Just in time for Passover, Jesus biopic ‘The Chosen’ premieres Season 5 in US cinemas
Launching March 28, hit show doesn’t downplay Christ’s Jewish roots but takes advice from a Messianic rabbi. Season Five: Last Supper to see a theatrical run before heading to streaming
Reporter at The Times of Israel
MIDLOTHIAN, Texas — Got a chance to catch a Dallas sunrise? Don’t miss it. The small golden disc peering above the horizon expands into a swath of brilliance encompassing the flatlands as far as the eye can see.
This is also a metaphor for “The Chosen.” Filmed in Texas, the hit series on the life of Jesus will unveil “Season Five: Last Supper” in theaters starting March 28, in time for Easter season (and Passover), after which the show will stream on Amazon Prime.
From a relatively obscure crowdfunded project that premiered inside a mostly-empty Nashville screening room at a religious broadcasters event in 2019, the historical drama has gotten bigger and bigger as it amps up for its arguably most-awaited season yet — including a depiction of Holy Week, which it calls “the most pivotal week in history.” With over 280 million viewers, the show has been a success for creator, director, writer and producer Dallas Jenkins and actor Jonathan Roumie, who stars as Jesus. You can even buy “The Chosen” T-shirts with the catchphrase “Binge Jesus.”
The Times of Israel joined a media set visit — to the “Galilee in Dallas,” if you will — during the filming of season five last summer. (Thank you to the astronomy-minded colleague who recommended seeing the sunrise.)
Yes, biblical Galilee has been recreated in the Dallas suburb of Midlothian. A body of water subbed as the Sea of Galilee, with the entire set spanning more than 80,000 square feet — including a synagogue replica where series executive producer Derral Eves convened a “faith roundtable” for the press. Earlier in the visit, the media got to speak with cast members and watch a filming within an elaborately constructed palace of the Sanhedrin, or high rabbinical court.
Amid all the hoopla, Jews might wonder whether to join those tuning in. Participation on that set visit — and some subsequent couch streaming on Amazon Prime — yielded the following takeaways: It’s a good series, creatively conceived and thoughtfully written, with plaudits for spotlighting the Jewish roots of Jesus and Christianity.
“[This] is a Jewish show about a Jewish Jesus,” Jenkins said during a media availability amid the floral colonnades of the inner courtyard. “[We] felt that was lacking in a lot of other Jesus movies and miniseries that we’d seen.”
“Jesus was a Jewish rabbi,” Roumie noted in a one-on-one interview with The Times of Israel. “[He] grew up in a household that was steeped in Jewish tradition. And I think to attempt to extrapolate the Jewishness from Jesus is kind of a sin, more or less. It’s a complete disservice and an impossibility.”
Jesus’s disciples are Jewish, too — including a feisty Galilean fisherman named Simon, one of Jesus’s earliest converts, played by Israeli-born actor Shahar Isaac. (Simon would eventually become Peter, the “rock” upon whom Jesus will build his church.) Simon is so financially strapped by the Roman occupation of Judea that he must go fishing on Shabbat in an attempt to feed his family and settle his tax bill. Jesus intercedes to help Simon reel in a record catch, among the earliest of many miracles performed on- and off-screen.
In the series, many Jews of Second Temple Judea are faced with a choice. Jesus says he is the Messiah. He backs this up with multiple claims: He can work miracles, from helping Simon to healing the sick; he can make uncanny insights into the lives of those he meets for the first time, and he has the biblically ordained lineage — descent from the House of David.
One particular Jew — a Pharisee named Nicodemus — faces a moral dilemma over whether to join Jesus’s followers. Nicodemus is the Second Temple antecedent to the avuncular rabbi at your synagogue — the one with an Ivy League degree, who reads The New York Times, listens to NPR and drives a Subaru, maybe even a used Tesla. He’s gentle, thoughtful, deliberate, respected — a pillar of his family and his people.
Oh, and one other thing: He’s secure in his religious convictions until he isn’t. It takes the mysterious case of a woman named Mary to shake him. Suffering from addiction and depression, Mary (as in Magdalene) is also possessed by seven demons, and Nicodemus can’t exorcise them. But Jesus can, and she becomes one of his followers.
In landing the role of Mary, “I was sort of reminded of who Jesus was, and who these characters are,” said actress Elizabeth Tabish. “[Who] Jesus is, what he was teaching, how revolutionary it was, how revolutionary it still can be, to love your enemies, to turn the other cheek, to bring peace, and to love others. And those are the tenets of Christ’s message that I’m so moved by today.”
Nicodemus makes inquiries — first to Mary herself, then to an imprisoned troublemaker named John the Baptizer, and finally to Jesus. The Nazarene rabbi makes an indelible impression on Nicodemus, who opts to remain in his world yet knows it will never be the same.
Stepping out of Jews’ comfort zones
Here’s where the show might constitute some uncomfortable territory for Jews. Its characters gently but definitively chide coreligionists who do not accept Jesus as the Messiah.
A previous chronicle of the life of Jesus — Mel Gibson’s 2004 feature film “The Passion of the Christ” — was not universally well-received. Part of the controversy involved a line attributed in Matthew’s Gospel to Jerusalem’s Jews, which would become historically linked with a charge of deicide: “His blood be on us and on our children!” Gibson reportedly promised to omit the line, but it was uttered on-screen in Aramaic, with no English translation.
Later centuries would be a lot less gentle — bringing violence such as the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. And while the evangelical Christian audiences who have taken to “The Chosen” include some of Israel’s staunchest supporters, their philo-Semitism may have more to do with an end-times prophecy. Some evangelical groups believe that Jews will return en masse to Israel and adopt Christianity, and then the world’s righteous will travel up to heaven — an event known as the Rapture — while Jesus will battle the Antichrist before ushering in the Second Coming. One individual who has done quite well writing a series of novels about the Rapture is Jerry Jenkins, father of “The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins.
While Dallas Jenkins identifies as both a believer and a follower of Jesus, he called himself “not actually ‘religious.’”
“We don’t ourselves call this a religious show,” Jenkins said, noting that the show’s viewers come from diverse faiths.
“One of the reasons why we’ve seen a positive response from people who are outside the [Christian] faith who might not necessarily believe Jesus is the son of God, might not necessarily believe in the miracles … they still appreciate the show because it’s not about a particular religion,” Jenkins said. “For us, we’re telling the stories of Jesus. And how people react to that, or whether they do react or not, or whether they believe or not, is really not up to me.”
(Extra-) biblical advisers
During the faith roundtable, series executive producer Eves said that “The Chosen” brought in biblical advisers — including Rabbi Jason Sobel, whom Eves credited as a source of information about first-century Judaism.
Sobel’s website states that he was ordained in 2005 at the UMJC (Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations) and clearly indicates his belief in “Yeshua.” A Times of Israel request to speak with Sobel, who was raised in a Jewish home, was unsuccessful.
To gauge Sobel’s theology, The Times of Israel turned to a YouTube playlist titled “The Chosen Unveiled with Rabbi Jason Sobel.” In Episode 11 of the playlist, Sobel addresses the question, “Why do so many Jews not believe that Jesus is the Messiah?”
Lamenting “persecution” of Jews who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah, Sobel nevertheless cites the Christian bible: “There is a partial and temporary blindness that has come upon the Jewish people, they can’t fully see him there, but there is coming a day when the eyes of Israel will be open that they will recognize Yeshua as the Messiah.”
Christians come in for some chiding from Sobel: “Over probably 1,800 years or so, the church has not been interested in the Jewish roots of the faith, they kind of rejected the Jewish roots of the faith, they rejected the Jewishness of Jesus that has been in the process of being restored.”
During creator Jenkins’s group interview with the media, he credited Sobel with helping the non-Jewish writers of “The Chosen” better understand Judaism: Under Sobel’s guidance, Galilean fisherman Simon’s decision to cast his nets on Shabbat was changed from an easy decision to an agonizing one. That was the beginning of what Jenkins called a nuanced portrayal throughout the show.
“It’s not all or nothing,” Jenkins said, noting that the show worked to avoid antisemitic tropes in depicting the money-changers in the Jerusalem Temple. “It’s not bad guys, good guys, ‘the Pharisees are all mustache-twirling villains, and the disciples are good guys, and Jesus is almost like the Christian Jesus who comes in and changes Judaism.’ We’re saying, no, no, Jesus was actually probably a Pharisee. Jesus actually practiced a lot of these Jewish traditions.”
Jewish audiences can watch the show and draw their own conclusions — and perhaps learn more about Christianity. Meanwhile, it certainly sounds like Christians are learning more about Judaism from the series.
From the sumptuously recreated set of the Sanhedrin palace in Midlothian, Jenkins enthusiastically summed up the response from Israeli viewers: “Well, one thing we appreciate about this is how Jewish Jesus is. He’s a rabbi and we love seeing our prayers and our traditions portrayed positively and favorably. And we’re seeing Gentiles all over the world pray the Jewish prayers now, interested in Jewish traditions.”
The Times of Israel Community.