The Young Adopted Messiah

[last post on the topic here]

My last post on the movie "The Young Messiah" was based on the trailer of the movie. At the time I wrote that post, the movie was not yet out in the theaters. Since it was based on a trailer, I thought it best if I would look at the movie itself so that I would definitely not mislead anyone by mis-interpreting the movie based upon a short trailer.

So one afternoon I decided to watch the movie. The movie was not as gnostic as the trailer would have us believe. Jesus did not kill a boy; the Devil did, while it was resurrecting a dead bird, not creating a bird from mud, although both scenes were at the seashore and the actions of scooping up the mud and scooping up a dead bird are virtually identical. That said, such changes do not really mitigate against the Gnostic error, which is to creates myths about the "missing years of Jesus." And altering some parts of the Infancy Gospel does not in any way exonerate the charge of gnosticism, just that it is now gnosticism-lite instead.

My earlier critique of having an Adoptionist Christology still stands. In fact, the movie is even more explicit in its promotion of Adoptionism. Jesus did not know he was God, that he was the Son of God, or that he was born to die on the Cross, through most of the movie. In fact, Joseph and Mary hid the knowledge of events surrounding his birth from the boy "Jesus" of the movie. Jesus only came to realize his status later in the movie. The boy "Jesus" does not even know why he could perform miracles. All of these are proofs of Adoptinism. Even the kenotic theory will not have the young Jesus not knowing he is God!

Besides the major error of Adoptionism, one can add the ahistorical nonsense of James being Jesus' cousin rather than his brother (pandering to Roman Catholic superstition), and of course the ridiculous scenes of Roman soldiers on the temple grounds (that would have caused a riot immediately). Overall, this movie is as bad as I thought it would be, and certainly should not be promoted to Christians