How many movies have depicted Matthias, the apostle who replaced Judas Iscariot?
Brief notes on films that have depicted Matthias before, during, and after his appointment to the Twelve.
Note: This post contains a spoiler for The Chosen: Last Supper (aka The Chosen: Season 5).
All four gospels agree that Jesus appointed a special group of disciples known as The Twelve. All four gospels also agree that Jesus was betrayed by a member of The Twelve known as Judas Iscariot. The book of Acts then tells us that Judas’s now-vacant position in the Twelve was given to a man named Matthias, during the ten-day window between the Ascension and Pentecost (Acts 1:23-25).
Matthias is never mentioned again after that. But we are told that he qualified for the job because he was one of the men who had “been with [the Jesus movement] the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us” (Acts 1:21-22).
Interestingly, this is more than the Bible tells us about some of the other members of the Twelve. Men like Simon the Zealot and James son of Alphaeus—men who were appointed by Jesus himself—are basically just names on a list, as far as the gospels are concerned. With Matthias, we are told how long he had been with the movement, and we are told that he was promoted to the Twelve right after the Ascension. That tells us something about him.
But not enough, perhaps, to make him much of a movie character.
Most Jesus movies have a difficult-enough time just juggling major figures like Peter, Thomas, John, and Judas. The other members of the Twelve tend to fade into the background and often don’t get any dialogue. So what chance do other members of the movement have, if even the gospels can’t be bothered to mention them during Jesus’ ministry?
Even movies based on the book of Acts often don’t deal with Matthias. It’s very easy to skip over his part of the story when you’re in a rush to get to more famous stories like the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost or the martyrdom of Stephen.
Still, a few films do at least acknowledge Matthias, however briefly. And I find myself thinking about this right now because of two things in particular.
First, The Chosen: Last Supper aka The Chosen: Season 5—which played in theatres last month—reveals that a mysterious figure known as “the Watcher”, who appeared in the crowd outside Lazarus’s tomb in Season 4, is actually named Matthias.
The Watcher doesn’t exactly match the description of the biblical Matthias—he’s not a member of the Jesus movement at all, let alone someone who has been with them since John’s day—but given all the other narrative shuffling in this series (how long after the baptism of Jesus did Philip start following him, again? and where did he start following him?), it seems a safe bet he’s meant to be that Matthias.
Second, I recently learned (via Prime Video) about a 2017 film called Pilgrimage that stars Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal as a 13th-century monk and a former Crusader, respectively, who are entrusted with a relic connected to Matthias—and the film begins with a short prologue set in AD 55 that depicts the death of Matthias himself.
There’s nothing else about Matthias in this film; the rest of the movie is a typically violent story of monks and knights fighting for possession of the relic. Still, it’s interesting that of all the saints this holy MacGuffin could have been connected to, the filmmakers went with Matthias. It’s a random detail, but a detail nonetheless.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of all that many other films that have depicted Matthias. His appointment to The Twelve doesn’t come up at all in adaptations of the book of Acts like The Living Bible: The Book of Acts (1957), Peter and Paul (1981), The Bible Collection: Paul (2000), or A.D. The Bible Continues (2015).
It does, however, turn up in a couple of the more thorough adaptations of Acts.
Roberto Rossellini’s five-part miniseries Atti degli apostoli aka Acts of the Apostles (1969) includes the scene in which Matthias is chosen to replace Judas:
And, of course, so does The Visual Bible’s word-for-word adaptation of Acts (1994):
Beyond that, the only other example I can think of—of a filmed depiction of Matthias—is a somewhat obscure one from the NBC miniseries A.D. Anno Domini (1985).
In this series—which blends biblical and secular history with some purely fictitious storylines (à la Quo Vadis?)—Matthias is a man who lives in Jerusalem and officiates at the betrothal of his niece to a Zealot who happens to be a friend of his nephew’s.
There is nothing in the miniseries that connects this Matthias to the Matthias of the Bible—aside from one of his nieces calling him “our Nazarene uncle” in another scene long after this—but the show’s novelization confirms that, yes, they are one and the same: he presides over his niece’s betrothal in Chapter 2, and then he joins the Twelve in Chapter 4. Whether the bit about him joining the Twelve is based on a deleted scene from the series or was invented by the writer of the novel, I do not know, but I’ll accept it as A.D. canon until someone can convince me otherwise.1
So: are there any other movie depictions of Matthias I should know about? If so, let me know (in the comments, etc.) and I might add them to this post.
Another biblical connection that is more explicit in the novelization than it is in the miniseries: The biblical Paul was accompanied on his trip from Judea to Rome by a Roman centurion named Julius (Acts 27:1-3), while the Paul of the miniseries is accompanied by a fictitious Roman soldier—one of the show’s main characters—named Valerius. But Valerius’s full legal name is “Julius Valerius Licinius”, and in the novel, Paul asks him, “May I call you Julius?” and Valerius replies, “No one else does. But then, again, you are like no one I have ever known. Please do: It makes me feel like a new man.”