"Walking the Bible" -- a three-part series beginning Wednesday on PBS (check local listings) is the story of a 10,000-mile journey through the settings in which the Bible's central narratives occurred. The show's host, Bruce Feiler (author of "Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses"), leads this trek, in the company of archeologist Avner Goren, and establishes the point of it all at the outset. Which is that the Bible's stories did not come from writers in some nebulous otherwordly place -- they were set in specific locations, which his camera crews have captured in extraordinary detail.
Their travels begin at the beginning, in Mesopotamia, with the site of the Garden of Eden, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. Eden, these guides note, bore no resemblance to what we think of today as a garden. it was a place of rivers and waters, which is why the ancient storytellers said so much about floods -- their stories, like many in the Bible, had to do with the life of rivers. The travelers next move on to th ematter of Noah's Ark -- relevant readings from the Bible are interspersed -- and to certain questions they ponder in beguiling detail, such as how Noah managed to fit all the species inside the ark. On, thereafter, to the place of Abraham's and Isaac's trials, to that of Joseph and the Israelites in Egypt, and, ultimately that of Moses and the 40 years wandering through the desert.
Mr. Feiler is an engaging and informed guide throughout these explorations, some of whose most vivid scenes are set in Egypt, amid the pyramids and the ruins of ancient cities. Three splendid hours. |
