9 Things You Should Know About the Bible in TV and Film

Last night the first episode of The Bible, a 10-hour dramatization of stories from the Old and New Testaments, aired on the History channel. The new miniseries, produced by reality television mogul Mark Burnett his wife, actress Roma Downey, revives a long tradition of adapting Bible stories for both the big and small screen. Here are nine things you should know about the Bible’s portrayal in film and television.

1. Although network television miniseries based on the Bible were popular in the 1970s (Moses the Lawgiver (1974), The Story of David, Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Greatest Heroes of the Bible (1978)), they largely fell out of favor until the mid 1990s. Between 1994 and 2002, the Italian company Lux Vide produced a series of 21 prime-time productions based on the Bible which were sold in more than 140 countries to various television networks. The miniseries Joseph (which aired on TNT in 1995) and Jesus (which aired on CBS in 1999) both won Emmy awards.

2. Of the 100 top-grossing films in America, four were based on the Bible. Adjusting for inflation, The Ten Commandments (1956) is the sixth highest-grossing film domestically, with an adjusted total of $1,025,730,000. The others are: #13 – Ben-Hur (1959) with $788,900,000; #45 – The Robe (1953) with $526,909,100; and #59 – The Passion of the Christ with $480,624,000.

3. A movie about the the Ten Commandments was among the top-grossing movies of the decade in both the 1920s and 1950s. Both movies were directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The 1923 version of The Ten Commandments was a silent film that tells the biblical story in the first half and a morality parable set in modern times during the second half. The 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments dropped the modern-day storyline and focused more on the early life of Moses.

4. The novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which includes a parallel narrative of the story of Jesus, was made into four films, first in 1907 and then again in 1925 and 1959 (the 2003 version was an animated film). The latter two feature films were among the top ten money-making films of the decade in the 1920s and 1950s.

5. From the 1900s to the 1970s, more than 110 feature films were based on the Old Testament. But since the 1970s only two have received wide box office release: King David (1985), the critically panned movie starring Richard Gere, and the animated feature The Prince of Egypt (1998).

6. The first portrayal of God in a film was by the African-American actor Rex Ingram in Green Pastures (1936). The film includes several Old Testament stories, including the Creation and Noah’s Ark, described using the perspective of rural, black Americans.

7. The first cinematic representation of Jesus was in 1897 in the Horitz Passion Play. Since then more than 100 feature films have been made about Christ.

8. In 1973, three movie musicals were made about Jesus: Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and Johnny Cash’s The Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus.

9. In 2003, the New York Times claimed that Campus Crusade for Christ’s Jesus (1979) was the most-watched motion picture of all time. The Jesus film, a movie that used American Bible Society’s Good News for Modern Man translation of the Gospel of Luke has been translated into nearly 1,100 languages and dialects, and has reportedly been viewed (including repeated viewings) more than 6 billion times. According to the film project’s website, more than 5,000 Jesus film workers worldwide show the film an average of three times a week.