Jesus Christ Beyond the Bible
Basic Info
The New Testament of the Bible offers a bunch of letters about Jesus: 4 Gospels recounting Jesus’ words and actions, including his suffering and death; and an apocalyptic book that may be about the end times or may be a screed against the oppression of the Roman occupiers. But it was never meant to keep people from thinking about Jesus and putting the pieces offered in the New Testament together in ways that help new communities to understand more deeply who Jesus was and is. All of the efforts to understand Jesus and to answer questions about him are rooted in the Bible but not restricted to its metaphors and images.
The first questions that caused serious wrestling among Christian leaders were those concerning Jesus’ identity: his humanity and divinity and his relationship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. But human beings need metaphors, so Jesus has also been variously understood as a philosopher/teacher; Good Shepherd; Priest, Prophet, and King, Sacred Heart, Man of Sorrows, and Liberator, among other images. The artistic tradition has embraced all of these ways of understanding Jesus at one time or another.
Historical Notes
Through the 3rd century, Jesus was often depicted as the Good Shepherd or a philosopher/teacher. Christianity became legal in the early 4th century and the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE. By around 400 CE, we see images of Jesus enthroned.
What to Look For
If you come across an image of Jesus that does not seem to fit into any known Bible story or any of the “identities” with its own section, this list should help.
- Jesus’ physical characteristics (with or without wounds, young, old, bearded, clothes, etc.)
- Other people with whom Jesus is interacting (biblical or not, saintly or not, leaders or everyone else, etc.)
- The context or environment in which Jesus is depicted (Heaven, earth, regal, common, natural, at a meal, etc.)
- How Jesus is interacting with others (leading, teaching, caring for, healing, judging, etc.)
- Objects with which Jesus is interacting
Questions to Focus a General Interpretation
What questions about Jesus might this artwork answer? his identity? his relationship with God the Father or the Holy Spirit? his relationship with humanity or with specific people?
Questions to Guide a Personal Interpretation
What about the artwork attracts you? What repels you? What might that say about what is going on in your life right now?
Does the artwork depict a role or identity for Jesus that is relevant to your life?
Questions to Suggest a Historical Interpretation
What might have been going on in the artist’s place and time that sparked the questions that this artwork answered (a World War, genocide, a nuclear explosion, etc.)?
For further depth see one of these interpretation pages:
