--- title: 'The Young Messiah' Review description: 'The Young Messiah' introduces a new class in the world of Jesus narratives. canonical: https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/ author: John Anderson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-11T18:53:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T16:38:12.000Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 'The Young Messiah' Review og:description: 'The Young Messiah' introduces a new class in the world of Jesus narratives og:url: https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbcc0874664cbf672/69888a623c16398be745c5ef/the-young-messiah_6a6lnc.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: the-young-messiah_6A6LnC og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Young Messiah' Review twitter:description: 'The Young Messiah' introduces a new class in the world of Jesus narratives twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbcc0874664cbf672/69888a623c16398be745c5ef/the-young-messiah_6a6lnc.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's Why Making _The Young Messiah_ Was 'Fraught With Peril' > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: 'The Young Messiah' Official Trailer #1 [Watch (HLS stream): 'The Young Messiah' Official Trailer #1](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0BU6hSGz.m3u8) (2:09)  _Published 2016-03-09_ by [John Anderson](https://time.com/author/john-anderson/) ## John Anderson Updated: Dec 13, 2023 4:38 PM UTCPublished: Mar 11, 2016 6:53 PM UTC  Adam Greaves-Neal in The Young Messiah. Adam Greaves-Neal in The Young Messiah.Focus Features by [John Anderson](https://time.com/author/john-anderson/) ## John Anderson Updated: Dec 13, 2023 4:38 PM UTCPublished: Mar 11, 2016 6:53 PM UTC **Correction appended, March 16** It’s not quite a miracle, but you don’t often see a movie and its prequel playing theaters at the same time. Still, that would appear to be the case in this, the season of faith-based cinema: _Risen_, a nonbeliever’s-eye view of the first Easter, arrived last month. Now, hot on its sandaled heels, _The Young Messiah_ presents an episode out of the so-called “lost years” in the life of Christ. One hesitates to use the term “branded content” in regards a Jesus movie, but the mania for movie prequels is all about elaborating on existing popularity and name recognition—consider recent examples like _Pan_ and _Minions_. But _The Young Messiah_ is in a class by itself: Based on Anne Rice’s 2005 novel _Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt_, it spins an entirely new narrative, replete with Satan and miracles, within a sliver of the biblically unaccounted-for time between the Nativity stories and the 12-year-old Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem at Passover (Luke 2:41-52). It’s also very careful not to tread on any Christian dogma: Jesus’ brother James, for instance, whose kinship to Jesus has been interpreted by theologians in various ways, is portrayed as a sibling, but is also called a cousin, and in any event is described as “adopted,” lest anyone think _The Young Messiah_ was arguing with the doctrinal tradition of the virgin birth. Elsewhere, Satan throws an apple in the path of a running child; the 7-year-old Jesus raises him from the dead. The Jesus tradition in motion pictures began in the silent era (most likely with Edison’s _The Passion Play of Oberammergau_ of 1898) and most of the treatments have been done with enormous respect, both for the subject and the feelings of believers, for whom anything less than adoration can seem an incitement to riot. If this sounds like overstatement, consider Martin Scorsese’s _Last Temptation of Christ_, with its deeply conflicted Messiah and his dreams of sex with Mary Magdalene—when it played in Paris in 1988, the cinematheque was firebombed. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wrote the screen adaptation of _The Young Messiah_ with his wife, Betsy, agrees that wading into the holy waters of the Jesus story was “fraught with peril.” “But I’ve had other projects I’ve been condemned for,” he says, referring to _The Stoning of Soraya M._ (2008) and _The Path to 9/11_ (2006), both of which drew criticism for alleged misrepresentations of fact. “So I’m kind of used to that territory. Someone said to me that we were going ‘where angels fear to tread,’ but that, to me, was what was exciting about it. I felt if we do it right, people will recognize that and it will attract a lot of interest.” That seems certain: When a movie with an even vaguely religious theme is released, the faithful flock. _The Passion of the Christ_, of course, created extraordinary interest when it was released in 2004\. More recently, the 2013 TV miniseries _The Bible_ earned enormous ratings. _Noah—_which even its distributor, Paramount, seemed to run way from—wound up doing unholy business. _Son of God_, a 2014 release, made $70M worldwide and _Killing Jesus_, last year’s critically eviscerated TV movie based on Bill O’Reilly’s book, broke NatGeo viewership records. What _The Young Messiah_ aims to do may have antecedents in the roots of early Christianity — for example, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which created its own narrative of Jesus’ life as a boy. “It is a quite ancient text—second or third century,” says the Rev. John W. Martens, professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas. “But it exists in many manuscript traditions. It was clearly not seen as ‘historical,’ but it desired to fill in the gaps, for reasons which scholars today are still trying to ascertain—was it for entertainment? Edification? Curiosity?” What intrigued the faithful back then may do the same today. “People said I’d get a lot of resistance, lot of pushback, that we were going to have nothing but problems. And it hasn’t happened,” says Nowrasteh, a Christian who grew up in a secular Muslim home and has been baptized in the Presbyterian Church. “We’ve been screening across the country for religious influencers and \[have\] gotten a list of endorsement that would be the envy of any faith-based movie.” It’s not as if he isn’t playing to a tough crowd: At one screening, Nowrasteh says, a viewer took exception to a scene set in Jerusalem, in which a Roman confronts the young Jesus, who is being sought by King Herod for execution; a fellow Jew covers for the child, claiming he’s mute. Jesus doesn’t say a thing. “Someone got up and said, ‘You’ve got Jesus complicit in a lie,’” says Nowrasteh, “and someone else got up and said, ‘No, they’re foreshadowing that Jesus will always stand mute before his accusers.’ I thought that was great. “There are a lot of good answers for some of the questions raised in the film,” he said. “And usually they’re provided by someone else in the audience.” **Correction:** The original version of this story incorrectly described the publication genre for the book _Killing Jesus_. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/"},"headline":"Here's Why Making The Young Messiah Was 'Fraught With Peril'","datePublished":"2016-03-11T18:53:05.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T16:38:12.000Z","description":"The Young Messiah introduces a new class in the world of Jesus narratives—and director Cyrus Nowrasteh says it wasn't easy material to tackle","url":"https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/","keywords":["movies","Christianity","Jesus","film"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbcc0874664cbf672/69888a623c16398be745c5ef/the-young-messiah_6a6lnc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"John Anderson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/john-anderson/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbcc0874664cbf672/69888a623c16398be745c5ef/the-young-messiah_6a6lnc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"the-young-messiah_6A6LnC","caption":"Adam Greaves-Neal in The Young Messiah.","creditText":"Focus Features","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/","name":"Here's Why Making The Young Messiah Was 'Fraught With Peril'"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"'The Young Messiah' Official Trailer #1","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/0BU6hSGz/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-03-09T21:15:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0BU6hSGz.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/","duration":"PT2M9S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4253067/the-young-messiah-movie-director-jesus/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```