PROVIDENCE --
After years of producing documentaries on topics as varied as
volcanoes, the secrets of the Parthenon and the crash of Swissair
Flight 111, Providence-based filmmaker Gary Glassman has produced a
stunning documentary about the origins of the Hebrew Bible.
The Bible's Buried Secrets is a two-hour NOVA documentary that is
scheduled to air on PBS Tuesday. Glassman, who is the show's writer,
producer and director, describes it as an archaeological detective
story that explores how the ancient Israelites were transformed from
being a people who worshipped many gods into a people who believed in a
single God.
"The traditional story is that Moses authored the
first five books of the Bible, but the consensus of most scholars is
that it was the work of many hands," says Glassman.
The film
largely accepts the hypothesis of scholars who say those five books
represent texts that were written over a period of several hundred
years, which were compiled and edited into a form familiar to people
today in 536 B.C. after the Jews went into exile in Babylon.
"If there had been a historical Moses, it would have been 700 years after his death."
What's that? Does Glassman say, "if" there was a Moses?
He
explains that because the film had to be based on solid scholarship and
research, the filmmakers had to look for evidence outside the
scriptures. While there is a possibility that there were Jews who fled
Egypt 3,200 years ago, the scholars who were interviewed by Glassman's
team found no evidence of a massive exodus of 600,000 men and their
families as described in the Bible.
At the same time, Glassman
says the film points to other exciting discoveries that help to support
parts of the Bible story, such as a huge stone monument known as the
Merneptah Stele, which is believed to have been erected by an Egyptian
pharaoh around 1208 B.C. On it, the pharaoh lists the peoples he
conquered, including the Israelites.
Stuck into maps of the
Middle East at Glassman's Providence Pictures headquarters on the third
floor of the old Providence Journal Building at Eddy and Westminster
streets are tacks showing numerous archaeological sites in Israel,
Syria and Jordan that the filmmaker and his team visited during the two
years they worked on the production.
During one visit to an
archaeological dig in a valley in Tel Rehov, Israel, the team was on
hand when archaeologists unearthed a clay figurine of Asherah, who was
regarded by many of the ancient Israelites as a fertility goddess and
consort to the god, El, who they believed would become "Yahweh's wife."
The
finding of such figurines is not unusual. While many people assume,
from the stories told to them in Sunday school, that the Israelites had
been monotheists from the time of Abraham, the figurines as well as
exhortations of Hebrew prophets against idol worship, show that the
ancient Israelites were perhaps no different from other ancient peoples
and believed in multiple gods, Glassman says.
But it is
noteworthy, he says, how that changed during the period of the
Babylonian exile. "Something happened during their exile that forged
their belief in one God."
For the first time, they identified
themselves as Jews and read and studied a Bible that taught them to see
themselves and their relationship to God in a new way.
To bring
the story to life, Glassman and his team visited ancient ruins over two
years and employed digital animation techniques that allowed them, for
example, to show what the long-lost Temple of Solomon could have looked
like before it was destroyed. They commissioned a hand-crafted
illustrated Bible -- a bound collection of art, featuring images of
ancient frescoes and illuminated medieval manuscripts -- which became
part of the film.
"I think what distinguishes this film from
others is the depths that we went into to create historical accuracy,"
Glassman said.
Providence Pictures also hired actual scribes.
Tristan Barako, the show's associate producer and senior researcher,
who has a doctorate in Middle Eastern religious studies from Harvard
University, even taught the scribes how to write in ancient
Paleo-Hebrew lettering to make the scenes more accurate.
This is
a film, says Glassman, that crystallizes 100 years of academic and
archeological scholarship, and shows how the Jews gave the world the
concept of one God, fundamental to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.
A native of New York, Glassman received a master's degree in fine art
from the University of California at Los Angeles before meeting his
future wife, Joan Branham, a visiting scholar at the Getty Center
there.
In 1996, his wife was hired as a professor of art and
art history at Providence College, where she is now a department
chairman.
In the dozen years since, he started Providence
Pictures. Glassman's company has produced 30 documentaries, including
award-winning films such as the one on the building of the Parthenon in
Athens.
That production recently won the top award at the
International Archaeological Film Festival and was the highest rated
show of the year on the Franco-German Arte television network. It was
also the second-highest rated show on NOVA in the last two years.
Glassman says he's hoping for even bigger ratings this time.
Asked if the film would inspire people or upset them, Glassman said: "I would say that in many ways the film is like the Bible.
"You
can find what you want in it or make it what you want. People who want
to do good and those who want to do bad can find messages in the Bible.
I would hope that people who see this film will find a message of
inspiration in the best traditions of what it can mean to people."
As for the film's impact on his own faith, he says working on the production inspired him.
"I
have to say that my relationship to religion has very much to do with
sitting around the family table. The table that me and my wife and
daughter, in-laws and friends gather around on Friday night is that
same table that I grew up with."
Regardless of whether there
really was a Moses or an Abraham, "my sense is that what the stories
are about is our being part of a long tradition that goes back
thousands of years. Making this film has increased my respect for the
religious traditions."
