The Daily Mail is reporting a series of bizarre occurrences that took place during the filming of the series, which has amassed millions of viewers during its Sunday evening prime time telecast.
According to the series' producer Mark Burnett, the so-called "king of reality TV" and creator of shows like Survivor, these incidents include a sudden swarm of deadly snakes around the base of Jesus' cross and the unexpected return of part of Christ's costume by a mysterious young boy after it had been lost for four days.
"The hand of God was on this," Burnett told Entertainment Weekly (EW) in a recent interview. Despite the mammoth proportions and complexity of the series, the filming in North Africa "came together perfectly, the actors came together perfectly, it just comes to life."
But there were also a few strange moments along the way.
“Weird things happened during filming,” he said. “Everybody would look at each other like, 'Whoa'.”
For instance, one scene depicts Jesus telling the priest Nicodemus, "The Holy Spirit is like the wind."
"At that moment, a wind, like as if a 747 was taking off, blew his hair, almost blew the set over and sustained for 20 seconds across the desert," Burnett said. "Everyone just looked at everyone like, 'What just happened?"'
Another strange occurrence took place while filming the crucifixion of Jesus. Even though the production company hired a "snake wrangler" to keep snakes away from filming sites, on this day the wrangler found 48 venomous snakes crawling around the mountain beneath the cross.
What may be the most amazing occurrence happened during the filming of Jesus' baptism. Part of the actor's costume came off - parts described as being "irreplaceable" - came off and floated away.
"Four days later, a kid showed up from many, many, many miles away, who had been seeking us through the desert to return this to us," Burnett told EW.
"He didn't know what it was, or why he should seek us, but he felt he had to return it."
The series will run every Sunday at 8:00 p.m. until the Easter Sunday finale on March 31.
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