A History of God (History Channel)
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DVD details
Brand: A and E Home VideoWriter: Karan Armstrong
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-04-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video
DVD Reviews of A History of God (History Channel)
DVD Review: Dubious scholarship at its finest!
Summary: 1 Stars
I was curious about this documentary to see what new ideas I could gain. What I anticipated was surely crushed by dubious, liberal and downright deceitful scholarship. Here are a few examples that are very basic to any person even remotely knowledgeable on this subject.
1. Karen Armstrong was perhaps the worst scholarship in this video. She is part of the Jesus Seminar! The Jesus Seminar is liberal scholars who range from atheists, agnostics to even theists who are well rejected by the academia for their ludicrous and un-factual claims topped with fancy thinking. Why is her scholarship and theories so asinine?
Karen asserts that Jesus never claimed to be God nor did He call Himself the Son of God-if ever rarely was her tone-. Such a statement could mean one of three things: she never read the New Testament, is completely ignorant, or is downright lying because it disagrees with her universe. I will not pick one of these choices and answer it for you, but you be the decider. The most obvious example of Jesus without equivocation saying He is the Son of God is in Luke 22:70. Jesus is being tried and the high priest asks Him, "Are you then the Son of God?" What does Jesus say? "You rightly say that I am." They then accuse Him of blasphemy. In John 8:56-59, Jesus tells the Jews that He appeared to Abraham. He goes on to emphatically tell them, "Before Abraham was, I AM." The Jews knew He was making Himself God so they tried to stone Him; compare "I AM" from Exodus 3:14! Later in John 10:30-33, Jesus tells the Jews that He and the Father are one! The Jews yet again accusing Him of claiming to be God! Lastly, go back to Luke 5:17-18, the Jews want to kill Him once again, for making Himself equal to God. It is obvious contextually and semantically that Jesus was understood as claiming to be God! She is also clueless to the simple fact that to the Hebrews Son of God was a divine title!
Karen also thinks she understands the evolution of YHWH from a kind God, to a monstrous killer of non-Jews. The narrator also suggests that YHWH was a different deity for Moses as opposed to Abraham. This of course is ludicrous and out right wishful thinking since reading the Old Testament, it is evident that their were different authors and so writing style is different. This however, does not mean that God was never just! She is clueless about theology by obfuscating pagan child sacrifice to the foreshadowing of the Messiah through Abraham's actions with Isaac. She plainly is ignorant to what sin is and how it is to be dealt with in the Old Testament. Simply alluding paganism to Judaism and Christianity is a logical error that begs the question. Armstrong also completely spouts misinformation by claiming that Constantine wanted to bring about Nicaea because he wanted Christianity to be at peace since he was going to use it for politics. No, No, NO! Constantine was not even a Christian at the time of Nicaea. The Church was never officially split because of Arianism save a few followers of Arius. Constantine wanted rest in his empire and so wanted the two sides to come to an agreement. Every single Bishop, save two, believed Jesus was God Incarnate and was equal with the Father.
2. The narrator. The narrator is oblivious to what he is espousing. He believes from the information he is regurgitated from a script, that this is all well and factual. He claims that a few Jews believed Christ was the Messiah neglecting the simple fact that Christ claimed to be the Messiah! He is constantly espousing nonsense that are products of fanciful script writing. From accusations that Christians never believed Jesus was divine until later to Jesus being the adopted Son of God. The script writer obviously never read the early Church Fathers as they all refute this none-factual assertion!
3. Elaine Pagels is the third and final segment of my critique. For a professor of religion, she seems clueless about Christianity which brings into question her scholarship. She thinks Jesus believed that God was going to transform the world and destroy it from Roman rule. Yet again, sleight of hand and fanciful thinking is in play. There are absolutely no legitimate texts which mention this fact. The fact of the matter is Jesus claimed that His kingdom was not of this world. She also erroneously claims that it is hard to know what Jesus actually said because He did not pen anything down Himself. She continues by laying a block down accusing the Synoptic Gospels of not being identical. Well Mrs. Pagels, I thought it might be obvious and common sense that two people do not think alike. And so, their explanatory process will be different. No surprise that logic flies over in her segments as she accuses the Trinity of being illogical and polytheistic, adding how Christians were never accustomed to logic. Besides the obvious red herring thrown in there, she is clueless to what she is espousing. The early Church Fathers were quite aware and used logic in their arguments and defenses. Mrs. Pagel negligent about Christianity and writings from some of the most brilliant minds, misunderstands the Trinity. The Trinity since teaches that there is only ONE God, One Being but reveals Himself in three persons. She equivocates this to two beings and then calls it polytheism and a logical stump. Well Mrs. Pagel, speaking of logic, I am uncertain of how much she knows about the straw man she presented in her argument.
An overall misinformed film that continues the History's Channel legacy of interviewing only the liberalist and smallest minority of scholars from the Jesus seminar.
Description of A History of God (History Channel)
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