Filmmakers tackling the Gospels or the Book of Acts often look for ways to make the story of Jesus and his followers relatable to modern audiences.
Sometimes they set the plot to modern music. Sometimes, as in The Chosen, they use modern idioms in the dialogue, impose modern establishments like hair salons on the first-century setting, or focus on the emotional relationships between characters.
And sometimes they go in the opposite direction, moving the first-century story to the present day. That is more or less what Testament, a new series based on the Book of Acts, has done, and the results are fascinating, illuminating, and at times profoundly moving. (The first seven episodes are currently streaming on the Angel Studios platform; the first-season finale arrives July 21.)
Directed by Paul Syrstad, who wrote the series with his wife, Faith, and her brother Kenneth Omole (who also plays the apostle John), Testament puts the Book of Acts in a setting that resembles modern Britain but is known as “the District of Salem.” Salem is under the occupation of a political entity known as “the Imperium,” and the Imperium has been ruling the district with the help of local ministers—a word that neatly hints at both the political and the religious roles played by the priests in Jesus’ day.
The series begins at Pentecost—identified here by its Hebrew name Shavuot—as the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles in their “upper apartment” and they step outside to find a crowd waiting to hear them preach. Swimming-pool baptisms follow while the disciples prepare small study groups and preach in the “temple” courts.
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The setting is at once familiar and yet slightly off. The characters drive cars and take rides in trains, but there doesn’t appear to be much, if any, digital technology, and money takes the form of small bars rather than coins or paper. The soldiers wear red armor and opaque visors like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, and some of them wield electrified spears.
The music, too, has a contemporary, even secular feel; the hymns sung by the Christians at their gatherings are basically modern praise songs, and when the apostles come home unscathed from their first hearing before the ministers, they’re chanting like sports fans who’ve just watched a great game at the pub.
While the mix of ancient and modern details sometimes feels a little odd—we hear that Jesus was crucified, but we get no hint of what that particular form of execution would have even looked like in this modern urban setting—the fact that the series isn’t trying to be historically accurate allows the filmmakers to dig into the emotional truth of a scene without worrying about whether all the details feel correct.
It also allows them to give full rein to their imaginations, to fill in the gaps in the biblical narrative while also adding new story lines that tie the story to modern forms of ministry.
Some of the connections they make are fairly standard. The biblical Saul (Eben Figueiredo), who started out as a persecutor of the church, was also a student of Gamaliel (Stewart Scudamore), an esteemed rabbi who told his peers to leave the Christians alone. While the Book of Acts never puts these two men in the same scene at the same time, Testament—like nearly every other film about Paul—imagines what their relationship was like and milks it for dramatic conflict, pitting the intolerance of one against the tolerance of the other.
Other subplots look at the story from fresh angles. Chief minister Caiaphas (Gary Oliver), for example, responds to the public preaching and miracle working of the apostles by complaining that he thought the Jesus issue had been put to rest over a month ago. I can’t think of any other film or series that has made me aware of how much time passed between the Resurrection and Pentecost and how frustrating it must have been from the priests’ perspective to be dragged back into this controversy.
The series also pays attention to small details that most other films miss. The biblical Saul had a sister and a nephew, the latter of whom helped foil an assassination plot against him (Acts 23:16–22), but very, very few films about Paul have depicted those characters. (I can think of a few old and rather obscure films that depict the nephew, but none that depict the sister.)
Testament—the first season of which ends while Saul is still persecuting the church—obviously can’t get into that story yet, but it lays the groundwork for it by devoting a few key scenes to Saul’s relationship with his sister, who is here named Eliza (Nisha Aaliya), and her son Asher (Tanay Joshi).
But if there is any one plot that gives the first season its arc, it’s the story of Stephen (Charles Beaven), an early convert to the faith who—spoiler alert for those who have never read Acts— ends up becoming the church’s first martyr.
When we first see Stephen, he’s reading the Book of Ruth with his mother, Esther (Lizzie Hopley), at Shavuot. He is soon drawn outside by the gust of wind that announces the coming of the Spirit, and before long, he hears the first sermon delivered by Peter (Tom Simper) and is baptized along with many, many others.
Stephen is very aware of the fact that he has never met Jesus himself, and this becomes a recurring theme throughout the season: How can he believe in someone he has never met? And how can he ask other people to join him in following someone he has never met at the potential cost of their freedom, maybe even their lives?
Stephen’s regret at never meeting the Messiah is nicely contrasted with the apostles, who did know Jesus personally but now find themselves adjusting to the facts that he isn’t with them physically anymore and that it might be a long, long time before they get to see him again.
In one episode, John steals away to pray in Gethsemane, and he tells Jesus how much he misses him. When an angel appears to the apostles in prison, Peter asks if she has come to take them back to Jesus. Nope, she says; instead, they’re sent back out into the world, where they get the authorities’ attention all over again, with even harsher results.
Eventually it all comes back to Stephen—and to his relationships with those outside the community who don’t know what to make of his faith.
Early on, Stephen takes a lame beggar named Caleb (Steve Furst) to hear the apostles preach, and he is excited when Peter and John actually heal Caleb (as per Acts 3). But then the story takes an unexpected turn as Caleb and the apostles are dragged before the Sanhedrin and Caleb realizes he never asked to be put in the cross hairs. Caleb’s resistance to becoming a Christian—even after he has been healed—gives Stephen pause about his own faith.
And then there is Stephen’s mother, Esther. She practically disowns Stephen when she learns about his conversion. Of course, she clearly still loves him, and in episode 7 (which started streaming last Monday, July 14 on the Angel Studios platform) her reaction to her son’s martyrdom is quietly but powerfully devastating.
Not everything translates to the modern setting as well as it could.
The series, which depicts the followers of Jesus as a multiethnic community from the get-go, obscures the narrative trajectory of Acts, which is all about how the church became more diverse, expanding from Hebraic Jews to Hellenistic Jews (Acts 6), Jewish-adjacent groups like the Samaritans (Acts 8), and then finally the Gentiles (Acts 10).
When the series gets to the story of the Hellenistic Jews—who are depicted here as foreigners speaking Ladino, an obscure Judeo-Spanish dialect—it depicts Stephen as one of the insiders who ministers to this outside group. But the biblical Stephen, like all the other deacons who ministered to non-Hebraic Jews, was actually a Hellenist himself. (Note their Greek names.)
Still, there’s a lot to like here, from the competitive politics between some of the ministers to the thoughtful way the series integrates even the most troubling of stories, like the deaths of Ananias (Edward Baker-Duly) and Sapphira (Ony Uhiara), struck down by God for lying about their gift to the church (Acts 5). In spite of those interludes, this narrative is mostly about the joy found within the early Christian community.
There are plenty of little Easter eggs, too, for those who know their Bible. A female temple guard named Mara (Yasmin Paige) goes undercover as “Naomi”—an inversion of how the biblical Naomi asked her friends to call her Mara, which means “bitter” (Ruth 1:20). And when the Sadducees tease Gamaliel, a Pharisee, by asking if he’s planning to join their sect, he replies, “Maybe in the next life”: a subtle, humorous nod to the fact that the Pharisees believed in the Resurrection and the Sadducees didn’t (Acts 23:6–8).
Intelligent, creative, and deeply pastoral, Testament is one of the best “faith-based” projects to come along in some time. Here’s hoping it gets a second season.
The first seven episodes of Testament are currently available on the Angel Studios platform; the season finale comes out July 21. The producers are also making each episode available for 24 hours on their YouTube channel and Facebook page one week after they debut on Angel; episode 7 goes live on YouTube and Facebook July 21, and episode 8 on July 28.
Peter T. Chattaway is a film critic with a special interest in Bible movies.
