Adaptation demands change, while audiences often search for faithfulness. According to scholars, adaptations by definition are never meant to be fully faithful to the original material.

You may have watched Odysseus wrestle with the consequences of violating Zeus’s sacred law of hospitality and may have wondered: “Wait, why does this sound so familiar?”

Why does the Book of Mark include this detail? The answer reveals one of the Bible's most cinematic storytelling techniques, and it teaches us how mere adaptations of the biblical stories often fall short.