One of the fascinating things about ancient cities is how easy it can be to dig into the ground without knowing what you will find. This is true in cities like Rome, where construction workers discovering archeological sites regularly halt attempts to update the city’s infrastructure.
It’s equally true in the Holy Land, where the three great Abrahamic faiths have called home for thousands of years and construction projects regularly stumble upon buried secrets.
In the valley sometimes called Armageddon or Megiddo, one of Israel’s largest prisons attempted an unremarkable expansion in the early 2000s when it accidentally stumbled upon a buried mosaic, which turned out to be the ruins of the oldest known Christian church discovered by archeologists — dating to 230 AD. In 2024, the mosaic was fully excavated by a multi-faith team of archeologists and shipped to the Museum of the Bible for its first public display in nearly 1,800 years.
That excavation is now eternalized by a group of filmmakers for Angel Studio’s newest documentary, The Mosaic Church. The mosaic is currently on display in Washington, D.C., through July 6; and it seems the film’s release was meant to coincide with its public display. The documentary broadcast even ends with a portal link to buy museum tickets.
Despite its name, the documentary is only tenuously about the excavation, which the filmmakers seem to imply went off somewhat effortlessly and with little drama, besides having to coordinate with the prison full of terrorists. Instead, the film uses the mosaic as a jumping off point for its significance, exploring the history of the early Christian movement in the Roman Empire, the roles tolerance, oppression, women, slavery and social justice placed in early Christianity, the socio-cultural tensions of Israeli’s multi-faith history, and the ways modern archeology is uncovering all these hidden truths.
Naturally, Israel is a very contentious place. The current state of Israel has been at war for nearly two years and has been wrapped in conflict for decades. The region itself has been occupied since the early Muslim conquests, fought over by Christians during the Crusades, and ruled by the Ottoman and British Empires. The Old Testament teaches that it was hotly contested as far back as the Bronze Age, with frequent conquests and wars. The modern coexistence between Muslims, Christians and Jews is just a fact of life for the residents of this region.
Screencap from Mosaic film.
The portrait Mosaic Church paints of this cultural exchange, though, is rather slick. The movie doesn’t address the ongoing war or whether it affected the excavation, even though the excavation began six months into Israel’s war with Hamas. It’s possible Miggedo was unaffected by the war but not addressing it at all leaves the film feeling like a tourism ad for Israeli holy sites — and a strangely repetitive one at that since the film reuses multiple B-roll shots for different segments.
None of this is to say it would be appropriate for a Bear Grylls documentary to veer into a deep dive into the complicated nuances of the Gaza War. It’s just that not acknowledging its existence at all makes the documentary feel a bit too clean and sanitized.
Given the filmmakers’ moderate conservative slant (Angel Studios is partnered with The Daily Wire), I doubt any sort of seething controversial take was incoming that most American evangelicals might’ve found offensive. It just feels missing when this film’s crew and multi-faith archeology team is completely unaffected by the conflict in early 2024.
How does a multi-cultural society like Israel navigate these issues in both war and peacetime? If archaeology is the study of people, shouldn’t we dig deeper into these people?
The same is true for its theology. The film doesn’t dig deeply into the theological implications of how the early Christians worshiped and how that might affect our modern understanding of theology. It doesn’t want to make implications about sacramental theology or liturgy that might offend evangelicals or Catholics and just avoids any such discussions that might be touchy. It makes a big deal about the fact that the church’s altar for the Lord’s Supper was donated by a woman but doesn’t ask why Communion was important.
Close-up of mosaic from the film.
Where the film does take stances, it does so in its interviews with scholars suggesting that women and slaves were some of Christianity’s earliest audiences — nodding approvingly at the vague implication that social justice, refugee rights and women’s rights were important to the early church.
As a whole, the film ends up being a marching tour of Israel’s impressive archeology industry, with long digressions on the Dead Sea Scrolls, coin collecting and interviews with scholars like N.T. Wright about why the oppressed were attracted to faith. The excavation itself is repeatedly intercut with these digressions as the archeologists share anecdotes on what it is like to work together with people of different faiths and why archeology is important.
That The Mosaic Church is filled with so many vague gestures is merely a side effect of its attempting to be inoffensive, not making a film that will alienate any potential audience member, be they Muslim or Baptist. It’s fascinating and enjoyable, especially with Grylls’ chiseled tones shaping the narrative, but it doesn’t dig deeply enough into its subjects. Instead, it casts a wide net to cover a large swath of humanity while sanding off the edges.
As a collage, the documentary works just fine and excels at its core mission of unpacking the history of this one mosaic’s significance, but in branching out as frequently as it does it makes the viewer want to drink deeper of the oceans of knowledge it is skimming. The unfortunate irony is that the documentary makes a big fuss about the value of human understanding and objective fact, pointing to archeology as a study that allows us to understand ourselves and become more empathetic.
As the film makes clear, applying these ideas to the real world is actually harder. Then again, if your ulterior goal is to make the case for Israeli tourism and Museum of the Bible ticket sales, it’s doomed to end up feeling like a corporate commercial.
Tyler Hummel is a Wisconsin-based freelance critic and journalist, a member of the Music City Film Critics Association, a regular film and literature contributor at Geeks Under Grace, and was the 2021 College Fix Fellow at Main Street Nashville.
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