Newsflash: Artist Suggests Jesus Was a Jew

[morgan_dhu]

I am totally boggle-minded. The paintings of an American artist, Clara Maria Goldstein, have been labeled controversial because they depict Jesus as a Jew.

Goldstein has created a series of paintings showing such "controversial" images as: Jesus as a baby, being lovingly prepared for circumcision by Mary; Jesus as a boy, reading from the Torah; Jesus dressed as and in poses associated with being a rabbi; Jesus wearing a yarmulke pictured next to a menorah. Now I know that the contemporary evidence (outside of Biblical texts themselves) on Jesus is rather slim, but all the sources I know of seem to agree that Jesus was a Jew. Apparently it's even in the Bible, what with the whole being descended from the House of David, and debating with the wise men in synagogue as a child, and calling the Temple "my Father's house" when he was doing that bit of housecleaning, and other such events.

However, these paintings are being denied display because "Gundersen Lutheran [the hospital] is trying to be more patient-friendly and it doesn't want anything controversial to potentially upset patients."

Let me get this right - portraying Jesus as what he actually was, a Jew, is controversial and might upset people?


The stupid. It burns.

Comments

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

It is very clear in the Bible that Jesus was a Jew. He reads the Torah in the temple. He is called "King of the Jews" by many. At his crucifixion, the Romans even put a sign on his cross saying "King of the Jews." (I would assume that by saying "King of the Jews" one would imply that he is a Jew.)

It is mind-boggling to me that anyone would suggest otherwise. Silly me always assumed that everyone already knew that Jesus was a Jew.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Because we're a world-wide minority everywhere but the tiny space of Israel, in a Jewish-centered space like a Holocaust symposium, it makes sense to say no to the exhibit: "Yes, we've heard a million times Jesus was a Jew; we just don't fucking care! Leave us alone with the prosyletizing and Christian-this, Christian-that already!" Context matters.

But for a Lutheran Hospital, nah, seems pretty anti-semitic to me.

[jane-ire.livejournal.com]

When I told my members of my Catholic family I was converting to Judaism they invariably said, "Oh, it's okay! After all, Jesus was a Jew!"

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Actually, the hospital's action makes me sick and shocked, for reasons I am too tired this evening to fully unravel. But it seems to me to manifest madness rooted in not very well-veiled hate.

It makes no theological sense; and it makes all too much sense in terms of anti-semitism.

As far as the Holocaust symposium is concerned: the Nazis murdered Jewish converts to Christianity impartially with all the rest.

[guyindkny.livejournal.com]

Debates about the depictions of Jesus never fail to amuse me. The images we've grown up with and which some evangelicans take to be canonical are actually fabrications. Early Christian depictions of Jesus were actually based on the template of Apollo, like some sweet shepherd boy. When they found that the images weren't commanding the respect of the population, they decided instead to switch to a more imposing Zeus-like template, hence the beard and robes. Even in the ancient world, it was all about branding and marketing, and for people to get bent out of shape over an image which actually has little historical accuracy to begin with amuses me more than upsets me.