Chicago, IL -- This October, Facets Video presents an extensive, 10-hour investigation of the birth of the Christian faith and its development with the DVD release of Origin of Christianity. The 4-disc special edition sparked a storm of controversy when it was originally released in France by Arte Video. Featured on the covers of national magazines and the subject of intense debate, Origin of Christianity quickly became Arte's best-selling DVD title of all time. The program, produced by filmmakers-scholars Gérard Mordillat and Jérôme Prieur, is being released on the heels of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and Dan Brown's best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code, which re-positioned questions of interpretation of the New Testament as critical issues of our time. Origin of Christianity will be available in the U.S. as a 4-DVD set on October 26, 2004 for a suggested retail price of $99.95.

The DVD set comes with an informative booklet featuring biblical references, a glossary, and historical timeline. The 10 episodes in Origin of Christianity are also chapterized by key historical questions for easy access to the material.

Prieur and Mordillat, authors of Jesus after Jesus (#5 on the French national bestseller list), spent over three years assembling and interviewing 23 of the world's most astute historians, archeologists, and writers on religion to probe the emergence of Christianity. In their investigation, they demonstrate how the death and crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans set into motion an irreversible division of Jews and Christians. They bring to their lucid discussions state-of-the-art research into the most explosive issues in the Christian world, including: Did Jesus found the Church? Is Jesus God? Did Jesus have siblings? What is the relationship between Judaism and Christianity? And who was the Apostle Paul, and was he the true founder of the Church?

The program has a running time of 520 minutes and contains both English and French language versions.

Arte France, the creators of Origin of Christianity, is one of the leading DVD producers and distributors in the world. Origin of Christianity is being exclusively distributed in the United States by Facets Video. Facets licenses and distributes world and independent cinema on its own video/DVD label and distributes DVD product for other labels including Cinemateca, Accent Cinema, Polart, and Ron Knight Media. The over 400 works on the Facets Video label include other works produced collaboratively with Arte including William Klein's Muhammad Ali the Greatest, Melies the Magician, a series of DVDs on architecture, and the upcoming DVD version of Peter Brook's Hamlet.

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