The annotated History of the World, Part II... part two
Some quick notes on 'The Last Supper Sessions' and 'The Council of Nicaea', the last two Jesus sequences in Mel Brooks' miniseries.
A couple days ago, I posted some Bible-geeky thoughts about the Jesus sequences in the first four episodes of History of the World, Part II, an eight-part miniseries that has been coming out this week on Hulu (in the US) and Disney+ (in other countries).
Now that the last four episodes are out, I figured I’d post some thoughts on the Jesus sequences that are featured in those episodes, too.
I’m sure some people will say I’m taking the show a little too seriously, but to that I say: Naaaah. The fact is, sometimes the jokes are funny to me because they remind me of certain bits in the Bible, and sometimes they get me asking questions that hadn’t occurred to me before and I end up doing a bit of research and learning a thing or two along the way—all of which is fun. (Feel free to quote Claude Rains from Lawrence of Arabia here: “It is recognized that you have a funny sense of fun.”)
And, yes, sometimes the jokes are not funny, and sometimes that’s because they’re rooted in false premises. And so I challenge those premises.
I will also confess that there is a part of me that sees basically frivolous shows like this as an opportunity to flex those parts of my brain that will be put to more serious use when, say, I resume my episode-by-episode analysis of The Chosen. (Just seven episodes to go until I’m caught up…) So consider this a warm-up exercise of sorts.
Anyway. As I mentioned in my review last week, this miniseries has four different versions of the Jesus story, each of which doubles as a parody of a certain movie, TV show, or genre—and this basically parallels how the New Testament has four different gospels, each of which has its own style, chronology, and thematic concerns.
Of the two sequences I looked at earlier this week, one was modeled after the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm, while the other was based on the romantic movie The Notebook. Now, we’re going to look at a sequence based on The Beatles: Get Back and another based on Hollywood action movies. As before, spoilers ahoy!
Jesus and the Apostles: The Last Supper Sessions (from episodes 6 & 7)
This sequence is a parody of The Beatles: Get Back, the three-part documentary that came out in 2021. I watched it back then and have not seen it since.
Mel Brooks narrates: “In 33 AD, Jesus and his Apostles were the hottest group in Jerusalem, but with the Romans looking to arrest Jesus, the group got together to record what would be his final sermon.” While Jesus did die in Jerusalem—and the early Church seems to have been headquartered there—the bulk of his actual ministry took place in Galilee, several days’ walk north of there.
Just as Get Back shows the Beatles rehearsing the songs that would eventually be recorded for the Let It Be album, this sequence shows Jesus and the Apostles rehearsing songs for an upcoming concert. The sequence is named after “the Last Supper”, the narrator calls the upcoming concert a “sermon”, and the bandmates call their songs “psalms”—so there’s a lot of overlapping concepts here: music, preaching, public performance, private ritual, etc. Don’t try to untangle it.
The song lyrics are kept on stone tablets, which is funny, though people in Jesus’ day would have been more likely to write on papyrus or animal skins. (We do see Mary Magdalene reading a newspaper on a scroll later on.)
The band consists of Jesus, Judas, Mark, and Luke, and it is known as “the Fab Twelve”. This is a nod to the fact that Jesus had twelve core disciples, who were known as “the Twelve” both during and after his ministry (e.g. Mark 3:13-19, Matthew 10:2-4, Luke 6:12-16, John 6:70, Acts 6:2, I Corinthians 15:5)—but Mark and Luke were not among those disciples. As I noted in my comments on the ‘Curb Your Judaism’ sequence, Luke is particularly unlikely to have been a follower of Jesus during Jesus’ ministry. Mark, on the other hand, seems to have lived in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12, 25), and it is widely thought that he might have been the man with the jar of water who led two disciples to the house where the Last Supper took place (Mark 14:13-16, Luke 22:10-13), or that he was the anonymous young man who ran naked through the Garden of Gethsemane after Jesus was arrested later that night (Mark 14:51-52). So Mark’s presence here is less of a stretch than Luke’s—but he wasn’t a member of “the Twelve”.
And speaking of “the Twelve”: if Jesus himself is a member of the band, in addition to all twelve of his disciples (most of whom we don’t see, but try not to think about that), wouldn’t they be known as “the Fab Thirteen”?
Mark says, “We had a rough one last night. A little bit too much of the myrrh.” Myrrh was used as a perfume or ointment, and apparently it was even mixed with wine sometimes (Mark 15:23). I have no idea what Mark was doing with it.
Jesus is late for the rehearsal, and Judas complains that Jesus “thinks he’s bigger than Jesus Christ.” Luke replies, “Well, he is Jesus Christ.” This, of course, is a nod to the famous interview John Lennon gave in 1966—three years before Get Back was filmed—in which he said the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”.
Jesus and Mary Magdalene show up late, and Jesus says they “had a little problem with rolling stone.” Mary adds, “We almost got run over by a boulder.” I assume this is just a nod to Rolling Stone magazine, which featured Lennon on its first cover in 1967, but there once was a time when Christian music fans liked to talk about the “rolling stone” that sealed Jesus’ tomb—or, more to the point, the stone that is often depicted being rolled away from Jesus’ tomb. (It is commonly assumed that the stone was disc-shaped, but we don’t know that it was—and if the archaeological record is anything to go by, it probably wasn’t. Nearly all of the tombs from that era were sealed with square, cork-shaped stones.)
The bandmates discuss where to perform their concert: Rome? The Apollo Temple? Masada?
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