Produced and directed by George Stevens, with an ensemble cast, it features the final film performances of Claude Rains and Joseph Schildkraut.

He tells them parables and other teachings, which attract the attention of a passing young man named James, who asks to join them the next morning, and Jesus welcomes him.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem priests and Pharisees are troubled by the continuing influence and preaching of John the Baptist, while the governor Pontius Pilate wishes only to maintain peace.

In Jerusalem, the priests become suspicious of Jesus and the curing of the cripple, and send a group to Capernaum to investigate, including the Pharisees Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

In the Temple courtyard, Jesus begins to teach, but leaves after Pilate dispatches soldiers to restore peace and close the gates, and many in the crowd are killed.

[4] While the disciples gather to prepare and partake in an evening meal, Judas leaves to meet with the Pharisees where he promises to hand Jesus over to them on the condition that no harm comes to him.

The Pharisees ask for Pilate to place guards around the tomb and seal it, to prevent a possible theft of the corpse that could potentially fulfill a prophecy of His resurrection.

Later, while he was with his disciples, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and others, Jesus ascends to heaven, leaving them with his final commands as clouds engulf him.

[7] In November 1958, while George Stevens was filming The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) at 20th Century Fox, he became aware that the studio owned the rights to the Oursler property.

[9] Spyros Skouras, the studio president of 20th Century Fox, had tried and failed to purchase the project from Bronston and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which had agreed to distribute the film.

[16] Stevens and David Brown, a Fox executive, considered numerous screenwriters, including Ray Bradbury, Reginald Rose, William Saroyan, Joel Sayre, and Ivan Moffat.

[20] The contributions Sandburg made included a brief conversation between Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene discussing her use of expensive perfume to anoint Jesus.

[16] For the role of Jesus, Stevens wanted an actor unknown to international audiences, free of secular and unseemly associations in the mind of the public.

"[25] It was reported that Elizabeth Taylor would portray Mary Magdalene, while Marlon Brando and Spencer Tracy were considered for the roles of Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate, respectively.

The Greatest Story Ever Told features an ensemble of well-known actors, many in brief, sometimes cameo, appearances; these included Pat Boone, Carroll Baker, David McCallum, Sidney Poitier, Angela Lansbury, Jose Ferrer, Martin Landau, Ed Wynn, and John Wayne as a Roman centurion.

[26] An urban legend told of Wayne delivering his only spoken line in the film, "Truly this man was the Son of God" three times, none of which worked to Stevens's satisfaction.

"[29] In late April 1960, Stevens, his son George Jr., and researcher Tony Van Renterghem spent six weeks scouting potential locations for filming in Europe and the Middle East.

[30] However, in 1965, Stevens told The New York Times: "Unfortunately some of the landscapes around Jerusalem were exciting, but many had been worn down through the years by erosion and man, invaders and wars, to places of less spectacular aspects.

"[31] Stevens then decided to film in the United States, explaining: "I wanted to get an effect of grandeur as a background to Christ, and none of the Holy Land areas shape up with the excitement of the American southwest.

[39] In June 1963, cinematographer William C. Mellor died of a heart attack during production; Loyal Griggs, who had won an Academy Award for his cinematography on Stevens's 1953 Western classic Shane, was brought in to replace him.

[37] By the summer of 1963, Stevens had met with Arthur B. Krim, the chairman of United Artists, and agreed to allow other directors to direct several sequences so the film would be finished.

Stevens eventually substituted the Hallelujah Chorus from George Frideric Handel's Messiah for both sequences[44]—a choice that was widely ridiculed by critics.

[51] This shortened version removed Jesus's 40-day journey into the wilderness, featuring Donald Pleasence as well as appearances by John Wayne and Shelley Winters.

Promotional items made available to groups identified for market segmentation included school study guides, children's books, and a reprint of the original novel by Oursler.

[54] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described the film as the "world's most conglomerate Biblical picture" with "scenes in which the grandeur of nature is brilliantly used to suggest the surge of the human spirit in waves of exaltation and awe."

However, he felt the scenes of Jesus preaching to the multitude were too repetitive and "[t]he most distracting nonsense is the pop-up of familiar faces in so-called cameo roles, jarring the illusion.

[48] James Powers of The Hollywood Reporter stated: "George Stevens has created a novel, reverent and important film with his view of this crucial event in the history of mankind.

Greatest Story is a lot less vulgar [than Cecil B. DeMille's Biblical films], though audiences are apt to be intimidated by its pretentious solemnity, which amounts to 3 hours and 41 minutes' worth of impeccable boredom.

"[56] Brendan Gill wrote in The New Yorker: "If the subject matter weren't sacred in the original, we would be responding to the picture in the most charitable way possible by laughing at it from start to finish; this Christian mercy being denied us, we can only sit and sullenly marvel at the energy for which, for more than four hours, the note of serene vulgarity is triumphantly sustained.

[57] Shana Alexander, reviewing for Life magazine, stated: "The scale of The Greatest Story Ever Told was so stupendous, the pace was so stupefying that I felt not uplifted but sandbagged.