Each year, I teach multiple sections of a course with the unwieldy catalog title The Bible as Literature and in Literature and the Arts. This interdisciplinary offering examines biblical figures, symbols, and principles in their textual and historical contexts, then considers the rhetorical impact of this material when it is woven into modern literary and visual art. When taught at public institutions by academics more convinced of the Bible’s literary merit than its truth value, this type of course can unsettle—even derail—young faith instead of fortifying it.
This outcome is far from inevitable. As hymns and poetic liturgy fill a sanctuary, adorning Scripture with meter and melody, so can faith-laced fiction and imagery swell the imagination with illustrations of the perennial contest between grace and rebellion.
In the hands of a religious skeptic or cynical instructor, a poem by Robert Browning that details a monk’s petty cruelty provides evidence of hypocrisy. The Christian professor, however, points out how tonal contradictions and hyperbole sabotage the first-person speaker’s arrogance: The poem spotlights integrity by framing the consequences of its absence. To the cynic, a Christological work by Catalan painter Salvador Dalí constitutes virtue signaling, a politically savvy cash grab in the wake of a Catholic dictator’s rise to power. For the educator convinced that divine action often eludes our attempts to dissect it (1 Cor 1:18–30), the possibility of God acting in Dalí’s life complicates any facile, scornful conclusions about his work.
Such heavenly intervention underpins the personal narrative of a filmmaker I met last fall during a visit to the Roman set of Fox Entertainment’s The Faithful, a miniseries releasing across the three Sundays preceding Easter. René Echevarria, the showrunner, entered Hollywood in the early ’90s as a screenwriter and editor for sci-fi favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation and quickly became an executive producer. Ever since, Echevarria has gravitated toward shows with equally fantastic premises, including Dark Angel, The 4400, Medium, and Carnival Row. Each show spin yarns about figures with extraordinary abilities whose powers both complicate life and provide it with new purpose.
This creative interest in supernatural possibilities found a new, life-giving channel mid-career when God unexpectedly obtruded into a stressful life sustained by a cigarette addiction Echevarria lacked the time and will to eliminate. Intrigued by the ashes on someone’s forehead one day at the studio, Echevarria wondered what this individual had given up for Lent and what, if he were still a practicing Catholic, he himself might relinquish. The answer arrived immediately, alongside the conviction that the nicotine addiction regularly waking him up in the middle of the night had too strong a hold ever to be shaken off.
And then he heard a voice say, Of course you can, and you will, and you’re going to do it right now.
Not only did Echevarria never smoke another cigarette, that moment also awakened a dormant faith which initially brought him back into the Catholic church, where he and the woman he soon married would baptize their three children. Later, they transferred membership to a small evangelical church outside Los Angeles and read the Bible in new, transformative ways.
Five years ago, Echevarria belatedly revealed his faith to his surprised agent and asked that they look for faith-based projects. The success of The Chosen and House of David had convinced Fox Entertainment to jump on the bandwagon, so it eagerly greenlighted Echevarria’s and Julie Weitz’s proposal for a show foregrounding the experience of women in the Bible.
Echevarria’s faith and avid research, Weitz’s Jewish education, feedback from Christianity Today’s Russell Moore, and assistance from Wendy Zierler (rabbi and professor of modern Jewish literature and feminist studies at Hebrew Union College) combined to create a show shaped by the biblical record and psychological realism. As Weitz puts it, they wanted the show to feel “true and legitimate, not heightened.” The sort of melodramatic excesses, extravagant sets, and military spectacle today’s audiences love are nowhere to be seen. Instead, into the huts and tents of ancient Bedouins, the show’s creators placed imperfect, God-fearing nomads whose faltering steps underscore the power of the one who draws them out of their homelands. The series opens with the story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar.
During a press conference last month, I asked Echevarria a rather involved question. Noting that Hebrews lists Sarah as one of the storied faithful who “was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise” (Heb 11:11), I pointed back to the events dramatized by his show which underscore Sarai’s lack of trust in God’s timing. These include feasible extrapolations from the scriptural account, including Sarai’s yelling at God and throwing vegetables from Abram’s altar when no pregnancy is forthcoming, her anger at Abram for not resisting more when she tells him to sleep with Hagar, and her frustration with Abram’s repeatedly uprooting them to move closer to Canaan. Did Echevarria intend to characterize faith, I asked, as an often tortured, complicated process, thereby making the faith of the show’s title appear accessible to struggling humans?
“Yes,” he enthusiastically rejoined. And Weitz elaborated: All three stories in the series consider women “grappling with faith on a human level.”
In the case of Sarai (Sarah), faith is vicarious for quite some time, with Abram (Abraham) serving as the divine proxy in whom she places her belief. Watching from a distance as Abram sacrifices at one homemade altar after another and lacking any revelatory encounters or dreams of her own, Sarai must trust that no delusions addle her husband’s brain. In the show, his romantic devotion to her makes such faith relatively easy. As Echevarria notes, Abram’s peers likely expected him to take another wife when Sarai failed to conceive, yet he refused to consider this option. (A second marriage in the Bible follows Sarah’s death.) Pushed into sleeping with Hagar, Abram acquiesces but maintains, “I have loved only one my whole life.”
Hagar’s experience differs profoundly from Sarai’s. According to Jewish Midrashim, Hagar was an Egyptian princess presented to Sarai as a handmaid by the Pharaoh anxious to get rid of her, an explanation for her presence in Abram’s tribe that the show adopts wholeheartedly. Her status as an ankh-wearing outsider and slave makes it unlikely any Jewish man will pursue her, and she appears to have few friends besides Sarai. Abram deigns to admit she’s beautiful the second time he sleeps with her, but he makes little effort to form an emotional connection. And Hagar demands none, at no point attempting to steal Abram’s affections. Despite her unenviable situation, Hagar proves even-tempered, particularly when compared with the vacillating Sarai.
One might contend that Hagar’s role as occasional narrator centers her own perspective and opinion—arguably the show’s most radical decision. In the screenwriters’ hands, Hagar comes across as kinder, gentler, and more pitiable than Sarai. The show interprets the idea that she “despise[d]” her mistress not because of the contempt Sarai names (Gen. 16:4–5) but because of an understandable desire to raise the child she carries in her womb. An angel of the Lord speaks to Hagar twice, as in the Bible (16:7–13; 21:17–18), and in the show’s conclusion she plays a surprising role that I will not divulge here.
Less surprising is the series’ production value, given the industry’s rush to meet the growing demand for quality Christian programming. Set visits in a quarry near Rome and back in the studio revealed the considerable research undergirding the design of period architecture, domestic goods, and costumes. I was particularly taken by a meticulously carved board game, an ingenious prop deserving mass production and a spot next to Wingspan and Catan on gaming displays.
While committed to never contradicting the biblical record outright, Echevarria and Weitz take expected liberties with the text. They include only events witnessed by the women, and the compact story line omits any mention of Abram’s nephew Lot. At the same time, Echevarria and Weitz invent several plausible moments in their quest to create relatable characters for a mixed audience. In the first two-episode story, these include Sarai’s and Hagar’s signing a clay tablet to formalize their surrogacy arrangement, Hagar’s recommending a grain-based peeing test for determining pregnancy, and Abram’s recounting tales about Noah and Nimrod to his tribe’s children in the manner of “the sagas.”
Teaching the Bible at a secular university has made one thing crystal clear to me. Unquestioned, prejudicial assumptions about biblical gender roles are one of the largest roadblocks for unchurched students wondering whether the Bible is more than a historical and literary artifact. If the first two episodes of this humanizing drama about multidimensional, relatable women prefigure the tenor of the next four, the show will realize the evangelical aim Echevarria repeatedly, joyfully articulated in our conversations: convincing a few skeptics to take their Bibles off the shelf.
Paul Marchbanks is a professor of English at California Polytechnic State University. His YouTube channel is “Digging in the Dirt.”
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