The narrator of the new series "Science of the Bible," premiering on the National Geographic Channel Sept. 14 at 10 p.m., says that the goal of the program is to find the "truth" of what happened in various Bible stories. However, a better way to describe what the program does is to use science and scholarship to look at how things might have happened, since, in fact, there is no real way of knowing for sure.

This does not, of course, undermine the reality of the Bible as the divinely inspired Word of God. The series doesn't even touch on that part of our understanding of sacred scripture. It's looking for facts, which are not the same as truth. And the fact is that what the scholars and archaeologists find doesn't mesh with what St. Matthew and St. Luke wrote about the birth of Jesus, the subject of the first episode. Of course, as the program points out, the accounts that St. Matthew and St. Luke wrote don't really agree with each other either.

For example, if you place the date of Jesus' birth according to what St. Matthew wrote, Our Lord was born in 6 B.C., right before the death of King Herod. If you place the date of Jesus' birth according to what St. Luke wrote, Jesus was born 10 years later. One of the points made is that both St. Matthew and St. Luke were writing almost 90 years after Jesus was born. Because of the fall of Jerusalem and the fact that most of the eye-witnesses were dying off, it would have been very hard for them to get a clear picture of what actually transpired. What it doesn't mention (and possibly should have) is that in those days, history was written to make a point, not necessarily to tell the facts.

What's important to look at, for people of faith, is what St. Matthew and St. Luke were saying about the importance of the birth of Jesus. And Jonathan Reed, professor of religion at the University of La Verne, does point out some of the images the evangelists were using and some guesses as to why they were included.

The film is respectful and uses knowledgeable sources, including Dr. Daniel Smith-Christopher, of Loyola Marymount University and perennial Religious Education Congress speaker. Where it works best, however, is in its recreations of how scholars think the birth of Jesus might have come about, and the basic finding is that it was probably a pretty ordinary event overall. The scenes of the actual birth, itself, are marvelous and based on how women gave birth at that time.

The program falls down in a couple spots where the narration doesn't mesh with what a given expert has just said. The astronomer commenting on the Christmas star points out that the Magi were actually astrologers and were looking for a sign, not necessarily a flashy event, yet the narration seems to insist that it should have been a flashy event that got the Magi's attention.

Ultimately, the show supports what we know about Jesus as having been born in the most humble of circumstances. So even though it questions the factual accuracy of the Gospel narratives, oddly enough, by stripping away the extraneous elements of those stories, the program gets to the heart of what the narratives are all about -- the humble birth of a child who would change the world.

Anne Louise Bannon of Altadena writes on media from a Catholic perspective.