10 Exciting Bible Movies You Haven't Seen Yet
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Bible stories have been adapted to film for as long as filmmaking has existed. Some great classics have been released over the years—from provocative movies like The Gospel According to Saint Matthew to cute children’s cartoons like The Star.
Sometimes the most interesting Bible movies are the ones that don’t get mentioned every year at Easter and Christmas. Movies that may not offer the most impressive special effects or cover the most famous stories. However, these movies are worth watching because they are less well-known. The stories they adapt and the unique angles they take can challenge us to rethink how we read the Bible, and also what we expect from a Bible movie.
The following 10 movies go a little outside the usual recommendations. They are easy to find but often challenging and enriching in ways you may not expect.
Photo Credit:©AngelStudios, Used with Permission
1. Genesis: The Creation and the Flood
Recommended for Kids: Yes
The story about the Garden of Eden and the story of Noah’s Ark are usually the first stories we hear in Sunday School. They are also two of the hardest stories to adapt. For one thing, many special effects are involved in depicting a planet’s creation and a planet-wide flood.
Genesis: The Creation and The Flood, the first part of the Bible Collection series, takes a clever approach to this problem. Instead of telling the story like a costume drama or special effects extravaganza, it uses a framing device to keep the scale small. A group of nomads living in tents share Bible stories, from Adam and Eve to Noah exiting the ark, with their children. The movie cuts back and forth between the nomads (who live much like Noah, Abraham, and other biblical patriarchs) doing their regular lives and quick scenes of the stories they tell—rain hitting the ark, etc.
The storytelling framework may feel like a gimmick to avoid showing the fun stuff, but it accomplishes something important. First, it reminds us that these stories were first passed down orally before someone (tradition believes it was Moses) wrote down the story of Genesis. Second, by imagining a nomadic family telling the story to each other, the movie reminds us of the context we forget. The Bible stories we hear so often happened in Ancient Near Eastern cultures, to people who were used to living in tents and making sure their tribe worked together to survive. That context—with its emphasis on honoring the past, taking care of family, and passing on stories as part of the family legacy—informs the Bible in more ways than we realize.
Further Reading: Great Bible Movies about Noah
2. The Bible Collection: Esther
Esther is a surprising book in many ways: the only book in the Old Testament, not to mention God by name, the story of how the Jews came close to being exterminated after already being humiliated and exiled. This entry in the Bible Collection depicts the story well, with both shocking plot twists and a larger context of the Jews craving a way to return home.
The Bible Collection: Esther is also unusual for refusing to simplify the story too much. Bible movies are always more informed by marketing than we realize, which means they often add romance where it isn’t mentioned in the text. Some Bible movies about Esther work overtime to make the story of Esther being taken by force to the palace and being married off to Xerxes into a romance. That angle gets especially funny in movies like Esther and the King, where Esther accidentally sees the king shirtless in a palace brawl but doesn’t realize he’s the king until later. The Bible Collection: Esther makes it clear that the marriage is forced and implies some of the squeamish dilemmas that come with being married off to a strange man.
This movie highlights Esther’s bravery by refusing to make Esther’s life too cute. Born into a disenfranchised people group living in a foreign land, she loses even more freedom when she’s made the spouse to a king who isn’t interested in her opinions. One of the many women that Xerxes keeps in her palace, easy to remove if she displeases Xerxes, Esther finds a way to do what no one expects. She changes a nation’s direction before it commits genocide.
Further Reading: Inspiring Bible Movies about Esther
3. The Bible: In the Beginning
While Creation: The Creation and the Flood takes a minimal approach to adapting the Bible’s early chapters, The Bible: I the Beginning offers more spectacle. However, it’s a different kind of spectacle than viewers who grew up on 1950s biblical epics may expect.
There are some grand special effects—especially in scenes about the Tower of Babel and Noah building the ark. However, the biblical epics often went out of their way to add extra spectacle and spicy material—for example, belly dancers in David and Bathsheba. They also tended to assume that the more special effects, the better.
Perhaps because this movie was made in Europe—away from the huge sets that Hollywood could offer to make huge scenes—it takes a careful approach to gimmicks. It keeps most of the spectacle scenes short, never overstaying its welcome. It uses simpler tricks (voiceover for the snake in Eden instead of an animated or pet snake), while other movies use elaborate tricks. The result is that today, when so many 1960s Bible movies feel clunky and bloated, this one feels streamlined and fun.
Further Reading: 10 Things I Learned from Watching Over 100 Bible Movies
4. Barabbas
Several famous Bible movies are based on side characters in the major Bible stories. Most famously, The Robe follows the Roman centurion who took Jesus’ robe on the cross. Barabbas dears to look at one of the least savory characters in the Passion narrative: Barabbas, the revolutionary who would have been executed if Jesus wasn’t killed instead.
The story imagines Barabbas being unsettled when he briefly sees Jesus, then being more confused when he hears stories about Jesus’ body disappearing from its tomb. He tries to return to fighting the Romans, becoming an enslaved miner and later a gladiator, meeting early Christians every step he takes. Each time, he must consider what he really believes about Jesus… and whether there’s a reason that circumstances somehow keep him from dying.
Barabbas is clearly designed to offer as many thrills—gladiator fights, brawls, crucifixions—as possible. However, it never makes Barabbas’ journey feel too implausible. By imagining him as a man who struggles to believe in Jesus but seems to be saved repeatedly from death, the movie plays with the idea that God is “the hound of heaven.” He is always seeking us, always offering a chance to accept his free gift of salvation, his love never giving up. Barabbas’ choice may not be what viewers expect, but it raises important questions about how much God respects our free will.
Further Reading: 10 Easter Movies about Jesus
5. A Story of David
Sometimes titled A Story of David, this early TV movie starts with the difficult second act of David’s life. He killed the giant Goliath, became a renowned military commander, and married Saul’s daughter, Michal. When it looks like everything is going well, Saul moves to kill him. David flees for his life, becoming a fugitive with his mighty men. Saul’s pursuit leads the two men to a point where they must determine which truly follows God.
A Story of David may skip the most dramatic scenes in David’s life, but it excels at depicting what may have been David’s greatest challenge. Fighting a strange foe is one thing. Fighting a father figure who has betrayed you is far harder. The script also highlights how easy it would be for David to seek revenge, how his fellow fugitives encouraged him to take it, and his hard choice to keep having mercy on Saul.
It may not be the most famous or exciting Bible movie about David. But it shows what may be the most applicable part of David’s life, when he learns hard lessons we all need to learn today. We will all experience betrayal and be tempted to return pain for pain. We must all learn to do what David did: to choose reconciliation and mercy instead.
Further Reading: 10 Bible Movies about King David
6. Golgotha/Behold the Man
Released in its native France as Golgotha and in America as Behold the Man, this movie about Jesus’ week in Jerusalem hasn’t developed the profile of movies like The Passion of the Christ or Jesus of Nazareth. However, it is famous for being the first sound movie to depict Jesus without hiding his face or similar methods. In fact, it finds a clever way to show how it shifts from the old standards: Jesus is seen from a distance or behind until after he clears the temple, which makes him mysterious at the start and then relatable as the scene shifts to his conversations with his followers.
Behold the Man may also be one of the most balanced Jesus movies available today. It covers the usual moments—beginning with the crowds waiting for Jesus on Palm Sunday and ending with Jesus talking to the disciples before ascending to heaven. However, it never drags out any one scene, so nothing feels overdone. The black-and-white photography makes Jesus’ torments creepy but never graphic, so it’s never gratuitous. The camera doesn’t move around as much as in some later color movies, but it moves around far more than in later biblical epics like King of Kings.
A compact, well-developed, entertaining Jesus movie that avoids most of the excesses that Bible movies fall into.
Further Reading: 10 Surprising Jesus Movies You Should See
7. Joseph the Dreamer
Joseph is another Bible figure that surprisingly doesn’t appear in live-action movies very much—perhaps because it’s a big story that covers decades. Joseph the Dreamer, a stop-motion animated movie by director Yoram Gross, is famous for being perhaps the first animated Bible movie made in Israel.
Like many lower-budget stop-motion movies, it has little dialogue, with a narrator giving the important information as the animated figures move. Like many great silent movies, the visuals are simple, but find clever ways to communicate a lot with a little. While the animation is basic (some viewers may think of the original Gumby TV show when they see it), Gross manages to make the dangerous scenes where Joseph is in peril feel truly dangerous. He also works in Jewish references throughout the movie, making it feel grounded in its historical setting, not just another Sunday School cartoon.
Although it may not have the polish of later animated Bible movies like Prince of Egypt, Joseph the Dreamer remains a classic example of how animation can tell Bible stories well, offering enough visual complexity for viewers of any age.
Further Reading: 10 Classic Bible Movies about Joseph
8. His Only Son
One of the more recent Bible movies, His Only Son looks at the most brutal part of Abraham’s life: God telling him to sacrifice his only son. The story follows their journey with regular flashbacks to fill in the essential information—Abraham thinking he can’t have children, the melodrama when he has a son with Hagar, and then his shock when Sarah does conceive.
Like many Bible movies and TV shows released after The Passion of the Christ, there is a strong emphasis on action and suspense. That suspense feels overdone in a few scenes (Abraham and Isaac running into bandits). However, the tone generally excels at capturing the shock and drama in this story. Being told after years of waiting for a promised child that God wants you to kill him is not an easy thing to hear—even for someone like Abraham, who grew up in a pagan culture where child sacrifice happened all the time.
A heart-wrenching, intense, but ultimately redemptive look at Abraham’s darkest hour. It’s also one of the few Bible movies that captures how much Abraham had spent his life following God in ways that surprised outsiders—leaving his homeland, defeating five kings in battle but not taking their land, becoming a respected warrior while staying a humble traveler.
Further Reading: Top 5 Bible Movies about Abraham
9. The Bible Collection: The Apocalypse
Many movies have tried to take Revelation’s prophecies and imagine what they would look like if they were fulfilled today. Far fewer movies talk about the context in which Revelation was written: the apostle John is exiled to the island of Patmos to share the good news. The early church wonders where he is while focusing on surviving or escaping Roman persecution. In this dark context, John has visions that God directs him to write down and share with the church.
The special effects for the vision scenes may not be too impressive decades later, but the story hasn’t lost its appeal. The Apocalypse balances, showing John and his supporters as each group deals with persecution. As John has visions, the visuals parallel the ancient events (soldiers on horses, etc.). While scholars argue about how much of Revelation describes the future and how much describes what was happening in John’s time, even scholars who take a futurist reading affirm that many of the prophetic images explore problems the early church was having.
By exploring John’s story and Revelation’s strange images, The Apocalypse makes an important point. The Bible’s last book may be about the future. But even in premillennial readings, Revelation is equally about what the early church was experiencing and the promise that all things would be made well in the end.
Further Reading: 5 End Times Movies that May Surprise You
10. The Miracle Maker
On paper, The Miracle Maker seems like a strange Jesus movie. It features Ralph Fiennes (later known for playing Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies) as Jesus’s voice. It was produced by a team of Welsh and Russian animators, not cultures we typically think of as working together.
Somehow, though, it all works. Perhaps it’s because the animators seem to have split their duties: flashback scenes showing Jesus’ past ministry are animated with ink, and present scenes of him traveling to Jerusalem are animated with stop-motion. Perhaps it’s because Fiennes is so good at playing wise characters and sinister ones, meaning he can depict the extremes of Jesus’ personality: the angry man who cleansed the temple and the kind man who healed blind people.
More than anything else, The Miracle Maker has a clear vision of what story it wants to tell. Many Jesus movies attempt to tell everything about him from all four gospels and feel bloated. The Miracle Maker starts with the concept that it will feature many of Jesus’ most famous events but focuses especially on miracles (resurrecting Lazarus and a dead girl, rising back to life on the third day). The clarity keeps the story moving without ever overstaying its welcome, building carefully to its final scenes. Few Jesus movies, live-action or animated, have made Jesus’ death and resurrection more compelling.
Further Reading: Top 10 Bible TV Shows of All Time
