From the earliest days of cinema to the present, American filmmakers have drawn on the Bible for their stories, characters and ideas. The majority of Bible-related movies have been based on or drawn from the Jesus story. This is not surprising, given the centrality of Christianity in America. The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), however, also comes in for its fair share of attention.
Hebrew Bible-related movies fall into two general categories: the Bible on film, referring to cinematic retellings of biblical stories, and the Bible in film, referring to the use of biblical verses, characters, plot lines and motifs in fictional feature movies. Whether the film is recreating a biblical story directly or drawing on it indirectly, however, nearly all films use the Bible to reflect on contemporary concerns and, in doing so, also offer novel interpretations of the biblical text.
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Below I briefly sample three films in each category, arranged chronologically according to the year of commercial release. For those who want to learn more (and have fun doing so), please check out my upcoming on-line course on the Bible and film at myjewishlearning.com.
The Bible on Film
David and Bathsheba (1951, dir. Henry King)
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This movie is one of many over-the-top Bible epics that were all the rage from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s. (Others include: Solomon and Sheba, The Story of Ruth, Samson and Delilah, Esther and the King). The story follows the scandalous account in 2 Samuel closely, while embellishing many of the details, including the torrid love affair between David and Bathsheba. In this film, Bathsheba’s husband Uriah is cast as a cold, authoritarian husband who neglects his wife so that he can focus on his military career. If the biblical story portrays David as the one who initiates their affair, in the film Bathsheba confesses that she has long been attracted to him. But David has a flaw: He has stopped believing in God, a crisis of personal faith that causes a nationwide drought. Bathsheba returns him to his faith, and the welcome rains begin to fall.
The Ten Commandments (1923, dir. Cecil B. DeMille; and 1956, dir. Cecil B. Demille)
DeMille’s 1956 movie The Ten Commandments is certainly the most widely known film in the Bible on film category. Starring Charleton Heston (Moses) and Yul Brenner (Ramses), The Ten Commandments is memorable for many reasons: its high tech (for the 1950s) depiction of the parting of the Red Sea, the etching of the Decalogue on the tablets, a long orgy scene as the Israelite multitudes dance around the golden calf and the entirely fictional love triangle between Moses, Ramses and the lovely Nefertiri. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is its prologue, in which the director himself steps out from behind the curtain to warn his viewers that they must not allow Communism to do to Americans what the Egyptians did to the Israelites: take away their freedom.
Noah (2014; dir. Darren Aronofsky)
Like the great biblical epics of the 1950s, Noah sets out to retell the biblical account itself. It follows the basic outline of the biblical story: God realizes the depth of human wickedness and commands Noah (Russell Crowe) to build an ark and populate it with pairs of living creatures as well as his immediate family in preparation for a flood of annihilation. Like other Bible movies, Noah embellishes considerably, adding characters and plot elements, some of which contradict the biblical narrative. Although set in the far-distant past, the film addresses our own climate crisis. Noah believes that in causing the flood, God is punishing humankind for destroying the natural environment. The only remedy, he believes, is for humankind, including his own family, to die out completely. But has Noah heard and understood God’s message correctly?
The Bible in Film
Pulp Fiction (1994; dir. Quentin Tarantino)
It is impossible to sum up Tarantino’s quirky, complex and gory movie in a few sentences. One of its many narrative threads focuses on Vince and Jules, who are underlings of the crime boss Marsellus. They are completely inured to the violence they inflict on their boss’s behalf, until the day that Jules and Vince set out to execute a man named Brett. Having just busted into his apartment, Jules is about to shoot when Brett’s associate Marvin suddenly emerges from the bathroom and fires at point blank range. Yet, Vince and Jules are not killed, or even injured! Vince chalks their escape up to coincidence. Jules, on the other hand, sees it as the result of divine intervention, a sign that he should leave the life of crime and begin anew. He tells Vince that he will now “walk from place to place, meet people, get in adventures … Until God puts me where he wants me to be.” With this line, Jules compares himself to Caine, the hero of the Kung Fu movies, but the scene also evokes God’s punishment of the biblical Cain for killing his brother: “When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:12).
The Truman Show (1998; dir. Peter Weir)
The Truman Show is a movie about an eponymous television show and its star (Truman), its creator (Christof) and its obsessive viewers (millions of people the world over). Broadcast live, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, this “documentary soap opera” follows Truman Burbank as he engages in the ordinary tasks of day-to-day life, completely unaware that he is on television or that his world, Seahaven, is merely an elaborate set.
The basic plot structure of The Truman Show parallels that of the second creation account in Genesis 2:4–3:24. Both stories feature a creator who is inherently larger than life (God), or believes that he is (Christof), and a man who is created, either literally (Adam) or socially (Truman) for the purposes of living in the perfect world that the creator has fashioned (Eden, Seahaven). In both cases, the man rebels: Adam eats the fruit that God has forbidden, Truman escapes Christof’s control. In a more fundamental way, however, The Truman Show reverses key elements of the Genesis account. Adam’s presumed reluctance to leave Eden contrasts with Truman’s eagerness to escape Seahaven. In leaving Eden, Adam does not leave God’s purview, but in fleeing Seahaven, Truman effectively throws off all further control. If Genesis revolves around human disobedience and God’s response, The Truman Show focuses on its hero’s struggle for autonomy.
Harriet (2019; dir. Kasi Lemmons)
Harriet is a fictionalized retelling of Harriet Tubman’s career as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman (1822–1913), nee Araminta Ross, was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation. In her late twenties, she made a daring solo escape to Philadelphia. She made 13 return trips to Maryland, where she rescued 70 people from slavery, including most of her own family. After the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850, she helped fugitives go north to Canada (then British North America). During the Civil War, she worked as a spy for the Union army and led the famous raid at Combahee Ferry, freeing more than 700 people.
Tubman was famously nicknamed Moses, a moniker that acknowledged her role in leading her people to freedom. Tubman did not fancy herself a new Moses; it was society that called her so. But the film emphasizes this connection, and draws a close analogy between Tubman’s accomplishments and the biblical Exodus narrative, for example, by portraying dangerous crossings over bodies of water – evoking the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites – and through Cynthia Erivo’s masterful portrayal of Harriet herself.
These are just a few of the many films that retell biblical stories and/or that draw on biblical passages, verses and characters to tell fictional stories. The abundant use of the bible in Hollywood cinema testifies to the centrality that the bible continues to have in American culture and society. And for a detailed overview of Bible-related films, and dozens of film suggestions, see my book, The Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (2nd edition), published by Routledge in 2022.
