When I was a guest on Dr. Michael
Brown's nationally syndicated radio show
"Line of Fire," our conversation focused on a chapter in my book Jesus
Uncensored, entitled "The Ethnic Cleansing of Judaism in Medieval and
Renaissance Art." Here I show that classical artworks washed out all
traces of Judaism in the personae of Jesus, his family, and followers--despite
the fact that they were all dedicated practicing Jews throughout their lives.
The process of totally Christianizing the Jesus circle placed an artificial
wedge between Judaism and Christianity that remained in place for centuries.
As late as the nineteenth century a
painting of Jesus and his family by British artist John Everett Millais and
another of the twelve-year-old Jesus by German painter Max Liebermann met with
public uproar because they were deemed too Jewish .
Liebermann repainted his young Jesus, rendering him blond with no indication of
his Middle Eastern Jewish ethnicity. He took the Jew out of Jesus, which
soothed and pleased the critics.
Surprisingly, that legacy of bristling at Jewish Jesus representations
continues to the present day. Here's what a listener to Michael Brown's radio
show said in response to my interview:
"While I was in high school--a Catholic high school--we had a project to draw in class. I drew a picture of Jesus, but removed his golden locks and blue eyes and replaced them with a more Middle Eastern looking man with thick hair. The teacher lost her mind. All this resulted in a trip to the Dean's office, as if I offended her. All I heard was 'why does it matter.' So I said, 'You tell me why it matters. I don't recall too many blond-haired, blue-eyed people from that region of the world.'"
In commentaries and descriptions of exhibits of artworks depicting Jesus, we
never hear that these paintings, as magnificent as they are artistically,
distort and falsify biblical history. Renaissance artists revolutionized art
with the introduction of realism and naturalism over the earlier artificialism
and primitivism. Unfortunately, naturalism and realism did not extend to who
the figures were naturally and realistically in their actual lives. Art
historians with whom I've spoken dismiss these criticisms as ignorance about
the Renaissance style of contemporizing figures in painting--dressing people in
contemporary Renaissance attire and picturing them in Renaissance settings as
Northern Europeans in skin tone and physical appearance.
While it is true that this kind of
historical distortion was commonplace in Renaissance painting, it does not
explain the obliteration of Jesus' and his family's true identities or the
pictorial conversion of orthodox Jews into latter-day Christians.
Nowhere in these artworks is there a hint of the subjects' Jewish identities or origins. For example, Bartolome Esteban Murillo's sixteenth century painting The Baptism of Christ pictures John the Baptist baptizing Jesus--an act reported in the Gospels (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-23). Curiously, Jesus and John are not dressed in Renaissance attire, but John is holding a crucifix staff, thus telling the viewer that this is a Christian event and a Christian conversion.
The fact is that there was no Christianity at the time of this baptism, nor did John or Jesus have any intention or desire to launch a new religion. Neither Jesus nor John ever heard the word "Christian"; it does not appear in the Gospels, although the term "Jew" appears eighty two-times. Moreover, John only baptized Jews--purifying them with the ancient Jewish practice of baptism for the coming of the Jewish Messiah.
Murillo's powerful image supports the
false conclusion that Christianity was already present. Consider too that the
cross was a hated symbol in the time of Jesus and John the Baptist--a reminder
of the countless times Jews were brutally crucified by the Romans. Jesus and
John would very likely cringe at the image of the cross in this depiction. The
cross didn't become a Christian symbol until the fourth century CE, when it was
introduced by the Emperor Constantine on his military banner and shields . No wonder
that it didn't catch on promptly as an endearing Christian symbol.
What has been overlooked by art
historians and other apologists is that the pervasive distortions of biblical
history in misrepresenting Jesus, his family, and followers established a
powerful foundation for anti-Semitism--anti-Semitism by omission. In stripping
away Jesus' Jewish identity these paintings implanted the firm conviction that
Jesus was of different ethnicity and religion than the others--the Jews. This
conclusion was made even more explicit in paintings like The Tribute Money , by
Peter Paul Rubens (1612), and Albrecht Durer's sixteenth-century
Christ Among the Doctors (Pharisees), both of which depict a blond
ethereal Jesus in contrast to the dark, menacing and ugly Jews--the others.
If we were to restore the authentic
ethnicity of Jesus and others, these painting would be strikingly different,
even while preserving the "Renaissance style." Consider, for example,
Michael Pacher's fifteenth century painting The Marriage of the Virgin,
which depicts the marriage ceremony (some say betrothal) of Mary and Joseph. In
reality, Mary was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl from a rural village in
Nazareth. Her betrothal and marriage was to Joseph, a working-class Jew
originally from Bethlehem. After their marriage they showed their dedication to
Judaism by taking the arduous seven-day trip to Jerusalem every year to
celebrate the Jewish holidays, particularly the Passover festival (Luke 2:41).
In Pacher's painting, Mary and Joseph
are Christians, with the marriage ceremony performed by a latter-day Christian
high church official in a Christian setting. Mary and Joseph's Jewish
identities are erased. Several other Medieval and Renaissance paintings of the
marriage also Christianized this Jewish
marriage ceremony. Similar misrepresentations of other scenes and
events are typical and routine for classical artworks.
In writing about this "ethnic
cleansing of Judaism in Medieval and Renaissance art" in Jesus Uncensored I
presented a "what if?" that punctuates why artists would
not dare to paint a Jewish Jesus:
"Imagine, let's say, if the painter Raphael presented
his patron with a scene of Jesus in a synagogue with a Jewish prayer shawl
(tallit), wearing tassels (tstsit), donning phylacteries (tefillin) for morning
prayer, and surrounded by other Jewish worshipers in similar attire--with Jesus
pictured affectionately kissing his beloved Torah. "Raphael, what have you
given me?" the startled patron would surely ask. "Sir," Raphael
would respond, "this is a painting of the authentic Jesus. That's what
Jesus did every morning. Don't you want to experience the real Jesus?" The
patron is unlikely to be impressed and Raphael might then be swiftly turned
over to the Inquisition." (This "what if" image is based on a
description in Luke 4:16 of Jesus in a
synagogue on the Sabbath.)
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