{"id":37341,"date":"2015-11-28T09:59:09","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T17:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=37341"},"modified":"2016-04-26T11:40:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T18:40:41","slug":"why-are-some-bible-stories-turned-into-movies-more-often-than-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2015\/11\/why-are-some-bible-stories-turned-into-movies-more-often-than-others.html","title":{"rendered":"Why are some Bible stories turned into movies more often than others?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"bible-tencommandments-a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My friend Matt Page is starting a series of posts over at the Bible Films Blog on the question of canonicity and Bible films<\/a>. Among other things, he asks: Is there a \u201ccanon\u201d of Bible films, independent of the biblical canon itself? And is there a reason why certain biblical stories get filmed again and again while others go ignored?<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see how Matt answers those questions. But for now, I thought I would take a stab at one part of one of those questions: specifically, which stories get told a lot, when people decide to adapt a range of stories from across the Bible?<\/p>\n

To answer that question, I figured I\u2019d look at three relatively recent series that were supposed to cover the entire Bible, more or less. All three of these series were produced in the past quarter-century, and they were all produced for a mainstream audience rather than a Sunday school class or some such thing; two of them won Emmy awards, and the third was very popular on cable TV and on DVD.<\/p>\n

Here is each series, with the list of installments and the stories they told:<\/p>\n

Testament: The Bible in Animation<\/b><\/i> + The Miracle Maker<\/b><\/i> \u2014 9 half-hour episodes and one feature film produced between 1996 and 2000<\/p>\n