This article was featured by Bible Gateway Bible Profs News on December 14, 2014.
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After going to the movies last night to see Exodus: Gods and Kings (and recalling the strain that Noah put on church-theater relations earlier this year), I decided to create a quick guide to help movie-goers decide whether they should risk $11.50 on Hollywood’s latest foray into the Pentateuch. Here it is:
Photo by Paul Burger via creationswap.com
1) Are you expecting Hollywood to get all the facts right? YES NO
2) Would you like to see Hollywood nod to the Bible and portray a world where God intervenes in history? YES NO
3) Will watching white people playing Egyptians make you twitch? YES NO
4) Next time you read Exodus, do you want to imagine it better–see the locusts, feel the the boils, and taste the blood in the Nile? YES NO
5) Will you lie awake at night, gritting your teeth, because they cast a child as God? YES NO
6) Will you appreciate (even if you disagree with) the artistic rendering of God as a slave boy, an attempt to show his identification with the Israelites? YES NO
7) Are you hoping that Hollywood gets Yahweh right? YES NO
8) Do you want to feel the wonder and terror of what God is able to do? YES NO
Answer Key:
If you answered yes to 1, 3, 5, or 7: Consider sticking with Charleton Heston–except if you answered yes to #3. Or, as an old man in Canada once said, think of the movie like a fish dinner. You don’t expect to eat it all. You enjoy the meat, and put the bones on the side of your plate.
If you answered yes to 2, 4, 6, or 8: Go and enjoy. Afterwards, reread Exodus 1-14, and where the movie falls short be glad that God doesn’t.
