Netflix’s docuseries “Testament: The Story of Moses” is both entertaining and frustrating. On one hand, the documentary series takes some valid creative license with the story of Exodus. On the other hand, the series diverges from the Bible strictly for the sake of politically correct sensibilities (I mean, after all, this is Netflix).

The choice of commentators studiously avoids stodgy white males, a staple of the biblical docuseries genre. In fact, the choice of commentators ranges from biblical scholars to airheads. The series perhaps accurately judges that its audience is not up to the English of the King James Bible and so eliminates the “thees” and “thous.” (Yes, liberals, I’m aware Moses didn’t speak English.) As a result, we get ridiculous lines such as, “You should not kill,” instead of “Thou shall not kill.”

Lastly, if we’re going to get technical, the Bible refers to Moses as “fourscore years old” at the time of the burning bush. In “Testament” he looks about half that age. Furthermore, whereas the Bible has Moses use his brother Aaron as an intermediary to speak to the Hebrews, once we get to episode two, “Testament” drops that pretense in order to have Moses give his equivalent to Sermon on the Mount.

Zipporah

One of the key departures from the text of the Bible comes in the chapter in which “Moses Takes a Gentile Bride” (Exodus 2:21). Moses takes a wife named Zipporah in a land called Midian, which, according to my Bible’s annotations, is “a land closer to Canaan than Egypt.” Therefore, Zipporah would have been a woman of Middle Eastern extraction, unlike the actress (Dominique Tipper) director Benjamin Ross cast as Zipporah, who is of African ancestry.  

After God appears to Moses in the burning bush, Moses resolves to go back to Egypt to free the Hebrews. Moses does indeed bring Zipporah and his son: “And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand” (Exodus 4:20).

After they arrive in Egypt, Moses’ wife rarely appears in the Exodus account. Yet in “Testament” we’re led to believe she’s running the show, as though she’s the brains behind Moses. She relentlessly nags Moses to the point where he has to remind her, “I am your husband.”

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