tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/passion-of-the-christ-14542/articlesPassion of the Christ – The Conversation2020-07-17T12:19:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1421302020-07-17T12:19:23Z2020-07-17T12:19:23ZThe long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347971/original/file-20200716-23-118p5j6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C0%2C2020%2C1694&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Painting depicting transfiguration of Jesus, a story in the New Testament when Jesus becomes radiant upon a mountain.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Transfigurazione_%28Raffaello%29_September_2015-1a.jpg">Artist Raphael /Collections Hallwyl Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Leer en <a href="https://theconversation.com/como-jesus-llego-a-parecerse-a-un-europeo-blanco-143404">español</a></em></p>
<p>The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.</p>
<p>As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/white-jesus-statues-should-torn-down-black-lives-matters-leader-says-1512674">Shaun King</a> went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”</p>
<p>His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of <a href="https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/66587">white supremacy</a> are not isolated. <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/06/24/how-jesus-became-white-and-why-its-time-to-cancel-that/">Prominent</a> <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/editorial-why-white-jesus-problem">scholars</a> and the archbishop of Canterbury <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/27/uk/justin-welby-jesus-scli-intl-gbr/index.html">have called to reconsider</a> Jesus’ portrayal as a white man. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://sc.academia.edu/AnnaSwartwoodHouse">European Renaissance art historian</a>, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the <a href="https://www.uffizi.it/en/search?query%5Bmatching_text%5D=jesus+">best-known depictions of Christ</a>, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.</p>
<p>But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300063424/icons-american-protestantism">Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940</a>. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.</p>
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<span class="caption">Sallman’s ‘Head of Christ’</span>
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<p>Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.</p>
<p>Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.</p>
<h2>In search of the holy face</h2>
<p>The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35120965">first-century Jews from Galilee</a>, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called <a href="https://biblehub.com/1_samuel/9-2.htm">tall</a> and <a href="https://biblehub.com/1_samuel/16-12.htm">handsome</a> in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.</p>
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<span class="caption">‘The Good Shepherd.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Shepherd_Catacomb_of_Priscilla.jpg">Joseph Wilpert</a></span>
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<p>Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “<a href="https://biblehub.com/isaiah/53-2.htm">had no beauty or majesty</a>,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “<a href="https://biblehub.com/psalms/45-2.htm">fairer than the children of men</a>,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.</p>
<p>The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior. </p>
<p>To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.</p>
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<p>Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as <a href="https://biblehub.com/john/10-11.htm">the Good Shepherd</a>, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo. </p>
<p>In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian <a href="https://www.fordham.edu/info/23704/theology_faculty/6211/richard_viladesau">Richard Viladesau</a> argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/ebr.jesus">combines characteristics</a> of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.</p>
<h2>Christ as self-portraitist</h2>
<p>The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347767/original/file-20200715-15-1qnwbii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Acheiropoietos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_School#/media/File:Christos_Acheiropoietos.jpg">Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow</a></span>
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<p>This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion. </p>
<p>A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries recounts how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the volto santo, or “Holy Face.” </p>
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<span class="caption">Christ crowned with thorns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435580">Artist Antonello da Messina. The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931, Metropolitan Museum, New York</a></span>
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<p>These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ. </p>
<p>From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length, dark hair. </p>
<p>In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.</p>
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<span class="caption">Albrecht Dürer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61547383">Albrecht Dürer/Alte Pinakothek Collections</a></span>
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<p>The 15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his <a href="https://www.palazzomadamatorino.it/it/tag-opere/antonello-da-messina">portraits of regular people</a>, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and signed “Antonello da Messina painted me.”</p>
<p>The 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.” </p>
<h2>In whose image?</h2>
<p>This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus with, for example, <a href="https://art.thewalters.org/detail/30807/triptych-with-mary-and-her-son-archangels-scenes-from-life-of-christ-and-saints">Ethiopian</a> and <a href="https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2013.312">Indian</a> features.</p>
<p>In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization. </p>
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<span class="caption">‘Adoration of the Magi.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.getty.edu/museum/images/web/enlarge/00090001.jpg">Artist Andrea Mantegna. The J. Paul Getty Museum</a></span>
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<p>The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/535881/the-story-of-the-black-king-among-the-magi/">contemporary tradition</a>, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires. </p>
<p>But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family. </p>
<p>In Mantegna’s Italy, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674240933">anti-Semitic myths</a> were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.</p>
<p>Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/650997">pierced ears</a> – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus. </p>
<p>Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148052/the-aryan-jesus">Aryan stereotype</a>. </p>
<h2>White Jesus abroad</h2>
<p>As Europeans colonized increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://explore-art.pem.org/object/asian-export-art/AE85752/detail">small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò</a>, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.</p>
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<span class="caption">Nicolas Correa’s ‘The Mystic Betrothal of Saint Rose of Lima.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nicol%C3%A1s_Correa_-_The_Mystic_Betrothal_of_Saint_Rose_of_Lima_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Museo Nacional de Arte</a></span>
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<p>In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300109719/casta-painting">caste system</a> where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower. </p>
<p>Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ. </p>
<h2>Legacies of likeness</h2>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://history.sdsu.edu/people/blum">Edward J. Blum</a> and <a href="http://www.paulharvey.com/">Paul Harvey</a> argue that in the centuries after European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469618845/the-color-of-christ/">justify the oppression of Native and African Americans</a>.</p>
<p>In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/actors-who-played-jesus-christ/">actors who have played Jesus on television and film</a> have been white with blue eyes. </p>
<p>Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/arts/design/jesus-christ-image-easter.html">representation matters</a>, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Swartwood House does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent protests on racial justice have also questioned the portrayal of Jesus as a white man. An art historian explains how this image appeared and came to be marketed worldwide.Anna Swartwood House, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1156752019-04-18T15:48:16Z2019-04-18T15:48:16ZPassion play: the often fraught history of the theatre and Christianity<p>During Holy Week – the run-up to Easter – theatrical versions of religious narratives abound. Across the world, countless church groups present Easter plays, people join processions and stage tableaux – and since 2010, and come rain or shine, a troupe called the <a href="https://www.wintershall.org.uk/passion-jesus-london">Wintershall Players</a> have enacted the Passion of Christ on Good Friday in London’s Trafalgar Square.</p>
<p>Led by professional actor <a href="https://londonist.com/london/features/londonist-interviews-jesus-well-the-guy-who-plays-him-at-easter">James Burke-Dunsmore</a>, this otherwise amateur company performs in a marked-off area with the audience on all four sides, while the action is relayed in close-up on a nearby screen. The performance is also streamed live via Facebook, and last year attracted extensive commentary, including bemused internet surfers asking: “Where is this?”</p>
<p>Given the pouring rain, Jesus praying in Aramaic, the lions on Nelson’s Column, Pilate on horseback and emergency services sirens wailing in the background, “Where is this?” seemed a very reasonable question to pose.</p>
<p>But just over 100 years ago, the Wintershall Players could not have performed in the UK at all, let alone in Trafalgar Square – because representing the Holy Family dramatically was illegal. At a time when the <a href="https://www.passionsspiele-oberammergau.de/en/home">Oberammergau Passion Play</a> tourist trade was cranking up in Germany, staging a nativity story in a church in Britain was liable to be banned by the theatrical censor, the Lord Chamberlain. </p>
<h2>Looking for God</h2>
<p>Theatre and Christianity have often had a strange and volatile relationship. Christians have picketed theatres, called for the censorship of plays that offended them – and even attempted to ban the art form altogether. </p>
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<p>Yet it is worth asking whether the influence of Christianity on theatre goes beyond religious plays or religious objections to them. The Passion cycle has at its centre a vulnerable, suffering hero who doubts himself but resolves to persist. And the medieval mystery plays, performed for the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/corpuschristi.shtml">festival of Corpus Christi</a> (literally “the body of Christ”), show a critical development in character complexity that the Elizabethans called “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2870530">personation</a>”.</p>
<p>Did Christianity supply Western theatre with a significant part of its sense of inner life, of subjectivity, of character and tragic depth? This suggestion runs counter to literary critic George Steiner’s argument in <a href="https://headlong.co.uk/ideas/tragedy-now/">The Death of Tragedy (1961)</a> that “tragic forms are Hellenic” and alien to what he called “the Judaic sense of the world”. For Steiner: “the Judaic spirit is vehement in its conviction that the order of the universe and of man’s estate is accessible to reason”. By contrast, the tragic protagonist “is broken by forces which can neither be fully understood nor overcome by rational prudence”. </p>
<p>This distinction is too sharp to fit the diverse legacy of world playwriting. In addition, Christian beliefs of “soul” imbue theatre with a different spiritual aura than that to be found in Greek tragedy, but one that is no less compelling and majestic. In fact, the passion of the Passion cycle has been one of Christianity’s most successful exports, bequeathing to drama an innovative ethical agency.</p>
<p>This agency is the difference between the crypto-Christian protagonist (think Hamlet, Willard White in Breaking Bad, or Paul in Simon Stephens’ Birdlands) and the gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome (every Marvel superhero movie you have ever seen). The former get to choose their fate rather than simply discover it. The act of choosing, the “either/or” decision, lies at heart of Christian-influenced drama.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270021/original/file-20190418-28119-uaa2lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ecce Homo: Paolo Veronese’s picture of Christ being mocked.</span>
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</figure>
<p>The words that Pilate uses to point to Jesus’s suffering – “Ecce Homo” (literally, “behold the man”) – offer an entry point for this idea of dramatic character. The crypto-Christian protagonists suffer, but their suffering is active, intelligent, because they choose it. In short, it is purposeful and redemptive.</p>
<p>In England, religious drama focused around the Passion was suppressed only in the 1570s. The Coventry Mystery plays were last performed in 1579, when Shakespeare was 15 years old. His fellow Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was also 15 that year, and it seems entirely plausible that the two dramatists who did most to develop the modern sense of stage character – look at the difference between Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus – would have seen and responded to Mystery plays. Ben Jonson, born in 1572, and with a different (and flatter) sense of character psychology, probably did not.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-the-shape-of-things-past-a-history-of-civilizations-by-fernand-braudel-trs-richard-mayne-1427319.html">History of Civilizations</a>, the French historian Fernand Braudel argues that the disappearance of religious conviction from the secular West in the 19th century marked the success of Christianity – its absorption into more general beliefs and feelings. As a result, it is worth reflecting on how influential the Passion cycle has been, not only in its biblical content, but in its impact on the development of dramatic character.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Schafer is the author of the recently published 'Theatre & Christianity' </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Was Jesus Christ the first male lead in the history of modern theatre?Elizabeth Schafer, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonJulian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1106912019-02-28T11:41:16Z2019-02-28T11:41:16ZWhat drives the appeal of ‘Passion of the Christ’ and other films on the life of Jesus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261100/original/file-20190226-150712-1kfq6or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy 20th Century Fox.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Church isn’t the only place people go to learn about Jesus.</p>
<p>At the beginning of Lent, 15 years ago, devout evangelical Christians did not go to church to have ashes marked on their foreheads. Rather, they thronged to theaters to <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/march/100.100.html">watch</a> a decidedly Catholic film to begin the Lenten season.</p>
<p>That film was Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” which would go on to gross over US$600 million globally. It brought to screen a vivid portrayal of the last few hours of the life of Jesus and even today many can readily recall the brutality of those depictions. The film also stirred up a number of <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/06/the-passions-passionate-despisers">cultural clashes</a> and raised questions about Christian anti-Semitism and what seemed to be a <a href="https://www.chron.com/g00/entertainment/movies/article/Will-a-recut-Passion-still-stir-debate-1568750.php?i10c.ua=1&i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%3d&i10c.dv=22">glorification</a> of violence. </p>
<p>This wasn’t the only film to bring Jesus to cinema in such a powerful way. There have, in fact, been hundreds of films about Jesus produced around the world for over 100 years. </p>
<p>These films have prompted devotion and missionary outreach, just as they have challenged viewers’ assumptions of who the figure of Jesus really was.</p>
<h2>From still images to moving images</h2>
<p>For the last two decades, I have researched the <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/religion-and-film/9780231176750">portrayal of religious figures on screen</a>. I have also looked at the ways in which <a href="http://theconversation.com/when-do-moviegoers-become-pilgrims-81016">audiences</a> make their own spiritual meanings through the images of film. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520286955/the-forge-of-vision">Images of Jesus</a>, or the Virgin Mary, have long been part of the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Image_as_Insight.html?id=lrpLAwAAQBAJ">Christian tradition</a>. From amulets to icons, paintings to sculptures, Christianity incorporates a rich visual history, so perhaps it is not surprising that cinema has become a vital medium to display the life of Jesus. </p>
<p>Inventors of cinematic technologies, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151913/">Thomas Edison</a> and the <a href="http://www.acinemahistory.com/2016/04/la-passion-1898-passion.html">Lumière brothers</a>, were among the first to bring Jesus’s life to the big screen at the end of the 19th century. Hollywood continued to cash in on Christian audiences all through the 20th century. </p>
<p>In 1912, Sidney Olcott’s <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6aaafe24">“From the Manger to the Cross”</a> became the first feature length film to offer a full account of the life of Christ. </p>
<p>Fifteen years later, crowds flocked to see Cecil B. DeMille’s <a href="https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/10078">“The King of Kings”</a>, demonstrating the power of a big budget and a well-known director. Writing about DeMille’s film some years later, film historian Charles Musser <a href="https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/900-the-king-of-kings">commented</a> how the film evoked “Christ’s charisma” through “a mesmerizing repertoire of special effects, lighting and editing.” </p>
<p>In Hollywood’s portrayal, Jesus was a white, European man. In Nicholas Ray’s 1961 film, <a href="https://catalog.afi.com/Film/20301-KING-OF-KINGS?sid=b96a394a-6a48-4f41-b7a4-6d05b5042fc3&sr=3.1776974&cp=1&pos=0">“King of Kings”</a> Jeffrey Hunter made a deep impression on his audience in the role of Jesus with his piercing blue eyes. Four years later, George Stevens’s <a href="https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/22336">“The Greatest Story Ever Told”</a>, cast the white Swedish actor Max von Sydow in the lead role.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261086/original/file-20190226-150715-11xig4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Jesus, portrayed by Swedish actor Max von Sydow, moves through a mass of people in this scene filmed on May 1, 1963, at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, for</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-ENT-NV-USA-APHS235600-Von-Sydow-Gre-/7512ad76f6cf4dbc9fa68cce3071aa97/155/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In all these films, evidence of Jesus’s <a href="https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1853&context=jrf">Jewish identity</a> was toned down. Social or political messages found in the gospels – such as the political charge of a “kingdom of God” – were smoothed over. Jesus was portrayed as a spiritual savior figure while avoiding many of the socio-political controversies.</p>
<p>This was, as Biblical studies scholar Adele Reinhartz <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146967.001.0001/acprof-9780195146967">put it</a>, not Jesus of Nazareth, but the creation of a “Jesus of Hollywood.” </p>
<h2>Global moral instruction</h2>
<p>Many of these films were useful for Christian <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/exch/33/4/article-p310_2.xml">missionary work</a>.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=k-KOCMRN1yYC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=%22destined+to+be+more+far-reaching+than+the+Bible+in+telling+the+story+of+the+Saviour%22&source=bl&ots=qfNYKdafRF&sig=ACfU3U1thBDr3oVzabJSRUbpLHjMhCtMZA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZ">advertisement for Olcott’s film</a>, for example, stated how it was “destined to be more far-reaching than the Bible in telling the story of the Savior.” Indeed, as media scholars <a href="https://www.vwu.edu/academics/majors/communication/meet-the-faculty.php?person=tlindvall">Terry Lindvall</a> and <a href="https://www.regent.edu/faculty/m-a-andrew-c-quicke/">Andrew Quicke</a> have <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814753248/">noted</a>, many Christian leaders throughout the 20th century utilized the power of film for moral instruction and conversion.</p>
<p>A 1979 film, known as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/cros.12121">“The Jesus Film”</a>, went on to become the most <a href="https://religionnews.com/2017/12/20/jesus-film-project-premieres-1500th-translation-of-jesus/">watched</a> film in history. The film was a relatively straightforward depiction of the life of Jesus, taken mainly from the gospel of Luke.</p>
<p>The film was translated into 1,500 languages and shown in cities and remote villages around the world. </p>
<h2>The global Jesus</h2>
<p>But, as <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/12/believing-in-the-global-south">majority Christian population shifted</a> from Europe and North America to Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and South Asia, so did portrayals of Jesus: they came to reflect local cultures and ethnicities. </p>
<p>In the 2006 South African film <a href="https://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=232">“Son of Man”</a>, for example, Jesus, his mother and disciples are all black, and the setting is a contemporary, though fictionalized, South Africa. The film employed traditional art forms of dance and music that retold the Jesus story in ways that would appeal to a South African audience.</p>
<p>It was the same with a Telugu film, <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/exch/36/1/article-p41_3.xml">“Karunamayudu” (Ocean of Mercy)</a>, released in 1978. The style resembles a long tradition of Hindu devotional and mythological films and Jesus could easily be seen as part of the pantheon of Hindu deities.</p>
<p>For the past four decades in southern India and beyond, villagers have gathered in front of makeshift outdoor theaters to watch this film. With over 100 million viewers, it has become a <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/exch/41/2/article-p120_3.xml">tool for Christian evangelism</a>. </p>
<p>Other films have responded to and reflected local conditions in Latin America. The Cuban film “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212065?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">The Last Supper</a>,” from 1976, offered a vision of a Jesus that is on the side of the enslaved and oppressed, mirroring Latin American movements in <a href="https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-15-culture-and-society/essays-on-culture-and-society/liberation-theology-in-latin-america/">Liberation Theology</a>. Growing out of the Cold War, and led by radical Latin American priests, Liberation Theology worked in local communities to promote socio-economic justice. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the appeal of some of these films can also be gauged from how they continue to be watched year after year. The 1986 Mexican film, “La vida de nuestro señor Jesucristo,” for example, is broadcast on the Spanish-language television station Univision during Easter week every year.</p>
<h2>The power of film</h2>
<p>Throughout history, Jesus has taken on the appearance and behavior of one cultural group after another, some claiming him as their own, others rejecting certain versions of him. </p>
<p>As the scholar of religion <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003260">Richard Wightman Fox</a> puts it in his <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060628741/jesus-in-america/">book “Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession:”</a> “His incarnation guaranteed that each later culture would grasp him anew for each would have a different view of what it means to be human.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261302/original/file-20190227-150724-tqp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Films about Jesus can move around the world quickly. Posters promoting ‘The Passion of the Christ’ in Bucharest, Romania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Romania-ROM-/b486e0efd6e0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cinema allows people in new places and times to grasp Jesus “anew,” and create what I have <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Representing_Religion_in_World_Cinema.html?id=tQGc8oHH5fkC">called</a> a “georeligious aesthetic.” Films, especially those about Jesus, in their movement across the globe, can alter the religious practices and beliefs of people they come into contact with. </p>
<p>While the church and the Bible provide particular versions of Jesus, films provide even more – new images that can prompt controversy, but also devotion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When it was released 15 years ago, Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion of the Christ,’ was a box-office success. The theme of Jesus has been a successful one that many filmmakers around the globe have cashed in on.S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, by special appointment, Hamilton CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365472015-01-29T01:44:27Z2015-01-29T01:44:27ZHow do we decide if offending someone is unethical or not?<p>Causing offence to others often causes hurt. Such actions have been condemned as unethical, even immoral behaviour in a civilised society. There have been many examples.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/body-issues-20120913-25taz.html">Bill Henson photographs</a> of naked children <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/stories/2012/01/19/3415368.htm">created much opposition</a>. The <a href="http://www.dw.de/the-rushdie-fatwa-25-years-on/a-17425932">Salman Rushdie fatwa</a> is another. The <a href="http://www.complex.com/style/2013/10/controversial-art-exhibitions/piss-christ">“Piss Christ”</a> photograph depicting a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine created <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/andres-serrano-piss-christ-triggers-religious-fury-and-court-battle-in-1990s-trials/story-fnat7dag-1226591823318">“religious fury”</a> and the Catholic Church unsuccessfully sought a court order to suppress it. </p>
<p>Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 film, <a href="http://ncronline.org/news/art-media/decade-later-passion-still-raises-questions-anti-semitism">The Passion of the Christ</a>, attracted charges of anti-Semitism and the actors were forced <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2004/03/23636/">to seek protection</a>.</p>
<p>Now we have the <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-editors-double-down-on-their-principles-in-first-issue-since-attacks-36269">cartoons of Charlie Hebdo</a>. Are they unethical? Is it OK to give offence to others, especially to religions? Or is it just plain wrong?</p>
<p>It has been a long unanswered question for this writer. It was most recently examined when I was a speaker in an <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/media/uploads/files/NAVA_FutureForward_Program_Online_1.pdf">Association of Visual Arts</a> panel discussion on ethical boundaries in the visual arts. </p>
<h2>Ethical behaviour and the link to harm</h2>
<p>In attempting to answer questions about the ethics of giving offence, first we have to define ethical behaviour. Unfortunately, philosophers have been waging this argument for more than 2000 years and still have not reached agreement.</p>
<p>This examination will search many moral philosophies, first using the most common ethical guideline, the version of <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Utilitarianism.html?id=Ju4oAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Utilitarianism</a> developed by British philosopher John Stuart Mill. His overriding rule is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another … are more important to human well-being than any maxims. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is also my personal ethical guideline, as I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/telling-right-from-wrong-why-is-utilitarianism-under-attack-30559">argued in The Conversation</a>. Mill claims his version incorporates the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule">Golden Rule</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do unto to others as you would want done for yourself. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As such, Mill is also saying that we should prevent or alleviate harm that is being suffered by others.</p>
<p>But is giving offence the same as harming someone? If you search the philosophers, you can find a dozen interpretations where a harm would clearly be a wrong.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Gert#Ten_moral_rules">Bernard Gert</a> gives us several: causing pain; depriving freedom; depriving others of pleasure; deceiving; telling untruths. Even an indirect harm through a misleading advertisement that nobody reads is a wrong.</p>
<p>Joel Feinberg in <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Harm_to_Others.html?id=z3DC0qYNAwIC">Harm to Others</a> tells us that the harm has to be wrong – that is, it violates someone’s rights. It also has to be universally disliked, an unpleasant experience that causes disgust, revulsion, shock, shame, embarrassment, anxiety, etc. It has to be serious, too. </p>
<p>Finally, Feinberg requires that the interests of those who wish to avoid offensive behaviour be weighed against the interests of those who wish to engage in it.</p>
<p>Mill argues that causing mental anguish is sufficient. He labels his utilitarianism “The Greatest Happiness Principle”, which is telling us that we should not cause unhappiness. Mill’s <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645o/">On Liberty</a> is also the first, and greatest, advocacy for free speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But none of the great philosophers clearly tells us whether to insult somebody – to offend a religion and its leader – is to cause harm. Or even whether it is unethical. </p>
<h2>A question of purpose</h2>
<p>Immanuel Kant, esteemed by many, has another philosophical guideline that can possibly help us in a version of his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#The_Second_Formulation">categorical imperative</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, Kant is saying: “Do not use other people for your own purposes.”</p>
<p>But we do not know what was the purpose of Bill Henson or those parents who pushed their children into being photographed naked by Henson. If it was to boost their own public image, then the children were being used. It is then wrong.</p>
<p>Kant’s <a href="http://thinkjustdoit.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pl-431-kants-formulations-of.html">other version of the categorical imperative</a> is that we all have to agree that to be moral, an act is universally acceptable:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You may get an indication that photographing children naked is likely wrong by asking at your next dinner party whether any parents would allow their 12-year-old daughter to be photographed naked and the photographs put on display.</p>
<p>The media are ambivalent about cartoons or photographs that offend a religion.
The Economist’s editor-in-chief, John Micklethwaite, <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21638118-islamists-are-assailing-freedom-speech-vilifying-all-islam-wrong-way-counter">argues in his leader</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The magazine was targeted because it cherished and promoted its right to offend: specifically to offend Muslims. That motive invokes two big themes. One is free speech, and whether it should have limits, self-imposed or otherwise. The answer to that is an emphatic no. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others – such as the UK’s Telegraph and the New York Post – disagree and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-media-around-the-world-chart-different-courses-20150108-12k90p.html">published photos</a> of Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier holding one of the offending front-page cartoons, but either cropped the photo or blurred part of the image.</p>
<p>The Associated Press distributed no images that included the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. This was in keeping with its longstanding policy on offensive images, AP vice-president Santiago Lyon <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/news-organizations-wrestle-with-whether-to-publish-charlie-hebdo-cartoons-after-attack/2015/01/07/841e9c8c-96bc-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html">said</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve taken the view that we don’t want to publish hate speech or spectacles that offend, provoke or intimidate, or anything that desecrates religious symbols or angers people along religious or ethnic lines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus the media, perhaps even the rest of us, do not meet Kant’s criterion of universality. So is offending others a wrong – an unethical act? </p>
<p>The answer has to be “only you know”. For it is only you who knows what your intentions are.</p>
<p>If they are to use the denigration of others for your own purposes, be that to sell your magazine, or photographs, or publicise your name, then it is unethical. If it is an offensive action where your purpose is obvious to all of us, and that is to benefit yourself, then it is unethical. It is wrong. Otherwise free speech must override.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: Peter will be answering questions between 11am and noon AEDT on Friday January 30. You can ask your questions about the article in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bowden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Causing offence to others often causes hurt. Such actions have been condemned as unethical, even immoral behaviour in a civilised society. There have been many examples. The Bill Henson photographs of…Peter Bowden, Honorary Research Associate in Philosophy; Lecturer in Ethics and Engineering , University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.