t he crucifi xion of the king of gl ory much discussed among scholars at the time. Movies about the Bible are notoriously inaccurate, including the 2013 miniseries The Bible, whose producers, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, identify themselves as devout Christians and promised to be faithful to the Bible. The series committed innumerable historical and biblical errors throughout all the episodes, including obvious changes to Bible stories that turned out to be comical distortions. Audiences are usually unaware of these errors and assume that what they are watching is accurate. Filmmaking requires certain adaptations, and a degree of poetic license is acceptable, but many inaccuracies serve no purpose at all. Rather than vividly portraying the Bible narratives for modern audiences, these films often misinform.
Let Us Journey to Jerusalem Gr eat and Holy Week in the Orthodox Church looms large in the annual liturgical cycle, presenting us with an extensive and intensive array of services, sometimes two or three per day. The week begins the day before Palm Sunday, on what the Orthodox Church calls the Saturday of Lazarus, and continues through Pascha and the appearance of the Lord to his disciples on the evening of Resurrection Day. Each Holy Week service is unique, thought provoking, emotive, introspective, deeply historical, profoundly theological, and completely rooted in the Scriptures. Every detail found in the Gospels is echoed and interpreted in the eloquent hymns and prayers, which meditate on and then express the meaning of the historical events. Orthodox Christianity has preserved practices, prayers, divine services, and traditions stretching back to the early Church. The Orthodox services of Great Week express how the early Church understood the events of Christ’s Passion through countless subtle details. The Lord fulfilled not only prophecies but generations of Jewish hopes, wishes, ideas, and expectations. The impact and value of Holy Tradition is never so obvious in Orthodoxy as it is during Great Week, as we hear the ancient voices of our ancestors in the faith whispering in our ears. Orthodox services articulate not only our personal, human response to the inexpressible love and condescension of God, but the profound and insightful theological 12 Copyright ©2020 by Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing
