Into this powder keg walks Jesus of Nazareth. His protests against the Romans make him a popular hero. To some, he is the messiah. But to the Romans, he is political trouble. So they crucify him.

This is just not an accurate representation of the events and the New Testament texts. Where in the New Testament is Jesus portrayed as leading "protests against the Romans?" Nowhere. The program blames the Romans alone for the crucifixion of Jesus, studiously avoiding any suggestion that the Jews rejected Jesus and demanded his crucifixion. The program is left with an account that is politically correct but demonstrates little resemblance to the New Testament. Pilate, you might remember, is presented in the New Testament as very reluctant to crucify Jesus. Political correctness simply trumped historical accuracy.

The program's treatment of the earliest experiences of the church and the first Christians contains much good and even fascinating material.

So the problem is not in the belief that Jesus is the messiah. The problem is when the belief is moving from messiah to a kind of deified messiah and as this begins to be understood by the Jews, then opposition to this movement is no longer a political thing. It's a very strong religious thing.

The problem with this statement is the fact that it presses the recognition of the deity of Christ to a later development after the resurrection. The New Testament claims that it was Jesus' claims to deity that were, at least in part, what led some Jews to demand his crucifixion.

Neeson does a good job of explaining the transformation of Saul the persecutor of the church into Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. "Saul of Tarsus, who never met Jesus in the flesh, never traveled or supped with him, and who wanted to kill his followers, becomes the greatest defender of the Jesus faith, known to the world by the Greek version of his name, Paul." Further: "People listened to Paul because he was the perfect man for the job, able to speak to both Jews and Gentiles in their own language."

The program also provided a rather fair explanation of the roles played by the apostles James, Peter, and Paul. The Jerusalem council is presented as the "first apostolic council" and Professor Levine rightly explains:

Paul argues that the Holy Spirit had descended upon the Gentiles apart from the Law of Moses. Therefore, there was no reason to insist that those Gentiles be converted first to Judaism in order to be a member of the church, and James, the brother of Jesus, presiding over this Jerusalem council, agrees with Paul.

Levine, a Jewish professor of New Testament studies, also offers keen insight into the mission of the Apostle Paul:

I can picture him just trying to convert the entire Praetorian guard. The early Christians, particularly the evangelists, the apostles, were politically problematic. They were proclaiming a son of God, a god from God, a savior, but those happened to be titles that the Roman emperor arrogated to himself.