The Miracles of Jesus - presented by Rageh Omaar
BBC1 Sunday 6th August
My heart always sinks when the telly do a major new documentary on Jesus. There are so many trendy and insubstantial theories out there jostling for airtime, and I don't trust TV producers to give us the facts; they are usually too interested in entertainment or shocking people with controversial new ideas.
So this first in a series of programmes about Jesus' miracles came a pleasant surprise. Rageh Omaar and his team did a good job.
Of course, they did not come down one way or the other on the question of whether the miracles really happened, but they were fair in their presentation of what the gospels say happened. It was left up to us to decide what to believe.
This first programme looked at four miracles; the raising of the widow of Nain's son from the dead (Luke 7:11-17), the feeding of the 5000 (Luke 9:10-23 & John 6:1-59), and Jesus walking on water (John 6:15-21). The main point of the programme was to explain what is now widely accepted by Christian scholarship; that the miracles were more than powerful acts of love, they were powerful statements - signposts pointing to Jesus true identity and mission. The fourth miracle, changing water into wine (John 2:1-11) seems trivial but turns out to be the biggest statement of the four.
The raising of the widows son is almost a re-enactment of a similar healing by Elijah (1 Kings 17:17-24). The feeding of the 5000 resonates with Moses' feeding the children of Israel in the wilderness (Exodus 16). The walking on water reminiscent of the miraculous crossing of the Jordan by Israel led by Joshua. So Jesus comes over as the new Elijah... Moses... Joshua.
Then he changes water into wine at a wedding feast. The prophets of the Old Testament predicted that one day someone would provide the wine for a wedding feast at the end of time. That someone was God himself. So what does that say about Jesus? We will find out next week!
Apart from the Matrix style freeze-frame photography, I was impressed with the way this programme was done.
Just one irritation, TV people keep on telling us that the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal what the ordinary Jew-in-the-street was thinking when Jesus walked the earth. Not true; the scrolls were written by a very elitist minority Jewish sect living in isolation by the dead sea. They reveal what the average sun-crazed religious nutter was thinking, but tell us nothing about Galilean farmers and fishermen. You might as well say that the ramblings of a Hare Krishna sect in Birmingham are typical of the thinking of twenty first century Londoners.
Apart from that, I am looking forward to next week.