Movies on the Early Church

rakovsky

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Just as I made a list of movies on the 12 apostles (Movies on the 12 Apostles), I saw all the movies on the early Church after the end of the Book of Acts that I could find, and am listing them below:

Movies on the Early Church

A.D. Anno Domini
(NBC miniseries, 1985, part 5.)

AD: The Bible continues (NBC, 2015)

Ancient Roads from Christ to Constantine (PBS Series. Episodes: 3. Age of the Apostles , 4. From Apocalypse to Heresies, 5. Pagans and the Cult of Martyrs)

At the Roots of Faith (2015, Catholicism & Christian Orthodoxy episodes)

Christianity: The First Two Thousand Years (Narrated by Ossie Davis, Produced by Bram Roos. History of Christianity's first 1000 years /
I saw first 1 hr 37 min / 3 hr 3 min of Part 1: History of Christianity's First 1000 Years.)

The Early Christianity (From a Cult to a Religion) (narrated by Doug Batchelor, speakers include Susana Elm, John Reeve, Euan Cameron) I don't know if this is the real title. It is a much longer version of the section that runs from 14:34 to 26:45 in Revelation: The Bride, the Beast & Babylon (produced by Amazing Facts).

The Early Church (World of the Bible series, in Russian."Мир Библии", "Ранняя Церковь")

An Empire Conquered (Dir. by Rob Marcarelli)

The First Christians (From the Lost Worlds TV series, Episode 11)

From Jesus To Christ. The First Christians (PBS)

The History of the Catholic Church (2013 series. Episode 1. The Early Christians)

The History of Orthodox Christianity (Greek Orthodox Telecommunications. Part 1: The Beginnings. I saw the first 31 min., incl. some of Part 2)

How Should We Then Live? (by Francis Schaeffer "Episode 1, The Roman Age" and the beginning of "Episode 2, The Middle Ages", AKA "The Early Church")

Last Man Standing (Naked Archeologist episode on Josephus)

Law of God (Episodes in the "Law of God" series: First Christians, Persecution of the Jews against the first Christians, the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church, the Catacombs. Russian language series "Закон Божий" and its episodes: Певрые Христиане ; Гонение Иудеев на первых Христиан; Святые Отцы и Учителя Церкви ; Катакомбы zakonbozhiy.ru/Zakon_Bozhiy/Chast_4_IstoriJa_Cerkvi/Zhizn_pervyh_hristian/ )

Polycarp (2015)

Quo Vadis (1951, USA) (2001, Poland. I saw the Russian-dubbed and English-subtitled versions)

Saints and Sinners: The History of the Popes (2005 series. Episode 1. Upon this Rock)

In Search of Hidden Holy Sites (White Fox S.A., 2013. Seasons 1 and 2: Episodes: Patmos, Cyprus: 2 episodes)

The Sign of the Cross (Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932 & 1944 )

The Trial and Testimony of the Early Church
(1990)

What happened to the JC Bunch?
(Naked Archeologist, on Jewish Christians, eg. the Ebionites)

Questions after Viewing:

1. Doug Batchelor's movie (On Youtube it's called The Early Christianity) complains that the church began to use repetitive prayers, like when Catholics pray a large number of "Hail Mary"s as part of penance. It compares this to pagans making repetitive prayers to appease pagan deities and to object to it, he quotes Matthew 6:7: "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking."
Do you think that this verse is against repetitive prayers like the "Hail Mary"? For me, the difference between what Jesus was criticizing and the Catholic practice (or the Jesus prayer for example) is that the Catholics don't intend for their prayers to be vain and don't intend to repeat them mindlessly to "zone out" like some Hindu monks intend to. There are repetitive prayers in the Bible itself, like when angels repeat "Alleluia" to praise God.

2. In the movie What Happened to the JC Bunch?, Eisenman says Paul chased James from Damascus but missed him around Jericho, and so it means James' community went into the desert like the Qumran community. The Clementines say that James' community went to a tomb around Jericho and housed the remains of two brothers that whitened every year, and Eisenman takes the narrator to a cemetery 10 km from Jericho that points to a promontory of bright earth. Where do the Clementines talk about this? Do you agree that Qumran belonged to James' community? I am skeptical because it isn't overtly Christian.

3. Also in What Happened to the JC Bunch?, the narrator goes to a synagogue from about 300 AD in Tiberias in the Galilee region. It has what looks like a mosaic of the Zodiac on its floor, as well as traditional Jewish symbols and pictures of pagan idols and maybe early Christian symbols. The narrator sees this as more evidence of Jewish Christians in synagogues. In the center of the Zodiac a picture looks like Sol Invictus, Helios, which the narrator says became Jesus resurrected for the Christians. In the picture, rays come out of his head and he has a halo. He says Roman emperors no longer wore a crown with rays once Christianity became legal. He says that this is a Christian symbol encrypted into the flooring because when the synagogue was built Christianity was still illegal.

Another drawing on this synagogue's floor is of an uncircumcised boy holding scales of justice. It looks like it is placed as one of the zodiac signs (It's probably Libra, the scales). He says that all the other signs of the Zodiac are fine except for 1. Aquarius standing next to the 2. fish, PISCES. He says that the word next to Aquarius is GLEE, meaning vessel in Hebrew, but that the words are written in reverse so that you need a mirror to read it, suggesting encoding. He refers to the story in the synoptics where Jesus says that the apostles should follow a man with a pitcher into the place where they will have the last supper. He says also that in PISCES' Zodiac symbol the G for the Hebrew word for fish is reversed, turning it into a symbol that looks like a Chevron. He suggests that it means that the viewer should flip everything - the viewer might think it's a pagan Zodiac but that the viewer should flip this idea and conclude that it's not pagan. Another archeologist whom he interviews named Motti doesn't believe that these are signs of Christian origins.

Do you agree with the narrator's view that this synagogue in Tiberias is a partly or fundamentally Christian one?

4.

At 2:15 into the documentary "Persecutions of the Jews against the First Christians", it talks about the two arrests of Peter and Paul by the Sanhedrin, wherein the Sanhedrin was unsure of how to punish them for preaching the gospel. It then shows a Greek-language written document wherein the words on the page are both centered and squeezed in descending order, whereby there are fewer and fewer words per line as the document gets closer to the end.​

What is the meaning of this writing format?
 
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Dave-W

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1. Doug Batchelor's movie (On Youtube it's called The Early Christianity) complains that the church began to use repetitive prayers, like when Catholics pray a large number of "Hail Mary"s as part of penance. It compares this to pagans making repetitive prayers to appease pagan deities and to object to it, he quotes Matthew 6:7: "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking."
Do you think that this verse is against repetitive prayers like the "Hail Mary"?
One of the things that all of those miss is that before the Bar kochba revolt of 135 ad, early christianity looked EXACTLY like pharasaic Judaism. And that included repetitive prayers in the synagogue (which our Lord Himself would have prayed) such as the Sh'ma, Kaddish, Amidah and Alenu. In fact, the "Our Father" prayer that He taught the disciples bears striking similarities to both the Amidah and Alenu.

Since He Himself prayed repetitive prayers, that verse is NOT against it. It is against mindless repetition with no heart behind it.
 
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rakovsky

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Thanks for replying, Dave.

44 minutes into the 3rd episode about the Apostles in the series Ancient Roads from Christ to Constantine, a professor says that normally under Roman standard practice, the Roman Magistrate would have given Paul a chance to run away to avoid being executed but that Nero prevented this from occurring by saying that accepting Christianity was enough of a crime for a death sentence. What Roman standard practice about magistrates letting people run away is he talking about?

At the beginning of Episode 4 in Ancient Roads: From Christ to Constantine, the narrator says that Jewish Christians were involved in the fight against Rome in c. 70 AD. Nowhere in Josephus' narrative about the revolt do I find this claimed, so where did the narrator get the idea that Christians of Jewish heritage were revolting against Rome along with the known rebels?

In the 2001 Polish movie Quo Vadis / Kamo Gryadeshi, the betrayer of the Christians repents and gets baptized by Paul, and if I understand the movie correctly, it's the third time that the traitor is baptized because he kept falling into sin. This is at 1 hour 49 minutes into the Russian-dubbed version (Камо Грядеши? / Quo Vadis (2001)). How could there be such a thing as a third baptism, even if the baptised person was insincere (eg. as a traitor) in the first two times?

The movie ends with Peter saying to his companion that they are going back to Rome, and it then shows them walking towards modern day Rome. I wondered if there was supposed to be some inner meaning hinted at when they showed modern Rome. Maybe they just mean that it's the same city in some ways many centuries later.
 
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rakovsky

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In The History of Christian Worship, Part 2: The Body (Christian Cinema) , the documentary presents baptism as happening often at Easter, with preparation through Lent. But isn't there also a tradition of baptisms happening at Epiphany/Theophany in January?
 
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