The Chosen – season two, episode two
In which two new disciples join the group, while the women plan to study Torah.
Season 2, Episode 2 — ‘I Saw You’
John 1
Synopsis. A Jewish architect named Nathanael suffers a major career setback when one of his projects collapses. He sits under a fig tree and cries out to God, asking if God sees him. Meanwhile, a disciple of John the Baptist’s named Philip shows up and joins Jesus’ followers while they are camping in a field. Philip befriends Matthew and takes him under his wing, showing him how to work with his hands and giving him advice on how to deal with Simon. Mary Magdalene offers to teach Ramah how to read so that they can both study Torah, like the men. Jesus and the disciples walk north towards Syria, stopping for a night in Caesarea Philippi. There, Philip introduces Nathanael to Jesus, and Jesus says he saw Nathanael under the fig tree.
-
Gospels. This episode introduces us to Philip and Nathanael, two of Jesus’ disciples, and it dramatizes the story of how Philip introduced Nathanael to Jesus (John 1:43-51).
-
Philip is mentioned in all four gospels, but in three of them he appears only in a list of the twelve core disciples (Mark 3:16-19, Matthew 10:2-4, Luke 6:13-16; cf Acts 1:13) who went on to lead the early church (cf Acts 1:23-26, 6:2). John’s gospel has no such list, but it does make Philip an active participant in four stories:
Jesus calls Philip to follow him, and Philip calls Nathanael (John 1:43-51);
Jesus asks Philip a question before feeding the 5,000 (John 6:5-7);
Some Greeks ask Philip to introduce them to Jesus (John 12:20-22); and
Philip asks Jesus a question at the Last Supper (John 14:8-9).
Philip is depicted in this series as a former disciple of John the Baptist, like Andrew. The gospels do not explicitly say that Philip followed John the Baptist, but some people have inferred that he did from the fact that Jesus called Philip to follow him the day after meeting Andrew and another, unnamed, disciple of John’s (John 1:35-42). The theory goes that Philip may have been the unnamed disciple.
It may also be significant that Andrew plays a role in two of the other stories about Philip, namely the feeding of the 5,000 and the story about the Greeks who wanted to talk to Jesus. This could be another sign that Philip and Andrew had a special connection going back to a time when they were both followers of John’s.
Then again, according to the gospels, Philip was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and so were Andrew and Simon (John 1:44, 12:21). So maybe that’s how the biblical Philip knew Andrew. Although, if three guys from Bethsaida all happened to be in the Judean wilderness at the same time, it’s certainly plausible that they all made the trip for the same reason, i.e. to hear John the Baptist and possibly follow him.
Incidentally, the series has so far portrayed Capernaum as Simon and Andrew’s home, and the gospels do say that the two brothers shared a house there (Mark 1:29). So one could infer that Simon and Andrew were from Bethsaida but had moved to Capernaum, the same way Jesus was from Nazareth but lived in Capernaum (Matthew 4:13).
This episode, however, implies that Simon and Andrew only stayed in Bethsaida at some point in the past—and Simon has no memory of Philip being there.
-
Nathanael, for his part, is never mentioned outside of John’s gospel—at least not by that name. In fact, he is barely even mentioned outside of this particular story. His name comes up just one other time, when he is one of seven disciples who witness a miraculous catch of fish after Jesus comes back from the dead (John 21:1-14).
However, we also know that at least some of the disciples had multiple names; e.g. the lists of the Twelve in the three synoptic gospels agree on all the names but one, a figure who is known as Thaddaeus in Mark and Matthew’s gospels and as Judas son of James in Luke’s gospel. So it’s possible Nathanael was identical to one of the names from those lists that does not appear in John’s gospel.
As it is, eight of the people on those lists do come up in John’s gospel:
Simon Peter (John 1:40-42, 44; 6:8, 68-69; 13:6-11, 24, 36-38; 18:10-18, 25-27; 20:1-10; 21:1-23)
Andrew (John 1:40-42, 44; 6:8-9; 12:22)
James son of Zebedee (implied in “the sons of Zebedee” in John 21:2)
John (implied in “the sons of Zebedee” in John 21:2)
Philip (John 1:43-51, 6:5-7, 12:20-22, 14:8-9)
Thomas (John 11:16, 14:5, 20:24-29, 21:2)
Judas son of James a.k.a. Thaddaeus (John 14:22, which simply identifies him as “Judas (not Judas Iscariot)”)
Judas Iscariot (John 6:70-71; 12:4-6; 13:2, 26-30; 18:2-5)
That leaves four names that could be alternates for Nathanael:
Bartholomew
Matthew a.k.a. Levi
James son of Alphaeus
Simon the Zealot
The most popular theory is that Nathanael was Bartholomew, whose name appears right after Philip’s in all of the synoptic gospels—and that seems to be the theory this series is going with, as it has already introduced characters based on all of the other disciples on that list (except for Simon the Zealot, whose intro is coming soon).
-
Nathanael scoffs at the idea that anything good can come from Nazareth (John 1:46).
This passage has already been alluded to in ‘The Shepherd’ and in S1E2, when people disparaged Nazareth in the presence of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus themselves.
-
Philip introduces Nathanael to Jesus in Caesarea Philippi, a city north of Galilee in a region that now borders the modern states of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria.
In John’s gospel, Jesus met Philip and Nathanael when he was south of Galilee—close to the Dead Sea, near where John the Baptist was preaching (John 1:28)—and he met them on the day that he decided to leave that region for Galilee (John 1:43).
-
Jesus says Philip was standing with Andrew on the day that he, Jesus, was baptized.
Strictly speaking, John’s gospel does not say that Andrew witnessed the baptism of Jesus. In fact, John’s gospel doesn’t mention the baptism of Jesus at all. Instead, it says that Jesus came to John the Baptist, and John the Baptist proclaimed that Jesus was the Lamb of God and that he, John the Baptist, saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove (John 1:29-34). Then, one day after this, John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to Andrew and another disciple, and they began following Jesus (John 1:35-40).
Until now, The Chosen has basically followed the pattern set by John’s gospel: it did not mention the baptism of Jesus at all, and, in S1E4, it showed Andrew following Jesus just one day after John the Baptist’s offscreen proclamation about him.
But now, the series has acknowledged the baptism of Jesus—and, ironically, it deviates from this aspect of John’s gospel at the exact same time that it introduces other aspects of John’s gospel, such as the characters of Philip and Nathanael.
This creates an oddity in the series’ timeline: If John’s proclamation took place at the same time as Jesus’ baptism, then that would seem to mean that Jesus was baptized during the events of S1E4, just one day before the miraculous catch of fish, and after he had already begun performing exorcisms and gathering followers like Mary Magdalene, Thaddaeus, and Little James (as seen in S1E1 and S1E2).
It would also mean that Jesus was baptized in the presence of Andrew and Philip just one day before he performed the miracle at the wedding in Cana (as seen in S1E5), news of which is supposedly what prompted Philip to start following Jesus. Why did Philip not respond to John’s proclamation instantly the way Andrew did?
And all this, in turn, would raise other questions, like whether the temptation of Jesus—which, in the gospels that mention it (Mark 1:12-13, Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13), begins right after his baptism—fits into the timeline of this series at all.
You could, perhaps, work around some of this by supposing that the baptism of Jesus and John’s proclamation about Jesus happened on two separate occasions, and that Philip and Andrew were both present for the baptism (sometime before the series begins), but nothing about the event stood out to them until John made his proclamation, which only Andrew witnessed (during S1E4). But that just raises the question of why John’s proclamation would have been delayed in the first place.
-
It’s also kind of funny to see how the series has followed the sequence of John’s gospel so far—from the calling of Andrew and Simon (chapter 1, S1E4) to the wedding in Cana (chapter 2, S1E5), the chat with Nicodemus (chapter 3, S1E7), and the visit to Samaria (chapter 4, S1E8)—and now it is suddenly jumping back to the first chapter of John’s gospel. And this is just one episode after it showed the apostle John writing the opening verses of his gospel! Can’t get away from those early chapters, it seems.
-
Jesus leaves the disciples for “a couple days” to think and, one assumes, pray.
There is ample precedent for this in the gospels. Luke’s gospel states explicitly that Jesus “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16), and Mark’s gospel says that, while he was staying in Capernaum, Jesus woke up very early in the morning and “went to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Three gospels report that Jesus went up a mountain to pray by himself after feeding the 5,000 (Mark 6:46, Matthew 14:23, John 6:15), and Luke’s gospel says he spent all night in prayer on a mountainside before deciding which disciples to appoint to the Twelve (Luke 6:12).
-
Simon and John reach for their knives as Philip approaches.
We saw John do this before, when a leper approached Jesus and the disciples in S1E6.
As I said in the context of that episode, it is certainly possible that the disciples had weapons for self-defense. At the Last Supper, Jesus even told the disciples they should buy swords for themselves if they didn’t have any already (Luke 22:35-38). The disciples replied that they already had two swords among them, and Jesus said that was enough.
Eventually one of the disciples—identified in John’s gospel as Simon Peter—used his sword against one of the people who came to arrest Jesus (Mark 14:47, Matthew 26:51-54, Luke 22:48-51, John 18:10-11). We don’t know which disciple had the other sword. But it would seem that, as far as this series is concerned, that disciple was John.
-
Andrew jokes about challenging Simon to a footrace.
Andrew similarly teased Simon about his slow running in S1E8. These jokes are a nod to the fact that John 20:4 says the beloved disciple (traditionally believed to be John) outran Simon when they went to see the empty tomb on the morning of the Resurrection.
-
Philip says John the Baptist has criticized the Herods for killing their sons and marrying their nieces.
It is certainly true that the Herods did these things, though there is no evidence that John the Baptist criticized them for those particular deeds.
Herod the Great, who became so notorious for killing his own sons that the Roman emperor Augustus joked it was better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son (because Herod, as a Jew, wouldn’t eat pork), died when John the Baptist was still an infant, so John the Baptist never had an opportunity to criticize Herod for killing his sons.
And as for marrying nieces: The gospels say John the Baptist criticized Herod Antipas for marrying his half-brother’s ex-wife—and for “all the other evil things he had done,” according to Luke—but the fact that Herod’s wife was niece to both of her husbands is never mentioned in the gospels (Mark 6:17-18, Matthew 14:3-4, Luke 3:19).
-
New Testament. When Jesus hints that he won’t be with the disciples forever, Simon asks for a chance to talk about this “soon”, and Jesus replies, “There’s that word, ‘soon’. It’s the most imprecise thing in the world. What is ‘soon’? A few hours? A few days? Years? A hundred years? A thousand years? Ask my Father in heaven how long a thousand years is, then talk to me about ‘soon’.”
In the broader context of this scene, Jesus is talking about his departure from this world. But in the New Testament, the word “soon” is often associated with apocalyptic passages in which Jesus predicts his return to this world (e.g. Revelation 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20).
Because Jesus obviously hasn’t returned yet, there has been much discussion around the meaning of the word “soon”, and Christians have often turned to another apocalyptic passage, II Peter 3:8, to explain why Jesus’ use of the word “soon” might be different from our own: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” The last sentence of dialogue quoted above is an allusion to this verse.
-
Old Testament. Nathanael’s prayer includes two passages from the Old Testament:
the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), a standard Jewish prayer that Jesus said is part of the greatest commandment of them all (Mark 12:29), and
the first two verses of Psalm 102, which is described as “a prayer of an afflicted person who has grown weak and pours out a lament before the Lord.”
Nathanael burns his architectural papers and pours the ashes on his head. Pouring ashes on one’s head is done by various figures in the Bible as a form of mourning (II Samuel 13:19, Jeremiah 6:26, Ezekiel 27:30) or asking God for help (Esther 4:1-3, Isaiah 58:5, Daniel 9:3); it is also an expression of repentance (Matthew 11:21, Luke 10:13).
-
Mary Magdalene is impressed when Philip starts to recite Ezekiel’s prophecy about Gog and Magog—and how the Israelites will burn their enemies’ weapons for fuel—and the other male disciples start reciting the passage along with him (Ezekiel 39:9-10).
-
Before commenting that Nathanael is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, Jesus notes that “Israel began with Jacob, who was a bit of a deceiver.”
The name “Jacob” means “he grasps the heel”, which, as some Bible translations note, is a Hebrew idiom for “he deceives” (Genesis 25:26). The biblical Jacob famously tricked his father Isaac into blessing him instead of his brother Esau (Genesis 27:1-41), and then tricked his father-in-law Laban out of some of his flocks (Genesis 30:25-31:9).
The name “Israel”, which means “he struggles with God”, was given to Jacob by a man—typically thought to be the Angel of the Lord—who wrestled with Jacob when Jacob was about to face his brother Esau for the first time in years (Genesis 32:22-32).
-
Jesus refers to Jacob again when he tells Nathanael, “Like Jacob, you are going to see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
The bulk of that line comes from John 1:51, which in turn quotes the story about the stairway full of angels that Jacob saw in a dream as he was fleeing Esau and going to live with Laban (Genesis 28:12). John’s gospel does not spell out the fact that Jesus is referring to that story, but this episode does.
-
Themes. There are several major themes in this episode, but—given the title and the Nathanael storyline—if any single theme is the dominant one, it would probably have to be that God sees people when they are at low points in their lives.
In the gospel, Jesus says he saw Nathanael under a fig tree, and there is no back-story to explain what the significance of this observation would be, aside from the fact that it reveals Jesus’ omniscience (or at least his clairvoyance). In the Visual Bible’s The Gospel of John, there is a flashback in which we see Nathanael praying under the tree and having a mystical experience of some sort—but because that film sticks to the text of the gospel, it doesn’t give Nathanael any specific words to pray. This episode shows Nathanael praying, but it gives his prayers a specific content.
The way this episode provides a detailed but fictitious back-story for Nathanael is similar to how the first few episodes in Season 1 created a back-story for Simon that turned his statement in Luke 5:8 (“Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”) from a general confession of sinfulness into a repentance for specific deeds. Some might say that all this fictionalization has given these moments extra depth; others might say it has narrowed their meaning.
-
Prayer in general is also a recurring theme in this episode.
In addition to Nathanael’s prayer, we see the male and female disciples recite morning prayers, and Thaddaeus compares Matthew’s habit of daily journal-writing to prayer—particularly when Matthew says the journal-writing used to be a chore but now it’s like a habit.
-
The disciples are also increasingly beginning to think along institutional lines, instead of just living in the moment as they travel from town to town with Jesus.
Matthew, for example, wants to keep a written record of Jesus’ words so that people can refer back to them whenever they are tempted to quarrel over what he said or what his words meant. And Simon, for his part, wants to “formalize a structure” for making decisions when Jesus is away and the disciples can’t defer to his authority.
There is a certain ambiguity in how these themes are treated within this episode.
Jesus is okay with Matthew writing his words down, and as far as the decision-making goes, he says, “I want every voice heard, and none silenced. Everyone can learn from each other.” But in that same scene, Jesus also says, “One day, Simon, there will need to be more structure and I see you playing a big part in it.”
So, every voice will be heard, but ultimately only some voices will be authoritative?
Meanwhile, in a completely different scene, Philip says, “From what I understand, Jesus doesn’t love everything about religion.” That may be more of a comment about rituals and legalism than decision-making, per se. But it does suggest some sort of resistance to institutionalism, or what some people might call “organized religion”.
-
The foreshadowings of Jesus’ death are becoming a little more obvious. He tells Philip he hasn’t figured out how to talk about it yet—but even just in saying that, he’s talking about it—and in his conversation with Simon, he hints that “more structure” will be needed because he won’t always be with the disciples.
-
Another major theme that emerges in this episode is the empowerment of the female disciples. Mary Magdalene offers to teach Ramah how to read and write so that they can study Torah together. Thomas, who is romantically linked to Ramah, doesn’t know how to respond to this and suggests letting him interpret the Torah for her.
-
Manual labour is a recurring theme in this episode. Jesus says he misses it, and Philip teaches Matthew how to work with his hands. Philip also compares his time with John the Baptist to Nathanael’s work as an architect and says he sometimes envied the fact that Nathanael had physical evidence to show for his efforts.
Philip also tries to foster a better relationship between Simon and Matthew by telling one to thank the other for preparing the firewood. The tensions between Simon and his former tax collector will continue to simmer over the next few episodes.
-
Historical quibbles. There are several references in this episode to “Hebrew school,” and we are told that Matthew and Nathanael both “skipped ahead” and got a Roman education that gave them greater access to wealth and social status.
The implication here seems to be that “Hebrew school” is offered to all Jewish boys, regardless of social background, and that the particularly gifted ones get access to a more elite sort of education. But I have a few questions about this:
First, are we sure that regular peasants would have had access to any sort of formal education?
Also, by the first century, Hebrew was essentially a religious language, and Jews spoke Aramaic in their day-to-day lives, so why would proficiency in religious education have led to greater opportunities in secular education?
Indeed, these days “Hebrew school” generally refers to extra education that Jewish kids get about their faith and culture, in addition to their secular education. It’s an add-on of sorts, like the Christian “Sunday school”, which makes the use of that phrase, along with phrases like “skipped ahead”, feel even more anachronistic.
-
Matthew says he “skipped ahead” at age eight and had earned enough money as a tax collector to buy his first house by the age of 13. That seems… awfully young, especially for someone in a profession as hated by his peers as tax collecting would be.
-
Ramah recites the Modeh Ani, a Jewish morning prayer that does not appear in the rabbinic literature until the 16th century. Jesus also recited this prayer in S2E1.
-
Geography. What happened to Jesus’ travel plans?
At the end of Season 1, he and the disciples left Capernaum on a three-day journey south to Jerusalem, but they put it on hold to stay in Samaria for a few days. They were still in Samaria during the previous episode. And now… they’re traveling north again?
This episode begins near Beit She’an, which is about halfway between Capernaum and the Samaritan town where the last episode took place. It ends in Caesarea Philippi, which is north of Capernaum. And Jesus says he plans to keep walking north, to Syria.
According to Google Maps, it’s a 14-hour walk from Sychar, the Samaritan town, to Beit She’an; it’s another 11 hours north to Capernaum; and it’s another 11 hours north to Caesarea Philippi. So Jesus and the disciples have not only abandoned their walk south to Jerusalem, they have walked right past their home on their way further north.
-
Philip says Caesarea Philippi is named after Philip the tetrarch, one of the sons of Herod the Great; and another character says it is a Roman city, not a Jewish city.
The first statement is certainly true. Philip founded the city in 3 BC and ultimately named it Caesarea, after Caesar Augustus. (The New Testament calls it Caesarea Philippi to distinguish it from the Caesarea built by Herod on the Mediterranean coast.)
But was it a Roman city? Technically, I don’t believe so. While it was named after a Roman emperor—and while one of the city’s other names was Caesarea Paneas, due to a sanctuary dedicated to the Greek god Pan that had been there a few centuries—I believe it officially fell under Philip’s jurisdiction and did not come under the direct control of the Romans until after Philip the tetrarch died in AD 34, several years after the events of this episode. Culturally the city might have been more Roman than Jewish, though.
-
Andrew says he knows Philip from when he and Peter were living in Bethsaida. Bethsaida is near the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, about two hours’ walk from Capernaum.
It is not clear where Philip is coming from when he meets the disciples. He says he was with John the Baptist, who is ordinarily associated in the gospels with the wilderness near the Dead Sea, but so far, in this series, we have only seen John in Galilee, which is quite a bit north of there.
-
Humanization. Jesus says he was gone for a couple of days because he is still thinking through how to talk about his death. There is “a lot on my mind,” he says.
As noted above, Jesus also says he misses manual labour, because there were “fewer questions, less speculation. Honest sweat.”
-
Timeline. This episode does not specify how much time has passed since Jesus and the disciples were in Sychar, the Samaritan town they visited in the previous episode.
Jesus does say that he left the apostles’ camp for “a couple days” to think. And their camp is in Beit She’an, which is roughly halfway between Capernaum and Sychar—a trip that took two or three days to walk in S1E8—so it’s probably been at least four days since the visit to Samaria.
Philip says John sent him to Jesus as soon as they heard about the miracle in Cana, which happened in S1E5—roughly two weeks before the visit to Samaria—so depending on how fast news travels, and how long it took Philip to figure out where Jesus was (which might have been more difficult if Jesus was making last-minute changes to his travel plans!), it would seem that not that much time has passed since the previous episode.
-
As noted above, this episode’s reference to the baptism of Jesus creates all sorts of complications for the show’s timeline. See above, under ‘Gospels’.
-
Language issues. There are some more modern-sounding phrases in the dialogue:
Nathanael says, “I’m just telling it like it is!” (And he says it twice!)
A bartender says, “Yeah, I got that.”
Philip says, “I’m sorry, man.”
Philip also tells Matthew, “Tell them you have a vegetable joke, but it’s corny.” I assume this pun wouldn’t actually exist in Aramaic. Then again, the English word “corny” reportedly emerged as a slang term for “hackneyed” or “old-fashioned” in the 1930s, the idea being that certain kinds of jokes or music appealed to “corn-fed” country folk, so maybe there were similar idioms for rural people’s tastes in Aramaic.
-
Nathanael tells a Gentile bartender he suffered from “hubris”. The word is Greek and has a range of meanings, though the one Nathanael intends here—which roughly means arrogant pride—comes from Greek drama and religion.
The word “hubris” comes up three times in the original Greek New Testament, and there it generally refers to harm or loss (Acts 27:10, 21) or insults (II Corinthians 12:10).
-
Nathanael says it will be “a cold day in Gehenna before they hire another Jew.”
This is basically a riff on the expression “a cold day in hell,” calculated perhaps to avoid offending any viewers who might object to a casual use of “hell”.
The notion that hell is a place of fiery torment was a relatively late development, but it did exist by the first century, as one of Jesus’ parables is about a rich man who wanted relief from the fire in “Hades”, the Greek name for the realm of the dead (Luke 16:23-24). Jesus also uses the word “Gehenna” to describe a place of punishment (Matthew 18:19, 23:33; Luke 12:5) that is full of unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43-49, Matthew 5:22) which can destroy both body and soul (Matthew 5:29-30, 10:28). The Epistle of James, believed to have been written by Jesus’ brother, also speaks of the fire of Gehenna (James 3:6).
The word itself is derived from the Valley of Hinnom, a valley outside of Jerusalem where some of the ancient Israelites sacrificed their own children as burnt offerings to pagan gods (II Kings 23:10; II Chronicles 28:3, 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31-32, 19:1-6). The fire of those offerings—and the fact that the sacrifices were condemned by the prophets—resulted in the valley’s name becoming a synonym for fiery punishment in the world after this one.
-
Miscellaneous. Series creator Dallas Jenkins has talked quite often about how the idea for The Chosen came to him while he was dealing with the box-office failure of The Resurrection of Gavin Stone—so the career setback that Nathanael suffers in this episode is a direct reflection of Jenkins’ own experience before making this series.
Real life is reflected in the series in at least one other way, perhaps, insofar as Simon tells the other disciples, while they are pulling up stakes, to leave enough firewood behind for the next person who camps there. As I noted when Jesus instructed his disciples to do this in S1E7, this has echoes of the series’ “pay it forward” plan, where viewers can pay to cover the costs of other people watching the show.
-
It’s kind of curious that Matthew thinks the teachings of Jesus—and their meaning—can be “confirmed in writing”.
I mean, just for starters, things had a tendency to stay in flux long after they were written, back in the days before the printing press and copyrighted authorship. There are clear signs that the synoptic gospels copied each other and made changes along the way—and yes, there are signs that Matthew’s gospel itself made changes to things that had already been written down by Mark and others. (I have already noted, in my comments on S1E6, how Matthew 1:1-17 edits the list of Jesus’ ancestors.)
And then there are all the changes that took place within the gospels as scribes and others made copies of them; sometimes the scribes simply got a word wrong etc., and sometimes they inserted entire verses and even stories into the text. (Possibly the most popular story about Jesus—the one in which he forgives the adulterous woman, from John 7:53-8:11—doesn’t even appear in the earliest copies of John’s gospel.)
And then there are all the gospels that exist outside of the New Testament, most if not all of which were written after the canonical gospels. Some of them are obviously fake. Others, like the Gospel of Thomas, have a mix of teachings that we recognize from the canonical gospels and others that we don’t. How does the existence of gospels like these fit with the idea that writing the teachings down “confirms” their accuracy?
-
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 MessengersSeason 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 was also livestreamed on April 13, 2021, with an intro by director Dallas Jenkins; the episode itself begins at the 19:28 mark:
There is also a clip of Nathanael praying under the fig tree:
Jenkins also posted a “reaction video” responding to comments about the episode:
Also, in a livestream on June 20, 2020, Jenkins previewed the part of the script in which Philip tells Nathanael about Jesus (starting at the 8:30 mark):
-
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