The story has been adapted for screens large and small so often at this point that any new effort has to make clear why it needed to be made and what it’s bringing to the task that we haven’t seen before. Lebanese American actor Haaz Sleiman plays Jesus, and it is nice at least to see a Jesus of color and more or less local origin instead of the white, sometimes very white, Christ so often offered. He is a little unprepossessing for a man who stirred the multitudes, but this is true generally of the film.

Another problem with the book is the lack of historical documentation. That said, O’Reilly and Dugard’s book is a fast, captivating read and, although it doesn’t describe the resurrection appearances, has helped some people with their Christian faith and convinced others to consider becoming a Christian. That said, readers will find books like Lee Strobel’s THE CASE FOR CHRIST even more compelling and chintakindi mallesham convincing. Of course, no other book can replace an open-minded reading of the four Gospels themselves, which are THE eyewitness testimony of what Jesus really said and did. KILLING JESUS is shot well, flows smoothly and has excellent performances, but some viewers may find it hard figuring out sometimes who is who from scene to scene. Also, its view of why Jesus was crucified is mostly political.

The killer doesn’t see Paula but she catches a glimpse of his face as he escapes. Paula and her brother Santiago report all this to the police, who steal the expensive watch from their father’s body and advise them to move out of town or become the victims of reprisals. Although the authors proclaim in their introduction that they have manfully succeeded in separating fact from legend and will alert the reader if the evidence is not set in stone, they signally fail to do so. Killing Jesus relies almost exclusively on the gospels, discounting two centuries of ongoing scholarly scepticism about their historical accuracy with a breezy footnote that there is “growing acceptance of their overall historicity”.

The Romans and Jews are “big government” and Jesus would prefer to cut taxes. Yes, Jesus arrived to save us from tax-collectors. This is three hours of my life that I will never get back. (Why was it billed as a four hour event?) Hate to use the old cheap shot, but it has never been more appropriate.

Her father, Jose Maria , is a lawyer who teaches at the same university. Jesus’s attempt to get round the problem of how to be a good Jew and a good Roman by saying “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” was unhelpful. The problem for the Jews was precisely that they could not divide Caesar from God. Uniquely at the time they had a monotheistic god and monotheistic gods brook no rivals, such as a divine emperor. Uniquely also, their god demanded obedience to his law and that law covered the whole of life – from sex, eating and how you acted in business to loving your neighbour and worshipping the one and only god.

According to O’Grady, Killing Jesus presents the Romans, Jewish elites, and Pharisees as categorically “bad” and “ordinary Jews” as “good”, without any background or nuance. O’Grady also criticizes O’Reilly and Dugard for relying almost entirely on the gospels and ignoring the centuries’ worth of books written by biblical scholars about the historical Jesus. The two-hour movie version of Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s bestselling book KILLING JESUS is not a faithful adaptation of the book. The book may be criticized for its weak historical documentation, lack of footnotes referring to specific sources, and noncommittal approach to the resurrection. However, the movie version is even weaker, giving its viewers a Jesus who’s not divine, who’s full of doubt at the beginning, though He gets stronger later. Also, unlike the book, the movie seriously plays down the divinity of Jesus and His teaching that He was the incarnate Son of God.

This entry was posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news. Jesus is a complex character, taking her to a picturesque location for her to take photos one moment, whipping out his gun and kicking stray dogs the next. When Paula asks Jesus to teach her how to shoot, he attempts to get Paula to embrace her anger. “Without hatred,” he tells her, “nothing happens.” As Paula learns more about Jesus, she realises that he is another victim of the system her father was so vehemently opposed to. As he’s driving Paula home one day after class, Jose Maria is assassinated, shot dead from the back of a motorbike.

Given the performance I witnessed I can only believe that the actor was so nervous that he doubled up on the Valium. If not, the actor apparently nailed the audition by simply hitting his mark and mumbling his line . I’ve seen greater emotional range from a cockatoo.