Talk:The Bible's Buried Secrets

Making it up as you go along
This "series" just proves that you can make anything up as you go along as long as you have the time and a budget. These are mostly man made myths worthy of the dust bin. What proofs are there from reliable Judaic sources that any of this has an ounce of truth? IZAK (talk) 06:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

BBC Series
3 part BBC series of same name broadcast weekly from Tuesday 15th March 2011 on BBC Two (details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zsbwv), fronted by Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou.

Is this a remake of the NOVA/PBS series, or a separate programming strand? Somersetlevels (talk) 20:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The BBC series appears to be based on the contents of this show but has been re-filmed because the presenter is different and goes on location around the world. Having seen the show and read the description here it is obvious it tries to be as controversial as the the NOVA show and draws heavily upon it. For starters, fronting the show with an atheist lol.  For anyone expecting the show to be unbiased, step away or change channel.  I struggled with the show because I got fed up with the hypocrisy and the errors within the content and narrative which demonstrate poor research.  In episode two for example where they talk about polytheism and how "the bible is hiding something".  We are then given a bunch of individual verses that could have been taken out of context.  But why do that when it would have been better to have mentioned Rachel the wife of Jacob and the household gods (Genesis 31).  Or how about Judges 18 and the house of Micah? In both of these stories, the household gods are stolen and are considered precious and important. Surely, whilst doing the remake, the highly educated Dr and senior lecturer would have pointed this out and could have improved the material within the show?  Therefore I would conclude the Dr was not permitted to "interfere" by contributing editorially.  So, perhaps there was some kind of rights or licensing issue going which forced the makers of the BBC show to stick closely to the plot of the original show Scottonsocks (talk) 07:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The end titles don't seem to mention the usual credits you would expect for something which is proporting to be well researched and of an academic quality. There are plenty of "with thanks to" references because of the locations involved and the permissions they had to ask for but there is no mention of researchers or assistants or expert helpers you would normally expect in something like this.  Even the five editors, they are all referred to as film editors.  The show ends with "produced and directed by Emily Davis, BBC Productons, Manchester."  Therefore I would guess this was an in-house production where the rights to the script were purchased from Nova. The script was then edited to create the three shows and they then found a suitable brainiac to front the show and film on location.  By contrast "Wonders of the universe" presented by professor Brian Cox has a series consultant as do many other factual programmes produced by the BBC. (Lets tell a story by filming on location with a brainiac)


 * the three BBC episodes are... (1) Did King David's Empire Exist? (2) Did God have a wife? (3) The Real Garden of Eden.  Each episode covers more than the title suggests but the series as a whole seems to cover slightly less than the original series - ie no new material. Episode 1 was the history of the Israel and Judea, episode 2 was about polytheism and monotheism, episode 3 at a guess will be the early history of the bible from creation to Abraham. The focus of the BBC series is primarily about going on location it seems and making sure the viewer knows they are on location as they see bits of evidence and as various religious experts etc are interviewed.


 * There is a small amount of info on how the show was created here but it doesn't mention NOVA. However, it does reveal that the Dr was involved fairly early on in the creation process and appears to be helping with the selection and division of material as opposed to supplying the material. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zsbwv Scottonsocks (talk) 21:41, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Having seen the first two episodes of the BBC 2011 series, I then deliberately re-viewed the PBS Nova 2008 series. They are two hugely different series covering generally the same material. Full disclosure, I am a long-time atheist raised in a very devout Catholic family; I found nothing new or shocking in either series, though I can see where even the Nova series might be upsetting to some members of the various Protestant religions, which are much more bible-based than we RCs are (biblical study having been the Reformation's alternative to official Church teachings). The Nova version presents any number of scholars, with their names and backgrounds clearly indicated. The BBC version will be much more offensive to people generally, not because it says anything different than the Nova version (it doesn't -- these really are widely accepted views for the most part), but because BBC cherry-picks a much narrower content, does it in a more confrontational way and with many fewer scholars and much less evidence, and, especially, because it wears its agenda on its sleeve. Unlike the Nova version, the BBC version goes out of its way to exclude Islam from the history it says it is describing, and no wonder! It's actually worth watching both documentaries, if for no other reason than as a kind of comparative anthropology of the US and the UK. The British are quite virulently anti-religious, partly, I think, as an extension (or maybe an inevitable result) of it's long-standing virulent anti-Catholicism, and partly because the Church of England (Anglican Communion, Episcopalian Church) is pretty cerebral and is put off religion by the the way they see it depicted in American culture, as theatrical, close-minded and exclusionary. It's a familiar joke in the UK -- and a "fair cop" -- that the Brits believe in God's laws, if not in God. On the other hand, the BBC reflects the UK dilemma of being a densely populated island with few resources, whose crucial financial industries are critically dependent on the Muslim (Arab, Persian and Asian) world -- so dumping on us Crusaders and, especially, Zionists can be awfully good for business. Still, atheists and "intellectuals" may be more likely to sit through the BBC version, and I think a little history is always a good thing. It occurs to me to add a point since I think someone here distinguished history vs. biblical accounts. I just happened to read a good point about that in a murder mystery of all things (John Sanford?). One of the book's characters is pointing out that you don't have to believe the story of Moby Dick to believe the way the ships or whaling are described -- and for some reader a millennium from now, Moby Dick could be historically very useful.alacarte (talk) 06:36, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

It's the best program in the world have been tuning in for the pass 40years  Winfield chase (talk) 23:17, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

image suggestion
we don't have an image for the info box. may i suggest.

http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/5857/biblesburiedsecretsvi.jpg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.35.166 (talk) 00:11, 13 April 2011 (UTC)