a soft sound), Cicero (not Kicker-oh), etc.

This other way—this "Caesar," "Lunae" thing, with the diphthongs like ae, oe, io, and the "C" being soft instead of a "K"... that is: TRADITIONAL (ECCLESIASTICAL) LATIN/pronunciation. This is the version that developed once Latin was practically a dead language—not totally gone, but certainly on its last legs—evolving into ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN during the Middle Ages, long after the Western Roman Empire had fallen (leaving only the Byzantine Empire, which is a whole different story).

I have no idea where you got the idea that different social classes used different pronunciations during the Western Roman Empire (or the Republic). You’ve confused social status symbols—the distinction between Patricians and Plebeians within the Latin ethnicity—with linguistic variation. Those distinctions weren't about how they spoke Latin; everyone used the CLASSICAL dialect. It was about something else entirely. 🙂