The Chosen – season two, episode four

Deconstructing the Pool of Bethesda, complicating the plots of the Zealots, and looking for a good restaurant in first-century Jerusalem, in 'The Perfect Opportunity'.

Jul 26, 2022

Season 2, Episode 4 — ‘The Perfect Opportunity’
John 5

Synopsis. In or about 13 BC, a boy named Jesse falls from a tree and loses the use of his legs. His mother dies while giving birth to his brother Simon. Years go by: their father remarries, Simon leaves home to join the Zealots, and Jesse spends his adult years waiting by a supposedly supernatural pool for a miracle that never comes. In AD 26, Jesus and the disciples go to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. Simon goes there too, to assassinate a magistrate. Jesus goes to the Pool of Bethesda and heals Jesse’s legs. The Pharisees are outraged when Jesse picks up his mat and carries it, because the healing took place on the Sabbath. Simon is on the verge of carrying out his assassination attempt, but he stops when he sees Jesse walking.

Gospels. This episode is mainly about the healing of the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-13), but it also introduces Simon the Zealot, who will become one of the twelve core disciples of Jesus.

Simon the Zealot is mentioned in all three of the official lists of the Twelve (Mark 3:16-19, Matthew 10:2-4, Luke 6:13-16; cf Acts 1:13), but nothing else is said about him anywhere in the New Testament.

He may, in fact, be the only member of the Twelve who is never mentioned outside of those lists. Many people have proposed that some of the more obscure names on those lists might belong to people who go by different names in other parts of the New Testament, and this show seems to be following those theories where Little James and Nathanael are concerned (see my notes on S1E5 and S2E2, respectively). But no such theory exists for Simon.

Scholars debate whether Simon was a capital-Z Zealot (i.e. a member of a political revolutionary group) or a small-z zealot (i.e. someone who was very religious). There is even some debate as to whether the capital-Z Zealots even existed as an identifiable group during the life of Jesus. They definitely existed by the AD 60s, however, because that is when they took the lead on the Jewish side of the First Jewish-Roman War.

This series goes with the theory that Simon was, in fact, a revolutionary.

The encounter between Jesus and the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda—who is anonymous in the gospel but named Jesse in this episode—follows the broad outlines of the story in John 5:1-13. However, this episode changes one or two details.

For example, the gospel says Jesus “slipped away into the crowd that was there”, but there is no crowd here—Jesus just walks away after the healing is done.

Some translations of verse 6 also say that Jesus “learned” or “realized” that the paralytic had been crippled for a long time, as though he discovered this fact after he met the man—but other translations simply say that Jesus “knew” the paralytic had been crippled for a long time. In this episode, Jesus seems to know everything in advance.

Most modern translations of John 5:1-13 are missing verse 4, which appears to have been added to the gospel centuries after it was written. In that verse, the writer claims that the invalids were waiting by the pool because an angel stirred the water from time to time—and only the first person who got into the water afterwards was healed, supposedly.

In this episode, John mentions the angel-stirring theory, but no one takes it seriously, and it is implied that the water is actually stirred by natural forces that have no particular healing power. Jesus and the others basically dismiss the pool’s alleged healing power as a pagan superstition, and Simon the Zealot explicitly challenges the idea that God would force sick or disabled people to compete with each other for a miraculous healing.

So this episode basically critiques a verse that, until only a few generations ago, would have been almost universally accepted as part of canonical scripture.

In this episode, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles.

John’s gospel does not specify which festival was taking place when Jesus healed the paralytic. It does tell us, however, of at least one occasion when Jesus did visit Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles—and it says he snuck into the city (after telling his brothers he wouldn’t be going to the festival) because people were arguing about him and some of them said he was “deceiving” people (John 7:1-13).

In this episode, the Pharisee Shmuel does some street preaching in Jerusalem and warns the people there about false teachers, which the disciples assume is a criticism of Jesus specifically, though Shmuel does not mention Jesus by name.

John reaches for his notebook when Jesus tells Jesse to pick up his mat and walk. This echoes the scene in S1E7 where John took notes while eavesdropping on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. In both cases, the series is suggesting that the gospel named after John is reporting events that John actually witnessed—and it implicitly suggests that the reliability of scripture is enhanced if it is based on notes that were written down as things happened rather than on memories someone had a few decades later.

Old Testament. This episode is set during the Feast of Tabernacles, which is also known as Sukkot. The rules for this festival are spelled out in Leviticus 23:33-43.

Big James says the Feast of Tabernacles is one of three pilgrimage holidays—the others being Passover and Pentecost—where every able-bodied Israelite male is obliged to travel to Jerusalem. The three holidays are named in Exodus 23:14-17, 34:18-23 and Deuteronomy 16:1-17, but the Israelites had not yet come to the Promised Land when those rules were given, and they had not yet taken possession of the city of Jerusalem, so instead of going to a temple there, the Israelites who first followed these rules would have gathered at the Tabernacle in the wilderness.

Notably, the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles is always treated like a Sabbath, even when it does not fall on a Saturday—but this episode indicates that, on this occasion, the first day of the Feast happens to coincide with the weekly Sabbath, as well.

Matthew asks if the Torah really forbids carrying mats on the Sabbath. John replies, “Not the Torah, the oral tradition.”

This is technically correct, though it bears mentioning that the rule against carrying things on the Sabbath was influenced by other passages in the Hebrew Bible besides the Torah. The Ten Commandments forbid working on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15), but they don’t define what they mean by “work”. Other passages give examples, though, and one of those passages—Jeremiah 17:19-27—specifically forbids the carrying of “loads” on the Sabbath day:

²¹ This is what the Lord says: Be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. ²² Do not bring a load out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your ancestors.

Later interpreters expanded on this rule by clarifying that it applied not only to carrying loads through the gates of Jerusalem or to carrying loads out of one’s house but it also applied to carrying loads into houses and into any kind of public space.

The Orthodox Union, an Orthodox Jewish organization, says on its website that carrying “is one of the few categories of work that is actually mentioned in the Torah. It is also the very first type of work that was prohibited.” It then offers some examples, and adds, “Carrying is really the prototype of all other types of Sabbath work.”

Parts of Zephaniah 3:15-20 are quoted three times in this episode.

First, we see a group of Zealots reciting a relatively straightforward translation of verses 15b-17, with the first few words of verse 18, as Simon walks past them:

¹⁵ᵇ The Lord is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil. ¹⁶ On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem: Fear not, O Zion. Let not your hands grow weak. ¹⁷ The Lord your God is in your midst. The Almighty One will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. ¹⁸ I will gather those of you who mourn…

The main difference between this version of that passage and the version in the Bible is that the biblical version of 15b identifies God as “the Lord, the King of Israel”.

Then, Simon listens to someone recite a version of 17b-20 in the Temple. This is what the reader says:

¹⁷ᵇ He will exult over you with loud singing. ¹⁸⁻²⁰ I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival, so you will no longer suffer reproach. Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors, and I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

And then, we learn that Simon quoted that last sentence in a note to his crippled brother, when he left home to join the Zealots many years ago.

Curiously, this episode has streamlined the last three verses, possibly to make them simpler, but also possibly to remove some of their more complicated messages.

Here, for example, is how the NIV translates verses 18-20:

¹⁸ “I will remove from you
all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals,
which is a burden and reproach for you.
¹⁹ At that time I will deal
with all who oppressed you.
I will rescue the lame;
I will gather the exiles.
I will give them praise and honour
in every land where they have suffered shame.
²⁰ At that time I will gather you;
at that time I will bring you home.
I will give you honour and praise
among all the peoples of the earth
when I restore your fortunes
before your very eyes,”
says the Lord.

There are three basic differences we can note here:

This episode removes the geographic references, such as “every land” in verse 19 and “at that time I will bring you home” in verse 20. It also reduces “all the peoples of the earth” to, simply, “all the earth”. Combine those changes with the deletion of “the King of Israel” in 15b, and this passage has been stripped of all its references to different nations and different ethnicities—which is very strange, given that the people quoting these verses are militant nationalists!

This episode basically takes the two references to praise and honour (or “praise and renown”), in verses 19 and 20, and reduces them to one.

And, most interestingly, this episode says God will “gather” people, as in verses 19 and 20, but it does not say that God will “remove” people, as in verse 18.

This last difference might not be a conscious change. Many translations use “gather” in all three verses, and it is possible that the writers of this series were starting with one of those translations and thought the three uses of that word were redundant, just like the two references to praise and honour. But the Hebrew word in verse 18 (āsap̄)—the one the NIV translates as “remove”—is different from the Hebrew word in verses 19 and 20 (qāḇaṣ), and evidently some translators think they communicate different things.

At any rate, the passage as a whole links the salvation of Jerusalem to the salvation of “the lame”—so the fact that Simon quoted this passage in his note to his brother tells us that Simon’s political activism is driven not just by nationalism or a desire for justice, but by his personal hope that the Messiah will come and heal his brother’s legs.

In his note, Simon the Zealot also quotes one of the Psalms by saying, “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” The line comes from Psalm 69:9, and was presumably cited in this episode because of the etymological link between “zeal” and “Zealot”.

Psalm 69:9 is also quoted in John 2:17, when the disciples see Jesus casting the moneychangers out of the Temple and are reminded of that passage.

Simon the Zealot quotes a few other passages in support of his cause:

Simon says the Law of Moses requires the expulsion of non-Jews from Jerusalem—even though the Israelites hadn’t taken Jerusalem yet during Moses’ lifetime—because Exodus 22:20 says, “Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord alone shall be devoted to destruction.” (Interestingly, the very next verse says, “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”)

Simon says he serves “El Shaddai, God of power and might, God of war.” “El” is an old Semitic word for “god”, but the meaning of “shaddai” is a matter of some debate, and could mean anything from “breasts”—the name “El Shaddai” is used a few times in Genesis when God tells people to be fruitful and multiply—to “destroyer”, which is how it seems to be used in Isaiah 13:6 and Joel 1:15. Many modern English Bibles translate “El Shaddai” as “Almighty God”.

When Jesse cites the commandment against taking someone else’s life (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17), Simon replies that there is “a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up” (Ecclesiastes 3:3).

Jesus and the disciples begin their Sabbath dinner by chanting, “Woman of valour! Who can find!” This is a quotation from Proverbs 31 that has been part of Sabbath prayers since the 17th century—only three or four hundred years ago.

(In S1E2, this series depicted people beginning their Sabbath dinner with this prayer almost three thousand years ago, which is clearly unhistorical.)

Big James quotes Zechariah 14:16, which says that all the nations that once attacked Jerusalem will go there every year to worship God during the Feast of Tabernacles.

Big James and the other disciples were discussing another passage from Zechariah 14, about God fighting the nations and splitting the Mount of Olives in two, in S2E3.

Themes. Jesus tells Jesse he doesn’t need the magic pool, he only needs Jesus.

This episode basically depicts the pool as an extension of the magical thinking that Jesse has been following all his life, ever since he lost the use of his legs. In the opening montage, we saw a shaman-like figure waving branches or bones over Jesse when he was young. Rather than live with his disability or rely on God for help, Jesse has been pursuing one technique after another to try to get his legs back.

Interestingly, this episode comes right after the episode in which people were lining up to be healed by Jesus in Syria. Did those people think of Jesus as some sort of magical problem-solver? Little James did wonder in that episode if those people were coming to Jesus only because he was useful to them. But in this episode, it is Jesus who comes to Jesse with an offer of healing, not Jesse who comes to Jesus.

Also: if the pool really is a pagan cult site, then the fact that Jesus healed someone that the pagan gods didn’t heal could be construed as a sign of his trumph over those gods.

Jesus is more intentional about provoking the Pharisees here than he has been at any point in the series so far.

He seems even more interested in going to Jerusalem to heal Jesse when he hears that Shmuel, the Pharisee who hectored him in Capernaum, is now in the city. Now he won’t just be performing a healing, he’ll be getting under Shmuel’s skin.

And when Matthew asks why Jesus didn’t wait just a few more minutes before performing the miracle—if it had happened after sundown, it wouldn’t have happened on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees wouldn’t be getting so upset—Jesus says, “Sometimes you gotta stir up the water,” and he walks away with a smirk.

Mary Magdalene asks why only the men are required to go to Jerusalem during the three pilgrimage festivals.

This ties in to a recurring theme throughout this season, which is the questioning of gender segregation in first-century Judaism. See, for example, how Mary Magdalene and Ramah talked about studying Torah like the men in S2E2.

Historical quibbles. As noted above, it is not clear that the Zealots actually existed as an identifiable group during the life of Jesus.

The Jewish historian Josephus claimed that the Zealot movement was founded in AD 6 by Judas the Galilean (cf Acts 5:37)—and he claimed that this movement was ultimately connected to the rebels who took part in the First Jewish-Roman War, which led to the destruction of the Temple over sixty years later. But modern historians question whether the two rebellions were so clearly connected, or whether there was a single active movement that spanned the six decades between those conflicts.

Either way, even if Judas did found the Zealots in AD 6, this episode seems to indicate that Simon became a Zealot even earlier than that. Jesse says he has been at the Pool of Bethesda for 25 years, and Simon left home to join the Zealots before that. Since this episode takes place in AD 26, that means Simon joined the Zealots no later than AD 1—which is five years before Josephus says the movement began.

This episode also seems to conflate the Zealots with the Sicarii, a group of Jewish assassins who used short daggers (sicae) and followed the slogan, “No Lord but God!” (That’s the phrase Simon utters when he holds a dagger to someone’s throat.) But Josephus says the Sicarii didn’t appear on the scene until the AD 50s.

When Simon leaves home to join the Zealots, he leaves a note for Jesse saying he is going to join “the Zealots of the fourth philosophy”.

It seems unlikely that the Zealots would have called themselves this. The phrase “fourth philosophy” comes from Josephus, who said there were three main “philosophies” among the Jews—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes—before Judas the Galilean founded a “fourth philosophy” known as the Zealots.

Given the Zealots’ hostility towards certain other Jewish groups, it seems unlikely that they would have self-identified as being numerically behind those groups.

John says the Pool of Bethesda has pagan roots, and Simon (not the Zealot, but the one who will eventually be nicknamed Peter) agrees: he says it used to be a shrine for the Phoenician god Eshmun, and then the Greeks and Romans turned it into a cult for Asclepius. (Both Eshmun and Asclepius were pagan gods of healing.) Simon the Zealot also says he has avoided the pool in the past because of its pagan associations.

It does appear that the pool was turned into an asclepieion, a healing facility named after Asclepius, at some point in the first century BC. Prior to that, I’m not sure. Some scholars argue that it might have been a mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath.

Notably, one of the reasons the Jews seem to have tolerated this pagan pool is because it was outside the city walls, so it was not part of the holy city of Jerusalem itself. This episode, however, shows Jesus entering the city in order to visit the pool.

Also, this episode shows Pharisees standing by the pool, despite the fact that the episode portrays the pool as a pagan place that devout Jews like the Zealots would have avoided. This is the second time this season that Pharisees have appeared in places where you wouldn’t expect them; in S2E1, there seemed to be a few of them in a Samaritan synagogue.

This episode introduces Atticus, who is identified as a member of the cohortes urbanae, a sort of police service created by the Emperor Augustus to keep order in Rome.

One character says the cohortes urbanae are “elite soldier-investigators”, though it sounds to me like they were more of a local police force separate from the Roman army—tasked with riot control and the like—and that they were not as “elite” as the Praetorian Guard, who served as the Emperor’s personal bodyguards and did do some intelligence work. Given their urban responsibilities, it is not clear to me that the cohortes urbanae ever would have worked as far away from Rome as Judea.

It is implied in this episode that figures like Atticus often work in secret, but Atticus walks up to soldiers and gives them orders, so how secret can he be?

This episode marks the first time that we have seen people crucified by the side of the road.

Notably, some of these victims are wearing clothes. Historically, the Romans crucified their victims naked, to make the experience as shameful as possible. St. Cyril of Jerusalem—who may have witnessed crucifixion himself, since he was already in his 20s when the emperor Constantine abolished the practice—wrote that early Christians were baptized in the nude partly to identify with Christ in his death.

A lot of Christian art, of course, has hidden Jesus’ nudity behind a loincloth. But some of the crucifixion victims in this episode wear a lot more than that.

Also: the victims in this episode are still on their crosses when the Sabbath comes.

When Jesus was crucified the day before the Passover Sabbath, the priests wanted the victims’ legs to be broken so that they would die more quickly and their bodies wouldn’t be on their crosses when the Sabbath began that evening (John 19:31-37).

That doesn’t seem to be a concern here. Maybe keeping the crosses empty was more important for the Passover Sabbath than it is for the Feast of Tabernacles Sabbath.

Shmuel says “over one million Jews” are coming to Jerusalem for the Feast.

This sounds impossibly huge—but it does reflect the sort of population estimates that some people would have made back then.

Josephus, for example, reports that over a million Jews were killed by the Romans during the Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, and that the number was so high because the siege coincided with Passover, when the city was filled with pilgrims.

However, modern scholars consider this number wildly inflated, and scholarly consensus puts the regular population of Jerusalem during Jesus’ lifetime somewhere between 25,000 and 75,000. A flood of one million visitors—in a city a fraction the size of Rome, which did have a million inhabitants—would have been overwhelming.

So, Shmuel is probably wrong. But The Chosen is not wrong to show him being wrong.

On a related note, Matthew at one point is on the verge of calculating how there won’t be room in Jerusalem for all the nations to come for the Feast, which a prophecy in Zechariah says they will do some day. Matthew opts not to run the numbers, in the end, but one wonders what sort of figures he would have started with.

The Zealots are plotting to murder a Roman magistrate who “goes to his favourite restaurant” with his wife every Saturday night. Atticus even gets a hardboiled line of dialogue to the effect that the Zealots are planning to “cancel” the magistrate’s “reservation”.

This seems woefully anachronistic. For starters, in the ancient Roman empire, taverns and other restaurant-like facilities were the domain of the lower classes, including prostitutes, and it was considered unseemly for the nobility to go there. Fine dining took place in private homes and social clubs.

But even if the magistrate was willing to take his wife to a public eating establishment, it seems highly unlikely that he or anyone else would have made “reservations” there. If you couldn’t phone ahead, how would you make one? Send a messenger? How many people would be able to afford servants for such minor tasks? Would the restaurant have a maître d’ handling the reservations? Etc., etc., etc.

As Shmuel is preparing to do some street preaching, his fellow Pharisee Yanni recites the Birkat haGomel, which Shmuel identifies as a prayer for life-threatening situations.

It’s my understanding that the prayer in question is an expression of gratitude that one makes after one has survived such situations—though I suppose there’s no reason it couldn’t also be used in anticipation of such situations. It is also not clear to me that this prayer existed before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.

Shmuel, for his part, ends up praying the Ha'tov ve'hametiv (“Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, who is good and does good”).

Simon the Zealot was apparently born by C-section, or Caesarean section, after the death of his mother. (Knives were part of his life long before he held a dagger.)

C-sections were indeed performed on dead or dying women in the first century BC.

Geography. Jesse says the Upper City in Jerusalem is less than a mile from the Pool of Bethesda. This is true; Google Maps says it’s just a little more than half a mile.

The Upper City was known for its wealth, and was home to priestly families and other members of the Jewish elite. If Jerusalem did, in fact, have food establishments for the middle and upper classes, then it makes sense that they would be here.

Jesus and the disciples left Capernaum on a journey south to Jerusalem in S1E8, but paused for a few days in Samaria, and then turned right around and went north to Syria in S2E2. Now they have turned around again and finished the journey south to Jerusalem—and it apparently took them much, much longer than they originally anticipated. (See ‘Timeline’ below.)

Miracles. This entire episode builds up to the healing of Jesse.

Jesse is the fourth cripple to be healed in the series so far, and the second who is based on a character in the Bible. Jesus previously healed the paralytic who was let down through the roof in S1E6, and cripples were healed remotely in ‘The Shepherd’ and S2E1.

The way Jesse dances after his healing is reminiscent of the “ex-leper” who keeps flexing his limbs in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, or the cripple who dances in defiance of the religious authorities after he is healed by Peter and John in The Bible Collection’s Paul the Apostle (as per the story in Acts 3:1-10).

Timeline. This episode is set during the Feast of Tabernacles, which happens during the month of Tishrei on the Jewish calendar, which corresponds to September or October in our own calendars.

From a continuity point of view, there is one huge problem with the fact that this episode takes place at this time of year: Matthew established in S2E1 that the events of Season 1 took place in the month of Adar, which corresponds to February or March in our own calendars. And the first three episodes of Season 2 took place in the days immediately after that, so those episodes probably took place in March as well.

That means six or seven months have passed between the previous episode and this one—six or seven months that would have included the other two “pilgrimage festivals”, Passover and Pentecost, as well as other major feasts like Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the latter of which takes place only five days before the Feast of Tabernacles.

And yet, there has been no mention of any of those festivals in this series.

We do know that Jesus and his followers left Capernaum with the intention of arriving in Jerusalem just three days later, as per S1E8. We also know that this is the first time the group has actually been to Jerusalem, because Mary Magdalene says she’s never been there before—so that rules out the possibility that they’ve made other visits to Jerusalem between that episode and this one.

So either their three-day walking trip turned into a six-month journey—not impossible, given how they paused for a few days in Samaria, then turned around and went in the opposite direction towards Syria in S2E2 before coming back down to Jerusalem in this episode, with who knows what other digressions and side-trips in the interim—or this series has simply lost track of the calendar.

Jesse has been crippled for 38 years. This episode takes place in AD 26, so the scene in which Jesse loses the use of his legs must take place in 13 BC (or 12 BC, if you assume—incorrectly—that there is a Year Zero between 1 BC and AD 1, as this show sometimes seems to do).

Jesse says he has been at the Pool of Bethesda for 25 years, so he’s been there since AD 1.

Simon was born very soon after Jesse lost the use of his legs—he says he’s “almost 40”—and he hasn’t seen Jesse since before Jesse moved to the Pool of Bethesda. So Simon must have left home to join the Zealots when he was no more than 13 years old—but he seems a bit older than that in the prologue.

Simon’s current Zealot instructor says he has been training Simon for three years, so he’s been training Simon since AD 23.

Language issues. Some more modern-sounding phrases pop up in the dialogue:

Jesus says he and the disciples have to pass a “checkpoint” outside Jerusalem.

Simon the Zealot’s instructor says he will be “briefed on the Roman’s movements”. “Brief” is an English noun that started to be used as a verb in the 19th century.

Atticus calls the Zealot recruits “marks”, a term that signifies the victims of a dishonest game or a confidence trick.

When Atticus disguises himself as the magistrate and takes the magistrate’s wife to the “restaurant”, he says something and she replies, “Don’t push it.”

Attics says Zealots are “martyrs with a persecution complex”. There are two problems with this phrase that go beyond simple questions of idiom or vocabulary; the phrase basically imposes modern concepts on Atticus’s way of thinking:

“Martyr” is a Greek word meaning “witness” that originally referred to anyone who saw something and described what they saw, such as when they gave testimony in a court of law; that is how the word is usually used in the original Greek version of the New Testament. But eventually the word came to be associated with religious believers who proved their “witness” by dying for their faith. That is the meaning that Atticus seems to intend here, but I don’t believe it had acquired that meaning yet when this episode takes place.

Also, “complexes” are a psychoanalytic concept that emerged in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in the early 20th century. I’m not sure anyone in the first century, Jewish or Roman, would have thought in such terms.

Also, see ‘Historical quibbles’ above re: the anachronism of “canceling reservations” at a “restaurant” in first-century Jerusalem. That, too, goes beyond mere vocabulary; it reflects assumptions about social and cultural practices, as well.

Someone asks if the cohortes urbanae are like “secret police”, and someone else says, “More like marshals.” The word “marshal” comes from an early medieval French word for stable boys and is now used for everything from local law enforcement to the highest military rank in some countries, so I don’t know what the word is supposed to signify here.

Finally—and this isn’t a language issue, per se—but when Matthew asks why Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, Jesus replies, “Sometimes you gotta stir up the water.” The use of “you gotta” rather than “you’ve got to” or some such phrase gives the line a distinctly slang-y, modern vibe.

Miscellaneous. The previous episode had no prologue at all. This episode has the longest prologue yet—almost a solid nine minutes. (Only the prologue to S2E1, which runs a little over eight minutes, comes close.)

This episode’s prologue is also notable for having no dialogue, and for using jump cuts to suggest the passage of time as it covers the entire 38-year period that Jesse has lived without the use of his legs. Along the way, we also see how Jesse’s brother Simon became a radicalized Zealot. (Some have compared this sequence to similarly long, dialogue-free montages like the one that spans an elderly couple’s entire marriage in Pixar’s Up.)

This is another example of how The Chosen has been playing with form this season, following the flash-forward to the book of Acts in S2E1 and the 13½-minute opening shot in S2E3. It also highlights one of the advantages of dramatizing the gospels in an episodic format; if a regular movie had tried to include the healing by the Pool of Bethesda, it almost certainly couldn’t have set aside a whole nine minutes to give you a sense of how long the paralytic had been waiting to be healed. But a series like this can focus an episode on a specific character and dig into his or her story.

For some reason it’s not enough for the Zealots to plot the death of a Roman magistrate. They also want the death to somehow cast suspicion on the high priest Caiaphas. We are told that Caiaphas has publicly resisted the Romans, but his resistance is only “for show” and the Romans don’t know that, so if the magistrate is killed, it will… somehow implicate Caiaphas? Not sure I follow the logic there.

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 | eight
Season 2: The Messengers review | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | The Messengers
Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2 notes | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight

The Chosen can be streamed via VidAngel or the show’s app (Android | Apple).

The episode premiered in a livestream on May 11, 2021, but the video is no longer on YouTube. A clip of the healing by the Pool of Bethesda is now online, however:

Director Dallas Jenkins and his religious consultants discussed whether the show “got the Pool of Bethesda wrong”:

Jenkins also posted a “reaction video” responding to comments about the episode:

TV show recaps:
Prophet Joseph | The Bible | A.D. The Bible Continues | Of Kings and Prophets

Movie scene guides:
Risen | The Young Messiah | Paul, Apostle of Christ | Mary Magdalene

Thoughts and Spoilers

Discussion about this post