New Documentary ORACLES OF GOD Explores Bible’s Creation
By Movieguide® Contributor
A new documentary, ORACLES OF GOD: THE STORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, explores how the Bible was created despite thousands of years between when the beginning and the end were written.
Erin Zimmerman, the project’s creator, explained that she felt called to create this movie after watching other Bible documentaries.
“I couldn’t find one that I thought was doctrinally correct, or from a Christian standpoint, or even historically correct,” she said. “They all seemed to come from the viewpoint that the Bible’s text is corrupt, that there was some chicanery in choosing the books, and that it was for political influence, and all of those things.”
“Using expert interviews, stunning cinematography, and dramatic reenactments, ORACLES OF GOD follows the history and archaeology of the Old Testament, from Moses and the Torah through the Israelite kingdom, with a special focus on the world’s oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls,” CBN Film’s website reads.
Rather than creating a documentary that pushed a certain agenda or belief about the Bible, Zimmerman wanted to create a movie that shared nothing but facts.
While researching, Zimmerman realized that there was little opportunity for malicious actors to influence the books included in the Old Testament because it came together so quickly.
“The New Testament canon, while that took about 300 years to develop, the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible canon, was fairly quick,” she explained. “There weren’t really disputes. The Jewish people…they sort of accepted the books as they came along.”
The text’s preservation throughout history also stood out to Zimmerman.
“What really struck me was the continuity of the text,” she said. “And this really couldn’t have been proven before 1947, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.”
“When they found that Isaiah scroll in 1947, they did the comparisons and they found that the two texts are 95% identical, and the other 5% can pretty much be chalked up to grammar and spelling differences over a thousand years,” she continued.
The Dead Sea Scrolls date back to before Christ’s life, outdating the previous oldest copy of Isaiah by over 1,000 years.
“What our experts say is that the Bible is the most stable of all the ancient texts there are,” Zimmerman said. “And we’ve got the proof in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
“So I just want to give Christians and even Jewish people—Jewish people will love this movie because it’s a very Jewish story—I want to give them something to watch. That’s the truth, you know, just the facts,” she previously told CBN.
ORACLES OF GOD: THE STORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT is the first of three documentaries from Zimmerman that will explore how the Bible was formed.
The next movie will focus on the New Testament, and the final installment will explain how the canon was decided.
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