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FRONTLINE / WGBH

From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians

A four-hour Frontline series on how a Galilean movement became the church of the Roman empire, told through archaeology, the letters, and a large panel of New Testament scholars. No reenactment: sites, texts and talking heads.

VerifiedFilm & seriesInterdenominational
Where to watchpbs.org ↗

Why this is listed

The companion website is the reason: full interview transcripts, maps and primary-source notes, free and still online decades later. It is a better first course on the first century than most paid ones, provided you know whose assumptions you are inside.

Before you press play

Nothing is dramatised, so there is no invention to flag — the thing to know is the frame. The series works from historical-critical assumptions throughout: the gospels as later community documents rather than eyewitness reports, a working distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and the resurrection treated as a claim to be accounted for rather than as an event to be reported. Several of the scholars on screen hold positions well to the left of most churches. A viewer who holds to gospel reliability will disagree with the framing repeatedly and should watch it anyway, knowing that is what it is. No content issues beyond adult subject matter; suitable from about fifteen.

Suited to Adults. Age judgements are ours, not a rating board’s — you know your own family.

How to start

  1. Open pbs.org (opens an external site) and read what FRONTLINE / WGBH says about itself before you read anything else.
  2. Read the note above first. It is there so an evening does not go wrong twenty minutes in.
  3. Watch it yourself before you watch it with children, if there are children.
  4. Read the passage it dramatises alongside it. The point is to send you back to the text, not to replace it.
  5. Afterwards, ask what the story added and what it left out. That conversation is worth more than the film.

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