Posted on 04/01/2004 1:00:31 PM PST by rface
Editor, the Tribune:
I remember when my mother said Santa wasn’t real. Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ," I suspect, will make some people experience the shock again. Gibson inaccurately depicts Jesus as European, with straight hair and blue eyes. This is a greater distortion than Elizabeth Taylor’s role as Cleopatra.
Long before Hollywood, sculptures and writings portrayed many gods as black, with African features. Buddha had woolly hair with tight curls or cornrows. India’s Krishna means "black" in Sanskrit. Islam’s Muhammad was "bluish" in color with "frizzy" hair. His grandfather was "black as the night." Moses was black, according to early portraits. The title for the Egyptian god Osiris means "Lord of the Perfect Black." The title for Zeus, the greatest of Greek gods, was "Ethiops," which means "burnt faced." Jesus had woolly hair and brass-colored skin.
Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, was populated by men who wore dreadlocks and never cut their hair. Nazarene is from nazar, meaning "unshorn." The next time you see a dreadlocked youth walking down the street, rebelling against society wearing baggy pants and shoes untied, then just think that today’s Jesus might look like him.
Tinseltown is not run by historians but rich actors. Gibson sparked the Second Coming by placing Jesus outside of the "church," and we finally get to openly talk about him as a black man on Earth and not some figment of our imagination.
We survived the truth about Santa. Aren’t we old enough to learn the truth about Jesus, too?
Kenya Kimbrough
American Family Rights Association
Kansas City
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09154a.htm
Publius Lentulus
Publius Lentulus is a fictitious person, said to have been Governor of Judea before Pontius, and to have written the following letter to the Roman Senate: "Lentulus, the Governor of the Jerusalemites to the Roman Senate and People, greetings. There has appeared in our times, and there still lives, a man of great power (virtue), called Jesus Christ. The people call him prophet of truth; his disciples, son of God. He raises the dead, and heals infirmities. He is a man of medium size (statura procerus, mediocris et spectabilis); he has a venerable aspect, and his beholders can both fear and love him. His hair is of the colour of the ripe hazel-nut, straight down to the ears, but below the ears wavy and curled, with a bluish and bright reflection, flowing over his shoulders. It is parted in two on the top of the head, after the pattern of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and vary cheerful with a face without wrinkle or spot, embellished by a slightly reddish complexion. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is abundant, of the colour of his hair, not long, but divided at the chin. His aspect is simple and mature, his eyes are changeable and bright. He is terrible in his reprimands, sweet and amiable in his admonitions, cheerful without loss of gravity. He was never known to laugh, but often to weep. His stature is straight, his hands and arms beautiful to behold. His conversation is grave, infrequent, and modest. He is the most beautiful among the children of men."
Different manuscripts vary from the foregoing text in several details: Dobschutz ("Christusbilder", Leipzig, 1899) enumerates the manuscripts and gives an "apparatus criticus" . The letter was first printed in the "Life of Christ" by Ludolph the Carthusian (Cologne, 1474), and in the "Introduction to the works of St. Anselm" (Nuremberg, 1491). But it is neither the work of St. Anselm nor of Ludolph. According to the manuscript of Jena, a certain Giacomo Colonna found the letter in 1421 in an ancient Roman document sent to Rome from Constantinople. It must be of Greek origin, and translated into Latin during the thirteenth or fourteenth century, though it received its present form at the hands of humanist of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The description agrees with the so-called Abgar picture of our Lord; it also agrees with the portrait of Jesus Christ drawn by Nicephorus, St. John Damascene, and the Book of Painters (of Mt. Athos). Munter ("Die Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen", Altona 1825, p. 9) believes he can trace the letter down to the time of Diocletian; but this is not generally admitted. The letter of Lentulus is certainly apocryphal: there never was a Governor of Jerusalem; no Procurator of Judea is known to have been called Lentulus, a Roman governor would not have addressed the Senate, but the emperor, a Roman writer would not have employed the expressions, "prophet of truth", "sons of men", "Jesus Christ". The former two are Hebrew idioms, the third is taken from the New Testament. The letter, therefore, shows us a description of our Lord such as Christian piety conceived him.
ROTFLOL! I would love to have been there to see the interviewers face when she said that.
You're not wrong. Gibson had Caviezel wear brown contact lenses in the movie because he anticipated the objection that "First Century Jews weren't blue-eyed!"
Of course, he anticipated the objection also that the "Passion of the Christ" was "anti-Semitic," and tried in good faith give no grounds for that objection in the movie, either.
Gibson could have cast Denzel Washington as Jesus, and this letter writer would have complained that he was "too light skinned." He could have had all the Jews in the film with nose jobs and perfect teeth, and he would have been accused of portraying Jews as "rich elitists." People like the one who wrote this letter have an agenda which they are not going to let facts or attempted accommodation obviate.
There are those believe that ethnically, Jesus was the offspring of a Roman Soldier and Jewish mother. Since no photographs exist of the pre-Arab indigenous peoples we will just have to accept Gibson's vision as being no better or worse than anyone elses.
I did find the description to be almost loving and even thought to myself, "I would not be surprised if this person subsequently became a Chrstian." But unless one is a document expert and not just a historian --- how is one to know?
Please tell me you didn't learn all of this fascinating information in your African Studies class. If so, honey, you should ask for a refund.
What the letter writer seems to be saying is that James Caviezel should not have been given the role because of the way he look (too "European"). Maybe so, but one has to balance this against acting ability and charisma - one has to do this balancing act for all movie roles. Anthony Hopkins did not look at all like Richard Nixon in Nixon. I still thought he did a good job.
Gibson inaccurately depicts Jesus as European,
Gibson does not by any means "depict Jesus as European". He depicts Jesus as a Jew, among Jews. It's not like in the film he gives Jesus a backstory where he comes from the Saxons, or something. He uses a "European" actor to play Jesus, but that's not the same thing.
Jesus had woolly hair and brass-colored skin.
I don't see how the letter writer can know this. In any event, so what if he did. One has to use some actor or another to portray Jesus. That actor may or may not resemble this person's idea of what Jesus looked like. Deal with it. If this person has a problem with James Caviezel's acting job, let's hear it.
Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, was populated by men who wore dreadlocks and never cut their hair.
Don't know about the "dreadlocks" part. Anyway, this is irrelevant.
The next time you see a dreadlocked youth walking down the street, rebelling against society wearing baggy pants and shoes untied, then just think that today’s Jesus might look like him.
To wear baggy pants with untied shoelaces is hardly to "rebel against society". This letter is approaching silliness.
Gibson sparked the Second Coming by placing Jesus outside of the "church,"
Huh?
we finally get to openly talk about him as a black man on Earth and not some figment of our imagination.
Jesus as a "black man"? Ok, now we're in loony territory.
Kenya Kimbrough American Family Rights Association
Hmmm, is this that organization that thinks that all black people are "sun people" and Europeans are "ice people"? I remember hearing theories like this back on Dennis Prager's old TV show....
cuckoo cuckoo
On that point, I'd have to say we don't know what Cleopatra looked like. She may have been light-skinned. She was descended from Ptolomy, one of Alexander the Great's Macedonian generals. As such, she was more Greek than Egyptian.
If you did that you'd see a odern-day Jew. He might be "Ashkenazi" or he might be "Sepphardic"; we also don't really know how much genetic drift has taken place amongst the Jewish population over 2000 years of diaspora and pogroms. So you may or may not get a very good idea at all of what Jesus looked like from looking at a modern-day Jew.
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