The Chosen (2021) s2e05

It's been a while (nearly six months!) since I had time to write up an episode of The Chosen, but I finally have some space in my schedule. So I thought I'd get going with the next episode "The Spirit" even if it'll take me a few such moments in my schedule to get it done. Then hopefully I'll be able to write these a little more regularly from now on! 

After taking a deep dive in s2e04 into a single story (the healing the the pool of Bethzatha), this episode is much more about setting up future storylines. Arguably the min incident is the healing of someone with a demon, but it's not one of the major exorcisms that the Gospel focus upon and it's more a way of introducing several new characters – the man at the centre of this miracle seems to become almost incidental the moment he's healed.

Mary and literacy

The pre-credits sequence starts, unusually in recent episodes, with one of the characters we already know, Mary Magdalene, who's collecting some apples in a remote-ish part of the countryside. As she does so, she's memorising a bit of scripture (Psalm 139:8) from a scrap of paper. 

I've mentioned before how I find the literacy of the figures in this adaptation implausible and a little propagandistic, but since last I discussed this in s2e03, I've come across a further source. In Catherine Hezser's book "Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine" (some of which you can read here and here), she presents evidence that the numbers of "Palestinian Jewish" who could "read documents, letters and 'simple' literary texts... and to write more than one's signature" would be only "slightly higher" than 3% and well below 10%.* She also concludes that Jewish elementary schools were focussed far more on reading than writing and "seem to have been rare before the third century".*

One could argue that Jesus' followers were a notable exception – and perhaps the filmmakers really do – that Nazareth bucked the trend; that experts such as Hezser and Harris and Bar-Ilan who she draws on are a little too pessimistic; and that Jesus specifically chose educated people who were not only able to read and write, but also able to teach others. But doing so moves far beyond 'likely', even if it's possible to come up with a scenario such as the above which one could say still passes Dallas Jenkins' "plausibility" test. Essentially, though, this is seeking to bolster a pre-determined outcome, not basing your take on the balance of available evidence. 

By the way, if you're interested in Jesus' own literacy (and I can't remember if we've seen him do much writing, but maybe some reading in The Chosen so far) then Chris Keith's recent book "Jesus' Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee" (which is largely available online for free) might be of interest.

Anyway, the key point in this sequence, is to introduce the idea that despite Mary still seems to be recovering from some form of trauma. When the demoniac turns up later in the episode the point seems to be that while she has been exorcised of seven demons, she is not yet entirely free of them. But in this opening sequence it appears that she is triggered by seeing Roman soldiers, perhaps the remoteness of the location is also significant, perhaps not. Nevertheless it's an interesting creative decision to take that Mary's path is more complicated than a simple encounter freeing her from her part.

Jesse and the Jewish Authorities

Jesse, the man whose leg Jesus healed in the last episode, is also struggling to walk away from his past. People keep wanting to interrogate him about his experience. This starts with him being interviewed by Schmuel and what I assume is another Pharisee. Certainly they are dressed very similarly and are both members of the Sanhedrin (though filmmakers often have a tendency to dress all of Jesus' Jewish opponents the same).

It turns out that this is at least their second time interviewing Jesse and various scenes follow of Schmuel essentially trying to alert the Sanhedrin that Jesus is a threat and his companion trying to teach him how to navigate the politics of the Sanhedrin. It appears that Nicodemus has perhaps quashed their efforts to begin proceedings against Jesus.

There's little scholarly consensus around the Sanhedrin of Jesus' day. One of the things that the show consistently seems to do is apply what we know about Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem (70AD) to Jewish life before the fall. But this was an earth-shattering event in Jewish history that destroyed certain pillars of Jewish life. Simply assuming that things such as the Sanhedrin did not radically change after the fall is kind of problematic. Similarly I'm uncomfortable with the way the Sanhedrin is portrayed here: it's not only authoritarian with seemingly strong powers to enforce how people live their lives, but it's also venal, and divided by political wranglings, riddled with bureaucracy, and rendered ineffective with corruption. 

In some senses this makes for good drama. The problem is that in the 2000 years since Jews have often been portrayed very negatively and this has contributed to a atmosphere of othering / dehumanising of Jews and antisemitism. I certainly don't think that is at all the show's intention, but I do wish they'd approached this issue more carefully and then been rigorously determined to come in the opposite spirit. It's never clear, for example (and this is true of almost all Jesus films/television) why the people accepted the harsh regimes they are portrayed as living under (which itself perhaps suggests they were all 'blindly religious' and that only Jesus and those willing to follow him were exceptions).

But Schmuel and his colleague are not the only people trying to find out what happened. Atticus bumps into him in the city and poses as a sympathetic friend to try and extract information. Just as Aesop's "The North Wind and the Sun" concludes that "gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail" so Jesse responds to Atticus' sunny disposition and unwittingly tells him everything he wants to know, particularly about Jesse's brother Simon. Jesse even mentions that having seen the healing, Simon "believes the man responsible *has* to be our messiah" (as per his letter in s2e04). As a result, Atticus soon manges to track down Simon just as he himself is tracking down Jesus.

The other Simon

Jesse's brother is also working through the implications of the healing at Bethzatha as he reaches Jesus' camp. First though he has an encounter with Caleb who is afflicted with demons. Simon nearly kills him but spares him in case the demons enter him instead. The two go separate ways but meet again at the disciples' camp as the demons try and taunt Mary. Despite the various montages we've seen of Simon training, Caleb has a seemingly supernatural strength and throws him off. Jesus comes to the rescue by using supernatural strength of his own.

For Simon this re-confirms that Jesus is the messiah. "Then you are…?" he asks, to which Jesus replies with a simple yes. Having got the introductions out of the way (including a moment Abbott and Costello-esque confusion confusion which Jesus resolves with "I'll stop you there. You are both Simons"), Jesus and Simon head off for a little chat. Simon wrestles with resolving his different expectations about what the Messiah would be like. This time he flat out asks him "You are messiah aren’t you?" to which Jesus agin responds in the affirmative.

This is interesting because in the Gospels (and particularly the Synoptic Gospels) Jesus is much more reticent about confirming that he is the Messiah/the Christ. It's not until Peter's confession that Jesus actually confirms this. John's Gospel is not entirely dissimilar. There there is much more speculation from people: Andrew announces to Simon Peter that he has found the Christ in 1:42, likewise the woman at the well (4:26), unnamed people in the temple (7:27-42), those at the Feast of Dedication (10:24) and Martha (11:27). But Jesus never gives a straight out yes to the "Messiah" question even in John until he brings it up the night before his death in 17:3.

Jesus realises Simon's military/political expectations need to shift so coaxes Simon into showing him his sica (dagger), which Jesus then tosses into a nearby pond. " You have no use for that?" asks Simon. Jesus' response – "I have a better sword..." – is interesting as well. I'm presuming the scriptwriters mean "sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" from Ephesians 6:17, but it's not a metaphor Jesus used himself a great deal aside from "I come not to bring peace, but the sword" (Matt 10:34). 

Otherwise Jesus' best known pronouncement on swords is "those who live by the sword will die by the sword" (Matt 26:52) which this conversation from The Chosen captures nicely. I wonder if the show will return to Jesus' use of sword here, or not. Incidentally, Paul's use is interesting because he exchanges one metaphor for what is probably another. I was brought up believing Paul meant the Bible – even though that didn't exist at the time Paul was writing – which would, then, be a metaphor, but there's no real consensus on what he does mean, or even if he always uses it consistently to refer to the same thing. It's perhaps never 100% literal, but using "word" as meaning something God says is certainly closer to that than if he meant "the Bible".

Anyway, I digress. I'm really interested to see how the character of Simon the Zealot (as he's known in Luke. In Matthew and Mark he's known as Simon the Canaanean) will develop. He's largely sidelined by Jesus films, except perhaps the occasional line to confirm that, yes he's the one who believes(d) in violently overthrowing the Romans. He gets a whole song in Jesus Christ Superstar but it's actually more common for Judas to represent the Zealot cause than Simon. So I'm keen to see how that will work in the remainder of The Chosen with it's much greater screen time and it's more committed focus on the disciples.

Incidentally, Simon's sword is retrieved moments later by a thoughtful looking Atticus. Does he take this as evidence that Jesus is associating himself with violent men or as a sign that he is brining peace not the sword?

The other John

It's in this episode that we finally get to meet John the Baptist. Guven that The Chosen seems to start around the beginning of Jesus' ministry it's interesting that there is no baptism scene. In the Gospels we see this progression in the story from gospel to gospel which tallies with their respective ages: Mark seems to hold John in the highest regard; by the time we get to John a few decades later it's unclear whether Jesus was even baptised by John. The progression here – omitting the scene of Jesus being baptised entirely – seems kind of in keeping with this.

It's clear though that Jesus and some of his disciples have a longer relationship with John the Baptist, including those who followed him before following Jesus. John is described as Jesus' cousin (I suppose technically he's his second cousin) and it seems Andrew and John son of Zebedee also followed the Baptist before they followed Jesus. Previously we've also heard Simon Peter refer to him as "Crazy John", but the extent to which that's based on having met is unclear to me.

The portrayal of John here is really interesting, particularly compared to other portrayals of John the Baptist in other Jesus films. Whereas he tends to be very two-dimensional in most on-screen portrayals (the courageous, but wild prophet) here he's much more developed as a real person right from the start. Yes, he looks wild (not least because of one of the series' few unconvincing beards) but the conversation between him and Jesus really gets behind the caricature. John and Jesus have an obvious strong affection and yet disagree on tactics. Jesus is concerned on a human level for what will happen to John is he continues to publicly criticise Herod. In contrast, John is concerned Jesus is being too safe. Yet there's also a mutual respect that each is probably taking the path they are called to.

This aspect of their conversation leads to one of The Chosen's best lines so far. When John challenges what he sees as Jesus' over-reliance on stories, saying "I'm eager for you to get to the point, Jesus counters with "I'm going to tell stories that make sense to some people, but not to others and that's just how it's going to be". I think this is a brilliant way of unifying the various things the Gospels have Jesus say about parables and while avoiding the technical discussion that often accompany efforts to make them make sense.

And finally...

This is not the only occasion in this episode where the series is prepared to break protocol and get behind the caricatures (I guess that's essentially what The Chosen is all about). Having been traumatised by encountering a Roman soldier and then having been directly addressed by Caleb's demon and reminded of that area of her past, she runs off. Jesus (slipping into a delegating leader type role) asks Ramah to go and check she's OK (the two have been reading scripture together imperfectly moments before), but later she's no where to be found. The camera catches up with her going back to her old haunts and Jesus – clearly concerned – sends Peter and Matthew after her. Is she going back to confront her old life or return to it? One for episode 6 I guess.

Peter is not initially overjoyed about being sent by Matthew. Indeed Matthew is getting a hard time from the other disciples in this episode. Early on Thomas argues with him before admitting he thinks Matthew’s arrogant and dislikes that he was a tax collector. I do like how the series makes us root for Matthew in these contexts and shows Jesus doing the same. Perhaps the next episode will give him the chance to be something of a hero.

===========

*Hezser, Catherine (2001) Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine.
I'm grateful for discovering foreverdreaming.org which features transcripts of many episodes. Wish I'd come across that before.