The Gospel of Matthew

The production is the very best I've ever seen and the word for word narration using the Bible only with the scenes being reenacted accordingly.

This is Excellent and much better than the film put by the Visual Bible.

Both are good, but this is by far the best.

One reviewer seems to be a non-believer and that he is so smart/ethnocentric that he demands to help us out by telling us how to think. I guess he knows all history/facts & has experienced every single thing, including life after death. Has nothing to do with the film.

Finally biblical movie with the Bible's own record.

To the reviewer who says there is no record of a historic Jesus. Friend, there are! Here is one from the ancient record of Josephus:

Evidence from Josephus

Perhaps the most remarkable reference to Jesus outside the Bible can be found in the writings of Josephus, a first century Jewish historian. On two occasions, in his Jewish Antiquities, he mentions Jesus. The second, less revealing, reference describes the condemnation of one "James" by the Jewish Sanhedrin. This James, says Josephus, was "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ."F. F. Bruce points out how this agrees with Paul's description of James in Galatians 1:19 as "the Lord's brother."And Edwin Yamauchi informs us that "few scholars have questioned" that Josephus actually penned this passage.

As interesting as this brief reference is, there is an earlier one, which is truly astonishing. Called the "Testimonium Flavianum," the relevant portion declares:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he ... wrought surprising feats.... He was the Christ. When Pilate ...condemned him to be crucified, those who had . . . Come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared ... restored to life.... And the tribe of Christians ... has ... not disappeared.

The other day, I went to a Christian book store and bought a DVD set with all 4 Gospel movies in this series. I saw The Gospel of Mark a few years ago and loved it, so I decided to own them all.

Biblical epics are my favorite movie genre, and the closer to Scripture, the better. In fact, earlier this week I saw Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According To St. Matthew, which is now my favorite Jesus movie.

The Gospel Of Matthew, made from The LUMO Project and released from Lionsgate, is the book, word for word. You can open a Bible to Matthew and literally follow along.

There is a setting on the DVD to watch it in The King James Version and one to watch the New International Version. I'm not a "King James Only" person per se, but I prefer it (call me "King James Leaning"), so I selected that and then I started the movie.

The Gospel of Matthew has many merits, and not just the word for word accuracy. The movie is well shot, mostly entertaining if you like Bible movies, and Selma Rasalingam makes for a good and more historically accurate looking Jesus.

However, notice that I said "mostly entertaining." The biggest problem with The Gospel of Matthew is that the movie is all narrated. Of course, there needs to be a narrator if directly quoting Scripture (they don't even skip the opening 17 verses of Jesus's genealogy), but the narrator says EVERYTHING.

If Jesus speaks, we see His lips move, but the narrator speaks. Same for if John The Baptist, a disciple, or Pilate speaks. The narrator is literally the only voice, even though the actors move their mouths.

I wondered if this was a King James option thing, so after about a half hour, I switched to NIV, but it only has a different narrator doing the same thing. It makes me wonder why the actors couldn't have spoken, and if they have an opinion about this choice of the filmmakers. (If the actors had thick accents, this could have been dubbed over. The Jesus Film did this.)

What's odd is that I didn't remember The Gospel of Mark doing the same thing. However, I looked up The Gospel of Mark on YouTube (it was on there) and I guess that it does?

As a result of this one voice dialogue, while much of the Scriptures were powerful, the monotone, barely dramatized voice got dull at times. I must confess there were times I considered watching something else knowing that this was 3 hours and 10 minutes long.

That said, I did overall enjoy it and still found it to be moving, like most Biblical epics are to me.

If you can get past the one voice narration, I recommend The Gospel of Matthew. If you want to see Matthew with more acting and power, then I recommend The Gospel According To St. Matthew or The Visual Bible: Matthew more. Honestly, I would recommend Godspell more as well.

Again, as a stand alone movie, The Gospel of Matthew is not bad. As a Bible movie, it is good, mostly due to the Biblical accuracy. However, the lack of acting is what keeps it from being great.

Note: The Gospel of Matthew also has a nit pick that I have with other Jesus movies, The Gospel According To St. Matthew being the exception. Matthew 5:1 states that Jesus ignores a crowd to speak The Sermon On The Mount to his disciples. Here, as with most Jesus movies, despite the word for word accuracy, Jesus speaks to the crowd, even though we hear that He sets them aside.

Happy New Year, this is my first review of 2023! :)