History (owned by A&E and formerly known as The History Channel) has a deservedly dubious reputation. Some of its better shows recently have had nothing to do history. They’ve been partially scripted “reality” shows like The Ice Road Truckers. Some of its putatively historical shows have been 90% fantasy of the “Could it be that [total bullshit] actually happened?” type (example, Nostradamus). Some of its actual history shows, like the one on JFK’s assassination, have been based so thoroughly on outlandish conspiracy theories as to have been forced off the air.

Other actual history shows have been rife with misinformation, either direct or clearly implied. For instance, they might do a show where the narrator is talking about, say, the historical figure Cleopatra. Simultaneously they be showing picture of a totally imaginary 19th century “odalisque” by Ingres or Matisse.  Does such “lying with images” really matter? Well, I think it matters if people looking for genuine historical education are “told in pictures” that a Ptolemaic Egyptian queen dressed and acted like a 19th century European’s fantasy about a North African Muslim harem girl. Still, I’ll let that one go.

But at this moment in U.S. history to use a now serving Black president’s face to represent the Devil is not just a disservice to our democracy, it’s downright dangerous. And that’s exactly what they did in a series titled The Bible. The Bible is itself a mixture of historical records, fictional stories and poems, religious myth and legend. For a dramatization of parts of the Bible to present that jumbled combination as if were entirely historical is obviously wrong. Casting for such an endeavor presents tricky problems.

It’s been customary from early on to depict Bible stories as if they had happened in the painter’s own time and place. For example, this is a depiction of the Annunciation by the Northern European Robert Campin in the first quarter of the 15th century. Mary is shown as a very white 15th century aristocratic lady, in very, very luxurious surroundings. At this point we don’t see Jesus because he hasn’t yet been conceived. (See that tiny little guy between the two windows on the left? the one carrying the cross? He’s just arriving.)

This is a picture of the same Virgin Mary painted by Paul Gauguin in the South Seas islands in the late 19th century. Jesus is a brown-skinned Samoan child at this point:

Now Jesus is an adult, a White European. He’s in Peru, celebrating The Last Supper. Notice the main course in the middle of the table? It’s a roast guinea pig.

Again, every time and place and culture re-imagines the biblical stories to reflect their own circumstances. They depict the spiritual truths of the stories rather than the material factuality.

OK, so what “spiritual truths” is History asking us to understand in contemporary terms? What’s the truth of showing Jesus as a White man, but Satan as a Black man? not just any Black man, but a particular man named Barack Obama?

Here’s a “morph” I created to show what I mean: