TV was rammed down my throat this past weekend. Our new Internet Service Provider insists that we can not get our beloved surfing without the accompanying cable. The system is free, advanced and flows through fiber optics we are told. The screen was there for movies anyway so, viola, there I was soaking in cable TV all my own for the first time in my life.

The History Channel on HD is incredibly colorful and absorbing. After a whole day of gazing I progressed to listening to the contents of the programming. Before long I realized why I had avoided television for so long. The fact that all the programming is focused on religion can be excused by the timing of my surrender to cable. However, the History Channel’s attempt to do serious investigation of biblical history was horrifying in its lack of realism.

Yes reality is in the eye of the powerful. The biblical programming is probably regurgitating most of the propagandist history papers that are published in US theological and history departments. However, there should be basic, commonly agreed20to objective methods of historical investigation that any programmer of such documentaries must follow – or maybe not.