The Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

Those “Biblical documentary” shows have become so ubiquitous on TV that it is hard to keep up with them. I have participated in many dozens of them over the years, some good, but many I am sorry to say, greatly disappointing. In fact, as the years go by I am often susprised to see myself on some ancient TV rerun in the wee hours on Discovery, History, or the Learning channel, looking shockingly younger with dark hair and beard. So many consist of a dramatic stage voiced narration, lots of “talking head” interviews with the usual suspects, and paintings of the Old World masters liberally spashed on the screen. It can get a bit tiring to watch. Recent attempts to add “reenactments” and special effects have by and large fell flat due to poor quality.

Still, from time to time some really good programing does come out in this made-for-TV genre and I wanted to draw your attention to a new documentary that I think really stands out of the crowd, one I think you will not want to miss, no matter what your persuation might be when it comes to the matter of the Bible and history.

Emmy award winning Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici has teamed up with academy award winning director James Cameron (”The Titanic”) to produce an amazingly provocative 90 minute program called “The Exodus Decoded” that will air Sunday night in the U.S. on the History Channel (8pm Eastern & Pacific; 7pm Central; 6pm Mountain). This unusual collaboration has yielded some fascinating results. The documentary is essentially based on Jacobovici’s investigative quest to determine whether the majority of archaeologists and historians are correct in maintaining that the Biblical account of the Exodus is a myth and never really happened. The results of his search are presented with the most amazing special effects I have ever seen in a TV production of this type in which Jacobovici and Cameron operate out of a virtual museum created to illustrate the story.

Jacobovici became convinced that the reason scholars have not found evidence of the Exodus is that they are looking at a period of Egyptian history two hundred years after it happened. Most historians have dated the Exodus (even as a mythological story) in the 1200s BC, during the time of Ramses II. Jacobovici argues that it should be placed under Ahmose I around 1500 BC. Although Jacobovici’s specific case is his own a few scholars have argued for an “earlier” Exodus, usually in the 1400s BC. It would be as if future historians of American history were investigating the American Revolutionary War but dating it 1976 rather than 1776.

Jacobovici also notes that the Hebrew Bible does not speak of crossing the “Red Sea,” but the “Reed Sea” (Yam Suf), and he also comes up with an alternative location for Mt. Sinai, in the northern Sinai area called Paran (Deuteronomy 33:1-2) not the traditional site around St. Catherine’s in the south.

Jacobovici is convinced that the eruption of a volcano on the island of Santorini around 1500 BC is the event that triggered the Biblical plagues that the Bible associates with the Exodus: waters turning to blood, frogs, lice, fire from heaven, darkness, and even the “death of the 1st born,” for which he presents a most intriguing natural explanation. He also focuses on a image of the lost “ark of the covenant” that he found in Greece, carried there, he speculates, by migrating Israelites.

The documentary has received widespread publicity with major stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines, plus an appearance by Jacobovici on NBC’s Today Show (view Part 6) just this past week.

I first met Simcha Jacobovici in Toronto in 2002 at a private viewing of the “James Ossuary.” He is the one who produced the Discovery Channel documentary on the ossuary and I related that story in the Introduction to my book, The Jesus Dynasty (You can read it on-line at the Biblical Archaeology Society Web page). I worked with him on a few of his Naked Archaeologist programs, which have already aired in Canada and the UK and will appear later this year in the U.S., but more recently on a new documentary, also with James Cameron, which at this time is still “under wraps.” I have been impressed with Jacobovici’s film-making skills. Some of you might have seen his award winning undercover documentary “Sex Slaves” that aired on PBS Frontline in February. I have had a lot of offers from film makers interested in producing some version of my book, The Jesus Dynasty, and after much thought and deliberation it seemed to me that Simcha Jacobovici was the obvious choice. We signed a contract earlier this year and will begin working on a multiple part series in 2007.

I have had a chance to preview “The Exodus Decoded” while in Jerusalem in June. It was featured at the Jerusalem Film Festival to standing room only crowds. I can state with confidence that this is one made for TV Biblical documentary that you will not want to miss.