I Don't Care About the Reaction - The Chosen Creator Dallas…

Capture

What the episode is about

Alex O'Connor (philosopher, popular writer, agnostic, known for his channel "Within Reason") interviews Dallas Jenkins, creator and director of The Chosen, on the set of the series. The conversation is a long exercise in transparency about the craft of adapting the gospels: where the biblical text ends and dramatic invention begins, what criteria a believing storyteller uses to decide what is "plausible" to put in Jesus' mouth, and how actors of different faiths (Jonathan Roumie, a Catholic, who plays Jesus) react to choices that touch their own theology. O'Connor also brings his criteria as a skeptical historian (multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment) to weigh which gospel episodes are more or less historically solid.

Books and films mentioned in the episode

Forrest Gump (film, 1994): used by O'Connor as an analogy for how a viewer holds together a real historical figure with invented characters and events: we know Gump's meeting with JFK never happened, but we know JFK existed. 1:49:56
Titanic (film, 1997): cited by Jenkins as an example of the same narrative device he uses. The opening with the "modern" explanation of how the ship sank isn't boring: it frees viewers from having to ask "how does this work" so they can sink into the story. The extra-biblical exposition in The Chosen does the same job. 16:54
The West Wing (TV series): Jenkins's stated model for the structure of The Chosen. The President (Jesus) doesn't appear until the last minutes of episode 1; it's an ensemble show that tells the story of power through the people around it. 22:15
Star Wars: mentioned twice as a joke. Once as an example of an implausible motive (Leia handing Luke over to Darth Sidious for money, as an absurd parallel to Judas's supposed motive) 1:25:44, and once as a yardstick for the entertainment value of The Chosen ("more interesting than Star Wars", says O'Connor). 1:59:17
Jesus (film, 1979, a verse-by-verse rendering of the Gospel of Luke): cited by Jenkins as the opposite of what he does, the literal biblical re-enactment, which he finds "quite emotionally distant" because it lacks the exposition and story arcs that make a character work on screen. 18:43
Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples (Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples), Helen Bond and Joan Taylor (2022): cited by O'Connor. An academic study (Bond teaches at Edinburgh) of why the gospels give women so little narrative space while mentioning them at key moments (funding the ministry, the empty tomb). 1:38:38
Christ before the High Priest (painting, National Gallery, London): O'Connor doesn't name the painter, but it's Gerrit van Honthorst's Christ before the High Priest, c. 1617. He cites it as a possible rival to The Chosen: a single painted look that conveys what the series tells in hours of TV. 1:53:14
The homicide detective's argument ("97 pieces of the puzzle"): Jenkins credits it to a detective and apologist whose first name he can't remember ("Wallace"). It's almost certainly J. Warner Wallace, author of Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels; the title isn't mentioned in the episode, but that's the book and the argument tied to the name. 1:19:18

Moments and passages that struck me

Factual truth vs "capital T truth": Jenkins doesn't claim historical accuracy for every scene, but "plausibility": an invented detail must not contradict Jesus' character and intentions in the gospels. In his words: "I'm trying to capture capital T truth and I'm trying to capture plausibility." 10:15
The comparison with the evangelists themselves: O'Connor notes that the gospel authors themselves seem to have "filled in the gaps" when reconstructing Jesus' words (e.g. the differences on divorce), not to deceive but because they were reconstructing a sincere memory. Jenkins agrees but marks a difference: the evangelists believed they were reporting historical truth, while he knows he is inventing for the sake of plausibility. 8:40
The two chronologies of the cleansing of the temple (John: start of the ministry; synoptics: the end): Jenkins picks one version because the story needs it, and explains his reasoning. It isn't a contradiction in the gospels; showing it twice would be more confusing. 25:41
The "Little James" scene: Jenkins cast an actor with a real disability and had to face on screen the question "why don't you heal me too?". Jesus says no and offers an explicit theodicy (with a reference to the book of Job: "think of the story you'll be able to tell"). O'Connor calls it theologically "dangerous" because it puts in Jesus' mouth a specific philosophical position on suffering that the gospels never explicitly give him. 56:40
Jonathan Roumie's theological discomfort: for the crucifixion, the actor pushed back on lines that were too light about the cross. Not for strictly doctrinal reasons, but because he felt Christ's suffering had to stay "reverent". And on the "brothers of Jesus", the Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity would make it theologically impossible for Roumie to play a scene with a biological brother of Jesus. 38:45
"I am the law of Moses": an invented line (season 3) that Jenkins thinks is theologically sound (Christ as the fulfilment of the law) but can't be shown historically. He admits it himself: "And that's dangerous." 50:53
The portrait of Judas: many causes at once (disappointment with a Messiah who doesn't overthrow Rome, some greed, demonic influence, predestination), never "purely bad". Jenkins: "the notion that he just was purely bad and just decided to do this and that Satan just entered him and that was it, I just don't find plausible, even if I believed it was good storytelling." 1:15:06
O'Connor's criteria of historicity: multiple attestation (especially between the synoptics and John, which are independent sources) and the criterion of embarrassment (e.g. Jesus baptised by John, the "12 tribes" mentioned with Judas still counted among them), details an inventing author would have avoided. 1:56:40
Women in the gospels: a conspicuous narrative absence despite key roles (funding the ministry, first witnesses of the resurrection). In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul lists the witnesses of the resurrection and doesn't explicitly mention the women, even though in the gospels they are the first at the empty tomb. 1:33:47
O'Connor's own reaction as an agnostic viewer of the series: the scene of the woman at the well moves him deeply, even though he knows he's watching an adaptation; he admits he can't fully "lose himself" in the less historically attested scenes. 1:55:36

Quotes

"I just don't care about the reaction." (Dallas Jenkins) 11:59
"I'm trying to capture capital T truth and I'm trying to capture plausibility. [...] I don't think the gospel authors were trying to be plausible. I think they were absolutely trying to and I believe achieved accuracy." 10:15
"This is my interpretation. It's backed by very very smart believing scholars [...] but by no means can I claim that my interpretation and my portrayal is or should be the definitive portrayal." 36:15
"The suffering is actually part of the theology." (on Jonathan Roumie and the crucifixion scene) 39:07
"It's not rational to me that he just [...] wanted more money and this was the best way to get it." (Jenkins on Judas) 1:20:44
"There is not a record of someone asking Jesus personally for healing and not receiving it." (Jenkins, on the Little James scene) 1:00:23
"It's probably the 20th greatest piece of Jesus media ever produced [...] after the 27 books of the New Testament." (O'Connor, tongue in cheek) 1:52:51
"Why did Jesus succeed where all these other false ones didn't?" (Jenkins) 2:11:06

Exploration

Central idea

Jenkins claims for The Chosen a status halfway between gospel and pure fiction: not "capital T truth" guaranteed line by line, but "plausibility", a commitment never to contradict Jesus' character in the gospels while knowingly filling narrative gaps. In O'Connor's reading the evangelists may have filled gaps too, but with a claim to historical accuracy. The difference Jenkins states is self-awareness: he knows he is inventing, while the evangelists, in his faith, believed they were reporting facts.

Ideas

Jenkins's guiding criterion isn't historical accuracy but "non-contradiction" with Jesus' character and intentions in the gospels: a theological constraint, not a historiographical one.
The comparison with ancient biography (works that embellish by convention, not to deceive) makes what The Chosen does look normal within ancient history-writing in general.
The riskiest choices (Little James and the theodicy, "I am the law of Moses") come from explicit theological reasoning that Jenkins knows is debatable, and that he runs past a board of consultants (a New Testament scholar, a Catholic priest, a Messianic Jewish rabbi). 34:32
The portrait of Judas rejects a single-cause explanation (pure greed or pure evil) for a mixed motive that is historically and psychologically more plausible. But it's still an interpretive choice, not a given.
O'Connor's historiographical criteria (multiple attestation, embarrassment) offer an independent tool for telling apart, inside the gospels themselves, what is more or less historically solid. Jenkins applies that kind of rigour less systematically to his own additions.
The absences (women, the Transfiguration, the temptations in the desert) are stated editorial choices, not denials, driven by the limits of time and medium (TV) more than by theological judgement. 1:43:17