{"id":11939,"date":"2013-12-17T12:22:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T20:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=11939"},"modified":"2013-12-17T23:03:42","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T07:03:42","slug":"newsbites-the-first-century-jewish-zealot-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/12\/newsbites-the-first-century-jewish-zealot-edition.html","title":{"rendered":"Newsbites: The first-century Jewish zealot edition!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Bit of a delayed reaction here, as I was under the weather when these two news items surfaced last week.<\/p>\n

First, The Bible<\/a><\/i> producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey are producing an adaptation of The Dovekeepers<\/i><\/a>, an Alice Hoffman novel<\/a> that takes place during the siege of Masada<\/a>, which marked the end of the First Jewish-Roman War in AD 73.<\/p>\n

Burnett and Downey are already working on a sequel to The Bible<\/i><\/a> that will mix the history of the early church with secular accounts of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans, etc. But it sounds like The Dovekeepers<\/i> \u2014 which follows the stories of four women who end up at Masada during the siege \u2014 will focus more narrowly on the Jewish rebellion.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, one of the network executives quoted in the story hypes the mini-series by referring to Burnett and Downey\u2019s \u201cpassion for telling biblical stories,\u201d which raises the question of whether the story of Masada is actually a \u201cbiblical story\u201d. It concerns first-century Jews, yes, and it is generally believed that much of the New Testament was written sometime after<\/i> the First Jewish-Roman War \u2014 but with the possible exception of the Book of Revelation (and maybe not even that<\/a>), the events described in the New Testament all take place at least a decade before<\/i> the siege of Masada, and the war itself is never directly mentioned, except in certain ominous prophecies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In any case, the plan right now is to turn The Dovekeepers<\/i> into a four-hour mini-series and air it on CBS in 2015. The Bible<\/i> sequel is being developed for NBC and, as of today<\/a>, is currently set for the spring of 2015.<\/p>\n

The story of Masada has been dramatized a few times before, most notably in a 1981 mini-series<\/a> that starred the late, great Peter O\u2019Toole as the Roman general in charge of the siege and Peter Strauss as the leader of the Jewish Zealots.<\/p>\n

Second, Lionsgate announced that they have acquired the film rights<\/a> to Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth<\/a><\/i>, the Reza Aslan book which posits that Jesus was basically just another political revolutionary, and not the cheek-turning pacifist who claimed some sort of divine status, as the New Testament describes him.<\/p>\n

Aslan achieved a bit of notoriety a few months ago when a Fox News journalist asked some ignorant questions about him and his book \u2014 the journalist was apparently unaware that Jesus is considered a prophet within Islam<\/a> and that Aslan\u2019s book deviates from Muslim beliefs about Jesus<\/a> just as surely as it deviates from Christian beliefs \u2014 and Aslan, a creative-writing professor with a doctorate in the sociology of religion, responded by puffing up his own credentials as an historian.<\/p>\n

No screenwriters or directors are currently attached to Zealot<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The makers of The Bible<\/i> are developing a mini-series about the siege of Masada, and a studio has snapped up the film rights to Reza Aslan’s book about Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1306,1686,1682,345,51,1685,1684,52,1683],"class_list":["post-11939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-ad-beyond-the-bible","tag-alice-hoffman","tag-dovekeepers","tag-jesus","tag-mark-burnett","tag-masada","tag-reza-aslan","tag-roma-downey","tag-zealot"],"yoast_head":"\nNewsbites: The first-century Jewish zealot edition!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The makers of The Bible are developing a mini-series about the siege of Masada, and a studio has snapped up the film rights to Reza Aslan's book about Jesus.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/12\/newsbites-the-first-century-jewish-zealot-edition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Newsbites: The first-century Jewish zealot edition!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The makers of The Bible are developing a mini-series about the siege of Masada, and a studio has snapped up the film rights to Reza Aslan's book about Jesus.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/12\/newsbites-the-first-century-jewish-zealot-edition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-12-17T20:22:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-12-18T07:03:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2013\/12\/dovekeepers-197x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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