The 2014 film, Son of
God, follows a familiar trajectory well-known to viewers who had seen films
such as George Stevens’ The Greatest
Story Ever Told (1965). Watching the Passion story yet again, I could not
help but take note of the repetitiveness from sheer likeness. Yet one scene
sticks out among the usual denouement—that scene in which Jesus in the
wilderness, the high priest in the Temple, and the Roman Pontius Pilate with
his wife in their chambers pray in their own ways and with differing assumptions
about divine intent toward a petitioner. The interplay of petitions plays like
a tutorial for the ears and eyes on comparative religion, found here even within a religion.
The entire essay is at “Son of
God.”
