• BC Christian News • JANUARY ISSUE 1999 • VOL. 19 #1 • Formerly "Christian Info News" •

Charlton Heston has a way with Bible stories
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• Charlton Heston Presents the Bible, Good Times Home Video, 1993 (4 cassettes).

• Charlton Heston: Charlton Heston Presents the Bible: A Com-panion for Families, GT Publishing, 1997.

PEOPLE MAY disagree as to which was the best of the old Hollywood Bible epics, but most can agree on one thing: it probably starred Charlton Heston, baring his chest, bearing his chains and gritting his teeth with his chin held high.

He was Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's spectacular, operatic The Ten Commandments and he won an Oscar as a Jewish prince in Ben-Hur. He even played a rather loud and unruly John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Heston kept his career alive into the Nixon era with a trio of apocalyptic science-fiction films -- Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, The Omega Man -- that played on these religious images.

In more recent years, he has become more of an activist than an actor, stomping the ground for the National Rifle Association and persuading Warner Brothers to censor Ice-T's Cop Killer album. His big-screen appearances these days -- check True Lies and Disney's Hercules -- tend to be brief and self-mocking.

What is not so widely recognized nowadays is that Heston can tell a great story, and tell it well, when he really puts his mind to it. Just read his crusty but reflective autobiography, In the Arena, or check out his cameo as The Player in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, one of that film's few high points. There's an intelligence and an erudition to his work that would shock anyone familiar only with his monkey movies.

Enter Charlton Heston Presents the Bible, a video series Heston shot in the Middle East and released five years ago. In the videos, Heston recites stories from the King James Version while standing in the ruins of ancient amphitheatres; his swaggering diction is perfectly complemented by Leonard Rosenman's music and the occasional montage of paintings and images that were created over the last six centuries.

Heston's no scholar, and he knows it. But then, neither were the people who first told these stories, which thrived in the oral tradition long before scribes wrote them down. It's not exactly clear what mix of aesthetic and, for lack of a better word, religious motives impel Heston's Bible appreciation, but appreciate it he does, just as he appreciates the painters and architects he relies upon to illustrate his series.

Now, to help families immerse themselves in Bible stories and the art they inspired, Charlton Heston Presents the Bible has its own coffee-table book. The text focuses almost exclusively on the Pentateuch and the Gospels; fans of the Israelite monarchy and the Early Church may be disappointed. Similarly, between the ancient architecture and the more recent paintings, none of which predate the 14th century, there lies a thousand-year gap in Heston's artistic perspective.

Heston's commentaries, sprinkled throughout the book, are pithy and direct; only a handful are in any way questionable (as when Heston tries to rationalize the parting of the Red Sea, or when he glibly sums up the archaeological evidence concerning Jericho's fate).

The good stuff, of course, is to be found in the stories themselves, which are easily available in less expensive volumes. And without the videos, one cannot savor the emotional nuances of Heston's performances. Still, the book is a handy way to introduce children -- and adults -- to at least some of the ways in which the Bible has influenced western culture. -- Peter T. Chattaway