Alissa’s Note: A.D. The Bible Continues began airing on Easter Sunday, and during its run, Peter Chattaway recaps episodes as they air. Recaps involve spoilers, especially if you’re not familiar with the Bible story.
Episode 4: 'The Wrath'
NBCIt would be a mistake to say that life is getting back to normal for the apostles—nothing will ever be "normal" for them again, after what they've experienced—but the fourth episode of A.D. The Bible Continues just might be the first one we've seen that isn't built around a major supernatural event (and the special effects that come with it).
The first three episodes all peaked with spectacular sequences like the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This episode, on the other hand, gives us a sense—just a small sense, but a sense nonetheless—of how the Church is beginning to grow and work as a community.
People are baptized, property is shared (with former tax collector Matthew in charge of the bookkeeping), and a new base of operations is found when Barnabas gives the Church a plot of land where they can live and work far from the hostile authorities in Jerusalem. (Acts 4 says Barnabas sold a field and gave the Church the money, but never mind.)
The episode is incorrect when it indicates that the Church amounted to only a "handful" of people prior to Pentecost—Acts 1 tells us there were about 120 believers, or nearly ten times what this series showed us, before the Holy Spirit came—but it captures well the joy and enthusiasm that accompanied the growth of the Church in the early chapters of Acts.
NBCIt also captures the troubling fate of new believers like Ananias and Sapphira, who try to game the system by claiming that they have given all of their property to the Church when they have really given only part of it.
The Bible says these people simply "fell down and died" when they were confronted by Peter, but A.D. can't resist the urge to make their deaths a little more gruesome, so it shows blood pouring out of their eyes and noses as they keel over. It's the closest this episode comes to having a major special-effects sequence of its own, and you can't help thinking the producers were looking for a "cool" way to kill these people off.
There's plenty of violence in the other subplots too, of course. Cornelius interrogates and ultimately kills a Zealot in an unsuccessful attempt to find the man who tried to assassinate Pontius Pilate in last week's episode. Pilate, for his part, starts crucifying ten Jews every day, and says he won't stop until the assassin has been handed over to him.
NBCAnd when Cornelius leads some of these Jewish victims through the streets to their deaths, he bumps into Stephen, the future martyr, and beats him up for getting in his way. That's right, we're four episodes in now, and there's still no sign of the devout, generous, God-fearing man that Acts 10 says Cornelius was before he became a Christian.
Meanwhile, Pilate develops a weird obsession with the ashes of his former officer, the one who was killed by the Zealot in last week's episode. He sits in his office and makes shapes with the little piles of ash on his desk, and eventually, of all things, he force-feeds some of the ashes to the high priest Caiaphas, who has already covered himself in sackcloth and ashes of a different sort as part of his mourning for the Jews who are being crucified.
NBCCaiaphas, incidentally, is turning into quite the complicated, and at times even sympathetic, character. Yes, he is still very hostile to the followers of Jesus. But it's hard not to share his grief when he visits the crosses of his fellow Jews, or to be moved by the prayer he recites there, which calls for empathy for both the oppressor and the oppressed.
There is no moment in this episode that goes the full Thomas Kinkade, but bits of kitsch remain, like the repeated gusts of wind that flutter across Peter's face during his trial before Caiaphas. It's an oddly repetitive and quasi-literal way to interpret the line in Acts 4 about Peter being "filled with the Holy Spirit" when he speaks to the high priests.
So, as always, it's a mixed bag. But it's good to see the series finally settling into the rise of the early Church, after all the dramatic turning points of the previous episodes.
Peter T. Chattaway writes about films in general, and Bible films in particular, at FilmChat.
