The Bible is quite deep, many complex, culturally rich, spiritually enlightening stories that too many in this generation fail to realize... Wait, I just realized I'm reviewing the show. The show was more than a chore to keep paying attention with its lack of finesse, nuance,attention to detail, care for God's character, etc. Literally from the first minutes of episode 1, I was deeply troubled that this would do more than worry me, but that my concerns from hearing it'd be on the History Channel (or "Hitler Channel," as a friend calls it) would be realized. Quite sadly, they were. Adam and Eve, respectively, get about a second of screen time each, a couple of other stories are shoved in your face, barely any comprehensibility, then the first story to get focused on is Noah's Ark. Seriously? The beauty and perfection of God's creating the universe gets dwindled down to basically a footnote? Roma Downey needs to get touched by an angel herself. To make things worse (and then worse), each episode starts with a disclaimer that "This adaptation stays true to the spirit of the book. Some scenes contain violence." The book? How quaint. Only violence? I grew up hearing the bible stories kids in church environments would know. I've read it on my own terms and was deeply shocked (and fascinated) as a teen that it contained not only graphic violence but plenty of sex scenes and prophecies that have vivid sexual imagery. Yet, compared to "the book" itself, the violence is seriously tame. It gets the second worse from how the narrator treats you, the audience, like you're in Sunday school, which annoyed me as a high schooler that Christian movies dealing with the Bible often did. You don't have movies like Passion of the Christ nor Risen or TV shows like the cancelled Of Kings and Prophets lecturing the audience on what's going on. Those treated you like you're an adult that can get an idea of what's going on. Now, for every major story they show, they completely miss, at the very least, 50 substories. Major characters don't get all the necessary details in their life that helps them become who they were in the Bible. The episodes with Jesus, for example, seem a bit too focused on making the Pharisees "bad" and "popularity-seeking" while almost just grazing Jesus any screen time in comparison. Just one miracle. Just one parable. A handful of smackdowns upon the Pharisees. Next to no cultural accuracy for the stories. This show presented Jesus in such a lackluster way that I thought "If skeptics were to get their experience of the Bible through this, I wouldn't blame them at all for not caring about Jesus." This wasn't just a waste of budget, it's a waste of time. I will not watch the sequel series nor recommend this heretical trash to anyone. If there's anything I *will* give credit for, it's a (kind of) decent camera lense and *some* of the costume design.

All these people pointing out historical inaccuracies are comical. It's a mini-series. They are cramming the most important events in 10 hours. I thought the effects were pretty good and the acting was great. I remember as a kid going to CCD every week learning about this was so annoying but as I've got older I appreciate all the lessons more. It's worth the time if you like Biblical stories.

All glorified, shows none of the true horrors of the age other than the "struggles" of the beloved hero of the story, lacks depth and is really only watchable if you're into religion. I'm not religious but I quite like the mythological background of Christianity, the whole Demons, Angels, Day of Judgment vibe could be an appealing story that you could slip in some dogma in. Instead this is dogma with a tiny bit of story...utterly unapproachable to the average Joe.

Elisheba, I really liked your review about how the producers 'whitewashed' parts of The Bible.However, in your comments about Lot, you could have added the extra little horror in that story, concerning incest where those two very young daughters - and in the TV series they do look extremely young (I must admit I had always assumed them to be in their late teens) - take turns having sex with their father.I am not sure how often this quaint story gets told in its entirety in Sunday Schools across the United States, especially if one is using the racy New Living Translation of The Bible, where nothing is held back - unlike the King James' version where people 'know' each other. That's what I grew up on and no one explained 'know' to me when I was young: it was quite an eye-opener when I chanced on the New Living Translation! One can certainly see how one gets one's morals from The Bible - God thought Lot was the only one worth saving in Sodom; he was a true moral role model for all of us! I wrote the above a few days ago and then I thought I'd add something more about Biblical horror stories. The story of Abraham and Isaac came to mind; that surely must be one of the most appalling stories in the whole Bible; and as I was thinking of the scene shown in the TV version, I realised that the programme wasn't following the story I know and love so well! The Bible refers to a ram with his horns caught in a thicket. I really have to wonder why the producers decided to substitute a lamb or kid with its hoof caught in the cleft of a tree.I've added a Spoiler Alert as I'm not sure if some viewers might be expecting The Bible 'warts and all'. And also some viewers, like me, might be expecting a ram in the hideous Abraham story.* * * * * * * * * *I also have to say that I found the way the producers of 'The Bible' combined the Creation story with the story of Noah very well done. Neat!However, I do have a few problems with both stories. I have always understood that Abraham was the 'founder' of the monotheistic religion of Judaism, having just the single God, Jahweh. As far as I know Abraham is supposed to have lived somewhere around 2000 B.C.E. And Noah of flood fame lived some 900 years earlier. My problem is this: if Noah lived so long before monotheism was established, how did Noah know that it was God, with a capital 'G' - the later God of the Jews - who ordered him to build an Ark; surely Noah would have worshipped a whole panoply of gods - he wouldn't have known there was only one God. I can just imagine this scenario: Noah coming into the family kitchen and announcing the great news of the coming flood, and Mrs Noah saying, "That's nice, dear. By the way, which god did you say it was? The god of the sea or the god of rain? That would be typical of either of them, wouldn't it! So angry they always are!"And then during the fearsome storm, where we get glimpses of a lonely llama in a stall, when Noah was describing Creation, he referred to God as though he knew there was only one god. How's this possible?I also noticed that the producers of 'The Bible' didn't go with the first chapter of Genesis where God, again with a capital 'G' some 2000 years before the establishment of monotheism, created both man and woman at the same time. The producers went with the much more likely story in Chapter 2 of creating Adam out of mud, rather than the completely unbelievable 'evolution' route. Of course creating man out of mud or clay has always proved a really tried and trusted method - so many cultures around the world have favoured this way of creating humans: the Egyptians with Khnum, known as The Potter; the Greeks with Prometheus; in the Babylonian creation epic 'Enuma Elish', the goddess Ninhursag was said to have created humans from clay; in Sumerian mythology, the birth goddess Nammu, of the watery depths, was said to have moulded clay into the shapes of humans; the Mayans, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Yoruba of West Africa and the Chinese all have similar myths, to name but a few. With so much stunningly convincing evidence, the mud/clay/dust method was definitely the way to go.Whoever came up with such an asinine idea as evolution? How could we humans possibly have evolved from an early ancestor common to both the great apes and hominids? Who do these scientists, paleontologists, evolutionary biologists, etc. think they are? Scientists are always so arrogant when they propose their ridiculous hypotheses, spend years and years of their lives in detailed research, sometimes doubting their findings, and finally they produce a theory, submitting their work in peer-reviewed publications to have it minutely examined by the greatest minds in the particular field. Such arrogance! When it is all so obvious that all that was needed was a group of bronze-age herdsmen in the Middle East sitting round their fire of a night and one of them announcing: "I was listening to that Egyptian fellow who arrived here yesterday. He told a wonderful story about their god Khnum, I think he said it was. This god, he said, made all men in his own likeness out of clay on a potter's wheel. I've already told my children this story, you know. And they really loved it..." So convincingly obvious! So thoroughly believable! Any humble believer just knows the truth when he hears it.