Splashing in the water, in The Chosen
An addendum to my earlier post about fully-clothed full immersion in Bible movies.
Spoiler warning: This article will discuss plot points from the closing scenes of The Chosen Season 3 Episode 5 (‘Clean, Part 2’), which premiered Sunday night.
A quick addendum, if I may, to my post on depictions of baptism in Bible movies.
In that post, I noted that ritual immersion in the water was generally done naked, by Jews and Christians alike, in the ancient world.
I also noted that Jesus is almost always fully dressed when he gets baptized in the movies—even when he is fully immersed in the water.
Along the way, I noted in my post that a trailer for The Chosen seems to indicate that Simon’s wife Eden will bathe in a mikveh later this season, and I noted that she, like the Jesuses of all these other films, is also dressed from the neck down, contrary to Jewish practice. And then, in a footnote, I noted that The Chosen seems to resist even partial nudity in general elsewhere too, such as when it shows some people being crucified by the Romans with their clothes on. (The Romans crucified people naked, so that the experience would be not just painful but shameful, as well.)
So, with all those thoughts fresh in my mind, I was amused when Season 3 Episode 5 (‘Clean, Part 2’) premiered tonight and included a scene in which Jesus and the disciples start frolicking in the Sea of Galilee—fully clothed. And this, at a time when the local religious leaders had just told them to go wash themselves ritually.
Of course, there are women standing on the shore when the disciples go to play in the water. Maybe the men couldn’t just strip down to their loincloths with them there.
Still, it was amusing to see, so soon after I had written my earlier post.
One other thought:
In my earlier post, I noted that The Last Temptation of Christ was one of the few films I could think of in which Jesus is wearing only a loincloth when he is baptized… but when he strips down to it, he drops his robes into the stream, and John the Baptist pours the water on his head. Ordinarily you might think that one of the whole points of taking your clothes off before baptism would be to keep them dry, but in that case, the robes are more fully immersed in the water than the person being baptized.
I bring that up here because, in The Chosen, before Jesus and the disciples come to the lake, we see Veronica—the woman who was healed of her constant bleeding—come to the lake to bathe in the water too. And we see her take off one or two outer garments before she goes into the water… and at least one of them clearly gets wet anyway:
So, again, it’s not entirely clear what the point of taking it off was. Ah well.
Incidentally, I do plan to start doing some episode-by-episode analyses of the Season 3 episodes soon. I’ve just had a lot of things to juggle, pre- and post-holidays.
As the characters in The Chosen might say, though: “Soon!”
-
The Chosen interviews:
Season 1: Dallas Jenkins, co-writer/director (Dec 2019)
Season 2: Dallas Jenkins, co-writer/director (May 2021) | Derral Eves, producer, on Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers (Nov 2021) | Dallas Jenkins on the ‘The Chosen Is Not Good’ marketing campaign (Apr 2022)
Season 3: Jordan Walker Ross, Little James (Oct 2022) | Vanessa Benavente, Mother Mary (Nov 2022) | Kirk B.R. Woller, Gaius (Nov 2022)
The Chosen recaps:
Season 1: review | scripture index
Episode recaps: The Shepherd | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eightSeason 2: The Messengers review | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | The Messengers
-
The Chosen can be streamed via Angel Studios or the show’s app (Android | Apple).