Preface
The Chosen is a work of fiction, based loosely on historical accounts in scripture. However, It is very important to note that it is not scripture. Its aim is to explore the life of Jesus and of His disciples. Of Christ we know much because all of scripture is about Him. Of the Apostles we know very little in comparison. Interlaced in the show are subtle scriptural references which I will include to give context and meaning to what you will see in the episode.
In this review, my approach is to examine the characters in light of biblical events and concepts. Therefore, I will not cover the non-biblical characters except when necessary to relate them to the main biblical characters in the show.
Main Biblical Characters
- Jesus
- Mary Magdalene
- Andrew
- Simon Peter
- Matthew
- Nicodemus
Spoiler Alert: I have included many details from the episode that may spoil the ending. However, if you scroll to the bottom, I have included a reading list of scriptures that will give you insight into the characters and concepts presented during the show. Afterword, you can come back and read about what happened in the episode.
Theme: I Have Called You By Name
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Isaiah 43:1, ESV
This verse is the anchor for the episode. It is significant because it is the Lord Jesus Christ who calls us to Himself. He is the one who created the world and He is the One who called Israel and who calls us.
Jesus Christ, the Messiah
Jesus does not appear in the show until the very end when redeems Mary Magdalene. But this show is centered around his life and ministry. Though Mary was the first called in the show, it was actually Andrew who was first called by Jesus in scripture.
Mary Magdalene
We first see Mary Magdalene as a little girl with her father. She was scared. Her father comforts her and has her recite the passage from Isaiah. This has significance later in the episode when Jesus calls her. It should be noted here that Mary was mentioned more than any other woman in the Bible except for those in Jesus family. She was also mentioned more than most of the other Apostles. She was the first to see Jesus after His resurrection and the first to receive the charge to tell others about His resurrection.
In the show, Mary, was called Lilith during her adult life, and was possessed by demons. Lilith was a female demonic figure of Jewish folklore.
NOTE: The name Lilith is not mentioned in the Bible and certainly is not actually affiliated with Mary Magdalene. The show uses that name to illustrate that she had demons as an adult while she had that name.
…Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out…
Luke 8:2
She had been causing trouble in her village in the red district when the demons took control of her. A Pharisee, a holy man named Nicodemus, tried to expel them, but the demons in Mary told Nicodemus that they were not afraid of him and that he had no power over them. He later said to his wife that only God himself could have driven those demons out. This is significant in the story because in fact it was God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, who did cast out her demons and redeemed her at the end of the episode.
Some evil demonic, sometimes called unclean, spirits come out through traditional means of exorcism, whatever those are, but these particular spirits could only be expelled by God himself. In the gospel of Mark there is a story of a boy who was possessed. The disciples tried to expel the evil sprits but were unsuccessful. They asked Jesus why they had been unsuccessful and he told them that this kind could only be expelled through prayer. Jesus expelled the demons for them. This would lead to the assumption that only God could have expelled the demon because through prayer we ask God to intervene and do what we cannot do in our own power or to give us the strength to do it through Him. The chosen uses the same idea in this scene to suggest that what Nicodemus said was true, that the demons in Mary were the kind that only God could expel.
Later, before she had met Jesus, she tried to kill herself. She threw the letter over the cliff that her father wrote to her which contained the words from Isaiah, signifying that she was throwing away the word and giving up on her life. She was about to commute suicide. Then a dove flew over head once and then it flew over her head again catching her attention it drew her away from the cliff.
Mary returns to the bar she previously had visited prior to her suicide attempt. She asks the bar tender for a lot of alcohol and the bar tender told her that it will not help to solve her problems. That alcohol will only distract her from her problems. Just as she is about to take her drink, Jesus covers her hand and says “that’s not for you”. She begins to have a reaction and starts beating on her head. Apparently the demons were beginning to take control over her again. As she was trying to run out of the bar and away from Jesus, Jesus comes outside and stoped her and says her real name Mary instead of Lillith. She asked, “who are you”. He said to her, “Thus says the Lord, he who created you, he who formed you. Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name.” These were the words her father taught her from her youth when she was scared and were also the words written on the piece of paper she carried.
The most amazing thing about this scene is that Jesus, who is the creator, was the one saying those words to her in that moment, was in fact the one who created her, who formed her and redeemed her. In that moment, you can see her facial expression change. The first reaction I saw was fear. Perhaps it was the demons who knew their time had come to an end. Then, you see her cry, finding comfort in Jesus. She had been redeemed by God himself and he said that she was His. She found the hope she had been longing for all her life.
Matthew
Matthew is portrayed as one with a slight Autism. But he is good with numbers and took up a profession as a tax collector. He was also a Jew. This would have been considered traitorous and he would have been hated by his fellow Jews. As you can see in the show, the people looked upon him with disgust, hatred even. Even the roman soldier who guarded him knew how much he is despised. The danger was very real for him, hence the need for a guard. The introduction of Matthew as a character plays out in later episodes and builds upon Jesus calling people by name to follow Him.
Andrew
Andrew was a fisherman and the brother of Simon who is called Peter. He was the first to be called by Jesus in the Bible to be his disciple. In the show, you see Andrew with his brother in a fight scene and also other places by the their boat and when they are presenting themselves to Matthew for the collection of taxes. The boat you see will be significant in a later episode.
The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
John 1:35-42, ESV
Simon Peter
Simon was a fisherman and brother of Andrew. He is portrayed as a free spirit kind of guy that is in debt to the Romans. He is trying to figure out how to make money in order to pay back the tax debt he owes. But he comes up short. Simon gets creative by making a deal with the Governor, Quintus to spy on the other Jew’s who were fishing on Shabbat, which was illegal to do as a Jew. Fishermen were doing this to escape paying taxes on the work they did on that day because the Romans were not paying attention on that day since they didn’t expect the Jews to be working. But they caught wind of this act and a deal was struck between Quintus and Simon. This entire storyline is fictional but sets up the character for later episodes when Jesus saves him from his debt and calls him to be fishers of men and be a disciple of Jesus.
Shabbat
Shabbat means Sabbath. Shabbat is the seventh day in the Jewish week, which begins at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday. It was a law given to the Jews by God that the time period of the Sabbath that no work shall be done. It was strictly prohibited and punishable by death in the law. As such, you can see why it would have been dangerous to fish or perform any work during that time period each week. This was brought to the attention of the Pharisee Nicodemus. Quintus, approached Nicodemus about this not because of his concern for Jewish law but rather because of the money that the government was missing out on because the Jews working on that day were evading paying taxes on the worked performed. Nicodemus was concerned because Jews were breaking Jewish law.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11, ESV
Nicodemus
Nicodemus was a great teacher and ruler among the Jews. He said something in the episode that was quite subtle but caught my attention. He was talking to his fellow phrases about the people working on the sabbath and told them that the messiah will not come until that kind of lawlessness ceases. Little did he know that the messiah who is Jesus Christ, was already on the earth and about to begin his ministry. The phrases thought that the delay in the messiah’s coming was sin, but we know that Christ came for the sinners. For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8, ESV
Nicodemus was highly regarded. His character is established in this episode and becomes more important as the episode progresses because he, being the man who should have all the answers, begins to question the wisdom he has.
God says that he will make the wise (earthly wisdom) fools. In the scenes where he is questioning what he knows about God show that he is beginning to see something mysterious at work. He is perplexed that he was not able to cast out the demons in Mary Magdalene, something that he should have been able to do. This was the problem with the Pharisees, they were men of knowledge but held to burdensome traditions in the form of an oral laws, laws that were not from God. Traditions that they added to year after year. Yet even they did not follow their own traditions perfectly and were considered hypocrites in Jesus’ eyes.
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!
Mark 7:5-9, ESV
Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?
Acts 15:10, ESV
Nicodemus, in the show, began to realize that he may not actually know as much as he thought he did regarding knowledge of God. He was questioning his wisdom.
Christ the Wisdom and Power of God
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles
1 Corinthians 1:18-24
This first episode of The Chosen introduces several very noteworthy biblical concepts. Many are subtle in their appearance. Hopefully with these scriptures in mind, you will now have a richer experience of the show in light of what is happening through scripture.
Pre-Show Reading List
I Have Called You By Name
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Isaiah 43:1, ESV
Mary Magdalene
Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.
Luke 8:1-3, ESV
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene After the Resurrection
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
John 20:11-18
And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
Mark 9:14-29, ESV
Sabbath
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11, ESV
Nicodemus
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
John 3:1-15, ESV
When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”
John 7:40-52, ESV
Christ the Wisdom and Power of God
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles…
1 Corinthians 1:18-24, ESV