It seems only natural that films (or any other media) devoted to retelling Biblical
stories would, first and foremost, exalt their moral virtues. Like the Bible
itself, they are often regarded as didactic tools with which to educate people
on ethics while reasserting the Biblical god’s authority. However, this is no
longer the case in American cinema. Overtime, the genre’s didactic function
monopolizes what little attention it still commands from American audiences,
while America’s film industry itself seems to have lost sight of the genre’s
devotion to the monotheistic Biblical god. The exclusivity that makes morality
in Bible adaptations “Biblical”--the willingness to proclaim God as the ultimate
moral authority superior to those of every other belief--has disappeared from
mainstream cinematic productions almost entirely. The result is a conflation of
Biblical morality in these films with that of a more universal, humanist, and
less religiously-bounded sort in the American audiences’ collective
consciousness.
