From Scriptures to Screen: Representations of Ancient Rome in Biblical Texts, Hollywood, and Africa's Black Jesus Films

Abstract

It is hard, if not impossible, to narrate Jesus’s story without mentioning ancient Rome, particularly its brutal imperialist culture in Israel. The gospel accounts of Jesus’s life, ministry, and death (particularly the segment dedicated to the passion of the Christ) provide discernible hints of Roman presence and imperialism in ancient Judea. In line with this, most literal interpretations of the gospel story (notably Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ) make ample allusion to this Roman domination in Israel through evocative scenes like Jesus’s trial before Pontius Pilate and Herod, as well as scenes of the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. On their own side, symbolic film adaptations that set Jesus’s story in African contexts tend to erase, downplay, or semiotize the aforementioned Roman presence and imperialism in ways that often generate contextual, technological, or historical anachronisms as well as an over-simplification of the story of Jesus. This understudied phenomenon is examined in this paper in light of relevant Black Jesus films produced by African cineasts. Specifically, this study uses semiotics, textual analysis of relevant Jesus films, and critical exploitation of secondary sources to answer three principal research questions: how is ancient Rome’s imperialistic influence represented in both historical sources and biblical scriptures? How has this influence been represented in the literal interpretations of Jesus story? How have African radical adaptations of biblical scriptures often portrayed or misrepresented Rome? The paper argues that through various forms of symbolization and narrative ellipsis, African Jesus filmmakers hint at Rome’s imperial influence but generate various forms of cultural and technological anachronism that affect the aesthetics and coherence of their Black Jesus films. This implies that the application of African Cultural Hermeneutics and Black Liberation Theology in the production of the Black African Jesus film is bound to work only partially and lead to controversial results.