When was Jesus baptized in The Chosen?

Making sense of the continuity issues in the life-of-Jesus series... and in the gospels on which it is based.

Jesus (Jonathan Roumie, centre) reminisces with Little James (Jordan Walker Ross, left) and Thaddaeus (Giavani Cairo, right) in The Chosen.

A few weeks ago, Dallas Jenkins hosted another livestream (which was actually prerecorded this time, so it wasn’t technically a livestream, but let that pass) to promote his life-of-Jesus series The Chosen, and this time, he included rough cuts of two new scenes from Season 4, which is currently in post-production.

In one of those scenes, Jesus reminisces with Thaddaeus and Little James about the early days of their movement—when it was just the three of them hanging out together—and my first thought, as someone who has been following this series since the original pilot episode in 2017 (and as one who has interviewed Jenkins a few times since 2019), was that Jesus was basically doing in this scene what Jenkins must be doing in real life: looking back at the show’s humble origins, marveling at how much it has grown in the past few years, and maybe even feeling a bit wistful for the days when he didn’t have to deal with so much fame and attention.¹

But then I started thinking about the scenes with Thaddaeus and Little James at the beginning of this series, and about how the series has been rather vague, even confusing, about how the Jesus movement began.

We never see Jesus call Thaddaeus or Little James, for example—they’re already following him when the series begins—and the series has never depicted the baptism of Jesus or his temptation in the wilderness, which in most other versions of the Jesus story have been the two events that kicked off his adult ministry.

The series does mention the baptism of Jesus, eventually—but not until Season 2, some time well after the baptism happened, and the series never says exactly when the baptism occurred. And the way the series confirms this bit of back-story arguably complicates things even more.

So I’d like to sum up what this series has revealed about the origins of Jesus’ ministry so far, and try to make some sense of it.

The biblical vs television definitions of “canon”

First, I have to clarify one thing: I am not addressing whether The Chosen has been true to the chronology of the gospels.

The gospels themselves don’t always agree with each other on chronological matters (e.g., did the “cleansing” of the Temple happen at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as in John, or at the end of his ministry, as in all the other gospels? was Jesus arrested on the night before Passover, as in John, or on the night of Passover, as in all the other gospels? did the resurrected Jesus appear to the women before he appeared to Peter, as in Matthew and John, or after he appeared to Peter, as in Luke? etc.), so I’m not going to complain if the show disagrees with any of them. In fact, I think some of the show’s internal inconsistencies might stem from the fact that it’s trying to be true to all four of the gospels on some level, which isn’t always possible.

No, what I’m interested in here is the show’s internal consistency. I’m not interested in how the show follows scriptural canon, but in how the show sets up its own dramatic canon.

Here, I’m following the same basic principle that my fellow Trekkies follow when it comes to Star Trek: anything that happens onscreen is “canon”, and everything that happens outside of the movies and TV shows—even the stuff that happens in the novels and comics and various other spin-offs—is pure speculation or “apocrypha” at best.² Even real-life historical events aren’t part of the Star Trek “canon” until and unless they are mentioned in a Star Trek movie or TV episode.

Likewise, fans of The Chosen can try to fill the gaps by appealing to things they know from the Bible, but if it isn’t mentioned in the series, it isn’t “canon”.

What the series has told us so far

So, with that in mind, what has the series revealed so far about the Jesus movement’s origins? Here are the data points I can recall, in the order the series reveals them:

• S1E1 — Jesus cures Mary Magdalene of demonic oppression.

• S1E2 — Jesus, Thaddaeus, and Little James visit Mary Magdalene for Shabbat.

  • Jesus calls Thaddaeus and Little James his “students”, and they call him their “rabbi”, i.e. their religious teacher.

• S1E3 — Jesus is living in a tent, by himself, on the outskirts of Capernaum. He spends time with children, but no adult followers. Given Jesus’ reference to a woman he is helping, i.e. Mary Magdalene, it appears that this episode takes place before, during, and/or after the events of S1E1 and S1E2.

  • Jesus tells the children he doesn’t have a single home because “I have a much larger job than just being a craftsman or a teacher.” One of the children asks, “You are a teacher, too?” Jesus replies, “I will be soon.”

• S1E4 — Andrew runs home from the Jordan River to tell Simon that John the Baptist pointed at Jesus and called him “the Lamb of God”. One day later, Jesus is speaking to a small crowd—including Thaddaeus, Little James, and Mary Magdalene—when he meets Simon and gives him a miraculous catch of fish.

• S1E5 — Later that same day, Jesus goes to a wedding in Cana and turns some water to wine. Thaddaeus tells Simon and Mary Magdalene he first met Jesus while they were working on a construction job together in Bethsaida. Little James says he was introduced to Jesus by Thaddaeus. Jesus tells Thomas to meet him in Samaria twelve days after the events of this episode.

  • Thaddaeus says Jesus “taught” him while they were working in Bethsaida.

• S2E1 — Thomas meets Jesus and the disciples in Samaria.

• S2E2 — Philip joins the disciples as they’re walking to Syria, and he says he came as soon as he heard about the miracle in Cana. Jesus says he remembers Philip standing with Andrew when he, Jesus, was baptized by John the Baptist.

Now, what sense can we make of this?