The Bible and Music

Monday during class we looked at the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and the idea of dramatization. Personally, I didn’t really like the music from this musical because there were some theological mismatches and some things seemed close to crossing a line and I didn’t really like that. It was clear that this musical was made more for entertainment purposes rather than educational ones. It is interesting to look at the dramatization of the Bible. Something I was thinking of during class was the mini series The Bible which went through most of the stories of the Bible and put them on screen. A lot of the scenes were very dramatic and some things needed to be added in as the Bible didn’t have all the details necessary for translating the text to the screen. Another example of dramatization I could think of is the musical Joseph and His Technicolor Dream Coat. This musical is very similar to Jesus Christ Superstar in the way that it adapted the story to a more ‘modern’ setting. Like for instance they portrayed Potiphar as living in a disco style mansion rather than a home that matched up with the time period. The more you think about it, the more examples of dramatization from the Bible you can find.