The Sky Father

 

Friend Xerxes persists in imagining the Christian God as a “bearded old man in the sky.” 

This is not the Christian conception of God. It seems to be more common among atheists.

Xerxes complains that image “will get in the way of any other understandings of God that may come your way.”

If so, this bearded sky-father gets in the way of the Christian or Jewish conception of God, it is actually Satanic, an anti-Christ.

And I think Xerxes is right here. The image is sinister.

Christians conceive of God is as a man of thirty or so with Semitic features, not in the sky but in the Middle East. This is how he chose to reveal himself to us.

For Jews, any physical depiction of God is blasphemous—including as an old man in the sky. For this reason, any depiction of God the Father is prohibited in Orthodox iconography. In the West, until about the 13th century, he was only depicted as a giant hand or eye, as seen on the US dollar bill.

God the Father as depicted on the US dollar.

It is true that we do now see the image in some churches, although far less often than images of Jesus. This bearded sky father is famously featured in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo's God the Creator

So where does he come from?

No doubt in part from Jesus’s reference to God as “father.” The father of a thirty-year old man would presumably look at least fifty. 

But this is theologically nonsensical, since God the Father cannot age, and so cannot be any age in particular. Age implies change over time.

There is also one reference in the Book of Daniel, to a figure called the “Ancient of Days.”

“I watched until thrones were placed,

    and one who was ancient of days sat.

His clothing was white as snow,

    and the hair of his head like pure wool.

His throne was fiery flames.”

Is this a vision of God the Father? Apocalyptic literature is difficult to interpret. Different authorities have different interpretations. Orthodoxy says this figure is Jesus. Some say it is Jesus as cosmocrator, world ruler, at the end of time. Indeed, the description of Jesus in the Book of Revelations is similar:

“… someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire”

William Blake saw it as Satan, given hegemony over the earth. 

“Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.’”

Blake's satanic "Ancient of Days," Urizen

 

But if it is God the Father, or whoever it is, there is no definite warrant here for a beard, which is consistent in the iconography, and his throne in Daniel’s dream is on the shore of the sea, not in the sky.

The grey-bearded god sitting on a cloud hurling thunderbolts is, more plausibly, Zeus, the Greek “sky-god” and “father of the gods.”

Zeus

As a pagan god, he is, in Christian or Jewish terms, a demon.

This is not encouraging.

He also seems to have something in common with Santa Claus: both elderly men with long white beards. There is no reason, after all, to portray the real Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, as an old man with a white beard. He might as well be shown at any age. In early representations, he has no white beard.

St. Nicholas of Myrna

There just does seem to be an urge to insert this figure of a bearded rich and authoritative old man as some kind of substitute for Jesus: as an image of the divine, and as a symbol for Christmas. 

"Father Christmas"

And I think, in practical terms, it is a barrier to many to knowing Christ. Especially for those who have had abusive parents, or bad experiences with authority, this image of God as a crowned ancestor has to be sinister.

I suspect bad parents, evildoers, and civil authorities of having snuck it in over time as an actual attempt to subvert and co-opt the Christian message.

Did they do it consciously and systematically? No need to assume so. The Devil works though a thousand, a million, little impulses, through our unreflective instincts.

Gods of Clay

Atheists seem always to refer to the Judeo-Christian God as an old man sitting on a cloud, a divine father. It is this God that they usually reject. They usually seem to make a point that it is this God that they reject, generally as “childish.”

But this is not the Judeo-Christian God.

Christianity has this thing called the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The father figure is only one. You are equally free to envision God instead as a friend, or a baby, or a bird, or a flame. All except as a friend are purely symbolic representations: it is as a friend that he chose to reveal himself to us. The point is to develop a personal relationship of love with God; use the image that works best in this way for you. It is no more intrinsically correct to imagine God as a father than as a lover: a metaphor found in the Song of Solomon, in St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul, and in devotional Hinduism’s Krishna Gopala cycle.

If atheists insist on seeing God as an angry father, and themselves as a child, this probably says something about their family relationships growing up; and perhaps our society’s devaluation of fatherhood; not about Christianity.

As for Judaism, conceiving of God an old man with a long grey beard is blasphemous. God himself is beyond our comprehension, and we must have no images of him.

Feminists, of course, make much of making God feminine; a divine Mother. They miss the point. Unless they are lesbian, Christian women have the traditional advantage. It is sick narcissism to think that it is about gaining power by making God in your own image.

How much power did Christians gain by imaging God as a crucified criminal, then?

Black Lies Matter

Traditional Ethiopian portrayal of Jesus..

The inevitable call has come, from Shaun King, a media heavy in residence at Harvard, with ties to Black Lives Matter: smash all the images of Jesus and Mary. Smash all the stained glass windows.

This, of course, was the target all along: God.

The premise, of course, is that Jesus is always portrayed as “European,” and this is racist.

"Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been."

"In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down."

This is nonsensical on its face. He refers to statues. How can one really distinguish, in an unpainted statue, whether the figure portrayed is from some European country or from a Hellenized area of northern Palestine? A slight difference in skin tone? We do not even know whether the skin tone would be different.

And on an unpainted statue?

Why did Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt, and not to Denmark? It may have had something to do with Denmark not yet existing. Egypt, on the other hand, aside from being the country next door, had the ancient world’s largest Jewish population outside Palestine. Two of Alexandria’s seven districts were Jewish—traders, mostly, no doubt, often coming and going. I think the holy family indeed had a decent chance of blending in.

Not that other Egyptians looked very different from either Palestinian Jews or European Greeks. There were a lot of Greeks in Egypt too. Cleopatra was Greek.

You would think a Harvard man would know such things. That would have been so, long ago.

The conventional image of Jesus comes from fairly early models. There is at least some warrant to think it is accurate. And he could indeed probably pass for a modern Lebanese, say.

If there are some blond Jesuses, racism is an implausible explanation for it. Rather, this is a natural consequence of the artists being themselves European, having only European models to work from, and having little idea or reason to care what a Palestinian of the First Century looked like. Black hair is rare in Northern Europe. For the same reason, in Ethiopia, Jesus is distinctly African in appearance. 

Our Lsdy of the Gate of Dawn, Vilnius, Lithuania

There are no comparable ancient standards for portraying Mary, and her images are far more variable. Mary is often portrayed in Europe as blonde or a red-head--just as she is shown with Asian features in Asia, or with indigenous features at Guadaloupe, her most popular shrine. A non-racist might nevertheless have noticed that even in Europe, “Black Madonnas” are given special veneration. There are famous examples, sites of major pilgrimages, in France, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden; rather white countries, on the whole. Perhaps most famously at Częstochowa in Poland and at Montserrat in Spain. Whatever reason this is so, it cannot be due to any notion of white supremacy or anti-black racism. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The real problem for King and his acolytes can only be, not that these beautiful works of art show Jesus or Mary as European, but that they are beautiful works of art. Worse, they are beautiful works of art made by Europeans. Worse still, they imply some fundamental truth and the moral law.

Make no mistake. What we are seeing in America now is the battle of good and evil. And all the racism is on the side complaining of racism.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Grinning Mary

My parish priest said something shocking in his sermon today: “If you do not have joy, you do not have Jesus in you.”

There is of course cause for joy in the Christian life. Things turn out well in the end. But this statement is directly against the gospel. Jesus says, instead, “blessed are those who mourn.”

The priest cited Mary as our model here: how she greeted joyfully the news of her pregnancy.

There is no trace of this in the actual gospel; only submission: “behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

The obvious likelihood is that the news was shocking and terrifying. Being pregnant without a husband was punishable by being stoned to death. This is important for understanding Mary as a moral model. Being moral is not supposed to be the easy, carefree option.

Yeats captured the enormity of it:

The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Mary is revered as Mater Dolorosa—Our Lady of Sorrows.

Then the priest cited St. Paul as his authority. But Saint Paul was not so big on joy either. He said we must all, like him, “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

It was striking to me, on a trip to Bulgaria and Greece, to walk through museums and compare the pagan Greek art to the early Christian icons. The pagan figures generally grinned with vacant eyes; familiar to art historians as “the archaic smile.” the Christian saints always looked deeply sorrowful.

The archaic smile, shown on a sphinx

The archaic smile, shown on a dying soldier.

The core message is the need for repentance.

I fear this priest has been infected by the same “I’m OK, you’re OK” theology as the Christmas song “At This Table.”

Mary Pictures

Here's mine.

From Aleteia. Pick your favourite.

What Did Jesus Look Like?

Hey! Who woke me up after 2,000 years?

What do we know about what Jesus looked like, and how do we know it? 

The question is more important theologically than might first appear. Jesus is God as God chose to reveal Himself to us. Given that it is valuable to have a personal relationship with God, it is valuable to have a clear image of him for prayer and meditation. The best and clearest image is surely the one God himself chose. 

Unfortunately, recently, a spanner has been thrown into the works. 

You might have seen the picture above. It is now all over the Internet; it is the first thing you are liable to see if you Google “what Jesus looked like.” It has been embraced and promoted by the BBC, Popular Mechanics, CNN, National Geographic, and any number of other media outlets. It is a claimed “scientific” reconstruction of what Jesus really looked like, using computer modelling. Being “scientific,” it is of course embraced as truer than the traditional view—after all, ”science” trumps “religion” as our true faith any day of the week. 

And it is nonsense. 

Consider the basic premise: It is based in the first place on a reconstruction of the sort forensic labs do on murder victims, built up from a computer model of a first-century Palestinian skull. 

Let's assume that modern forensic science is good enough to reconstruct what someone looks like accurately from a skull. It does not matter—because this is not Jesus's skull. Think for a moment how likely it would be for someone to come up with an accurate image of you by choosing a random photograph of another person who lived in the same country in the same century? Odds of winning the lottery would be better. 

But the nonsense only begins there. There is lots more to come. You will note that the image has short hair—unlike the traditional, long-haired image. Hair length, of course, cannot be determined from a skull. No; it turns out the “scientific” reason for this touch is that St. Paul in one epistle passage advised Christian men to wear their hair short. But St. Paul was writing in Greek to Greeks living in Greek lands; I thought the original premise was that Jesus was going to look like a Palestinian Jew? Jesus preached in synagogues and was called “rabbi”--and Judaism required men to wear their hair and beards uncut. If Jesus's own appearance was so much at variance from the norm of the place and time, and from the religious requirement, we would surely have mention of it. 

The “scientists,” in other words, are contradicting their own first premise, and for one purpose alone: to come up with an image as different as possible from the traditional view. We should be aware of this motive, and we should judge their claims accordingly. You're never going to get any press these days by saying the traditional religious view is right. 

You will note again that the scientists's image is considerably darker-skinned than that of the traditional image. The press coverage makes a point of this: “dark olive skin.” This is no doubt politically correct these days, when other authors commonly try to claim that the Egyptian Pharaohs were black. But it seems highly unlikely to be historically accurate. Modern Jews are far from being dark-olive in colour. Granted, they have no doubt intermarried over the years; but modern Palestinian Arabs are also not olive-skinned. While there is a natural range, one commonly finds today Palestinian Arabs with quite pale skin, sometimes even blue eyes and blond hair. I know; I have taught some of them. 

It is hard to imagine why the pigmentation of the Jews two thousand years ago would have been darker. The Arabs, after all, are supposed to have come from further south, and some of the inhabitants of the Southern Arabian Peninsula can be quite dark. In Jesus's time, by contrast, and in Galilee in particular, thanks to Alexander's conquests, there had been a rather recent influx of Greek blood from the north. 

This new “scientific” image also shows a broader, shorter nose than we are used to seeing—Jesus is usually shown with a rather long and thin nose. Odd, again, that the scientists would do that—I believe nose length cannot be determined from the skull since it is build from cartilage, not bone. After all, modern Palestinian Arabs tend to have long, thin noses, like the traditional depiction, not bulbous ones like this modern illustration. 

Jesus as he appears in ancient mosaic at Hagia Sophia. Note the long, "Arabian" nose.

It is amazing what nonsense you can get away with simply by misappropriating the word “science.” Ask Marx, or Freud. 

So this image is not just arbitrary in origin, but probably systematically wrong. And, of course, damaging to numberless spiritual lives. 

But to be fair, where do we get our own current idea of what Jesus looked like? Is it, in turn, and as these “scientists” and the press they have attracted assert, arbitrary? 

That is what the “scientists” claim: the original Popular Mechanics story notes “nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described, nor have any drawings of him ever been uncovered.” But this is not, strictly, true; not true, at least, unless you reject certain images that are indeed claimed to be portraits of Jesus indeed taken from life. At least three have been uncovered, and they have indeed been influential downthrough the ages in forming our common image of Jesus: the Mandylion of Edessa, Veronica's Veil, and the Shroud of Turin. 

The Shroud of Turin, I assume, needs no introduction. 

A modern reconstruction of Jesus's face from the Shroud of Turin.

Veronica's veil is supposed to be a headscarf with which St. Veronica wiped the face of Jesus as he carried his cross. “Veronica” is unlikely to have been the real name of the woman involved, since it simply means “true image.” However, the story appears quite early, in the “Acts of Pilate,” and references to the veil itself as a relic can be traced back to the fourth century. 

Veronica's Veil.

The Mandylion of Edessa is a portrait held to have been painted by a court painter from Edessa during Jesus's lifetime, at the request of the king of Edessa. It was carefully preserved as the “first icon,” but the original may have disappeared during the French Revolution. Nevertheless, it served as a touchstone throughout earlier centuries, and two reputed copies survive. 

Copy of Mandylion preserved in Genoa; or possibly the original.

Copy of Mandylion preserved in Vatican.

Of course, all three relics may be forgeries. But it is worth noting that they all agree on Jesus's appearance. 

It would be natural, surely, for followers to preserve Jesus's shroud; though an image burned onto it would of course be supernatural. So too for Veronica's Veil. That the images require a supernatural explanation is of course far from a disproof, given that we are dealing with a man claimed to be God himself. Rather, their apparent supernatural origin and state of preservation are themselves arguments for their validity. 

It seems at least plausible, in turn, that a neighbouring king might have sought a portrait of Jesus. The gospel tells us that the Nazarene prophet stirred up considerable interest not just in Judea, but in neighbouring kingdoms—we are about to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. “All of Judea” came out to see John the Baptist, “and the whole region of the Jordan.” Edessa was reasonably close culturally and geographically, in a time of great regional commerce, and is known to have embraced Christianity very early. 


There are other claimed ancient relics, with less plausible pedigrees. We also have surviving written descriptions of Jesus that are at least claimed to be very old; and they, again, conform to the traditional image. An intriguing example is the supposed letter of Publius Lentullus, claimed to have been at one time procurator for Judea: 

"his hair of (the colour of) the chestnut, full ripe, plain to His ears, whence downwards it is more orient and curling and wavering about His shoulders. In the midst of His head is a seam or partition in His hair, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His forehead plain and very delicate; His face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with a lovely red; His nose and mouth so formed as nothing can be reprehended; His beard thickish, in colour like His hair, not very long, but forked; His look innocent and mature; His eyes grey, clear, and quick"

But all of this is almost beside the point. We have one other authority for the traditional appearance of Jesus, and it is unassailable: inspiration. From his own time to ours, Jesus has repeatedly appeared in visions to the saints; we have their witness, and he, being God, is entirely capable of ensuring its reliability. Indeed, we also have the witness of the great artists themselves. No artist becomes great without inspiration, and God, being God, can and would preserve the image within accurate bounds for our benefit, particularly in art especially commissioned for a religious and meditative purpose. You can presumably only deny this likelihood if you assume in the first instance that he is not God.