Why Have Art Historians Been Silent About the Falsification of Biblical History in Artworks?

[Behind the Aegis]

When I recently visited the impressive Marc Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York City, I was surprised that more than half of the 31 paintings include a crucifixion theme. More surprising, the dying Jesus is clearly a Jew, frequently shown wearing a Jewish prayer shawl rather than a plain loin cloth. For Chagall, the crucifixion represented the common ground of suffering of Christians and Jews. In reminding us of Jesus' Jewish identity Chagall departed from the massive numbers of artworks that have falsely pictured Jesus as strictly Christian, thus fueling the historic rift between Christians and Jews.

"Do you know that Jesus was Jewish?" I posed this question to both Christians and Jews when I was doing research for my book Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew. Many people acknowledged that Jesus was indeed Jewish. But I discovered that what they really meant was that he used to be Jewish -- before he became Christian.

"Of course, he was Jewish," said Jane, a young woman educated in Catholic schools. "And did he remain Jewish throughout his life?" I asked her. "Oh, no, he became a Christian." "When did that happen?" I asked. "When he was baptized by John the Baptist," she said. "It says so in the Gospels."

Scores of other people I talked to gave similar responses. Some even contended that Jesus was born Christian or that he launched the new religion of Christianity. The Gospels make it clear that Jesus and his family were dedicated Jews throughout their lives. Bible scholars do not dispute this. For example, in his book Rabbi Jesus, Episcopal priest Bruce Chilton says: "It became clear to me that everything Jesus did was as a Jew, for Jews, and about Jews." In fact, the well-documented but often ignored truth is that there was no such thing as Christianity during the life of Jesus. The term "Christian" never appears in the Gospels, while the term "Jew" has 82 mentions. Nor is there any evidence that Jesus envisioned or started a new religion.

But these realities seem to have eluded the artists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Consider Bartolome Esteban Murillo's 17th century painting of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus (The Baptism of Christ). The baptism here is clearly a Christian conversion. But according to the Gospels, John only baptized Jews, and he did so to purify them for the expected coming of the prophesized Jewish Messiah. Yet Murillo's painting shows John holding a crucifix staff -- a Christian symbol that wouldn't come into being until three centuries later. In fact, the cross was a hated symbol in the time of Jesus .

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[msongs]

1. maybe the job of art historians is to talk about the art and leave religious propagandizing to

others, like someone with a book to sell, for example

[Behind the Aegis]

6. Part of talking about art is talking about the subjects.

[ZombieHorde]

2. The similarity between some of the main characters

in the new and old Testaments to older religions suggests to me that those folks probably didn't exist in the first place.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. How does that relate to the article?

[ZombieHorde]

10. None of it is very likely to be real.

All identities are false, but some are based on things that probably never happened. Doesn't really matter if a made up character identified with other made up characters. Seems like the kind of argument one would hear in a comic book store. Seems so important to the author of the article that people hold this opinion about stuff that probably never happened. Seems strange to me, but that doesn't mean it is strange. Different people have different world views.

[Behind the Aegis]

11. All identities are false?

You have proof of this? If not, then it still matters. Even using your comic book reference, there is still things to discuss and should be. It sounds as if you are saying mythology is unimportant for discussion.

[ZombieHorde]

12. Yeah, they're BS we tell ourselves and each other.

I have identities, but I know they're not real. I work in health care, I see people completely change when they get a urinary track infection. Who are we? What is identifying? Our thoughts? Our opinions? Our emotions? Our memories? These things change all the time. Even the way we remember things change, so many of the situations we remember never actually happened the way we think it happened. It's all BS. There is no self.

There's other reasons too, but I'm too tired to describe them in a way that would be worth reading.

[Behind the Aegis]

14. Many of those id's are what make us who we are.

Frankly, it is a bit offensive to imply that my identity of being gay is not "real". Things may change over time, and new identities may emerge or fade away, but they are important, and to say they aren't or are "BS", is dismissive. Do you also not "believe" in psychology?

[ZombieHorde]

18. I'm not trying to be offensive.

Maybe the topic of identities would be better discussed in the philosophy group.

A sexual orientation and an identity are two very different things, even if we give them the same label, such as gay or straight. It is a bigot created identity. An imposed identity. The reason many societies place subjective importance on orientation is for harming those who don't conform to perceived majority behavior. There is no more reason to identify with orientation than there is any other nature given trait, such as height or metabolism.

[Karia]

7. Pontius Pilate existed

His name appears on an inscription at Caesarea Maritima, from the time of Tiberius (14-37 CE).

[Karia]

3. Strange title

I don't know which art historians he talked to, but a LOT of scholarly work has been done on this. Please don't blame art historians for not getting the word out in a society in which a high percentage of people regard evolution and global warming as wrong opinions.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. It doesn't seem he is blaming them, but asking a question.

So where are the scholarly works being done in regards to the issue raised in the article?

[Karia]

8. Search Amazon and Jstor

Neil MacGregor, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art, Yale, 2000 for a start, and his essay at http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/apr/19/art.artsfeatures

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Interesting.

It is one example. I will look for others. Mostly what I have seen is has mostly been history, archeology, and biblical scholars who are more invested in this, but I don't read art history like I do the others, so I can't really say for certain. I just thought it was an interesting article on a topic that is equally interesting.

[Karia]

13. Yes

Archaeology & History of Ancient and Early Christian Art!

[djean111]

15. It does seem, a wee little bit, that the author is really doing some advertising for his

own upcoming exhibition.
That being said, delving into inconsistencies between art and a book with so many contributing authors and revisions and inconsistencies would seem to be more the province of a biblical scholar, IMO.
I don't believe art should be held to a strict representational standard. In fact, that idea makes me uncomfortable. And insisting art needs to be held to a standard imposed by a religion seems a bit off somehow.
I know that some religion prohibits depiction of people or something like that; this seems a bit different, with an agenda towards better understanding between Jews and Christians. Not an art historian's job, methinks. And certainly not for an art historian who does not believe the Christian bible is factual.

[TexasProgresive]

16. The finished product of an artist

is his/her perception or interpretation of a subject. In other words a painting, composition, poem etc. are strictly subjective. Any attempt at being objective by an artist tends to render the work non-art.

What we see in the religious art of the Middle and Renaissance is the perception of the time and place. Antisemitism was de rigueur and so it would be nearly impossible for an artist to see Christ, his mother Mary or Joseph as middle eastern Jews. They were blind to the Jews in their society as fellow human beings much less seeing the one they worshiped as God being a Jew.

Chagall has been described as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" by art critic Robert Hughes. Chagall's Jewish eyes saw Christ as a Jew, perhaps as the Rebbe from his home town in Liozna, Belarus. It was not Chagall's intention to be the quintessential Jewish artist of the 20th century. He wanted to open the eyes of all of humanity and he has.

[edhopper]

17. Art historians are quite aware

of the environment in which the works are created. It seems superfluous for them to address that the paintings were not historically accurate. Brugel and Rembrandt (as did many others) painted bible stories in clothes of their own times. Historians understand it, they are not ignoring it, it is beside the point.
That some ignorant believer accepts what they see as factually correct is the milieu of theologians and culturalist, not art historians.

[LeftishBrit]

20. Very interesting

There is a tendency quite generally speaking to treat Jesus, his family, and their entire surrounding as North Europaean rather than Middle Eastern. I can understand people putting Bible stories into their own familiar context, but what is always puzzling is when people put the Nativity into a far more North Europaean context than their own: e.g. southern Brits wanting 'white Christmas' and even Australians decorating their homes with fake show at the height of summer!

I also find it strange that many people seem to have absolutely no concept of the possible existence of non-Europaean, Middle Eastern Jews, despite the fact that most of the people in the Bible were in that category!

And of course the idea that Jesus was 'not a Jew but a Christian' seems amazingly common.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. That's because a solstice celebration has more meaning in colder climates

The shortest day (and length of day varies a lot more at higher latitudes), things getting cold - the festival is there to cheer you up. A summer solstice near the tropics is not so notable. It's the celebration that has been co-opted by Christianity.