The Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible
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"While surveying the site of some ancient ruins, two young archaeologists, Derek and Margo, and their nomad friend Moki find themselves trapped and sinking in a whirling pool of sand. And when the dust settles, they stare up in awe at a vast chamber, filled with giant relics and artifacts from another civilization... And there, at the far end of the cavern, a door with a strange inscription - 'All who enter these portals pass through time!'"
—Opening Narration before each episode
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Developed by Hanna-Barbera during the middle to late 1980s and early 1990s, The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible was a 13-episode direct-to-video series that featured three young explorers, Derek, Margo and Moki, travelling through time via unexplained Doorways of Time, which allow them to witness some of the major events recorded in The Bible. Often even within the same episode, they would stumble across one of the Doorways, allowing them to witness events from the same story that took place years later.
Similar to Superbook and The Flying House, the series tried to focus on making the characters from the biblical stories relatable and believable. Surprisingly, it also adhered as closely to the original stories as possible, keeping many of the elements that most Moral Guardians quietly edit out to make the stories "appropriate" for children, editing only the relative closeness of events in order to keep within the 30-minute time frame.
Because of the close adherence, the series took the biblical stories very seriously; it was usually the side adventures of the time travellers that featured any comedy, although they often overlapped with the main story as the heroes tried to help the Biblical figures out in whatever way they could.
These cartoons are still often shown to kids in Sunday School
It also shares an art style with Captain Planet and the Planeteers, as Ted Turner helped fund the project.
- Bible Times - Well, duh!
- Big Eater - A Running Gag seems to be Moki complaining all the time that he's hungry
- Butt Monkey - Moki
- Development Hell - It took Joseph Barbera over 17 years before he could finally get the support he needed to create the show.
- Fan Service - Delilah from "Samson and Delilah" and the belly dancers from the infamous party in "Daniel and the Lion's Den".
- Fish Out of Temporal Water
- Godiva Hair - In the creation story. Also has some clever scenery placement.
- Hey, It's That Voice! - Famous guest stars included Helen Slater as Esther, James Earl Jones as the Pharaoh in the Moses story, Tim Curry as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Robbie Benson as David, Alan Oppenheimer as Jonah, Tony Jay as the High Priest who tried Jesus, and Vincent Price as Herod.
- Large Ham - most of the actors playing major religious figures were very big and bombastic. In the retelling of Exodus, Moses and the Pharaoh particularly engage in some delicious Ham-to-Ham Combat.
- Our Time Travel Is Different - Our 20th-century heroes travel through time not so much by any device, as because they keep finding holes in the Space-Time Continuum.
- Shout-Out: Moses wears the same outfit worn by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Also, the scene where Egypt's water is turned to blood is a nearly shot-for-shot copy of the same scene from The Ten Commandments.
- The Creation of Earth bears some resemblance to Fantasia, with all the volcanoes & such.
- Tim Curry - Played the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Very well at that.