Christian Texts and History • A new spoof film portraying Jesus of Nazareth as a victim of imperial power

Religion News Service reports that 'A new biblical [comedy], ‘The Book of Clarence,’ captures the political side of the messiah'

https://religionnews.com/2024/01/11/a-n ... e-messiah/

Clarence’s career as a false messiah presents some of the film’s most compelling material, about the reality of Roman occupation in first-century Palestine and to the earthly conceptions of salvation that their presence inspire[d] in the occupied ...

There seems to be a lot of dimensions to this fim, including Black liberation theology (In this telling of the Jesus story, the Jews are a Black population living under white rule enforced by armed centurions patrolling the streets).

But a key point, race and color aside, is this film plays on James Cone (Black liberation theology’s most famous proponent) pointing out in 1969 that, in Jesus of Nazareth, God [was] incarnated as a victim of imperial power rather than someone who wielded imperial power.

The idea that Jesus was one of a small crowd of self-proclaimed messiahs at the time has shown up in biblical spoofs before, most memorably perhaps in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” The fact that the salvation they promised was political liberation from Roman rule is lost on many ... The ancient world assumed divinity was behind political reality.

The article about the film notes

The modern church’s refusal to make this connection between the spiritual and political ...

To be sure, “The Book of Clarence” is no theological treatise, and even well-read Christians may be flummoxed by [the director] Samuel’s incorporating unfamiliar stories from the Gnostic Gospels and elements of magical realism. However, it would be wrong to interpret Samuel’s creativity as blasphemy. Samuel is as creative with his source material as the New Testament writers were with the Hebrew Bible.

Statistics: Posted by MrMacSon — Sun Jan 14, 2024 5:33 pm

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