Superbook: Nehemiah and the Walls of Jerusalem (1982)

A while ago I wrote about the Japanese Anime Bible series Tezuka Osamu no Kyuuyaku Seisho Monogatari (In the Beginning, 1992) and I ended it with a passing mention of "Brasilian anime series called 'Superbook'". That was based on a translation of this site, but revisiting that again made me realise that was wrong. I'm not sure if the translation has improved or whether I just mis-read it, but at the moment it's translated "Perhaps the best known Christian anime in Brazil is Superbook (Anime Oyako Gekijo)". 

In fact it turns out that this series was also a Japanese production made in conjunction with CBN, first broadcast in 1981. It was produced by Tatsunoko Productions who were set up by anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida and his two brothers Kenji and Toyoharu and are probably best known for their work on Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96). It was directed by Masakazu Higuchi (The Real Ghostbusters (1986)). The series ran for two 26-episode series in 1981 and 1982 was rebooted with CGI for CBN in 2011 with five series having been produced so far.

According to Wikipedia, the original version of the Nehemiah story was broadcast on 11 March 1982 (the series having begun in October 1981). As with the series usual format, Chris Peeper (Sho Asuka in Japanese), Joy (Azusa Yamato), and Gizmo the clockwork Robot (Zenmaijikake) travel back in time via Chris' titular Superbook - a magic Bible. Chris is grumpy because he has to help build a fence and well you can probably see where this goes.

The trio arrive back in the 5th century BC and immediately bump into Nehemiah's opponents Sanballat and Tobiah who accuse them of being spies and start to attack them. In contrast to other portrayals of Nehemiah, here he arrives on a horse and flanked by soldiers - much more aligned with the power Artaxerxes has invested in him.

When they arrive back in Jerusalem Nehemiah brings his 20th century guests up to speed on the recent history of Jerusalem as he ponders his next strategy. The next day his speech inspires the crowd to pick up their tools to rebuild the city wall, despite Sanballat and Tobiah's attempts to discourage them. Foiled at this the Tobiah and Sanballat arm a party of soldiers to attack those working on the walls and are only repelled when the Jerusalemites fire arrows back at them. This goes rather beyond the text where the threat of attack is sustained, but never quite seems to go all the way (Neh.4).

Interestingly the film also includes the incident where Sanballat and Tobiah bribe the house-bound Shemiah into suggesting Nehemiah should hide in the temple - as part of a relatively sophisticated plan to then discredit him. It  fails, of course, and so the film ends on the Jews celebrating the completion of the wall. This enables the film to avoid Ezra and his purging of gentiles from the city altogether, but it also means the film has a fairly good narrative arc - better than the book which peaks a little later, but then gets bogged down in the details. 

The animation is fairly good - it's no Studio Ghibli, but is fairly well executed and the robot figure - while obviously totally anachronistic - lends the series a suitably Japanese 80s vibe. It's the most prominent gimmick of the dramatic devices that put 20th century kids alongside biblical figures, but it's has its own charm. It never feels like the team behind it are desperately trying to cling on to their audience's attention as other kids Bible series do at times and the storytelling is reasonably competent while capturing the spirit of the original. Speaking as someone who has never really enjoyed the Book of Nehemiah, this ranks as a decent effort to dramatise a somewhat stodgy text.

Nehemiah: The Joy of Jehovah Is Your Stronghold (2020). Parts 1&2

Nehemiah  is a rather overlooked biblical character. Not only has he been almost entirely ignored by filmmakers, but 18th and 19th century operas and plays; novelisations; picture Bibles and Christian art have been significantly less concerned with his story than that of earlier characters from the Hebrew Bible. Even those reliable staples of Victorian-era Christian Art - James Tissot and Gustave Doré only produced a handful of works between them, such as Doré's "Nehemiah Inspects Jerusalem's Walls" and "The Rebuilding of the Temple" Tissot's "Nehemiah and the King" and "Nehemiah Sees the Ruins of Jerusalem.

So it's something of a surprise to discover that last year (of all years!) the Jehovah's Witnesses made what appears to be the first significant screen adaptation of the story. Nehemiah: The Joy of Jehovah Is Your Stronghold (2020), split into two parts, covers most of the material in Nehemiah, before delving into the Book of Malachi in towards the end of part two. That in itself is an unusual choice, but it's even harder to fathom given the film's treatment of Ezra. 

The precise relationship between the two men is somewhat unclear. In the popular imagination, however, they are often seen as more-or-less contemporaries, not least because partway through the book of Nehemiah, Ezra pops up to read the law to the people - a moment that's pivotal to the text as a whole. Scratch the surface, though, and there are reasons to think this passage was inserted at this point in the text for thematic emphasis, rather than historical verisimilitude. It's hard to establish a smooth chronology and as a result some scholars see Ezra as preparing the way for Nehemiah's work, others see them as more or less contemporaries, while still others seeing his reforms as coming significantly after Nehemiah's.

The film begins with a prologue that gives more or less the traditional chronology,¹ and goes on to call Ezra as "a man who had come before" Nehemiah, and show that he was still around to read out the law the marketplace at the start of part two. But both men are still young and therefore contemporaries, so the decision to sideline Ezra, to the extent that he doesn't even feature in part 1, but gives such prominence to Malachi is an interesting decision. 

This is probably an attempt to downplay the racist messages which are found in both Ezra and Nehemiah, but are largely attributed to Ezra. The film largely summarises Ezra's policy of wide-scale divorce foreign wives (Ezra 9-10) and dispelling foreigners from Jerusalem (Neh 13:3) as responding to a single misdeed, "divorcing our wives to marry foreign women" which is the most (still not that) palatable part of his policy. Later Nehemiah speaks out those who have divorced their Jewish wives to marry those from other tribes.

The inclusion of the Malachi material takes up a sizeable portion of part 2 and allows the portion on tithing to be included. It's worth remembering at this point that this film is a teaching aid produced by a worldwide denomination - as indicated by a preacher at the start of the film - and the film includes one of the passages that is used, in various forms of Christianity, to promote the idea that 10% of church-members' income should be given to the church.

I first watched this film a month or so ago and in the meantime the issues I've reflected most upon are to do with the sets and lighting. Even the "distressed" sets have the feel of being brand-spanking new.This is somewhat contrary to most 21st century epics, where the trend has generally been to portray all biblical era sets as being old-looking and rundown. The increasing popularity of Italy's medieval town Matera as a location is both a cause and an effect in this respect. 

While I must admit I love the look of Matera, and that aesthetic, at the same time it's also something of a construct. As much as the buildings we see on screen represent something from the past, that does not mean they would have been old at the time of the story. Indeed, at some point, all buildings were new. Modern cities tend to feature architecture of various ages and while we might hypothesise that certain cities after a recent razing might be more homogeneous, or that the time range might be narrower due to lower standards of expertise, even those assumptions can be challenged. For example, some buildings from this era still stand today - hardly indicative of shoddy craftsmanship. Of course, what's particularly interesting in the case of Ezra-Nehemiah is that it literally is a story about a building project to redevelop a city. Certainly by the point in the film by which the building work is completed it's not unreasonable for buildings to be looking pristine. 

That said, I'm just as bothered by the 'before' scenes (see enlarged version of the above photo). The filmmakers have attempted to make Jerusalem's walls seem damaged by a siege and 70 years of ageing, but the city still seems sterile and fake. I'm reminded of DeMille's hurriedly instructing his team on The Ten Commandments (1923) to grab bits of seaweed at the last minute so that the sea bed would look genuine when the waters parted. Struggling to put my finger on what exactly was wrong in this respect I asked Twitter and I'd like to thank the people who were kind enough to reply.² They confirmed that the lighting was the biggest problem as well as pointing out a few other issues (such as CGI integration, post-production work and the costumes). 

Given this is a relatively low budget film it is perhaps unfair of my to hone in on this, but it does take me right out of the film: I'm never able to buy into the world that is portrayed as being real rather than a bunch of actors on a set. Instead I find myself asking question that would never normally occur to me.³ As I prefer to keep my focus on the positive aspect of a film and the points of interest it raises, I'll refrain going into the film's various other problems such as the acting and the dialogue.

While the film is wary of wandering away from the biblical text too much it does include a number of invented figures so the audience can experience the events from there perspective. Peleth and Imma  are a Jewish couple who originally came to Jerusalem with Ezra along with another man Raham to whom they are now in debt. (The names Peleth and Raham both feature much earlier in the Biblical chronology, but not in Ezra-Nehemiah).⁴ Imma and Peleth follow Nehemiah (and, by implication, God) faithfully while Raham grows to question Nehamiah's plans as well as trying to convince Peleth to sell his daughter into slavery to pay off the debt Peleth owes him. Peleth later divorces his Jewish wife to marry a Moabite.

These fictional episodes run alongside the biblical episodes which did highlight to me various incidents that I otherwise didn't recall. The celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles (Neh 8:13-18) towards the start of part 2 is portrayed in a fairly vivid fashion which makes it stand out more compared to the six verses in the text. Though perhaps it won't be quite as memorable to those who have not seen Ushpizin (2004).

Similarly the incident where, Tobiah, one of Nehemiah's main opponents talks his way into getting a room in the temple (Neh 13:4-9).

While the film is artistically and dramatically weak and is very selective in its presentation of the original book's most problematic area, it is the only significant attempt to adapt the book of Nehemiah - at least that I know - and so will doubtless be of interest to many seeking a dramatised version of these stories. I may post a scene guide, but for now you can view or download the two parts of this film here:

Nehemiah: The Joy of Jehovah Is Your Stronghold: pt 1

Nehemiah: The Joy of Jehovah Is Your Stronghold: pt 2

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1 - This is usually that the first Jews return in 537BC; the restoration of the temple is completed in 515 BC; Ezra returns in 458BC and Nehemiah leaving for Jerusalem around 445BC. However the film does not give a date for Ezra and moves Nehemiah up to 455BC. The JW's New World Translation agrees with most other translations that Nehemiah 2 starts in the 20th year of Artaxerxes (465-424BC).

2 - Full thread at https://twitter.com/MattPage/status/1382954911101501440. Thanks to Rachel Bastarache Bogan, Katie Turner, James Harrison, Isaac T. Soon, Brandon Hurlbert, A, KS, Fake History Hunter and James Heywood.

3 - Why has no-one taken the rubble for their own building projects as was common? Is that how we would expect walls to fall in this circumstance? Why have the fallen stones weathered so much more than the stones? These are pedantic questions, I know, but the come from pulling at the thread of "why does this world not seem genuine?". 

4 - Peleth is named as the father of one of those who complain in Num 16:1 alongside Dathan who alone tends to be the token dissenter in Moses adaptations, Presumably he is also father of the Pelethites mention in various lists in Samuel Kings and Chronicles. Raham just gets a single mention in 1 Chron 2:44. Interestingly the filmmakers do not use the names of those listed as returning with Ezra in Ezra 8 as they are only the heads of clans and, I imagine, they wanted to show the experience of ordinary people like the Witnesses for whom the film was intended.

Esther, Ezra and Nehemiah

As I've mentioned here in the past I currently lead a course called Through the Bible in Five and a Half Years where we look at a different book of the Bible every month. In July we'll be looking at Esther and given how this story is a popular one with filmmakers (see all posts on Esther films), and how our baby is due any minute, I thought I might use some extended clips from one or two of them.

One of the Esther films I have always liked is the Bible Collection's version. It was one of the first in the series I watched, and it was perhaps the first time that I realised that the early part of the story wasn't some fairy tale love story, but that of state-sanctioned rape. It's possible that Esther enjoyed the glamour of it all, but the Bible certainly doesn't mention that. (Having said that even this film hints at a love story. Note the shot above - the first time the camera gazes upon Esther - and how the intimate close up and soft focus suggest romance). Naturally, then, this is one of the clips I'm thinking about showing, so last night I began to re-watch it.

The first thing I noticed was that both Ezra (below) and a young Nehemiah appear in this film. This was a little frustrating as I had hunted for relevant film clips during the last two months, if only to find a suitable image for the Through the Bible... blog. But having studied those books in some depth now it was interesting to see how the film treated the characters.Of the two, it's Ezra who gets the most screen time. Ezra's a friend (or disciple?) of Mordecai and we meet him even before we meet Esther. As a thief is dragged away by the Persian guards, Mordecai voices his dismay at the likely severity of the thief's punishment; he will have his hand cut off. When Ezra replies that such is the Persian way Mordecai begins to reply. "It's not the harshness Ezra, it's the absence of clemency. We Jews should remember when we write our own laws..." but he is then cut off by the arrival of Haman.

There's a fair bit packed into Mordecai's statement. Firstly, it clarifies that this Ezra is the same man who will go on to lead the Jewish people, and establish them as a people who (actually) follow the law. Lest their be any doubt, a little later he advises Mordecai not to let Esther "marry a foreigner". But there's more to it than that. Whilst the books of Ezra and Nehemiah present their leading man taking the people back to the law of Moses, there are also a few differences. Scholars disagree as to how much input Ezra had in the process, and whilst Deuteronomy seems to have been a written text by the time of Josiah, some claim that not much else was actually in written form by this point. Mordecai's statement seems to suggest that the laws weren't written by that point, and that Ezra was amongst those responsible for writing them down.

But there's more to it as well. Whilst Mordecai is shown as older and wiser, it doesn't appear that Ezra takes a great deal of notice of him. Indeed it's generally a very unflattering portrayal of Ezra; he comes across as arrogant and judgemental. There's very little compassion and this tends to be underlined by the actor's harsh an unattractive face. So the film doesn't seem to think a great deal of Ezra and is keen to show that not everyone was behind his abrasive approach to reform.Nehemiah's appearance (above) is briefer and he appears much younger than Ezra. There's some debate as to which of these two men acted first, but the film seems to back the theory that Ezra came first and needed Nehemiah's work to complete the job. This again suggest a fairly low opinion of Ezra. Those who value his input more highly tend to suggest that he was completing Nehemiah's work and not vice versa.

Nehemiah is also portrayed more positively. Whilst still not classically good looking he has a soft, endearing face, and his demeanour suggests he is humble, receptive and teachable. He is, of course, being tutored in the art of wine tasting, but there's enough in this brief vignette to hint at how this Nehemiah's future might pan out.

There were a few other points that I noticed. Firstly, in the film Ezra links Haman to the Amalekites of King Saul's time. This is something I'd missed before, and probably only picked up because it's significance is enhanced in the 2006 Esther film One Night With the King. Both films draw on a Jewish tradition that considered the Amalekite King Agag (whom Saul spares and Samuel kills in 1 Sam 15) to be the ancestor of Haman who is described in Esther 3:1 as "Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite".The film actually pays quite a lot out of attention to the various names. For example, as with the Bible, Esther is originally called Hadassah, but as she is taken to the palace Mordecai tells her to change her name to Esther - a Persian name. Later on the chief Eunuch, Hegai, somewhat awkwardly, expounds the meaning of the name. It's a variation on the name Ishtar - the Babylonian goddess of love. It's kinda funny that originally this name was chosen to sound un-Jewish, and yet these days Esther it's considered a classic Jewish name.

The film also calls Esther's husband Ahasuerus. This is in line with the original texts, but most translations these days use Xerxes instead. Whilst it's likely that Ahasuerus and Xerxes are one and the same, I'm glad the film sticks with what's in the text rather than try and interpret it in order to make the story seem definitively historical.

All this and I'm only about 40% of the way through the film! I do seem to recall that the opening part of the film is the strongest, but we'll have to see. The film is already quite different to how I remember.