Dallas Jenkins Explains Why the Garden of Gethsemane Scene in ‘The Chosen’ Was ‘One of the Most Difficult’ Moments To Portray

Jenkins noted that “there’s nothing in the Gospels that says that Jesus had end-of-life visions or that he was thinking about Old Testament history, but some of the things that we portray and that we put in front of Jesus in that scene are extraordinarily biblical.”

For example, “The Chosen” depicts Jesus seeing Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ sacrifice. At another point, Jesus finds himself in Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, where he “experiences the hope and the possibility of redemption, of resurrection, of wholeness, even asking, ‘Can these bones live?’” said Thompson. 

In the vision as depicted by the show, Jesus asks that question of Ezekiel, just as God did in Ezekiel 37. And as in the biblical account, Ezekiel answers, “Oh Lord, only you know.”

“The third and final moment in Gethsemane is one in which Jesus has been grappling with his heavenly Father about the enormity of what’s before him,” Thompson said. “And so we’ve imagined his earthly father, Joseph, who himself has passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

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“It’s such a heartrending moment,” said Roumie, “having a father figure there to comfort you in your darkest hour and give you that comfort that you need to be able to get through what’s next.”

“And so we don’t know that Jesus would have thought of them for sure in this moment, but we do know these moments existed, that they are historical,” Jenkins said. “And so having Jesus show us in this show what these moments might have looked like and for Jesus to actually experience them, I thought was an extraordinary way to illustrate both Jesus’ mindset but also biblical history.”