Ben-Hur (now 2 chapters into Book VI, and almost 3/4 of the way through the whole doorstop opus): Pilate has cleaned out the prisons, releasing the political prisoners that Gratus had "disappeared." The head jailer has discovered a hidden cell that nobody but Gratus had known about, reached through the cell of a prisoner who'd been deprived of his tongue and his eyes, with the only door bricked over. Inside it are Judah's mother and sister. And since they'd been deliberately placed in a cell contaminated with leprosy pathogens (and we're talking about Biblical leprosy, in a 19th century novel, so it could be Mycobacterium leprae or M. lepromatosis, or any number of other pathogens, or even a non-infectious condition) for eight years, with no sanitation, they're both now lepers. Not exactly the bright side of life.
Never saw Life of Brian. And while I did see a production of Spamalot, and I understand it appears twice therein, I don't remember it from there, either. (Truth be told, about all I remember about Spamalot was that it was [1] based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and [2] better than Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)
I disagree on #2... but I'm also not going to say you're wrong. Terry Jones, who didn't like it, described Spamalot as something like "Monty Python lite," and yeah, it takes a bunch of Monty Python stuff (not necessarily from Holy Grail exclusively), repackages it, and hangs it on a simplified and mass-market version of the film's plot. So, yes, on that level, I'm not going to say #2 is wrong. The songs are catchy. The cast album is a fun listen. I enjoyed it when I saw it in 2007. Am I shedding tears that Palin and Gilliam vetoed the film version Eric Idle had been wanting to make? Not one goddamn bit. You should have been nicer to your collaborators, Eric. Neil Innes, especially. I will go down swinging that the best thing to come out of Holy Grail is not Spamlot and not the film but the comedy album, The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. About half of the album has nothing to do with the film. It's so funny that I have come close to passing out. Idle followed up Spamalot with a "rock oratario" based on The Life of Brian titled "Not the Messiah!" It's unmitigated garbage. I realized a few years ago that it was misconceived; Idle shouldn't haven't riffed on Handel, he should have riffed on "A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols" instead, with faux Bible readings (similar to "The Martyrdom of St. Victor" and "The Book of Armaments") interspersed with Brianmas carols and hymns.
Based on that description, I'm not sure why you're not saying #2 is wrong. What about any of that could be construed as better, unless you mean better for profitability by being more mass-market?
Because I disagree that Spamalot is better than Holy Grail, for the reasons I gave, but hbquik isn't wrong to prefer it for whatever his reasons are. And by mass-market, I meant that Spamalot is very much a cultural memory version of Monty Python with the edges smoothed, rather than doing anything truly weird and innovative like Monty Python was. It's a cover band doing Monty Python. Again, I enjoyed it. I listened to the cast album recently. I have been known to belt out "I'm All Alone" at work, doing both Arthur and Patsy, on days I am, in fact, all alone.
Actually, perhaps a better analogy can be found in one of the longest-running movies in history. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's visited Colonial Williamsburg. And their 1957 orientation film is a high-budget VistaVision epic (in a little under 40 minutes) that redefined forever the whole genre of the museum orientation film. Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot starred a young Jack Lord as John Fry, a fictional Virginia planter (a composite of a number of minor historic figures), our point-of-view character. And while the film hit all of the basic requirements of a museum orientation film, i.e., pointing out key landmarks like the Governor's Palace, the Capitol, and the Raleigh Tavern, it did so by telling the story of a planter who, succeeding his late father in the House of Burgesses, meets and interacts with such major historic figures as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Likewise, Judah Ben-Hur is a fictional point-of-view character, meeting and interacting with a number of important Biblical figures. Now three chapters into Book VII of Ben-Hur. Having learned that his mother and sister are now lepers, Judah has seen a riot instigated by Roman infiltrators in a Jewish protest, and is covertly raising an army for the King who is coming, even as Balthasar continues to suggest that he will be an entirely different sort of King.
Book VII of Ben-Hur ends with Judah witnessing all of the events surrounding the Baptism of Jesus, except the actual baptism. Book VII takes up the story three years later, with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, to celebrate Passover with the seder that would be his last supper. And in the first three chapters, he cures Judah's mother and sister of their leprosy, with effects that are described in detail from the mother's point of view.
So Jesus was baptized as an adult? Hmm, I probably knew that once but forgot it. The stuff on Wikipedia about John the Baptist and the Jordan River sounds familiar. My mother (whom we lost when I was seven) was religious and taught me Bible stories, and I think my grandmotherly next-door neighbor was too, or maybe I just make that association in my memory because her name was Mrs. Jordan.
Infant baptism dates back only to about the 2nd Century A.D. Pre-Christian baptism, among the ancient Hebrews, was a rite of entry or re-entry into a community. As to the Baptism of Jesus, see The Gospel According to Matthew, The Gospel According to Mark, and The Gospel According to Luke. I have a couple of amusing baptism stories. Years ago, while vacationing in Seattle, I was at St. Mark's [Episcopal/ECUSA] Cathedral one Sunday, and before the service, there was a bucket-brigate filling a barrel font, top to bottom. I was a bit puzzled, until a toddler girl went up to be baptized, dropped her dress to reveal a rather loud swimsuit, and was given a full-immersion baptism (the ECUSA, as a denomination, allows, but neither requires nor prefers, full-immersion baptism; St. Mark's has since installed a full-immersion font, which was in use during this year's Easter Vigil; I used to know an Episcopal Priest who had a preference for full immersion for adult baptisms). The other story was at a friend's United Methodist church, a bit closer to home, which has a "water feature" just outside the building, which they use for baptisms. I was there for an adult baptism, and Pastor Sara half-jokingly talked about "dunking" (her own word) the candidate, before she sprinkled him.
I've been reading through the new Emily Wilson translation of The Iliad. I'm partway through book seven now, Ajax and Hector's duel has just been called on account of nightfall. It's my first time with any version, so I only know the broadest strokes of the story already, and even reading the introduction, was surprised to learn that virtually nothing of the larger story of the Trojan War is in it (no golden apple, no thousand ships being launched, no horse, and surprisingly little Achilles, so far, though he has come off a lot better than Agamemnon in their petty arguments over who gets to enslave which women, so maybe less is more). I've been enjoying (or maybe "appreciating" is a better word) the sense of melancholy and the futility of war. The way the battle scenes have little brief vignettes describing the soldiers' lives and how their families will mourn them as they die are an affecting literary device, cutting right to the core in a very unvarnished, direct way. The attempts to come to a peace settlement which are frustrated by the scheming of the gods who've already decided they want Troy obliterated brought to mind a discussion I recently heard where someone talked about how it bothered him that, in the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh is ready to capitulate to Moses, but God hardens his heart, and further plagues and suffering are inflicted on Egypt until he's finally allowed to relent. Writing this, I'm also reminded of the Arthurian story of a truce being shattered when a soldier tries to strike a poisonous snake and is believed to be restarting the battle. I'm not sure how much I've seen motif of war and suffering coming about unintentionally by cosmic forces of God or fate and not a normal human person deciding they want war in modern works, though I suppose I can think of a few examples. Hector comes across as a real prick when his wife suggests that, maybe, he should fortify the city walls instead of going outside and assing around scuffling with the Greeks in personal combat, and he points out that, yes, while that would guarantee the safety of his family, and the death or enslavement of his wife and baby after the Greeks sacked the city would break his heart, and he grieves to imagine the lives of suffering they'll have because of his actions, he'll be dead for that part and won't care, whereas if he does his damn job and saves the city in a less personally-glorious way, he'll have to live with people calling him a coward (or even just not so legendary a warrior), so he'd rather not. I also liked the fourth-wall breaking by Helen saying they were all really screwed by Zeus deciding they should be "topics of a singer's tale / for people in the future still unborn." Yes, Helen. I, too, have come to dislike living through history.
I watched the film awhile back and I find it interesting that the filmmakers decided to have it be Judah’s sister who accidentally knocks the tile pieces off the edging of the roof during the procession and Judah just claiming it was him who had done it (to protect her), instead of just having it actually be him like in the book. One the one hand, they may have chosen to do so to demonstrate Judah’s love for his family. On the other, Heston may not have wanted to present Judah as that clumsy and said “Let’s have the sister do it”. David Young
In the book, the chariot collision is at least as much Judah's fault as Messala's. I haven't seen any movie version (and have no immediate plans to), but I understand that in the most well-known one, Messala deliberately caused the collision.