Carl Amari

Finding the perfect Jesus was no problem for Carl Amari -- he just called up Jim Caviezel, who starred in "The Passion of the Christ" -- but making a deal with just the right devil has turned out to be harder than hell. "And you need a good Satan," Amari said with a bit of exasperation, "because Satan has some of the best lines in the Bible." Amari is a 43-year-old Chicago entrepreneur who made a fortune in the late 1980s by salvaging old-time radio shows and repackaging them on cassette tapes.

Finding the perfect Jesus was no problem for Carl Amari -- he just called up Jim Caviezel, who starred in "The Passion of the Christ" -- but making a deal with just the right devil has turned out to be harder than hell. "And you need a good Satan," Amari said with a bit of exasperation, "because Satan has some of the best lines in the Bible." Amari is a 43-year-old Chicago entrepreneur who made a fortune in the late 1980s by salvaging old-time radio shows and repackaging them on cassette tapes.

Once Jesus signed on, it was easy to enlist King Solomon and Moses. Jim Caviezel (Jesus), Malcolm McDowell (King Solomon) and Richard Dreyfuss (Moses) were among hundreds of actors who lined up to create "The Word of Promise Audio Bible," all 98 hours and 79 CDs of it. The nearly four-year project, released last month,was the inspiration of Carl Amari, a Chicago-area producer behind "Twilight Zone Radio Dramas," "Mystery Theater" and other radio programs. "I always thought it would be cool to do a radio drama of the Bible," said Amari, who grew up "not real religious" in the Catholic Church.

A little more than two years ago, when the digital music revolution was just beginning to take hold, an entrepreneur from Boston had an intriguing idea: If everyone else was putting music on the Web, why not old-time radio shows?