I watched Journey to Bethlehem a while back. I planned to do so when it was the appropriate time, around Christmas, but didn\u2019t manage to get to it then. After that another Christmas came and went and I still failed to return to it. As this Christmas dawned, it seemed as though I ought to say something about this attempt to turn the mythical story told in the Gospels into a romantic comedy musical.<\/p>\n
There was a time when I would at least have objected, as some reviewers of the movie have, that the filmmaker Adam Anders<\/a> \u201ctook some liberties\u201d with their source material. After many years of grappling with the historical<\/a> problems<\/a> in the infancy stories in the Gospels, and many years teaching a course on the Bible and music, I am more than okay with art in all its forms doing what it does so well, namely exploring. The Gospel authors show themselves to have been doing the same thing. Although they are not strictly said to be sung, song lyrics without music are poetry, and the Gospel of Luke may thus be said to insert several musical numbers into his narrative. In my class on the Bible and music, I talk about why even those who love musicals may bristle at a one-off musical episode<\/a> in their favorite show. We immerse ourselves in a story, whether as musical or as realistic drama. We suspend our disbelief. A sudden shift of genre jolts us out of our immersion.<\/p>\n Yet we fail to allow ourselves to be similarly jolted, as we ought to be, by the musical numbers in the Bible. Did the Israelites stop immediately after crossing the Sea of Reeds to hold a songwriting workshop? No. It is just that when telling certain stories of importance and power, they call out for something more than just prosaic words. They need song, they need poetry, they need special effects.<\/p>\n And so just enjoy the exploration, recognizing that the Gospel authors and modern filmmakers are doing something similar, and you\u2019ll love hearing Antonio Banderas as King Herod sing \u201cIt\u2019s Good to Be King\u201d no matter how well you know the Gospel of Matthew, and even if you know Herod the Great as a historical figure in quite a lot of detail.<\/p>\n