O'Reilly managed to kill Jesus as God
O'Reilly managed to kill Jesus as God, I finally finished watching Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Jesus” yesterday, and the word that most easily comes to mind is “soulless.”
O’Reilly approaches the mission, passion, death and resurrection of Christ in a kind of Jack Webb “Just the Facts Ma’am” approach, and what we end up with is a Jesus of the 21st century American conservative, not the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus Christians believe walked through Jerusalem in 33 A.D.
Certainly, this version of the life of Jesus the man at least resembles Jesus from the Bible, more than did the CBS version of Christ who appeared more to be a California surfer dude in the 1999’s “Jesus.” I didn’t make it past his picking the Apostles like some popular kid picking sides in a kickball game on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in that one.
In this one, as many pro critics have noted, we get a kind of tea-party anti-big-government conservative Jesus, who opposes the Roman government and the church hierarchy to lead his band of rabble rousers in their own way. It's a story tainted by the time of the writer, not the time in which the story takes place.
There was very little of a man of peace and certainly no man of divinity in the story. Jesus never made water into wine, never raised Lazarus, never saved the Centurion’s daughter. He never was transfigured, walked on water, or performed any visible miracles, other than getting St. Peter’s fishing net to fill by saying a prayer with Peter. Indeed, he never really appears after the crucifixion, other than mystically as Peter’s net fills again. Pilate's wife never has a nightmare about killing Jesus. Barabbas never appears as an alternative choice for the cross.
O’Reilly’s Jesus did the human stuff, knocking over the money-changers’ tables in the temple, saving the woman from being stoned for adultery, but the portrayals were much more human than divine. The Beatitudes weren’t shown, but at least O’Reilly resisted the temptation to rewrite The Lord’s Prayer.
I don’t know if his historical facts were perfect or not. The (Dr.) Boss is the biblical scholar with the degree around my house and I’m just a simple man with a daily struggle with faith. Not belief, but with trying not to let the world hammer me into submission.
And that’s perhaps what I found sad about O’Reilly’s “Killing Jesus.” For while he defends it as the highest-rated show in the history of the National Geographic Channel (which seems to air prison documentaries nonstop to me and gave up on “The Dog Whisperer”), he fails to see why there is this controversy to the whole thing. Because “Killing Jesus” is a triumph of the world over God, the ultimate in dramatic hubris, writ large via a cable network or two. It is the victory of “fact” over faith. I have made a living since May 1981 by one motto, one I often repeat to students, visitors and people who accuse me of not telling “the whole story.” That motto is, “I report what I can prove, not what I ‘know.’ “
O’Reilly has made Jesus into a story of what he can prove vs. what people believe.
No, the Bible is not historically accurate. Even someone with limited collegiate theological study as I am can tell you the Bible is a bunch of forms of literature all balled into a volume meant to show the way, to offer a guide to belief, a road map to a better life after this world.
What O’Reilly has done is to take the central story of the New Testament and turn it into a life of this world. And that just doesn’t work for a life whose central purpose through the centuries has been about something well beyond the understanding of this world. At least, that's what I believe, not what I can prove.
On this point, even a lifelong reporter gives in to what he believes -- knows -- over what he can prove, lest the world be nothing but a succession of fires, wrecks, plane crashes, inept politicians, crimes, murder trials, inhumanity and human silliness. Perhaps O'Reilly finds that world preferable to the one he cannot find beyond the tip of his pen.
O’Reilly approaches the mission, passion, death and resurrection of Christ in a kind of Jack Webb “Just the Facts Ma’am” approach, and what we end up with is a Jesus of the 21st century American conservative, not the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus Christians believe walked through Jerusalem in 33 A.D.
Certainly, this version of the life of Jesus the man at least resembles Jesus from the Bible, more than did the CBS version of Christ who appeared more to be a California surfer dude in the 1999’s “Jesus.” I didn’t make it past his picking the Apostles like some popular kid picking sides in a kickball game on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in that one.
In this one, as many pro critics have noted, we get a kind of tea-party anti-big-government conservative Jesus, who opposes the Roman government and the church hierarchy to lead his band of rabble rousers in their own way. It's a story tainted by the time of the writer, not the time in which the story takes place.
There was very little of a man of peace and certainly no man of divinity in the story. Jesus never made water into wine, never raised Lazarus, never saved the Centurion’s daughter. He never was transfigured, walked on water, or performed any visible miracles, other than getting St. Peter’s fishing net to fill by saying a prayer with Peter. Indeed, he never really appears after the crucifixion, other than mystically as Peter’s net fills again. Pilate's wife never has a nightmare about killing Jesus. Barabbas never appears as an alternative choice for the cross.
O’Reilly’s Jesus did the human stuff, knocking over the money-changers’ tables in the temple, saving the woman from being stoned for adultery, but the portrayals were much more human than divine. The Beatitudes weren’t shown, but at least O’Reilly resisted the temptation to rewrite The Lord’s Prayer.
I don’t know if his historical facts were perfect or not. The (Dr.) Boss is the biblical scholar with the degree around my house and I’m just a simple man with a daily struggle with faith. Not belief, but with trying not to let the world hammer me into submission.
And that’s perhaps what I found sad about O’Reilly’s “Killing Jesus.” For while he defends it as the highest-rated show in the history of the National Geographic Channel (which seems to air prison documentaries nonstop to me and gave up on “The Dog Whisperer”), he fails to see why there is this controversy to the whole thing. Because “Killing Jesus” is a triumph of the world over God, the ultimate in dramatic hubris, writ large via a cable network or two. It is the victory of “fact” over faith. I have made a living since May 1981 by one motto, one I often repeat to students, visitors and people who accuse me of not telling “the whole story.” That motto is, “I report what I can prove, not what I ‘know.’ “
O’Reilly has made Jesus into a story of what he can prove vs. what people believe.
No, the Bible is not historically accurate. Even someone with limited collegiate theological study as I am can tell you the Bible is a bunch of forms of literature all balled into a volume meant to show the way, to offer a guide to belief, a road map to a better life after this world.
What O’Reilly has done is to take the central story of the New Testament and turn it into a life of this world. And that just doesn’t work for a life whose central purpose through the centuries has been about something well beyond the understanding of this world. At least, that's what I believe, not what I can prove.
On this point, even a lifelong reporter gives in to what he believes -- knows -- over what he can prove, lest the world be nothing but a succession of fires, wrecks, plane crashes, inept politicians, crimes, murder trials, inhumanity and human silliness. Perhaps O'Reilly finds that world preferable to the one he cannot find beyond the tip of his pen.
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O'Reilly managed to kill Jesus as God
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