Those British Jesus Movies
19 December 2005
2 Comments
Those British Jesus movies are on television again for the holiday season. You know, the movies where Jesus speaks in the King James 1611 Shakespearean dialect.
Why is this? I would figure that Jesus probably had an accent and dialect of the people of Nazareth and Bethlehem.










He wouldn’t have been white, had blue eyes, or long hair either!
And a Roman speaking modern English would probably have an accent more like Ricardo Montalban than Mid-Atlantic King’s English.
The convention of Biblical figures speaking British-Upper-Class English has spread far and wide. My sister-in-law (Iraqi Christian from Kurdistan) speaks Aramaic (it’s her denomination’s liturgical language). She had one complaint about The Passion — that all the Aramaic was spoken with such thick English accents.
(Kinge Jaymes 1611 Englyshe leaking through even in ancient Judea?)