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pasitheaI don't remember who I swiped this article from so apologies for not giving credit where it's due, but I found this really interesting: http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/107992.shtml?p
The assertion of the article is that images of the crucifixion didn't occur in christian art until nearly 1,000AD
I find this interesting on a few fronts. The cynical aggressive point, of course is that I've heard christians say other religions are invalid because they were 'made up in the 60s' or something, so their version of their religion being half as old as they believe is great fodder. Also, it casts quite a bit MORE doubt on the already ridiculous cry of "Wah! 2000 years of persecution!"
OTOH, for me, at least, it makes it seem a little less likely that their cult willfully destroyed everything good about the ancient world. My logic is kind of convoluted here and probably faulty, but my reasoning is this: To be accepted by religion, art must uphold the ideals of the religion and if the art is pastoral scenes of a utopian paradise on Earth, and a world filled with beauty, the people following that religion are more likely to have that bent. Where a religion centered around their god being tortured to death by cruel people and everyone being wicked and full of original sin and self-hate is a lot more likely to have a violent bent.
Final tangent: Heh. With the timing being so close to 1000 years after the death of Jesus, wouldn't it make for a great story... Armageddon happened nearly 1000 years ago. All the 'true christians' went away to heaven. Charlemagne was the anti-christ and pope Urban the great deceiver. We are coming to the end of the thousand year war. The 'christians' (followers of the deceivers) have twisted their loving gentle prophet into a weapon of death, discrimination, and terror. The black plague was an example of their alignment with Satan. Killing cats and telling people washing was a sin was to kill as many people as possible. The condemnation of people with HIV and ignoring the epidemic is part of their latest attempt. They push to ignore global warming and the rights of others, speeding this world towards a fiery end where the air burns the throats and the oceans become dry and cracked. They are a cult of death!
You could even synch it up with other wingnut death cults. *2012 is very popular with the sensitive new-age death cults, but anyone who does five seconds of research knows this number is off by a bit... The end of the Mayan calendar. After all, the mayan civilization collapsed around... 1000AD... You could also throw in some projections about 'the singularity' and the end of unix epoch time (2038). That makes them all synch up nicely, doesn't it.
Of course.. I shouldn't even joke about writing a story like that. Throwing together nonsense like that is how religions get made.
*I'm really sick of hearing about 2012 in new-agey groups. Particularly since it's a largely bullshit date. See also, wikipedia's entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Arg%C3%BCelles
The assertion of the article is that images of the crucifixion didn't occur in christian art until nearly 1,000AD
I find this interesting on a few fronts. The cynical aggressive point, of course is that I've heard christians say other religions are invalid because they were 'made up in the 60s' or something, so their version of their religion being half as old as they believe is great fodder. Also, it casts quite a bit MORE doubt on the already ridiculous cry of "Wah! 2000 years of persecution!"
OTOH, for me, at least, it makes it seem a little less likely that their cult willfully destroyed everything good about the ancient world. My logic is kind of convoluted here and probably faulty, but my reasoning is this: To be accepted by religion, art must uphold the ideals of the religion and if the art is pastoral scenes of a utopian paradise on Earth, and a world filled with beauty, the people following that religion are more likely to have that bent. Where a religion centered around their god being tortured to death by cruel people and everyone being wicked and full of original sin and self-hate is a lot more likely to have a violent bent.
Final tangent: Heh. With the timing being so close to 1000 years after the death of Jesus, wouldn't it make for a great story... Armageddon happened nearly 1000 years ago. All the 'true christians' went away to heaven. Charlemagne was the anti-christ and pope Urban the great deceiver. We are coming to the end of the thousand year war. The 'christians' (followers of the deceivers) have twisted their loving gentle prophet into a weapon of death, discrimination, and terror. The black plague was an example of their alignment with Satan. Killing cats and telling people washing was a sin was to kill as many people as possible. The condemnation of people with HIV and ignoring the epidemic is part of their latest attempt. They push to ignore global warming and the rights of others, speeding this world towards a fiery end where the air burns the throats and the oceans become dry and cracked. They are a cult of death!
You could even synch it up with other wingnut death cults. *2012 is very popular with the sensitive new-age death cults, but anyone who does five seconds of research knows this number is off by a bit... The end of the Mayan calendar. After all, the mayan civilization collapsed around... 1000AD... You could also throw in some projections about 'the singularity' and the end of unix epoch time (2038). That makes them all synch up nicely, doesn't it.
Of course.. I shouldn't even joke about writing a story like that. Throwing together nonsense like that is how religions get made.
*I'm really sick of hearing about 2012 in new-agey groups. Particularly since it's a largely bullshit date. See also, wikipedia's entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Arg%C3%BCelles
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Date: 2008-06-25 08:10 pm (UTC)I do think the art history side is interesting when you consider the prevalence of the fish and the combined Chi-Rho symbol as prominent early Christian iconography. I don't know enough but suspect that the article is biased, and that the crucifix was always around - just that it became stressed as a symbol around 1000 or so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon gives some background on the adoption of a standard interpretation of what Christianity actually consisted of - though things do seem to have stabilized after 400 or so.