“Walking the Bible” on PBS

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  01.19.06 | 7:25 PM ET

Last night on PBS I caught the third and final installment of Walking the Bible, a new travelogue documentary that takes viewers into the land of the Old Testament. Journalist Bruce Feiler, imagewho wrote the book of the same name, visits key sites, meditates on the power of the desert and marvels at the journey of the Israelites. (Among more humorous moments, he finds a fire extinguisher next to what some believe is the original burning bush.) The landscapes are stunning, and I found Feiler to be a wide-eyed yet thoughtful and likable guide. The series airs on PBS stations throughout the month.

Critic Virginia Heffernan offered a mixed review earlier this month in the New York Times:

To watch such a sweetheart of a guy experience elementary revelations in the serious and fraught Holy Land is somewhat odd. But the landscape is beautiful, the stories are venerable, and, as Mr. Feiler, who deploys his gee-whizzes with great care, must know, even the sophomore’s pose is not without its uses. Here, relentless exposure to that pose - as if to desert sun - wears down the skeptical viewer’s defenses until at some point (when Mr. Feiler is explaining “dust to dust”? when he’s wondering where the hippos were on Noah’s ark?), it is possible to enjoy this unusual character: a full-throttle believer, in the midst of his Pilgrim’s Progress, right here on PBS.

Back in 2001, Feiler discussed the book on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He told interviewer Ray Suarez:

About six years ago, I decided that as a writer I should be more conversant with the Bible. I hadn’t read it since I was a kid, which meant, as a practical matter, I hadn’t really read it, so I took the Bible off my shelf, put it by my bed, and [it] sat there untouched for two years, making me feel guilty. Then in the summer of 1997, I went to visit an old friend in Jerusalem. And on my opening day, he gave a tour—he took me to this promenade overlooking the city, and he said over there is Har Hama, the controversial neighborhood, and over there is the rock where Abraham sacrificed Isaac. And, real or not, it hit me like a bolt of Cecil B. Demille lightning - it never occurred to me that this story so timeless and abstract actually was in a real place that could you visit and touch. And so I thought, well, here’s an idea. What if I travel along the route and read the Bible along the way? And that’s what I did.