John Dickson does a decent job presenting things, but I have to say, I wasn't really satisfied with this documentary. It deals with a fragment of papyrus found by British Egyptologists about a hundred years ago—a find that shows not just the words of a Christian hymn in Greek, but also an early example of musical notation. The idea was to try and recreate the hymn so we could hear it again after nearly two thousand years. However, what we ultimately receive isn’t quite that. Following a rather brief overview of its history involving Egypt and Oxford University, we're introduced to well-known songwriters Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding, who then create a piece of music that is upbeat, but any link to the original Oxyrhynchus document feels pretty weak. I would have appreciated it if some linguistics experts had explained exactly what the writings said, and then, more interestingly for me, an explanation of how these modern equivalents of musical notes were deciphered to give us some sense of how they accompanied the words. Instead, we go to Nashville for a celebratory song, but one that doesn’t resemble the sounds of the original it was supposedly based on. They do try to include an American-Egyptian singer to add a touch of authenticity, but we never hear the finished piece with her contributions, so we're mainly shown at the end—a lively anthem performed for ten thousand Christians in Fort Worth who could be singing along to any number of Tomlin’s songs. From what I understand about the complete original text, it also appears they have been selective regarding which phrases they chose to interpret, essentially ensuring that these were used to support the message Dickson and his team had decided on from the beginning. It runs far too long, and if it lost thirty minutes—or even more, given the amount of repetition and increasingly evangelical commentary—it might have worked better as a shorter film. As it stands, I felt the story of P. Oxy 1786 was overshadowed. Did they restore it to something close to its third-century form, or did they simply take control of it? It’s hard to say!

Source on TMDB