Theology in the Raw - Reading the Gospels as Narratives and Depictions of Jesus in Film: Dr. Jeannine Brown

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Dr. Jeannine Brown is The David Price Professor of Biblical and Theological Foundations at Bethel Seminary, where she has taught for 26 years. She focuses her research on the New Testament, hermeneutics, and integration. She’s written a bunch of books and commentaries, including Scripture as Communication, Becoming Whole and Holy, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (editor), commentaries on Matthew, Philippians, and 1 Peter (forthcoming), and a couple books most pertinent to our conversation: Gospels as Stories and The Greatest Story Ever Retold (with John Anthony Dunne). Jeannine is a member of the NIV translation committee. In this podcast conversation, we talk about reading the gospels as narratives versus harmonizing the 4 Gospels, and we also talk about the portrayal of Jesus in film, including the popular The Chosen series. Time Stamps:00:00 Introduction02:57 Why Read the Gospels as Narrative?07:36 Are the Gospel Differences Contradictions?11:45 Ancient Biography and the Gospels21:45 Why John's Gospel Is Different33:44 How Each Gospel Presents Jesus39:15 How to Read the Gospels Well44:15 Bible Movies and Portraying Jesus54:20 The Chosen: Creative License and Biblical FaithfulnessSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Justin Martyr, mid-second century, wrote that in church gatherings on Sunday, quote, the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as there is time. Ooh, what if we did that on our church services? We just started reading and we kept on going. And you let people kind of hear the themes, right? As long as there is time. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Row. My guest today is Dr. Janine Brown, who is the David Price Professor of Biblical and Theological Foundation.

at Bethel Seminary out there in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has taught there for 26 years. She focuses a research on New Testament, Herminutics, and Integrations. And she's written a bunch of books and commentaries, including Scripture as communication, becoming whole and holy. She's one of the co-editors of the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, a couple commentaries on Matthew, working on one on First Peter, Philippians, and all kinds of other books. The two books of hers that are most pertinent to our conversation are Gospels as stories, where she talks about how to read the, how to read the Gospels as narratives rather than sort of, you know, compiling all four gospels together and piecing, you know, stitching everything together.

She talks about the importance of reading each gospel on its own as an individual narrative. And also, she co-wrote the book, The Greatest Story Ever Rtold with John Anthony Dunn, friend of the show. which talks about how film has used the story of Jesus. So we do talk about that in particular, talk about The Chosen and what are some good and maybe not so good uses of the story of Jesus and film. What else? Her rap sheet keeps going here.

She is a member of the NIV translation committee. So when you're reading your NIV Bibles, Janine had a hand in that. She's a well-known, brilliant scholar. Super excited to have her on the show. So please, welcome to the show for the first time. The One or Only, Dr. Genevon.

All right, welcome to Theology DeRala. I am so excited to talk to you because you are, I've been in a New Testament scholar, expert in the Gospels, among other things, written commentaries on at least one gospel, right? Matthew, a couple of them, yes. Okay. Is that your main of all the four Gospels? Yes. Yeah, I did my dissertation there, so I've written journal articles, commentaries. I have a couple of journal articles in John, one in Luke, you know, but again, things that are

a little more specific. But then the Gospels of Stories took on all of the Gospels in a more sort of methodological way, right? Yeah. Thinking about how do we approach them? So that's what I'd love to talk about, because there are different approaches to how to even interpret and read the Gospels. I want you to talk about how to read the Gospels as narratives. In almost like the shadow background I'm thinking of is, you know, versus harmonization.

A lot of people, they intuitively read the Gospels. You know, we don't know why there's four, but we have four. And there's some similarities, some differences. And we just kind of like stitch it all together to construct a historical life of Christ. And that's not, I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong. You can see the tone of my voice. But there's another way to approach the gospel. And it's a worthy endeavor.

And it's not the way we have them in the canon, right? In the Bible, we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. So maybe there might be an invitation to do something more and sometimes different. So how would it explain to something different, a narrative approach? Yeah. Well, I grew up in a church context where I was learning the Bible, memorizing verses. and I could tell you, yes, that's the story of Jesus, healing a centurion's servant. But I couldn't tell you which gospel that was from or if it came up more than once

because we just read with this harmonization impulse, which again didn't harm me deeply. I mean, it's like as a Christian, there was much there for thinking about how do I, you know, when do I emulate Jesus? What characters should I pay attention to? Because there's some nicely emulatable characters in the Gospels. But when I in, it was in seminary myself, when I was taking courses with Robert Stein, who was a redaction critic, which just means that he was taking on a whole gospel, comparing it to like Matthew to Mark, Luke to Mark, but really doing a little more holistic kind of reading, I just fell in love with whole Gospels. oh, that passage of the Jesus Healing the Centurion's servant comes up in Matthew 8, and that's a whole string of healings that happen.

And what does that do in that context, especially because this is the only non-Jewish person that Jesus interacts with. And there's something there that then gets picked up later in Chapter 15 with the Canaanite woman. They're just to see that kind of story to contour. And by story, when I say Gospels of Stories, I don't mean they're not true that they're fiction. I just mean the shape of the story, like you said, narrative. And then in Luke 7, that's where that shows up. And Luke shows up twice.

And you might say John has a companion kind of similar story, but I think those two are the clear parallels. And it does something a little different there because of the placement. It doesn't say something contradictory. It just says something different. And it adds to his story in a different way, Luke's story in a different way. So I found that to be utterly transformative. Someone who knew lots of the Gospels in bits and pieces and in kind of extracted parts. And like you say, in the harmonizing of those two stories together.

And oh, I just found sitting with the shape of Matthew's story captivating. And I still do. I mean, I still go back and study more in Matthew and write something new and find, see something. I did something recently on Gentile women in Matthew. And that was really lovely to do. How many are there besides the Canaanite or Saracian? Well, yeah. I mean, the Canaanite woman, she's called a Canaanite woman in Matthew and her daughter.

So there are two. There's Pilots' wife. Oh, yeah. And whether you count them, they're not in the storyline, but the four women who show up at the beginning of the four Gentile women, I think, who show up at the beginning of the genealogy. whether you say best sheba's one or not, but she's called the wife of Uriah, so highlighting this sort of gentilic, gentile connection. So at least that many, the queen of the soul shows up in chapter 12, but I didn't take her on because she's just sort of referenced. But I took on those seven women, I guess you could say, thought of them.

And then how they've been interpreted throughout the history of the church, some of that stuff. So I keep on going back is what I'm saying. and I don't find that I exhaust that story. You know, because 28 chapters of Matthew is just, I can't pin that to the wall, right? I can't, I've done that. I'm going to go on to something else. There's just, it's just a beautiful story that I learn more about as I continue to go back to it. So when you come across a passage in Matthew that is also in another, the episode is in another gospel.

So do you not immediately jump to the other gospel to? to understand what Matthew's doing with that story? Or how do you approach the, when you have stories occurring in multiple gospels? That's a great question. Because you could jump to that story to fill it out. Or if you're a redaction critic, which I trained with, a redaction critic, you jump to say, how is it that we see the one kind of set against the other? If we have Mark and it's Cyro Phoenician woman, why does Matthew call her a Canaanite woman,

which isn't the first century word for it. It's the ancient enemy name for it. I think that's part of it. He uses that language to heighten that this is the arch enemy of Israel from the past. And of course, the story doesn't end that way. It doesn't end with here is an enemy of Jesus. No, I mean, but it has this really contested kind of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So you're saying Matthews using that.

So Mark uses sorrow for nation. Matthews is Canaanite. Same story, some differences. So you're saying this is a good example. narrative reading, like Matthew is specifically calling her a Canaanite 4. Like he's he's doing that on purpose. Yeah, he's hearkening back to this ancient rivalry because Canaan isn't, you know, a place in first century Judea or, I mean, and beyond, right?

So it, it does. It does something a little different. And now you could, you can get that just from reading Matthew on its own, but to know that, oh, so that redaction, comparing with Mark can be fruitful, right? It heightens that, oh, why? Why this term? But you were just reading Matthew and went Canaanite woman, and you might say, oh, Canaan is not what people call this place anymore in the first century world.

So why? So I think you can narrative approaches, I think, if you read really carefully, a single narrative on its own, you can catch all sorts of nuance. So, yeah, so I think about the parable, the changing course, the parable of the wandering sheep, Matthew 18, 10 through 14, and the parable of the lost sheep, Luke 15. Right. The language is different. Luke uses lost three parables, right, coin, sheep, sun in Luke 15. Three things are lost in these three different parables. and Matthew clearly uses one who has gone astray or wandered. And I think that's intentional. In other words, you could say, well, Jesus told both of those.

Good, fine. Why does Matthew have this one? Why does Matthew use wandering language? Because this is in the middle of Matthew's community discourse, which is all about how should the community live together well. And one thing to do is to pay attention to those who have wandered. And he ties that to the little ones theme that he has in the first. part of Matthew 18. So there's something very rich there when we spend some time with it and go,

yeah, and not get so worried about, okay, there's a difference. But what is that about? What is that language doing in Matthew 18? Because it's not somebody outside of the community. It's one who is straight away. And how do you act toward that person? And then there's that, you know, Matthew 15, if your brother, sister sins against you, what do you do? So it has all sorts, and forgiveness this ends the chapter. So it has all these really relevant, I mean, connected together topics to think about how do we live well in a community where we don't always agree, where we sin against each other, where we don't, you know, get along necessarily? How do we think about

living in a community in a really deep way, caring for those most vulnerable, which I think what the one's language does? So it fits so nicely there. And it It says something there, and it's slightly different than what we hear in Luke, although, of course, the main thrust of the parable is quite similar. You know, they're not saying something different. So I've gotten, I really love, like, narrative approaches to the Gospels. Redaction. So, that's interesting, too. But I still like to look at just the, what's the canonical final form?

Yes. The text we have. And how do these stories, the places. Smith, the wording, how does it interact with and expose and bolster the theology, what Matthew's trying to do in his overarching story. So having said that, it's taken me a long time to get in that mindset, but I still had that nagging in the back of that Sunday school voice of the back of my head saying, yes.

Okay, there's two stories. In one version, Jesus says this. In this version, he said something a little different. The overarching meaning may not be drastically affected, but if I had a video camera in the first century, what did he actually say? Yeah, yeah. Is that ever a problem? I mean, and does that trouble you? How should we think about that ancient historiography?

What actually happened in the first century when there are these differences? It's such an important question. And again, growing up in a very Bible-centric church, which had a very high view of scripture, and I still hold too, a high view of scripture. I tell you, and as somebody very interested in the Bible, I mean, I won Bible quizzes in my, you know, jet cadets class. That's what we call that, you know, jet cadets for Jesus. There's a song.

So, but I had to sort of look away from that. I remember thinking I can't really stare that one in the face because it does, I mean, it looks like there could be problems, right? whether the same saying slightly differently or different orders of events. I just talked about that. Lovely Matthew 8 Centurion story. Well, it comes in a different place in relationship to some other stories than in Luke and in Mark. What do I do with that?

But I couldn't really look at that because I had to just say the Bible is true and the Gospels are reliable. And I still say those things. But I now can say, oh, I understand something about Greco-Role. biography, which are a thing, right? It's a genre, and the Gospels fit them for the most part, not fully, because they're very Jewish as well. I mean, all the Old Testament strewn across Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that's not common to have those, you know, kind of outside texts all over the place in a Greco-Roman biography. I mean, it didn't have kind of the same kind of

scriptural kind of heritage. But what they do share with Garco-Roman biography is, a sense that theme can override chronology. Suttonius says this in his, you know, biography or his, yeah, his biography of one of the many, I get who it is, is Augustus, you know, one of the Caesars. He talks about how theme is a really important organizer. In fact, to make sense of a story, theme needs to happen. I mean, you need to organize by theme. Essentially, he says something to that effect.

So that really helps to say, oh, the order can be different because you can highlight theme, like Matthew 8 through 9, theme Jesus' power and authority to heal. And, you know, 16, 17 verses in, he gives us Isaiah 53, 4. And this happened to Phil was said through Isaiah, you know, he took our illnesses, he bore our diseases. I mean, you know, just right there. Matthew says, here, I want you to know this section is about healing for the most. part, and it is. So I think that helps. Now, the wording piece, like, what did Jesus say exactly at this moment? I think those kinds of slight changes are, you know, kind of adaptations. Often the language fits a theme of the gospel writer. So they didn't feel they had to have

sort of that exact wording necessarily to return. I think of when Jesus says, God knows how to, you know, parents know how to give good gifts to their children. God is even more so, right? Good gifts. Luke says the Holy Spirit, surprise, surprise. God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him, because that's a very, Luke and theme, the spirit's work and activity. So he just fills in sort of the best gift. Bob Stein used to say that all the time. That's the best gift. So there it is. So does that seem problematic that Matthew has the more general, and Luke gives us something very specific that's very, Very, very good. So that kind of, I don't think, I don't think I'd be afraid to stare the issues in the face and just say, let's figure out why Matthew is doing this, why Luke is doing this, why Mark?

There's something wonderful about taking that whole scope and saying, yeah, I can see. Matthew really likes the word righteousness to Kayosune. It shows up seven times. It doesn't seem like much, but compared to none, Mark, you know, to Luke, too, Luke. Luke, the two or one, you know, but just it doesn't show up much elsewhere. It's interesting word to look at and go, Matthew really likes it. Whether there's justice or righteousness or God's faithfulness or a variety of ways, people might translate that.

But that's clearly a theme that Matthew wants us to hear about. And if we didn't have Matthew, we would not hear about it the same way as if we did. So would it be correct to say, like from an ancient historiography perspective, of the first century way of doing history, the author could take some liberties to, I mean, I guess we do it today too. In wording? Right, for summarizing, right?

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So is that, like, it wouldn't, like, from an ancient perspective, Matthew wouldn't be viewed as being untruthful. Going off the rails. If he, you know, worded it in a different way than, you know, Luke has it.

And where we see more of the shift in wording is often in the narration versus in Jesus' words, even though we see some there. But we do see greater variety. I remember because in redact, because I had Dr. Robert Stein for Greek, we underlined our synopsis where you see the parallel columns, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and you're just underlining all, everything's similar. And the most agreement is in the words of Jesus. Oh, okay. and more, just much more flexibility. And Matthew wouldn't write shorten a story that is longer in Mark or all that kind of stuff. And I do think it's helpful to have that sort of caveat.

Yes, there's some flexibility in telling that story. And early church is very interested in the words of Jesus, right? Passing them down orally. And they were in an oral culture where they were good at that, as opposed to, I have to just write things down. You know, we just made a shopping list for the, you know, it's like, I'll forget that if I don't write that one word now. So I think coupling those together, yes, ancient biography had this flexibility in the world of Jesus and Jewish culture, not just Jewish culture, but the importance of Jesus, people paid attention to what he said in probably a more focused, detailed way because of who he was to them. You know, he was their rabbi first, but then also, wow, he wrote Rising from the Dead.

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It would be natural for an ancient writer to organize a story, not according to how it played out necessarily, but according to different themes that writer is trying to convey. Does this solve the whole problem of John's temple cleansing? Because Jesus clearly cleanses a temple. That's a great one. Yeah. The last week of his life, like that's just Matthew Mark Luke, right?

And then John all of a sudden it's like, what, chapter two, I think, like after he goes to the wedding again, and all of a sudden he's out cleansing the temple. And some people say there's, I don't know the answer is. Is it two? Two temple cleansings. Yeah. I'm, John does take, I mean, John does, I love what one of my colleagues said to me as I'm like, well, this is powerful. In John is as if we're in Passion Week the whole time, you know, chapter two on, we are in Passion Week. So, I mean, you know, the thing that happens to begin Passion Week, which is the cleansing of the temple or the temple incident, whatever Jesus is doing, judging cleansing and something between, already happens in John 2.

I was convinced there must be two somewhere, you know, in the gospel. And, you know, growing up again, and I had to be, oh, wow, there is only one in John. It just comes at the beginning. I think there's a, if it's not two, there are not two, but there was one temple cleansing and Jesus does it in John, early in the ministry, John is then trying to really emphasize Jesus' death, which is not surprising, as he does, and it happens at Passover. There are, you know, three Passover, maybe four in John. Only one that we hear of, I mean, in other words, we hear of a

kind of a just a shortened version of Jesus' life ministry, one Passover in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, I should, Luke at the beginning, you know, or infancy narrative may be something different there. But in John, we hear these three Passover's, because Passover is the festival he wants to emphasize, and I think he wants to emphasize, Jesus is a Passover lamb. Chapter 1, behold the Lamb of God. Jesus is crucified. He is killed at the same time as Passover lambs are being killed. It seems in Johanna chronology.

So I think he's trying to really emphasize for us. He knows, I mean, if various Mark Goetheker and others who have argued that John knows the synoptics, he's aware of them, he wants to do something different than that. I think that's a pretty powerful, rather than just say, I'm just going to repeat that, that's all. good, but I want to emphasize something differently about who Jesus was, this Passover lamb, which is that we get that most strongly in John. And in my book, Gospels of Stories, when I take on and have a couple chapters on the Old Testament in the New Testament, in the Gospels particularly, I have half of a chapter on the Passover lamb from John. I take John and I look at renewal of creation and Passover Lamb as two key Old Testament sets of illusions that show.

up. Right. They keep on going across John. It's like chapter seven, I think, or something like that. John really is a different bird. I mean, I know. Yes. Most people listening probably know the difference between synoptic gospels, Matthew Mark Lute. There are a lot of similarities. John comes along and it's just, I think if I remember correctly, 92% of John is unique to John or something like that. Like there's very little repeated. Little crossover rate. Right. Even if If you say there are signals that he knows of the synoptics, he really is giving us, he wants to give us something different. I think that's everybody agrees on, but I think that's kind of a fundamental. And it's often the gospel we send people to when they first come to faith.

I mean, my husband, who isn't a believer in his 20s, was reading religious texts from different, you know, from different religions, world religions. and picked up the Bible, and John was the one that just cut him to the core. At the end of John 3. No, it's not the end of, but John 320-ish around there. People love the darkness. I'm sure at that point it was men love the darkness more than the light. They don't want their days to be exposed to they stay in the darkness. People stay there, and he's like, shoot, that's me and everybody I know.

That became really powerful. And John was very, you know, even though it's this sort of rich, deep thing, it's also very easy to read in some ways. Because we understand darkness and light, right? We understand the images that John uses, even if we don't know what Passover lamb is or what a lamb is. In the Old Testament, we get that this is a unique individual, right? This is a high Christology.

Jesus comes and he comes in the middle of festivals that are about light and water and says, I'm delighted well. You know, they're just kind of these powerful statements that stick with you. And so I think it's interesting that it's maybe the most, I don't say the most theological. I don't think that's true. It's the most, he's the most concerned with giving us a kind of a different take, theologically, not contradictory, but the sense of richer. I'm going to just, I'm going to give you symbols and I'm going to just throw it all at you.

And yet it's one that we say, you could understand that. You know, a child can wade and an elephant can swim in John, according to some ancient commonplace. And it has the, of all the gospels, like the most simplest Greek, right? I mean, it's, I remember reading the first year Greek student, I'm reading, you know, John, I'm like, I'm reading you, right? Yeah, and then I turned to Hebrews. I'm like, I don't know Greek, you know.

Yeah, exactly. Or acts or, yeah. Yeah, John, I mean, there's so many, he has so many, just so. subtle, like every word, every, every, every, there's like, and he plays on word. Yeah, you know, he plays on words, like born again, born from above, living water, running water, you know, fresh water kind of thing. Even verse five of the first chapter, the darkness has not understood, the lights come to the world, and the darkness has not understood it, or is not overcome it. Both of those work wonderfully in John, right? I mean, so it might be his first illusion. because he wants sort of both to be activated.

And if you're a Greek reader, you can get both. In English, you just have to look at the footnote in the NIV that says or or whatever it is. I never thought about how simple the gospel is in many ways, how simple the Greek is. And yet in many ways, it's the most theologically profound, multi-layered, endless. Yeah, multi-layered. I think that's a good way to put it. Yes, yes. It just good.

And it cites the Old Testament far less than Matthew and Luke. maybe even Mark, but it alludes to, you know, kind of the tapping into, I have a, I studied the renewal of creation in the Gospel of John, so I have that book, but partly because I did read a journal article in 2010, that I guess has gotten a lot of, no, yes, no, yes, over the years, but I'm not in the Johanna and stuff as much. I'm like, look, the literature, the the secondary literature. So, but the idea that we hear Genesis, early chapters of Genesis one and two in the prologue, right?

The first 18 verses of John in the beginning was the word. But we also hear it in chapters 19 and 20. We hear these tapping into the use of the language of garden. Yes. Which is only in John. And Mary thinks he's a gardener. Well, as one commentator says, question isn't, is she wrong? Are she wrong?

I mean, is she, whether she knows she's identifying correctly, but is she right or wrong? Is this just the gardener? You know what I mean? So just he's kind of evocative, and he breathes on them, the language from Genesis 2. He breathes on his disciples. So that kind of stuff really comes, I think, more quickly and routinely in John, those kind of little evocations, little like, was that from Genesis? Was that from Isaiah?

You know, just you have to wonder about it. a little longer because he doesn't just say, and this was what the prophet Isaiah said. Matthew likes those fulfillment, put his quotations and just puts them all over the place. What do you think? That's, I never thought about this before. What do you think is the motivation for John, the author, in doing that? No. Now you're asking me, Johanai and stuff.

Well, or I guess it can be a generic question. Like, why would an author have these illusions that many readers will just miss, you know, unless you're like so steep in the Old Testament and you have it memorized or whatever? Like, is there an artistry to it? Like, he wants the subtleness to be? Like, a modern day artist would say that, right? Like, I, my, there's power and the subtlety. If things are so in your face, so blatant, here's the meaning.

You know, it's like, well, that's that really art. You know, it's more powerful and people are drawn in and discover things. Do you think that's going on? Oh, yeah. I mean, how musicians allude to earlier music and it just gets, it happens all the time. Yeah, I do think, I, I, I, I, do think we underestimate what people might have been able to catch. Now, you know, you could say, well, this is partly John might be, according to Craig, Kester, Gentile, Samaritan, and Jewish Adis.

I mean, all of those people are represented. But they're in communities where those people might not be separated from each other. In other words, Jewish readers or Gentiles who had been schooled in Judaism because they were kind of hanging around the fringes of the synagogue, they would recognize the oral, you know, they're hearing it orally. They've heard the Torah read out orally or the prophets. And so they can catch things a little more easily than we might think. The sophistication is, I think, not about literacy so much as it's about how well do we know these texts and these traditions and how much have we heard them throughout our lives. Yeah, there's just lots of interesting questions.

there. But I think like Joel Green talks about in First Peter how the Gentile readers, hearers, would have been also bumping up against the side of some Jewish readers, even as primarily Gentile. I'm working in First Peter right now, so I'm just... Oh, you are? I am working on the

NCNT commentary, and I just finished a themes book for the new biblical theme series. But he says, you know, the Jewish and Godfuer, if you can say that was a category, but you know, it's like in the hanging around the synagogue people would be schooling others.

So even if they don't all catch it. And you're right. I think authors still will want to allude to it to make a point. Now, first period, there's a lot of citations, which is nice, but there are a few illusions as well. Yeah, yeah. I got some questions about First Peter three, but I... Oh, goodness.

Don't do that, too. Maybe you're not there yet. I'm not there in my writing yet. I have an idea of what I'm going to say, but not fully. but I do think there are allusions to Genesis 6 and potentially First Enoch and all that stuff. I was talking about the household code, one to seven. Oh, yeah. Why I've written on that?

I've written a book on Embedded Genres in the New Testament, and I take on the household code of First Peter in one of my chapters. So I find that really interesting. Yeah, yeah. But we don't have to go there. We don't have. We'll see if a pop's up. Yeah, go back to the Gospels.

You know, I are both the New Testament scholars. So we're familiar with the phrase like, you know, the Luke and Jesus, the Johanna and Jesus or Matthew's Jesus, you know. And it's so normal to me. I don't even think about it. But that could feel weird for somebody who's not in those circles. Like, what would it be Matthew's Jesus? Like, is that a different Jesus than John's Jesus? Yeah.

Is that what are we trying to communicate with that? Is that okay? Yeah. Well, if you allow for it to be a shorthand for us, nerds. and scholars, I think it's okay. But, I mean, it's not language I try to use generally speaking, you know, in my everyday life, right? I do think what it does is it just captures in a quick snapshot the highlights of the portrayal of that individual author. Matthew's Portrait of Jesus, which we call Christology or Matthew's Jesus, has some different contours to it.

It's, again, not utterly different. Still savior of the world, though that's a Johannine. I mean, that's John's Jesus. He says, John says it about Jesus. And savior language shows up in Luke, but the actual term soter doesn't show up in Matthew. But he does save his people from their sins. So, I mean, just thinking about the kind of language that gets used by each gospel writer, what they're trying to emphasize about who Jesus is.

I mean, I think there are some interesting. subtle kind of themes in Matthew around Jesus as wisdom, especially in chapter 11. And it's not explicit, but it's implicit because here are John the Baptist is hearing about the deeds of the Messiah and then 112. And then at the end of that section, wisdom is proven right by her deeds. And, you know, there's this sort of kind of implicit Jesus is that wise one who teaches from the Torah, that law, rightly, correctly, and profoundly. So I think you get some of that, and you don't get that in Mark as much. Mark doesn't have the same passages, the same parts of the story.

And Luke has some of that material, but it's shaped a little differently. So just to recognize, oh, the Mathian Jesus is being emphasized as one who is truly wise. And when the Jewish leaders come at him with all these questions during the first few days in Jerusalem at the end of the story, chapter 21, 22, he's able to answer wisely, sometimes with a riddle, sometimes by saying something profound. And then they're just like, they don't know what to say. And everybody was amazed at what he said. And at the end, they all just shut down and nobody could speak anything more to him. You know, there's this kind of this wisdom of Jesus is really highlighted in some powerful ways. So it's not that you could see some of that in the other Gospels,

but I think Matthew shapes it in a particular way and highlights it a little bit more than the other gospel writers. Well, that's worth price of the ticket, I think. You know, I mean, like, I'm going to read Matthew because I want to hear how Jesus acts and speaks and what he does. And even though in all the Gospels, of course, he does. dies for Israel and for the nations and he is raised. So you mean, you know, the end of the story isn't this question mark. But there is, there are some different shapes too. I think that's, I could just keep on doing that the rest of my born days.

Do you have a favorite gospel? I think it's Matthew, you know. I mean, I think I started working to Matthew because it was my favorite. Yeah. But, yeah, John is very intriguing. And so last year I was asked to do Trinity, had a series on the Gospels, and so I was given a Goss, I was asked if I would do a lecture on Luke,

which I was called my lost gospel, because it's the one I've worked with the least. But I decided I would do it on hospitality and Luke, because it's the theme I've always wanted to look at, so I did the theme of hospitality and Luke. I just found it wonderful to do, and just learned a ton and how Jesus, so how Jesus is welcomed and welcomes, how we are to welcome people, how different people and the meal scenes that come through Luke

that are about welcome and hospitality. You know, the big question of just Jesus, how many of these does Jesus host, which I think is the interesting question? I mean, he doesn't have a place to host, right? I think the only two that he hosts are the one in the wilderness in Luke 9. Big place. I can host here. I mean, I don't mean to put those words in Jesus' mouth, but then the upper room he has

to rent out, essentially. Oh, yeah, yeah. get the loan of an upper room. And those are the two that he hosts. And then in the chapter 24 and the road to a mass, he breaks bread. He takes the role of a host in someone else's house. Wow. But there are like seven other meal scenes that seems like people are hosting Jesus.

Well, that's interesting. Yeah. And we have Zechiaz and Luke 19. Yes, Jesus invites himself over. He's the one that. Yes. I need to come a different nature place. And then in Luke 7, Simon the Pharisee is the host.

technically, but a woman comes and performs all the duties of a host. So just, oh, I mean, that's just amazing to think about the narrative and not just statements of welcome or hospitality, but instead kind of how the story highlights those things. You don't have as many meal scenes in Matthew, Mark, or John, as you do in Luke. Just don't. So what I'm here to say, yeah, just to kind of maybe sum up this part of our conversation. So like when you're reading the Gospels, you come across a story, you come across a series of stories, like try to figure out like or understand like how is this story participating in the stories around them as they compare and contrast. Are they conveying a theme?

And then even as you have a wider lens, like how does this contribute to an overarching theme of the gospel, the individual gospel writer? Would that be fair? Yeah. When I have students read a gospel, just start jotting down the themes that you're hearing. And they can be themes that are very similar to ones we hear in other gospels. Same thing. It can be distinct ones. So just start writing them down.

And you only notice a theme if you go past one story, right? I mean, you can't tell a theme in Matthew unless you've read chapters one through four. Or, you know, so that kind of idea of just reading longer sections of text is something we're not as prone to do because our sermons are maybe eight to ten to 12 verses. verses, we're told to read the gospel, you know, we're told to read scripture, kind of however it sort of fits in our maybe day or like people think, I mean, like I want to find a verse that will speak to me. We talk like that, right? And again, God can do, I can speak through kind of any, any amount of text, but we can also misread some things if we just pull them out of context. I don't think that's the heart of anybody wanting to go to the Gospels to read, though. So I just say, read further than you thought you were going to. read a little further. And I talk about how in my first page of the Gospel of Stories, I talk about Justin Martyr, who in about mid-second century, wrote that in church gatherings on Sunday, quote,

The memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, Gospels or Old Testament, as long as there is time. Ooh, what if we did that on our church services? We just started reading and we kept on going. And you let people kind of hear the themes, right, as long as there is time. So it just invites a different kind of reading to try on. It doesn't mean you can't read how you used to read. I'll have sometimes at the end of our hermeneutics class, which is the first

interpretation class at Bethel's Seminary, I'll have people say, you ruined me for devotional reading. And so tell me about that. Tell me what kind of devotional reading you no longer feel you can do because of what you've learned. And what does it invite you to in terms of a different kind of reading? So, because I just won't take it on. I won't. I'm not going to be responsible for that. Because if they didn't internalize anything, I said, they would still be doing whatever they were doing before. But they've internalized something. So tell me about that. And it's not that they internalize

everything I say. And they'd read just like me. Nobody reads just like me and makes charts of Luke in hospitality that are cool pictures. And, you know, I mean, nobody has to do that. Unless I say, that's one of the assignments in Gospels class, but that's only once they have to try them. I do have them try. I want to say just that when I was first to have done a narrative approach to my dissertation, it was a narrative reading of a large part of Matthew.

When I went into teaching, Beck and I had been teaching for a while, I kept on teaching with small little sections of gospel's texts. And after a while, I thought, what am I doing? Why am I having them read and do a paper on 13 verses? So then I started to have them do a plot-themed diagram of the whole Lucan travel narrative, which is about 12 chapters, because I wanted them to try something different that got them thinking about themes. So I'll just say, it took me a while to even catch up to my own way of reading for myself and for my students.

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Because the subtitle tells it. Envisioning Jesus' narratives from Gospels to film. To film. So you look at how Jesus' story is portrayed in film and lots of films. You told me John watched over 200 Jesus. She did. I didn't watch all of those. I've watched any number, but not that many.

And yeah, and across the globe. I mean, so some of them are not in English. And some have subtitles, some don't. But, you know, many of them are from the English-speaking world or from, you know, whether Hollywood or, you know, some. Yeah. What did you find? What was the, I guess, the purpose or goal of the book? Yeah.

What's your takeaway from this? Well, we taught a class first. And we thought, well, maybe we'll do some writing out of it. We love teaching the class. And what we did was we looked at. And the goal was always to start with that. Gospels and look at second, third century gospels, and then look at film and see kind of if there are some basic things that we tend to do. People tend to do with the Jesus story.

So we looked at harmonizing, you've mentioned already, so films often harmonized, but so did the diatesteroon, second century compilation of all four gospels. We looked at filling in gaps, you know, kind of the parts of the Jesus story that are just like, what happened between the age of what? You know, infancy and 30 or something like that. And some films fill that in, right? The Young Messiah is one film that does that. We had students watch that. But then also the infancy gospels, infancy gospel of Thomas, talks about what Jesus did.

He healed people, but, you know, he also cursed people. I mean, just like this young Jesus doing all sorts of weird and wacky things in this third century, maybe I can't remember the exact name. Nostick or is it a Gnostic? Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, it's not a gospel. We would say, let's go home and read that. But when you read it, you go, wow. And then so people were interested in that time period or in the desert during Jesus' temptation.

What happens? There's whole films about 40 days in the desert because it's an intriguing time, right? So they take on kind of gaps in the storyline. often young or maybe one interesting part of it all and maybe do a whole film on it or something like that. And some ancient gospels did similar things. And then we just looked at the way people, filmmakers, portray Jesus from like the earliest days,

late 19th century all the way to the present, is Jesus sort of more lofty and clearly God on this earth walking around just sort of slightly off the ground, you know, or a really human Jesus, is that captivated? More recently, that's certainly captivating audiences. Think of the chosen. You think of Last Temptation of the Christ. I mean, just all sorts of ways that's been portrayed on film.

How does that come out of the Gospels or not? What do we get in the Gospels? We'll talk always about the Gospels first and then some of the intervening gospel, second, third century, or the history of interpretation a little bit, and then we'll land real heavily on film as well. So we talk about the chosen. We talk about any kind of screen version of Jesus, really. We talk about, you know, the silence, the silent films of the late 19th century to

1930s, right? And then how Jesus sort of goes silent. I mean, in terms of films, there aren't any films really about Jesus much from 1930 to, you know, late 1950s to Hayes Code, which kept people from kissing. too long on screen, also kept people from wanting to portray. I mean, just the sensibility of trying to not portray Jesus in a way that would be sacrilegious. He just wasn't, there's one film that has the back of him the whole, the most of the whole time. You just see his back. You hardly see his front. And you think of Ben Hur. I mean, I grew up watching Ben Hur. Jesus shows up twice,

just giving water or receiving water from this character, Ben Hur. And that's all you see. So then in the 60s, though, that all shifts again, because now those restrictions have been lifted and people have some different sensibilities. And all of a sudden, there are these big epics about Jesus. So it's just, it was so fascinating to walk through. And to ask the question, how are we already directors in our own minds when we read the Gospels? What have we directed? So when you have a reaction to a film that's like, ugh, no way. the good question to ask is, so how did I, how was I rolling that out on the film in my mind?

What is so different that I, like, nope, that didn't happen that way. Or I'm, you know, there's almost a revulsion that seem people have at different parts of Jesus films, which I can identify with. And it's really helped me to turn the lens to myself and say, so what was I thinking happened at that point? Yeah. So what, yeah, what do you think about the chosen? Do you feel like they get it right? They do a, well, I mean, there's always. pros and cons, right? I mean, you're always doing something beyond.

They're filling in lots of gaps, especially around the characters of the 12 disciples and Jesus. Jesus is certainly more fully orbed than in other portrayals, partly because they get to keep on doing the next episode, right? So, yeah, we showed a clip at a recent discussion of the book, where James and John want to call thunderdown on those awful Samaritans. And Jesus answers both, you know, really like with this intensity, but then at the end he has his lovely little kind of joke,

kind of a brings him in, and it's a very warm, you know, there's a very, there's a warmth to his portrayal that I think draws people to say, well, yeah, Jesus must have been that, right? It must have been a warm, caring, but also have an intensity to him. So the range of emotional display is really helpful in many ways, right? And a film can't even capture that. We like to compare one of the most famous, maybe the most famous Jesus film, Pasolini's 1964 film on mostly Matthew.

It's the first one that really stayed in one gospel. And then in the 90s and a lot's and beyond a number of films took on just one gospel and just word for word, you know, like you just, it was everything in the gospel. Yeah. So 1993, Matthew, we compare those to Jesus's because the Jesus and Pasolini's film Italian actor on the hills of Italy, very intense, very sober, very, you know, somber. And then 1993, Matthew is the silliest Jesus, or the one that laughs the most. It's just he'll laugh at anything, like right in the middle of a passion prediction. He's like, it's a little smile on his face.

You're like, what is going on? So it's kind of interesting to say, oh, people are trying to get at some part of this tension of how do we portray Jesus? And some people just don't even like to see Jesus on screen. And that's fair enough. You know, there's no reason why they have to watch it. if they don't want to. But it is interesting how these films are proliferating and there's more. And, you know, Joaquin Phoenix is Jesus in the 2017 Mary Magdalene film.

That's like a mind-bender to me. I'm like, whoa, I can't quite get around. Yeah. Walking Phoenix is? Phoenix, yes, yep. In 2017. Is it good? Mary Magdalene is a good film.

It's very interesting. It focuses on Mary, but he's the torture, tormented. You could see him playing that right. Portured tormented Jesus. Yeah, some of the Jesus figures are so interesting, you know, from, and of course, around the globe, portrayed very, very differently. Indian Jesus, South African Jesus. I mean, just all sorts of. Does that film portray Mary Magdalene is like a prostitute or they actually get?

No, faithful follower. One of the, the smartest of the, not 12, but 13, I suppose. she just hangs out with them. She was always interested in sort of this discipleship role and understands Jesus better in terms of what his mission is. And there's no sort of sexualization of her. It's really interesting because that's in the history of interpretation. Though Mary Magdalene has never called a prostitute in the New Testament at all. It comes later in the history of interpretation.

and most films kind of tap into that. 1927, King of Kings, silent film. The first scene is Mary Magdalene looking like she's, I mean, she's got a very kind of a costume that would, I don't know how to just, I dream of genie. I'm sorry, it looks like I Dream of Jeannie costume. And she rides on a chariot with zebras as she rides out of the scene. So I mean, seriously, it's like, what?

But King of Kings is a really interesting. in film to watch. And the first time we see Jesus, it's through the eyes of a little boy who's blind who slowly is getting his sight back. And it's also one of the oldest Jesus is of film history. So we talk about some of those features. We can't talk about every film, but it is really fun just to tell the stories of the films as we tell the stories of the Gospels as we ask people to think about their own way of viewing the story. What do you think about the artistic? liberties that any film is going to take. Even if you do word for word, gospel, Matthew, you're still portraying scenes in a way that may or they may not accurately depict what actually happened.

My response, well, yeah, what's your response to that? I've got some thoughts on that. Yeah, we talk about our first chapter, our first main chapter for the introduction is on faithfulness. And that question of how do we judge that? And do we need to complexify it a little bit simply because you're right. Anytime you visually portray the story, you're adding to, even the ones that just stay with the script. We call them visual translations. And then we compare some. We have two visual and translations of John that we could watch. And they do things differently, right? So, in terms of landscape and the way they portray Jesus, maybe stoically or less so, or, you know, so many choices. So if you're going to do a job,

Jesus film, you're going to have to go outside of the boundaries of the Gospels. But we do suggest that when we read a gospel, we do the same thing. Whether we visualize or somehow kind of expand what's going on, we just will do that automatically. We'll see additional things in the scene. We'll attribute additional motives to groups that text doesn't say what their motive. It will discern motives. We can't get away from that. So I think that that's what why Jesus films can be helpful. It's like, oh, it's a way to kind of push us back to the text. Right. I think the Chosen says on one of the, like, early discussions about the show. It says, you know, the book is better. Read the book or something like that, you know.

Yeah, do that. And if that helps you to go back and go, oh, no, that's not how I, oh, look at that that detail in the story that I missed. So if it can help us be better readers, If it just becomes a substitute for reading the Gospels, I say, don't do it then. I don't ever let it substitute. Yeah. I don't think it does it for most people, though. I think either you banish films altogether or if you're going to say some films are allowed, then by definition there's going to be some artistic liberties.

For me, it's like, do the artistic expansions on the story, do they resonate with, I love that you use the word, tour earlier. Do they resonate with the contours of the original text or do they conflict with it? You know, the Chosen's portrayal of Matthew with autism. Yeah. Yeah. I'm

like, okay, there's nothing about what I'm saying. Which is never the way I've pictured the writer of the gospel. Tax collector numbers guy. Do, you know, it is interesting that I, well, I don't know, I assume there were people with autism in the first century.

There were probably people with autism in the crowds. Maybe one of the 12 was. Like the New Testament doesn't say that, but it does add a very human element as it often does. And that's the plausibility issue. Yes. Human issue. One of the things we talked to Doug Huffman, who is a consultant on the chosen, in a class. We recently taught.

We taught the course after. having written a book. So we kind of taught him either end. And he came and was a special guest, a New Testament scholar. And he said that balancing sort of that plausibility and also relatability. I mean, because relatability, that means we're going to watch these things in English if we're English speakers rather than another language. But of course, some films use, whether Aramaic and some try to use Greek or maybe Latin.

And, of course, all of that is difficult to parse out since this was a multilingual context and what would Jesus speak and what would he speak with this people or those people. So we're already, you know, moving toward relatability in terms of language and maybe in terms of costume or maybe in terms of landscape. You know, so kind of realizing what a filmmaker is trying to do and what they're not trying to do can be really helpful too. because some aren't trying to be faithful. And some aren't trying to be faithful in every sense. We might think of faithfulness. So that first chapter is meant to expand or thinking a little bit. And then also to just go, we can evaluate, but let's start with some analysis.

Let's think just more about what are they trying to do? What are their goals? Why do I react strongly? And then, you know, at some point to say, yeah, I didn't like that one. That's fair enough, right? but to give it a little bit of room to interact with our own thinking can be helpful. I thought they, I mean, I actually haven't seen too many episodes, maybe the first season and half.

I didn't go back and finish it. But yeah, even like the wedding at Cana, seeing Jesus dance and laugh and just, I feel like it just, I think because modern Christians in the West at least, we're so, we so emphasize Jesus's divinity, you know, and that's kind of like the bedrock. And all that's true. What's interesting is the first heresy that Christianity had to refute was his humanity, wasn't it? And the gospel, Jesus is so human, not at the expense of his divinity. But I feel like we need, and this might be another factor of film.

Like, I think, for least American Christians probably need more emphasis of his humanity. And if, you know, like the chosen really draws that out. I think that's why for some, it's almost too shy. It's almost like, oh, I don't like this. I'll think, well, but you might need it because your view of Jesus might be a little, it might be kind of like he's more divine and he is human rather than both and, you know. And the very happy laughing Jesus from 1993, at least it raised for me the question of, so when was Jesus being hubris?

You know, like in his teaching, you know, the speck and the log, you know, the speck in your brother's eye, but you got this huge log in your own. I mean, you just take a visual of that and you go, well, that's funny. But I hadn't necessarily thought all about it, in part because the gospel writers never have Jesus laughing. I mean, the use of laughter in the first century world is a bit different than the contemporary world. It's not that they didn't laugh. It's that the use in writing. Yeah, there's a great article about this, laughing Jesus essentially,

but it's the gospel of Judas, again, a later god. gospel, a popperful gospel, has Jesus laughing, but it's in derision. Laughter is often, and you hear that in the gospel, when people laugh at Jesus when he says, no, she's, she's not dead, she's just sleeping. They laugh in derision. I mean, so laughter in literature is used differently than we might use it today and in a film. So to think, well, I don't hear any laughter in the gospels. Well, that's partly because it doesn't talk about Jesus laughing, if the gospel writers don't. But that doesn't mean Jesus didn't laugh, right? So you're getting out this, well, then it helps us to round out this picture of Jesus that's more fully-orbed human and divine. You know, what does that look like to be

human and divine? I mean, we only have one example in history that would be Jesus. So how do the gospel writers do it? Well, they do it in their own context. And they don't mention laughter, because that's not maybe appropriate given the way laughter is used, but in other writings. But that doesn't I mean, Jesus didn't laugh, right? Yeah, that's good. Well, Taney, thank you so much for being a guest at the Al Jara, giving us a overview of how to read the Gospels of this narrative and also some thoughts on film. Really invite people to check out both of those books.

So remind me the name. The greatest story you ever told is film one. Ever retold, retold, and then the Gospels of Stories. Yep. Gospels of Stories. Okay. And you have plenty of other commentaries of books and doing First Peter stuff now. So what do people, I assume you have a faculty website, people can check out.

I do, yeah, at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Yep. You can just check out some of those things that are listed there. And, yeah, it was great to be with you. I really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, you too. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.