In 1993, Bruce Marchiano starred as Jesus in The Visual Bible: Matthew, bringing lightness and humor to a role that many viewers embraced, saying they’d never seen the Lord portrayed in so human a manner in film.
Matthew was supposed to be the first of many films covering all 66 books of the Bible, each using dialogue taken verbatim from Scripture. Acts came a year later, also with Marchiano playing Jesus (and James Brolin as Simon Peter).