In its second year of operation, Britain’s new Channel 4 commissioned this three-part miniseries from London Weekend Television (LWT). It would become one of the most controversial documentaries in British television history.
Broadcast during the Easter period in April 1984, the miniseries sought to present a critical examination of the origins of Christianity and investigate the historical and archaeological evidence for Jesus.
Did Jesus Exist? What do we really know of his teachings? Did hypnosis play a part in the miracles ascribed to him? Did Jesus rise from the dead, or was the story of the Resurrection developed by later Christians?
The first episode explored the historical reliability of the New Testament, tracing how secular historical and text-critical scholarship from the late 18th to the mid-20th century began to erode traditional confidence in the Bible’s absolute literal truth.
Episode two examined contemporary 1980s academic theories and delved into alternative, non-traditional interpretations of Jesus, including highly unconventional ideas such as whether Jesus could be viewed as a magician or a practitioner of witchcraft.
The third and final episode traced the historical evolution of early Christianity from the empty tomb up to the Council of Nicaea in AD 324, explaining how theological definitions of Jesus’s divinity were politically and structurally consolidated by the early Church.
Directed and produced by David W. Rolfe, the series featured a range of mainstream biblical scholars alongside fringe theorists, with prominent contributors including author and historian Ian Wilson (who wrote the accompanying companion book), Géza Vermes, a pioneer of the “Third Quest” for the historical Jesus; Helmut Koester, a prominent German-American New Testament scholar and professor from Harvard Divinity School; G.A. Wells, an academic noted for advocating Christ Mythicism (the fringe theory that Jesus never actually existed as a historical person) and established British theologians Rev Prof. Dennis Nineham and I. Howard Marshall, who provided traditional and academic New Testament perspectives.
The reaction to the series from church leadership and the Christian public was immediate outrage.
Viewers were shocked by the programme’s suggestion that the Gospels were historically unreliable, alongside visual imagery including an exploding effigy of Jesus.
Leading theologians, such as James Dunn, quickly published rebuttal lectures and books to counter the show’s claims. Henry Chadwick, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, heavily criticised the series for irresponsibly mixing mainstream, sensible academic research with extreme, ungrounded theories.
The series also became the focus of a protest campaign led by the Evangelical youth magazine, Buzz, which drew wide support from many sections of the churches (particularly the Evangelical and Catholic wings).
John Ranelagh (Channel 4’s commissioning editor for religion) and the LWT producers were summoned to an ad hoc Parliamentary Committee to defend the series, but the immense public and political pressure prompted the network to quietly shelve the master tapes and refrain from any repeat airings.
Narrator
Jeremy Kemp
Video
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Broadcast during the Easter period in April 1984, the miniseries sought to present a critical examination of the origins of Christianity and investigate the historical and archaeological evidence for Jesus.
The third and final episode traced the historical evolution of early Christianity from the empty tomb up to the Council of Nicaea in AD 324, explaining how theological definitions of Jesus’s divinity were politically and structurally consolidated by the early Church.
Leading theologians, such as James Dunn, quickly published rebuttal lectures and books to counter the show’s claims. Henry Chadwick, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, heavily criticised the series for irresponsibly mixing mainstream, sensible academic research with extreme, ungrounded theories.
