The Chosen – season two, episode one

Some notes on the sources, themes, and other aspects of the episode ‘Thunder’.

Jul 06, 2022

Season 2, Episode 1 — ‘Thunder’
Mark 3; Luke 9; John 4

Synopsis. In the early AD 40s, the disciples are mourning the death of Big James. John decides he needs to write an account of Jesus’ life before more disciples die, so that the things Jesus said and did won’t be forgotten. In AD 26, Jesus is teaching the crowds in Samaria. Big James and John begin to assert their authority over the other disciples, much to the annoyance of Simon. Thomas and Ramah arrive in Samaria and join the disciples. Jesus heals a lame Samaritan whose past misdeeds may have inspired one of Jesus’ parables. Jesus and the disciples then spend the night at Photina’s home. Big James and John ask Jesus to call fire down from heaven on some Samaritans who threw stones at them, but Jesus chastises the two disciples instead. A Samaritan priest asks Jesus to speak at the local synagogue. John listens as Jesus reads from the opening verses of Genesis. In the AD 40s, as John thinks back on all these things, he bases the opening verses of his gospel on those verses from Genesis.

Gospels. Like the very first episode of the series, which depicted the exorcism of Mary Magdalene, this episode does not dramatize any major stories from the gospels but, instead, expands on details that are mentioned only in passing in the gospels.

These include: Jesus and his followers spending a few days in Samaria (John 4:39-42); Jesus rebuking James and John, the sons of Zebedee, for wanting to call fire down from heaven against some Samaritans (Luke 9:51-56); and Jesus giving James and John the nickname “sons of thunder” (which in Aramaic is Boanerges; Mark 3:17).

This episode does not merely expand on its source passages; it revises them, too.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is planning to stay at a Samaritan village on his way to Jerusalem, so he sends messengers ahead of him to get things ready—but the villagers do not welcome him, so he goes to a different village instead. According to Luke, this refusal to show hospitality is why James and John want to destroy the Samaritans.

But in this episode, Jesus and his followers are already enjoying the hospitality of the entire city of Sychar, and James and John merely want to destroy a few people on the road who throw stones at them outside of the city. So within this episode, James and John are reacting to greater hostility that is expressed by fewer people.

Also, John’s gospel says Jesus stayed in Sychar for “two days”, but this episode seems to show him staying there longer. See ‘Timeline’ below for more on that.

The episode is framed by scenes set in the future, when John is writing his gospel.

The gospel named after John never quite mentions him by name—the closest it gets is a reference to “the sons of Zebedee” in John 21:2—but it does say that it was written by “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20-24), who has traditionally been identified as John. So in the prologue to this episode, as John is preparing to write his gospel, he says of Jesus, “I was in his inmost circle. He loved me.”

A major theme in this episode is the jockeying for status among the disciples, as James and John in particular make a point of trying to set the agenda for everyone else.

This is consistent with the characterization of the disciples in the gospels.

Mark’s gospel says James and John asked Jesus to exalt them above the other disciples, by seating one of them at his right hand and the other at his left (Mark 10:35-45). Matthew’s gospel says it was the mother of James and John who asked Jesus to do this (Matthew 20:20-28). Both gospels agree that James and John (or their mother) made this request after Jesus had already appointed his twelve core disciples, and that the other ten disciples became “indignant” when they heard about the request.

The disciples also argued among themselves over who was the greatest. Sometimes they tried to hide their arguments from Jesus (Mark 9:33-37; cf Luke 9:46-48); sometimes they asked Jesus who was the greatest (Matthew 18:1-5); and sometimes they argued about it right in front of Jesus—even at the Last Supper (Luke 22:24)!

In light of all this, the fact that the John of this series keeps talking about how Jesus loved him, years after Jesus’ ministry ended, would seem to indicate that he never quite stopped jockeying for position, even when he was writing his gospel.

John’s comment that he was part of Jesus’ “inmost circle” does have a basis in the gospels, though. On several occasions, Jesus gives special jobs or privileges to just a few of his disciples—and John always seems to be one of them:

Jesus invites Peter, James, and John to join him when he visits the home of Jairus (Mark 5:37, Luke 8:51);
Jesus invites Peter, James, and John to witness the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2, Matthew 17:1, Luke 9:28);
Jesus speaks to Peter, James, John, and Andrew privately when prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem (Mark 13:3-4);
Jesus asks Peter and John to make preparations for the Passover (Luke 22:8-13); and
Jesus asks Peter, James, and John to accompany him when he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33, Matthew 26:37).

This central role that John played in the Church, usually in tandem with Simon Peter, continued for some time after Jesus’ ministry (Acts 3-4, 8:14-25; Galatians 2:9).

The framing narrative quotes both the opening and closing words of John’s gospel.

The opening words of the gospel actually appear at the end of the episode, as John decides to start his gospel by echoing the opening words of Genesis, and the episode cross-cuts between Jesus reading Genesis 1:1-3 and John reciting John 1:1-5.

Meanwhile, the closing words of the gospel appear at the beginning of the episode, when Mary says that the world itself doesn’t have enough room for all the books that could be written about the things Jesus did, and John says he’ll use that line (John 21:25).

John says, “The Greeks use ‘Word’ to describe divine reason—what gives the world form and meaning.” It is on this basis that his gospel says “the Word” is God.

The Greek word for “Word” is Logos, and its use as a word for divine reason goes back to Greek philosophers like Plato, who lived in the 4th century BC.

This concept was picked up by Philo, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt before, during, and after the life of Jesus (circa 20 BC-AD 50), and who identified the Logos with the Angel of the Lord—an ambiguous figure from the Old Testament who sometimes seems to be identical to God and sometimes seems to be a messenger of God’s.

So John’s gospel, by asserting that Jesus was the Logos—a person who is both distinct from God and identical to him—is extending this Jewish appropriation of Greek philosophy to one of the core concepts of Christian theology.

John is interviewing the other disciples as research for his book, and Mary asks why he’s working on a book when Matthew is already planning to write one of his own. John replies that Matthew is “only writing about what he saw, and about what Jesus told him directly. But I was there for things that Matthew doesn’t know about.”

It’s a curious set-up, as some of the stories that the disciples tell John, such as the one about Mary Magdalene’s exorcism (Luke 8:2) or the one about the miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11)—the latter of which, as Simon notes, John took part in himself—do not appear in John’s gospel.

Also, most scholars would argue that Matthew’s gospel actually has very little eyewitness testimony, if any, as a lot of it seems to be copied from Mark and other sources.

John says he doesn’t want to put the genealogy of Jesus in his gospel because he’s pretty sure Matthew is planning to include a genealogy in his gospel.

Sure enough, Matthew’s gospel begins with a genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17).

One of the disciples interviewed by John is someone we have never seen before.

The disciple in question is Nathanael, who says he met Jesus through Philip, an event that will be depicted in the next episode (as per John 1:45-51).

In the prologue, set in the future, John calls Mary “mother”, and she calls him “son”.

It’s a striking exchange, because we’ve never really seen them interact before. (They were both at the wedding in Cana in S1E5, but did they speak to each other?)

However, their familiarity, even intimacy, reflects the fact that Jesus, when he was on the cross, told the beloved disciple—traditionally believed to be John—to look after Mary, and he told them they would be “mother” and “son” to each other (John 19:26-27). So the prologue shows them several years after they “adopted” each other.

It will be interesting to see how the series develops the relationship between John and Mary between the early days of Jesus’ ministry and the moment of their “adoption”.

Surprisingly little of Jesus’ dialogue comes from the gospels in this episode. We hear him say two things during his preaching to the Samaritans:

First, he says God pursues the sick more than the healthy, which is very similar to something he said in S1E8.

On that occasion, Jesus was speaking to hostile Pharisees outside Matthew’s house (as per Mark 2:17, Matthew 9:12, Luke 5:31)—that is, he was speaking to people who assumed that they were “healthy”, and that people like Matthew were “sick”. But on this occasion, Jesus is speaking to a friendly crowd of Samaritans.

Then, Jesus tells the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:12-14, Luke 15:3-7)—but he does not simply tell it outright, he improvises it with a shepherd in the crowd.

Jesus alludes to this parable again later in the episode, when he explains why he is reaching out to Melech, a Samaritan with a criminal past. Sometimes, he says, a shepherd will leave the ninety-nine sheep to find the one who is lost.

Incidentally, this episode’s version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep is closer to Luke’s version of the parable than Matthew’s.

In Matthew, Jesus tells the parable after his disciples—who always seem to be competing for status—ask him who is greatest within the Kingdom of Heaven; Jesus tells them the parable to emphasize that God loves all of his people, even “the little ones”.

In Luke, on the other hand, Jesus tells the parable to Pharisees and others who complain that he is eating with “sinners” who are outside the religious community, and he emphasizes how the shepherd celebrates with his friends when the lost sheep is found.

In this episode, Jesus is not speaking to his disciples or to the Pharisees when he tells this parable—instead, he is speaking to a friendly crowd of Samaritan strangers—but the intended meaning of the parable, and the part that emphasizes the shepherd’s celebration, go back to Luke.

Jesus says he has “a very warm place in my heart for shepherds.”

Shepherds, of course, are a recurring motif throughout the Bible. Just within the gospels, the birth of Jesus was celebrated by shepherds (Luke 2:8-20), and Jesus calls himself “the Good Shepherd” (John 10:1-18). Jesus also bears the messianic title “son of David”, and David was a shepherd before he was king (I Samuel 16:11, 19; 17:15, 34-35).

This episode also indicates that the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) might not be fiction, but might be based on something that actually happened. Specifically, this episode “reveals” that Melech, the lame Samaritan who is eventually healed by Jesus, was one of the bandits in that story.

This is curious, as it means the victim in that story was attacked by bad Samaritans before he was rescued by a good Samaritan. If Jesus told the parable, in part, to challenge the negative stereotypes of Samaritans that some of his followers had, is the point of the parable undermined if there are bad Samaritans in the story? Is it diluted at all if the bad Samaritans in the story outnumber the one good Samaritan?

One also wonders how far out of their way a couple of Samaritan bandits would have had to go to rob someone on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, when they could have robbed someone closer to home, where it would have been easier to hide.

A few other sayings of Jesus’ are alluded to in this episode.

Mary and John quote Jesus’ statement that “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Mark 13:31, Matthew 24:35, Luke 21:33).

Jesus says John will one day be given authority “to do the things I do, even greater.” This sounds like a prediction of the distant future, but it shouldn’t. The biblical Jesus gave his disciples—not just the Twelve, but also the Seventy-Two—“authority” to heal people during his ministry (Mark 3:14-15, 6:7; Matthew 10:1; Luke 9:1-2, 10:17-20).

When James asks Jesus where the disciples can find him, Jesus replies, “Seek, and you will find” (Matthew 7:7-8, Luke 11:9-10). Simon calls this one of Jesus’ “riddles”.

Jesus tells James and John, “We’re here to plant seeds, not to burn bridges.” The planting of seeds is the central metaphor in the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:2-20, Matthew 13:3-23, Luke 8:4-15).

Jesus asks, “Who is worthy of anything?” John says, “You, but no man, apparently.” Jesus replies, “I’m a man, John. And yet, I am who I am.”

The idea that only Jesus is worthy of anything may be a nod to the biblical Jesus’ response when someone addressed him as “Good teacher”: “Why do you call me good? No one is good, except God alone” (Mark 10:17-18, Luke 18:18-19).

The line “I am who I am” has echoes of the moment when God revealed his name to Moses (Exodus 3:14), which the biblical Jesus echoed when he said, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58; cf also Jesus’ use of “I am who I am” in John 13:19).

Mary comments on how John feels the need to talk about Jesus’ love for him, and she contrasts this with how she keeps her own unique relationship to Jesus to herself, saying, “I prefer to treasure these things in my heart.”

That line is a nod to the passages which say that Mary “treasured” and “pondered” things in her heart when Jesus was young and growing up (Luke 2:19, 51).

Jesus says he is “sowing seeds” in Samaria “that will have a lasting impact for lifetimes.”

It’s not clear just how much of a presence the Jesus movement had in Samaria during his ministry. While John’s gospel does say that Jesus was well-received by the people of Sychar, the other gospels indicate he sometimes made a point of not going too deeply into Samaritan territory (Luke 17:11), and they even say he told his disciples to avoid Samaritan villages when he sent them out to preach (Matthew 10:5).

The Church did spread in Samaria eventually, but the book of Acts seems to indicate that the growth there happened well after the Ascension (Acts 1:8, 8:1-25, 9:31, 15:3).

This episode marks the first time we have seen Jesus or the disciples in a synagogue—and it’s a Samaritan synagogue.

As I noted in my recap of S1E7, the gospels often say that Jesus taught in the synagogues and performed miracles there (e.g. Mark 1:21-28, 38-39, 3:1, 6:2; Matthew 4:34, 9:35, 12:9, 13:54; Luke 4:14-37, 43-44, 6:6, 13:10-17; John 6:59), but the series has tended to depict the synagogues as the exclusive domain of the judgmental Pharisees.

So it’s interesting that, the first time the series shows Jesus going into a synagogue, it is a synagogue populated by a group that has been excluded from Jewish circles.

When someone says that Jesus isn’t afraid of ghosts, Andrew replies, “I might be.”

As it happens, the biblical disciples were afraid that Jesus himself was a ghost on at least two occasions: when they saw him walking on the water (Mark 6:49, Matthew 14:26; cf John 6:19), and when they saw him after he rose from the dead (Luke 24:37-39).

The Acts of the Apostles. This episode’s framing narrative takes place while John and the others are mourning the death of John’s brother James, as per Acts 12:2. That makes this the first episode to have any scenes that are set after the gospels.

Interestingly, there are a number of things that happened in the book of Acts before the death of James that this framing narrative could have mentioned, but doesn’t.

For example, Acts 8:14-25 says John was one of two apostles, along with Peter, who went to Samaria to bring the Holy Spirit to the people who had been baptized by Philip, a deacon fleeing Saul’s persecution of the early Church. It could have been interesting to compare and contrast the two visits John made to Samaria.

Also, King Herod Agrippa I executed James as part of a wider persecution of the Church, and he arrested Peter and nearly executed him soon after killing James (Acts 12:1-19)—but none of the apostles seem to be worried for their safety in this episode. Peter, the apostle who used to be known as Simon, is even cracking jokes about John the Baptist (who, come to think of it, was also killed by one of the Herods).

Old Testament. Jesus taunts John with stories about people losing their temper in the scriptures—though some of the examples he cites are easier to defend than others.

He specifically mentions:

Moses striking the rock instead of speaking to it as God instructed him to (Numbers 20:1-13);
Balaam hitting his donkey (Numbers 22:21-35);
Moses breaking the tablets of the law (Exodus 32:19);
Jonathan storming away from the dinner table after his father tried to kill him (I Samuel 20:34); and
Samson killing the men of Ashkelon to settle a bet at his wedding (Judges 14:19).

One could plausibly argue that Jonathan, at least, was acting in self-defense, and that the anger in at least some of these cases was righteous, like that of God himself.

As noted above, Jesus reads Genesis 1:1-3 aloud in the Samaritan synagogue.

Jesus also quotes Psalm 33:6 (“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made”) and says the quote comes from David, which is true according to the Greek Septuagint translation of the Psalms but is never specified in the original Hebrew version of the Psalms.

Jesus and John discuss the fact that the Samaritans count only the five books of Moses in their canon. Jesus and John don’t discuss the fact that the Samaritans use a different version of the five books of Moses than Jews (and, thus, Christians) do.

Given that the biblical Jesus did assert the truth of Jewish tradition over Samaritan tradition (John 4:22), one wonders if Jesus would have avoided reciting any passages in the synagogue that disagreed with the Jewish version of those passages.

Or perhaps he would have avoided reciting anything from the Samaritan Pentateuch altogether, lest he appear to be endorsing its contents as a whole?

Themes. As noted above, one of the major themes in this episode is the rivalry between the disciples, as they seek positions of authority or privilege within Jesus’ circle.

The primary focus of this episode is the rivalry between the sons of Zebedee and everyone else, especially Simon—but it is also implied that some form of rivalry could emerge between Matthew and Thomas, both of whom are good with numbers.

In the prologue, which is set roughly 15 years after the events of this series, John is still talking about how Jesus “loved” him. Jesus’ mother Mary pushes back against this a bit by replying, “He loved all of you. You just feel the need to talk about it more often.”

Jesus says he is “sowing seeds that will have a lasting impact for lifetimes.”

The makers of this series have often talked about the “impact” that they hope it will have on its viewers. The way Jesus uses that word here, it feels a bit like some of the promotional rhetoric surrounding the series has bled into the series itself.

Jesus makes several other thematic points in this episode:

He tells Ramah’s father, “I ask a lot of those who follow me, but I ask little of those who do not.”
Melech’s wife says her father told her the Messiah would bring an end to pain and suffering. Jesus manages expectations, as it were, by drawing a distinction between the Kingdom of Heaven, which is “not of this world”, and the broken hearts and bodies that will continue to populate this world.
He says Jews “tell and listen to stories. Our stories connect us.”
He tells James he didn’t correct Photina’s husband’s belief about ghosts because “I don’t address everything at once with new converts.”

Historical quibbles. Jesus recites the Modeh Ani, a Jewish morning prayer that does not appear in the rabbinic literature until the 16th century.

Andrew says Jewish and Samaritan purity laws both require people to stay at least four cubits away from a leper. That law is not in the Hebrew Bible, but at least two rabbis from the 3rd century AD did say it was forbidden to walk less than four cubits or one hundred cubits to the east of a leper, depending on whether a wind was blowing at the time.

Matthew says Jesus and his followers will need to reach an average of “eighty-three point three three three three” people per hour to reach “approximately two thousand” men in two days, to which Simon replies, “What’s point-three-three of a man, Matthew?”

First-century Jews didn’t measure fractions this way. Decimal fractions were first introduced in the Muslim world in the Middle Ages, and to this day different cultures disagree on whether to separate integers from fractions with a “point” (as in most English-speaking countries) or a comma (as in most other countries).

It is also not clear why Matthew would be so extremely precise with the fraction when he started with an approximate number of men (not counting women and children).

There appear to be Pharisees in the Samaritan synagogue. This seems unlikely.

The disciples talk about “appointments” and the “schedule” they think Jesus should keep. This sounds like modern to-the-minute office management, and not like how most people would have planned their activities in rural first-century Palestine.

Photina gives Simon a message written on a scroll with shiny rods. The rods seem a little elaborate for a simple invitation to dinner.

When Jesus and the disciples arrive at Photina’s house, Peter says, “This is the address I was given.” Did houses have “addresses” in the pre-modern world?

Jesus calls Photina’s husband a “new convert”.

It is questionable whether any of Jesus’ followers would have thought of themselves as “converts”. Jesus was Jewish, and most of the people who followed him during his ministry were Jewish, so presumably they all thought of themselves as fellow members of a sect within first-century Judaism. Christianity had not yet become a separate religion.

But the fact that Photina and her husband are Samaritans, with a different set of scriptures and a different set of beliefs, complicates things. The biblical Jesus does affirm that some of Photina’s Samaritan beliefs are wrong, but he also says a time is coming when “true worshippers” will transcend those differences (John 4:19-24).

So: if Photina and her husband are “converts”, what have they converted to? Did they have to become Jewish to become followers of Jesus? Or was it possible to stay Samaritan while following a man whose claim to be Messiah was rooted in Jewish beliefs, and not in whatever Samaritans believe about the Messiah?

The scroll that Jesus reads from appears to have been written with modern Hebrew letters—also known as the “square script” or “block script” alphabet—but the Samaritan Pentateuch would have been written in the “Samaritan script”.

The episode shows John beginning to write his gospel in the immediate aftermath of Big James’s martyrdom in the AD 40s, only 15 years or so after Jesus’ ministry.

Most scholars would argue that John’s gospel was written quite a bit later, maybe even as late as the AD 90s, and probably after the other three gospels had been written.

Irenaeus of Lyon—a 2nd-century bishop who was a disciple of Polycarp’s, who in turn was a disciple of John’s—claims in Against Heresies that John wrote his gospel while he was living in Ephesus at the end of his life, and that John called Jesus the Logos, or “the Word”, specifically to refute the teachings of a heretic named Cerinthus, who was also living in Ephesus at the time (Against Heresies 3.4, 3.11).

Geography. Thomas, Ramah, and Ramah’s father Kafni debate which route they should take to get through hostile Samaritan territory to Sychar.

Thomas says his map tells them to go south along the east side of the mountains, and he says they can’t keep going to the west because that route will take them to the particularly hostile city of Sebaste.

Kafni, however, says it would be faster to go between Mt Gerizim and Mt Ebal.

I’m not quite sure what sense to make of this conversation, as the two mountains are on opposite sides of a valley, and Balata—the modern name for ancient Sychar—is on the eastern side of that valley, while Sebaste is a roughly three-hour walk northwest of all those locations. It seems like Thomas and company would have to walk around Mt Ebal either way; the question is whether to walk around the western side, which would bring them closer to Sebaste without necessarily taking them all the way there, or around the eastern side, which might be more direct in any case.

And just to complicate things even more: Ramah says the road going south to Sychar also goes further south to Shiloh, but when you ask Google for walking directions from Sychar (or Balata, its modern name) to Shiloh, it suggests walking to the west, i.e. back up the valley in the direction of Sebaste, before turning to the south.

So the episode suggests that Thomas and company have to choose between (a) walking south towards Shiloh, and (b) walking through the valley to the west, between Mt Gerizim and Mt Ebal—but in reality the route to Shiloh may run through that valley.

After robbing their Jewish victim on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, Melech says his friend was going to sell the goods they stole to palm traders in Anathoth, which is a town a few miles north of Jerusalem, on the side facing Jericho. So that fits.

Miracles. The only miracle performed in this episode is fictitious rather than biblical.

It is also very similar to the fictitious miracle in the Nativity-themed pilot episode: Melech wakes up to discover that his leg healed overnight while he was sleeping, just as the shepherd in the pilot episode was healed spontaneously when he went to tell people that the Messiah had just been born.

Strikingly, Jesus is not only far away when Melech is healed; he also seems to be asleep. The episode cuts straight from Melech discovering that his leg has been healed to a shot of Jesus opening his eyes in bed, and smiling.

It is possible that Jesus was awake and simply closed his eyes to perform the healing, but the episode is at least ambiguous on this point.

John expresses amazement that Jesus can perform miracles from a distance.

The biblical Jesus performed at least three such miracles:

when he exorcised the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Mark 7:24-30, Matthew 15:21-28);
when he healed the centurion’s servant (Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10); and
when he healed the royal official’s son (John 4:46-54).

In all of those cases, though, someone asked Jesus to heal someone else, and he told them the healing would happen, and then they confirmed it afterwards.

Humanization. Jesus’ mannerisms and activities are once again designed to make him look and feel fairly down-to-Earth. He winks at Melech in the synagogue, he whistles approvingly when he sees the field that James and John have plowed, and so on.

The first time we see Jesus, he is fixing someone’s cart, like a good carpenter—and he is lying on the ground, underneath the cart, like an auto mechanic lying under a car.

Jesus also admits to Kafni that he does not necessarily know what it means to send a daughter away with strangers, because he, Jesus, is not a father himself.

And there is humour: Jesus cracks a joke about bandits on the road, after hearing Melech’s confession, and then says, “Too soon?” And when Photina’s husband says one of his rooms is haunted by a dead grandmother, Jesus says, “Oh, I’ll take that one!”

Timeline. John’s gospel says Jesus and his followers spent “two days” in Sychar, and the disciples in this episode say that that’s what they’re doing, too.

But the episode might show them staying longer than that.

First, we are told that Jesus has been preaching in town since dawn—so presumably this episode begins the day after the day the disciples first arrived at the town.

Then, after a night’s sleep, the disciples spend the day at Melech’s place. That would be the second day after they met Photina.

Then, after another night’s sleep—this time at Photina’s house—Jesus and the disciples go to a Samaritan synagogue. This would be the third day after they met Photina.

You could argue, I suppose, that they spent only two full days in Sychar. But even if they leave right after visiting the synagogue, they still would have spent roughly three 24-hour periods in Sychar, or even four “days” if you count the partial days as “days”.

Matthew tells John he first encountered Jesus on “the fourth morning of the third week of Adar.”

It is not clear whether Matthew is referring to the first time he saw Jesus (when he witnessed the miracle of the fish in S1E4) or the first time he spoke to Jesus (when Jesus called him from his booth at the end of S1E7, roughly one week later).

The fact that the fourth day of the week would have been a Wednesday doesn’t necessarily clear things up.

Matthew certainly spoke to Jesus on a Wednesday, because they left Capernaum one day after Jesus called him from his booth, and Jesus said in S1E7 that he would be leaving Capernaum on “the fifth day”, i.e. Thursday.

But it is also possible that Matthew saw Jesus on a Wednesday, because the miracle of the fish happened two days before “the Sabbath”—and it is not clear whether the person who said that in S1E4 was looking ahead to Friday night or Saturday morning.

Incidentally, the feast of Purim—which commemorates the events described in the book of Esther—takes place on the 14th day of Adar. So if Matthew saw or met Jesus in the third week of that month, it would seem that the bulk of Season 1 took place around that feast. The feast might have even happened between episodes S1E5 and S1E6.

Thomas joins the disciples at the end of Jesus’ first full day of preaching in Sychar.

Thomas first met Jesus and the disciples at the wedding in Cana, in S1E5, and Jesus told Thomas to meet them in Samaria 12 days later. So it is now 12 days later.

The wedding in Cana took place two days before a Sabbath, so Thomas is presumably arriving in Sychar three days after the subsequent Sabbath.

Three days after the Sabbath would be a Tuesday. Working back from this, it would seem that the day before this—when Jesus met Photina by the well, in S1E8—was a Monday. But the dialogue in that episode, where Jesus and the disciples leave Capernaum on a Thursday and plan to get to Jerusalem just three days later, seemed to indicate that Jesus must have met Photina no later than a Saturday.

Language issues. There are lots of modern-sounding idioms in the dialogue, some of them more obviously anachronistic than others. A sampling:

Andrew says John the Baptist “freaked out” when he saw Jesus.
John says he’ll add a “disclaimer” to his gospel.
James tells John, “We lucked out,” then adds, “Don’t quit your day job.”
Jesus proposes a course of action to Ramah’s father, and says, “Sound good? … It’s a plan!”
Andrew says Jesus gave them an errand “and said ‘Come with’.”
Simon, referring to Jesus, says, “Let’s leave it to the boss.”
A wine merchant tells Simon, “It’s on the house.”
Melech asks why Jesus had his disciples plant some crops for Melech: “What’s the catch? … You don’t know me from Adam. … I don’t have any money. I can’t make a donation to your ministry.” Jesus replies, “We’ve got that covered.”
Jesus, after cracking his joke about bandits on the road: “Too soon?”
Jesus, exasperated by the disciples’ concerns for his security, says, “Enough with the protection!”
Thomas says he won’t join the other disciples in a vote because he’s the “new guy”.
John says he’s “not okay” with losing track of Jesus’ whereabouts.
Jesus tells James and John, “We’re here to plant seeds, not to burn bridges.”

There is also a scene in which someone asks if Jesus called James and John “planners” or only “planters” of literal crops—a play on words that only works in English.

Miscellaneous. This is the first episode of The Chosen to have a prologue set after the events of the episode, rather than before. (Five of the first season’s eight episodes had prologues that took place years or even centuries before the episodes proper.)

Also, by introducing Nathanael in this prologue, this episode marks the first time The Chosen has used a flash-forward to introduce a character from the gospels before we have met him but after all of the biblical stories about him have taken place. The series will do this again in ‘The Messengers’, when it introduces Lazarus during the time of Acts.

At 65 minutes, this is the longest episode of The Chosen to date.

Every episode in Season 1 was between 30 minutes and 61 minutes, with an average length of 47 minutes. The shortest episode in Season 2 will be 38 minutes, and the episodes throughout the season will have an average length of 50 minutes.

Series creator Dallas Jenkins notes in one of his videos that there is an unintentional parallel of sorts between the fact that he had to find a new actor to play James this season and the fact that the season begins with the disciples mourning the death of James.

The parallel may go even further than that.

James the son of Zebedee was one of the three apostles who were closest to Jesus, along with John and Simon Peter. Jesus keeps the three of them particularly close to him

while visiting the home of Jairus (Mark 5:37, Luke 8:51),
before experiencing the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2, Matthew 17:1, Luke 9:28), and
before praying in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33, Matthew 26:37).

But after the son of Zebedee is executed (Acts 12:2), James the brother of Jesus emerges as a significant leader within the Jerusalem church (Acts 12:17, 15:13-21, 21:18-25).

Not only that, but Paul writes that James the brother of Jesus was regarded as one of the “pillars” of the early Church, along with Peter and John (Galatians 2:9).

So you could argue that one James replaced another within the Big Three, too.

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).

This episode was also livestreamed on April 4, 2021, with an intro by director Dallas Jenkins; the episode itself begins at the 23:10 mark:

There is also a clip of Jesus giving James and John their nickname:

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

Also, in a livestream on May 11, 2020, Jenkins previewed the part of the script in which Jesus gives James and John their nickname (he introduces the scene at the 30:30 mark and begins reading a two-minute excerpt from the scene at the 37:00 mark):

Jenkins also took part in a discussion of the episode with Messianic Jewish rabbi Jason Sobel, Evangelical professor Doug Huffman, and Catholic bishop Robert Barron:

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

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