As before, T.J. Rathbun and his crew have done a magnificent job of filming these sessions so they are definitely visually alluring. For an age of visual learners, this is a very good thing. Also as before there are six separate sessions of three parts on each DVD. It is a lot of material, and it comes with guide books to help the process along. This review will focus on just one of these three DVDs, the one on the Life of Jesus. We will deal with the other two in subsequent blog posts. There is one technical gliche that needs remedy– namely that the subtitles have to be repeatedly turned off. Even if you turn them off for the opening segment of three in a given session, they reappear in the subsequent two sections, and are annoying. I am sure this little problem can be remedied.
One of the most welcome and different aspects of this new set of three DVDs is that women are involved. A Ms. Feinberg is the presenter of the various settings in Israel, and Prof. Susan Hecht from Denver Seminary is one of the six scholarly presenters. Kudos to Matt Williams, the general editor for making this happen. Of the six presenters three are younger or mid-career scholars, and three are older. Two of them are household names in the Evangelical world— Darrell Bock and Gary Burge.
This attempt at balance is welcome, although it must be said that this reviewer thinks it was a mistake to have no scholars on any of these three DVDs from east of the Mississippi, not least because two thirds of the nation lives east of that great river including two thirds of all Christians of any sort, and a whopping 70% of all Evangelicals live either in the Southeast or South Central or Mideast part of the U.S. One could have wished to hear from at least one of the famous Evangelical Craigs on this set of videos— Craig Evans, Craig Keener, Craig Hill, or Craig Blomberg. But you can’t have everything, and what we do have here is a very useful resource indeed for Bible study.
Naturally enough, some of the expositions are clearer and crisper than others, and some of them do a better job of linking a locale in America to the Gospel texts being discussed. I was especially impressed by the clarity of Gary Burge’s presentation, and Scott Duvall, whom I do not know, has a wonderful avuncular style and on camera manner. I was a bit disappointed that the presentations were solely about Synoptic Gospel texts, since we are talking about the life of Jesus, not just his Galilean ministry, but the two other DVDs in this batch of three do deal with the Fourth Gospel some.
These six sessions do not shy away from tough subjects, like Jesus and exorcisms. Matt Williams does a nice job and setting that whole discussion in its historical context, and Gary Burge does a fine job of helping us to understand Jesus’ tempations in the light of Israel’s temptations in the wilderness. I do think he pushes the envelope a bit too far in the ‘Jesus relives the script of Israel’s life, getting it right’ vein. Jesus after all does not lead the people of God across the Jordan (indeed the baptismal stories are not about a crossing of the Jordan into the Holy Land), and his temptations take place within the Holy Land. I could have wished for a discussion of the visionary and apocalyptic character of the temptation narratives as well. But still Gary’s presentation is excellent, and he makes his points clearly and forcefully.
Darrell Bock ably helps us understand the call narrative of Peter, and makes some interesting connections between Lk. 5 and 7. It was a little surprising to have as the opening of his session a sort of info-mercial for Dallas Seminary, but then the filming was done at the school, so I suppose this is understandable.
It is a little surprising as well, since we have already had a DVD about the miracles of Jesus, that two of the sessions on the Life of Jesus deal with this as well. It would have helped instead to have a session on Jesus and his relationship with women, or Jesus and his relationship with his own physical family, or Jesus and his relationship with the Pharisees or Sadducees or the governing authorities or Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. But you can’t do everything in a limited amount of time and space.
Despite some short comings then, what we do have in these Bible studies will help the student of the Bible to probe both deeper into the text, and to go further in connecting the texts to their original historical contexts and this is welcome indeed in an age of the dumbing down of Bible study. This series could just was well be called ‘Ramping Up rather than Dumbing Down the Bible’, and as such it challenges the audience to tease the mind into active thought. And that is a very good thing in an age of over-simplification. A very good thing indeed.
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