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Where the Bible ends and the story begins

The honest ledger

This series stands next to Scripture, so here is exactly where the line runs, with nothing left vague.

The method, in one sentence: the events of the Passion follow the Gospels; the people at the edges are imagined into the silences the Gospels leave. Nothing invented is ever allowed to contradict the text.

● What is in the Bible

  • The penitent thief and the promise of today. Luke 23:39–43.
  • The centurion’s confession and the spear in Jesus’s side. Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47; John 19:34.
  • Barabbas, released in Jesus’s place; his name meaning son of the father. Matthew 27:16–26; Mark 15:7–15; John 18:40.
  • Joseph of Arimathea, the rich councillor, and his new tomb. Matthew 27:57–60; Mark 15:43–46; John 19:38.
  • Nicodemus, the ruler who came by night, and the hundred pounds of spices. John 3:1–21; 7:50–52; 19:39.
  • Mary Magdalene: the seven demons, her support of the ministry, her presence at the cross and burial, her being first to the empty tomb and to the risen Christ, and her recognising him when he speaks her name. Luke 8:2–3; John 20:1–18; Mark 16:9.
  • The women who funded the ministry — Joanna, Susanna and others (Luke 8:3); Salome at the cross and tomb (Mark 15:40; 16:1); and their testimony dismissed as an idle tale (Luke 24:11).
  • The early church: the upper room (Acts 1:13), Pentecost (Acts 2), and the community that held all things in common (Acts 2:44–47; 4:32–35).
  • The Aaronic blessing — the Lord bless you and keep you. Numbers 6:24–26.
  • The world itself: Roman occupation, the Temple, the Sanhedrin, crucifixion, Passover pilgrimage, Gethsemane, the Pavement, Golgotha.

◐ What comes from later tradition

  • The names Dismas (the penitent thief) and Longinus (the soldier).
  • The merging of the confessing centurion with the soldier who pierced Jesus’s side. Scripture names neither man and never says they were the same person.
  • The title apostle to the apostles for Mary Magdalene.

○ What the series invents

  • Miriam herself, and Demas’s whole family — his father Eliezer, the carpentry, the pomegranate lintel, the northern village.
  • Aziz’s identity and childhood — the potter Yannai, his mother Marta, the eastern-hills village, the drought and the debt that drove him to the legions.
  • Bar-Abba’s family and fortunes — the olive terraces, the tax-ledger that ruined them, his sister Adina and his brother Yoel, and his homecoming.
  • Tirzah (Joseph’s wife), Yonatan (Nicodemus’s student), Vero (Aziz’s fellow soldier), and the private inner lives of all the councillors.
  • Mary’s specific afflicted years and her town’s treatment of her — imagined from the single biblical line about seven demons.
  • Miriam’s house, table and gathered family — an imagined vessel for the historical reality of the early house-churches.
  • The crossing threads: the cell prayer, the Pavement handoff, and above all the later reunion of Bar-Abba and Aziz as brothers. Dramatic inventions, built to make visible the reconciliation the New Testament describes.

One thing the series refuses to invent

It does not repeat the old, unbiblical slander that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Scripture calls her afflicted, not immoral, and the books keep to Scripture.

It is a small decision, and it tells you how the whole series treats the line: where the Bible is silent, it imagines; where the Bible speaks, it obeys.

Imagination fills the silences. It never contradicts the text.

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