Why are the accents in Jesus movies so weird?
Denizens of the imaginary ancient Middle East speak in an exotic-sounding, unidentifiable hodgepodge of sounds
Mary and Joseph in the Netflix production. Courtesy of Netflix
By Mira Fox December 13, 2024
It has always struck me as absurd that actors in English-language films set in other times or countries speak in accents. After all, the ancient Romans, Greeks, Israelites, Gaels or whatever other peoplpe in question didn’t speak English at all, so as long as we’re all agreeing to suspend disbelief so we can understand the dialogue, the actors might as well speak in their natural voices.
Nevertheless, the convention has long been to use an accent. Received Pronunciation — also known as “a very posh British accent” — is broadly standard; think HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries, or basically anything set in Ancient Rome. It’s also common for actors to speak English dialogue in the accent of the language their character should be speaking. Schindler’s List or Hulu’s We Were the Lucky Ones have their characters speaking English dialogue in German accents. Lumiere, the talking candelabra in Beauty and the Beast, has a French accent.
And then there’s the recent spate of Jesus movies. And whatever it is they’re doing.
Netflix’s new release, Mary, about the mother of Jesus, features an almost entirely Israeli cast. Yet some of its characters speak in American English, and Sir Anthony Hopkins, who plays King Herod, speaks in his natural British accent. (Also, all the background actors are speaking Modern Hebrew.)
The Carpenter, a Jesus movie that is somehow also about mixed-martial arts, has its star fighter speak in a strongly American accent, while Jesus speaks with the rolled “r” of Arabic and other village-folk sound unplaceably exotic.
And perhaps the biggest hit of all, The Chosen, a crowd-funded TV show about Jesus and his disciples, contains what — to my inexpert ear — sounds like a mix of Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish and American accents, depending on the speaker or, sometimes, even the sentence.
Of course, since none of these people should be speaking English anyway, you can excuse some of the inconsistencies. Royalty likely had a different dialect than villagers, so perhaps Hopkins’ British accent makes sense. And Jerusalem, thanks to the Temple, drew pilgrims from different regions, so maybe they all had different accents.
But the question that stays with me is: What, exactly, are these accents aiming for, and why?
In a Reddit forum discussing The Chosen, I found a post trying to parse the strange and inconsistent accents on the show. In the comments, numerous people complained about the inaccuracy to the region. “They all sound like Antonio Banderas to me,” wrote one commentator.
Some more helpful answers pointed out that Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus on the show, drew his accent from his Egyptian and Palestinian relatives’ Arabic accents and the rest of the cast followed his lead. A representative from the show said that a dialect coach worked with the cast on “Middle Eastern accents,” though of course there are myriad accents in the region.
Most strikingly, many of the annoyed commenters said that the cast should not have been aiming for Arabic accents at all; they should have been going for Yiddish. Though the language in Jesus’ time was Aramaic, and Yiddish is more closely related to German, the participants in the discussion seemed to agree that Yiddish would be a way of “honoring the Jewish tradition of the Bible, its setting and inhabitants.”
The apparent rising interest in Jesus media often comes with a strong emphasis on the Judaism of the era. Getting back to mysterious, ancient roots of Christianity is part of a quest for religious authenticity.
The Chosen makes a point of showing Jesus’ disciples putting on tzitzit, observing Shabbat, discussing the laws of the mikveh or kashrut. Mary, too, depicts the Temple, the Jewish priests, the centrality of Judaism to life and identity in Jerusalem at the time; its director, D.J. Caruso, told Entertainment Weekly that he wanted to cast Israelis “to ensure authenticity.” Even The Carpenter, which is more concerned with MMA fights than history, makes it clear that its characters are Jews. But unlike many previous Jesus movies in which the Jews are villainous — perhaps the most notable example being Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ — these newer Jesus movies laud and almost fetishize Jewishness.
This is not just a trend in Jesus movies; it’s a trend in Christianity more broadly. Shofars are common at Christian rallies. Seders and even Friday Shabbat dinners are becoming popular among some Christians. There are even Purim shpiels.
The accents, as inconsistent as they are, are part of this project. They’re bound together by the same fascination with Jewishness and Jewish history. The driver, seemingly, behind much of the Christian fascination with ancient Judaism is not seeking accurate history so much as religious truth. So the accents don’t need to be perfect; they need to gesture at the exoticness and mystery of ancient times, the ancient people and their strange, mysterious and authentic religion — the religion that Jesus practiced.
There is a history of using inaccurate accents in films to signal power or symbolize a character trait. In the original Gladiator movie, for example, the emperor had a high-class British accent while Russell Crowe’s gladiator had an Australian one to signify his low standing. In The Ten Commandments, made in 1956, the Egyptians had British accents while Moses and the Jews spoke an American-inflected English, to help audiences identify more with the protagonists.
The symbolism of the confused accents in the Jesus movies works similarly. The point isn’t history or linguistics. It’s exoticism. Jews are the holders of mystery in this Christian schema — they’re not like modern Christian American viewers. And whether that’s accurate is as irrelevant as the accuracy of the accents.
So maybe in the next movie, Jesus will sound like a Yeshivish guy with a strong Ashkenazi intonation. He could even have a Brooklyn accent. As long as it’s clear he’s Jewish.
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