Yes, Jesus, as portrayed in countless paintings, has a six-pack. As comedian and author, Greg Behrendt joked, "I'd like to get ripped ... ripped like Jesus. Jesus was ripped. You've seen the pictures, right? He's ripped! Ripped. He's the son of God. He's not going to be walking around saying I've got back fat today, I'm so puffy."
February 27, 2014
"But, I don't think when the Biblical Nathaniel asked, 'Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?'..."
"...and Phillip answered, 'Come and see,' they were talking about Jesus' beautiful face or chiseled abs."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
36 comments:
Jesus!
Jesus images from the Roman renaissance painters are idols. Look into Rembrandt's paintings from a Dutch Reformed Calvinism faith tradition.
The man and God who was of one substance with the Father whom he perfectly represented was the one recorded by the gospel writers, such as Mark, who displayed a Jesus who was was an ordinary non descript Jew who was usually accused of eating, and drinking way too much, and doing it with sinners too if they had the boldness to be drawn by His love and forgiveness after they had watched his everyday demon exorcisms and miraculous healings being followed by long teachings about The Kingdom of God.
I don't mean to be disrespectful... usually means the opposite.
Film portrayal mockery is somewhat understood since the incarnate Jesus was most likely in appearance and skin color like the Iranian actor, although I suspect He was mesmerizing in every other way.
The desire to portray Jesus as an exemplar of the ideal of masculine beauty is understandable, but still quite odd in light of the biblical narratives about his life and mission. In terms of Jewish expectations for the promised messiah -- a new David, descended from the greatest of Israel's kings -- who would restore the kingdom, Jesus was the opposite. The circumstances of his birth, the humble nature of his family, and the comparative backwater of a town where he grew up, make for an uncomfortable fit with efforts to portray him as a man of striking physical beauty.
Jesus would definitely be healthy and well formed. When you offer a lamb as a burnt offering to God, it would be dishonorable to pick out the sickly one for the offering. It's an offering not a culling....That said, I don't think it's proper to depict Jesus as hot. Wasn't there something in his message about turning away from worldly things. He would have been attractive but not in a sexy way. Think Roger Moore vs Sean Connery.
Yes, yes--Jesus farted, Jesus peed on his mom, Jesus threw up and had bad hair days. He cracked jokes. People like coming up with these "shocking" Jesus factoids but they don't realize that they're just underlining the point. "By his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin." Gaudium et spes, no. 22 (2d Vat. Co. 1965); accord Heb 4:15.
The reason, according to some biblical scholars, Nathaniel bad-mouths Nazareth is because the Galilee had only been brought under Judean control about 100 years before the birth of Jesus, and still, no doubt, contained large non-Jewish communities in Jesus' day. Nazareth is never mentioned in the Old Testament. For the highly-observant "Jerusalem" Jews like Nathaniel, the Galilee was too doctrinally iffy to be trusted to produce trustworthy Jewish thought.
Here's a link with some history.
@tradguy,
Jesus images from the Roman renaissance painters are idols. Look into Rembrandt's paintings from a Dutch Reformed Calvinism faith tradition.
Oh, fuck you in your Calvinist arrogance & bigotry! I can see from your postings why New England Calvinism so quickly collapsed into Unitarianism. Street-level Calvinism was just too stupid to live.
Arnold would have made the coolest Jesus. Can't you just see him on the cross: "I'll be back!"
Isaiah said of Him: "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem."
@YoungHegelian...The truth hurts institutions that base their teachings on deceptions. Your attitude is what got the Pilgrims to take off from Holland for a new version of England in a total wilderness that at least allowed the young Puritan families to read truth in their English translated Geneva Bibles.
Right Said Jesus
I’m too sexy for my robe too sexy for my robe
So sexy it throbs
I’m a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the crucifix
Yeah on the crucifx
I shake my little tushy on the cross... I.N.R.I.
I’m too sexy for my tomb
too sexy for my tomb...
Too sexy for thy womb
The closest thing to a physical description of Jesus is a prophecy about the Messiah in the Old Testament (Isaiah 53:2): "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." So that kind of defeats the Messiah-with-a-six-pack image.
Now only if we can see a picture oh Muhammad.
@tradguy,
Your ignorance is simply invincible, tradguy. When challenged you always come back with some form of "I have the truth & you don't". It's really tiresome bullshit.
The difference between us, tradguy, is I know the Protestant traditions as well as the Catholic/Orthodox traditions, and I see the value in most of it. Remember, it was me who quoted the Fletcher the other day? Oh no, you probably don't know Fletcher, that nasty Ariminian either. You, however, have never, ever shown a sign here that you have read anything from the Catholic tradition, even St. Thomas, with any understanding or sympathy. Theologically, you're basically a snake-handler, except your snake is named TULIP.
Think long & hard about this, tradguy --- every country that was Calvinist --- New England, Scotland, Holland, Switzerland -- they're all atheists now, to a man. What makes you think your neo-Calvinism is going to be any different?
Need to compete with Hercules and Thor and the other ripped deities.
Rembrandt looked for Jewish guys in the Netherlands as models.
Wow Tradguy and Young Hegelian remind me of the Shia and Sunni. Don't Christians worship the same God? Sheesh lighten up. You sound like Muslims.
Why is it so difficult to believe that Jesus would have been good looking? Assuming that God had any say in his physiognomy and body, his looks would be in keeping with his job, the salvation of all Mankind. So, probably not ugly, certainly striking, probably in good shape, probably not cursed with horrible body odor or unfortunate tics. His hands were probably smooth and gentle, but with that hint of callous to show he'd done some work with his Dad.
Or, heck, maybe he appeared slightly different to everyone, with just a hint of whatever the viewer was most attracted to at the time. He was, after all, the Son of God.
this is NOT a "new movie". it's a re-edited theatrical release of the tv series, 'the bible'. did nobody notice that jesus was 'hot' when this was televised ?
Lord Be With Us is inequal to My Vision Of God Rules.
Looked like Bob Dylan but had Bill Cosby's personality.
They couldn't afford Jim Caviezel?
Those quoting Isaiah are on the right track. My bigger difficulty in religious art, incidentally, are the depictions of the Blessed Mother (and, occaisionally, Jesus) as a blonde! They were Jews, for Pete's sake!
I would have loved to hang out with Jesus. With all reverence, he was hilariously snarky without every being unkind. He loved living in this world,and He loved the people of this world. He just wanted to bring people to His father with His message of Salvation.
Young Hegelian...Peace be with you. We seem to agree that the Neo Calvinists are not as gracious as the should be and that Thomas Acquinas is a wonderful thinker, as is Francis Schaeffer.
My comments are in response to the veneration of images problem raised in the post. Maybe the faith needs images to hang onto when scripture is unread.
Jesus is a blank canvas that neo-primitives justify their every fault, failure, hatred and vanity. The ultimate get out of hell free card for the spiritually greedy and corporal needy.
Arnold would have made the coolest Jesus. Can't you just see him on the cross: “I'll be back!”
You can see him on the cross (not as Christ though) in Conan the Barbarian.
According to historian John Romer (Byzantium: the Lost Empire), many late Roman and medieval depictions of Christ (Christ Pantocrat, or Christ the ruler of the Universe) — such as, e.g., the famous depiction of Christ above the Golden Gate in Constantinople — were based on the famed huge statue of Zeus (by the great Athenian sculptor Phidias) that was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
He was a carpenter, and lived WAYYYY before cushy modern lifestyles turned ordinary men into chubby office softies that get winded riding on the elevator.
He certainly didn't have a convenience store full of soft drinks and chips to turn him into a doughy blob while surfing the internet.
So, yea, Jesus most likely had the ordinary nice body of a young man who is physically active. Six pack and all.
If depictions of Jesus as a healthy young man threatens your masculinity and thus, you have to portray paintings of him being fit being somehow odd, how sorry are you?
The closest thing to a physical description of Jesus is a prophecy about the Messiah in the Old Testament
Which means you still don't have any sort of idea what Jesus looked like, because neither did Isaiah, as he never met Jesus.
Sgt Ted: You understand what a prophecy alleges to be, right? To say a prophet doesn't really know what will happen because he didn't "see" them happening kind of misses a rather large point.
"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem."
God damn it, I must be Jesus!
Though, I'm positive, I've never been here before,...
Interestingly the issue in Christology has always been how 100% human Jesus is, or is He a spirit God inside a man that never becomes a man. The councils from Nicea on defended Jesus as being a plain man who was also God.It seems to matter greatly since He became Sin with our sinfulness on the cross which. spirit could not thus ending the Gnostic heresies.
But they are back. The resurrection of a dead man seems a bridge too far for the brilliant scholars today, so they "spiritualized the story."
So we go into Lent Wednesday and get ready for Easter Day .
In Jesus' time, about 3% of people were well off, and the rest of everybody else were poor, subsistence level or not even that. (Hence, all those beggars.) Jesus would not have been fat. He was from a poor family that paid his redemption price (of the first born) using the poor people's offering, two birds.
Jesus is called a "carpenter" but in those days, carpenters worked as construction workers.
So he probably not only had six pack abs but pretty good biceps muscles.
However, I doubt he'd be "good looking". Here in the third world, usually 30 year olds who work outside in construction are thin, wirely and very wrinkled.
Not the pretty boy one sees in too many movies, which is why I usually avoid pious films.
Post a Comment