A Story of God and All of Us

A Story of God and All of Us - By Roma Downey


AUTHORS' NOTE

In the spring of 2011 we began work on a ten-hour television miniseries: The Bible . It would begin with the Book of Genesis and end with the Book of Revelation. As you can imagine, we were immediately faced with a massive creative challenge: how do we tell this story? More specifically: how do we transform a sacred narrative that spans thousands of years and features hundreds of individual stories into just ten hours of television?

We had one of two choices: either select dozens of short summaries and tell many brief stories; or, choose fewer characters and stories but make a much deeper emotional connection.

Clearly, we had to go with the second choice.

So we began the TV scripts, written by a team of writers under the guidance of many theologians, advisors, and biblical experts. Their combined expertise brought forth vivid spiritual and historical images. To our great joy, when we showed the scripts to others for technical and creative feedback, the resounding messages we heard over and over were "I've never been able to imagine these Bible stories so clearly in my mind," "I'm going to reread the Bible," and "You really should publish these scripts."

Initially we were resistant, but then we started researching. We came across startling facts like: half of Americans cannot name the first five books of the Bible, 12 percent of American Christians believe that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc, and many believe that Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple.

If our scripts had provided an impetus for

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people to want to reread the Bible and given them a clearer picture of these stories, then maybe by novelizing the scripts we could spark even more people to pick up the Bible.

Thus, we began the novel A Story of God and All of Us . We feel very inadequate to teach the Bible, and we are certainly not theologians. We are television storytellers. It will be easy for people to focus on how we have

"compressed stories" or to find "theological inaccuracies." But on this point, we must be clear: we are not retelling the story of the Bible; it has already been told in the richest, fullest possible way, from the mouth of God and through His chosen prophets, students, and apostles. Instead, we are dramatizing some of these beautiful stories from our scripts.

We owe a huge debt of thanks to all the small army of script writers, our amazing production team, and all of our advisors and biblical experts. We also want to thank you for holding this novel in your hands. Our television miniseries will be seen by millions around the world, and it is our hope that the series together with this book will inspire many more millions to read and reread the greatest story ever told: the Bible.

Roma Downey and Mark Burnett

California, 2013