Best Bible Documentaries?

Daniel O. McClellan “crashed” a Bible movie meme and then had the audacity to inflict this meme upon others. But I think it is useful to make recommendations, and so I decided what I’ll do is mention some particularly useful Bible-related documentaries that I think are worth watching and even showing to one’s classes:

(1) ABC News Presents The Search for Jesus: Peter Jennings visits the Holy Land and talks with Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Paula Fredriksen, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor and others.

(2) Mysteries of the Bible: Joshua at the Walls of Jericho. Although it strives a bit too hard to be “balanced” (by including Bryant Wood in the mix of views presented), it is on the whole fair and presents the various views and evidence quite clearly, interspersed with Biblical quotations from Joshua and artistic depictions.

(3) Ancient Evidence: Jericho. In addition to presenting up-to-date evidence from archaeology (not only about Jericho but also Finkelstein’s work on the highland settlements and Eric Cline on earthquake storms) and forensic evidence from DNA, you get to hear Commander Sisko narrate it.

I use edited versions of both of the last two (I showed them to my classes today).

I was tempted to add The Matrix just to be a nuisance, but managed to refrain from doing so. Just barely. And if I had actually posted about Bible movies, I probably would have mentioned Life of Brian and The Ten Commandments. I particularly like that the latter took inspiration from so many midrashic sources that retell and expand on the Biblical story.

If you like “crashing memes”, feel free to consider yourself tagged and post your own recommendations.