History Channel's 'The Bible' Is a Marketing Miracle

It’s a tense night in Sodom. God’s judgment has arrived, and fire rains down from the skies. The beleaguered, henpecked Lot, a nephew of Abraham, shuffles two mysterious Jedi-like figures into his home. A group of armed Sodomites soon bursts through the door and demands that the men be given up. One of the “Jedis” unsheathes two swords and swiftly dismembers the men.

The scene ends the first episode of a new, 10-part miniseries on the History Channel called The Bible, which garnered 14.1 million viewers last week—more than any other show on cable television in 2013. Produced by Mark Burnett, the reality-TV pioneer best known for Survivor, The Apprentice, and Shark Tank, and his wife, Touched by an Angel actor Roma Downey (who also plays the Virgin Mary), the miniseries appears to have been conceived primarily for religious audiences—or at least those knowledgeable of scripture. It’s also packaged with enough bloodlust to capture channel surfers. In that regard, the series resembles Mel Gibson’s 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ, a movie bloggers called The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre—and which raked in more than $600 million at the box office.