Two ways to watch a film version of the entire gospel of john, word-for-word


Two ways to watch a film version of the entire gospel of john, word-for-word

Play all audios:


THE VISUAL BIBLE In 2003, Scottish-Peruvian actor Henry Ian Cusick starred as Jesus in the three-hour film, _The Gospel of John. _The script was an unabridged word-for-word use of the Gospel


of John, using the Good News Translation. Advertise on TGC The Visual Bible produced similar projects for _Matthew_ (1993) and _Acts_ (1994), which included Italian-American actor Bruce


Marchiano—who seeks to bring out the gentleness and approachability of Jesus (at one point he tousles a disciple’s hair!) but fails to convey the depth and gravitas of an actor like Cusick.


THE LUMO PROJECT Now comes the Lumo Project, which seeks to do something similar with all four Gospels. _The Gospel of John_ is already available, with Luke planned for Easter 2016 and


Matthew and Mark planned for Christmas 2016. Here’s one aspect of Jesus films I’d never considered before—though in retrospect it’s obvious. Some people complain about Jesus being depicted


as Anglo with an Anglo cast of characters. But if the film is in English, then it may be difficult to get a cast of actors who speak fluent, undistracting English and yet look like the part


of a Mediterranean Jews. In December 2002 _Popular Mechanics _reported on scientists and archaeologists using forensic anthropology to reconstruct what a first-century Galilean Semite might


have looked like, with the following result: The way that the Lumo Project solved this issue was by having Selva Rasalingam play Jesus. Rasalingam, whose ethnicity is partly Tamil, looks


more like the picture above than the typical Anglo-Jesus version. Furthermore, the actors in the film speak Aramaic (and I assume Latin for certain parts?). But you can’t really hear their


dialogue clearly. Rather, you hear the voice of the narrator, British actor David Harewood (whereas the Visaul Bible contains a combination of narration plus the actors saying the relevant


dialogue). Harewood is essentially reading the Gospel of John word-for-word (you can choose whether to hear it as NIV, KJV, or in the Spanish Reina-Valera translation) as the actors depict


the scenes. It may not work for some viewers, but I think the approach is intriguing and surprisingly effective. One exciting aspect of this approach is that the film can be translated with


relative ease into multiple languages, since it only requires one voice-over narrator to read the biblical text. The Lumo Project is currently translating the Gospel of John film into  


Brazilian-Portuguese, French, Danish, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Finnish. The film is shot on location in Morocco, and the cinematography is at times beautiful. There is also an appropriate


use of CGI to reconstruct the city of Jerusalem from a difference. As a whole, the entire project is a step up from the Visual Bible version. For readers who are interested, I’ve copied


below two scenes from each movie, on the raising of Lazarus from the dead and the last supper of the Christ with his disciples. It’s interesting to take two identical scripts and to see the


various acting and directing choices that can be made with the same source material. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6TrnPzYMps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUkGWZgCRiU And here is the


Lord’s Supper in both versions: [embedded content] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-jLMkoTrkc By the way, if you have a Netflix subscription, the Lumo Project _Gospel of John_ is currently


streaming for free. I don’t know how long that will last.