THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE ATHEIST WRITER PHILIP PULLMAN

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE ATHEIST WRITER PHILIP PULLMAN

The very blasphemous and senseless novel " The Goood Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ"

Philip Pullman is atheist convinced, he declares Jesus was not the son of God, and Christianity was invented by Paul.
Now to give some basis to his raving ideas, he wrote a novel where he invents a kind of direction that
realize the Christianity and the Church. Pullman also claims that Jesus had a twin according to some apocryphal gospels,
he alludes to the Gnostic Coptic Gospel of Thomas, but in Thomas is not a carnal twin , but spiritual-gnostic twinning.
Here is a small summary of the tale.
Mary of Nazareth is a girl and lives with Joseph, to whom she was has entrusted by the priests of the temple,
this was copied from the apocryphal Gospel of James.
It happens, that one night an angel seduces and impregnates Mary.
Born twins, a healthy and strong, the other sickly and intriguing.
To the healthy twin will be given the name Jesus, to the sickly, the name of Christ,
the Greek translation of messiah. The birth takes place in Bethlehem.
There is also the visit of the shepherds ,who are visited by an bright angel, who announcing the birth of the Messiah.
The story continues with a blasphemous and ridiculous copy of the Gospels.
The twins grow up, we find Jesus at twelve in the temple, where he writes his name on walls with clay,
and priests want to punish him, the twin Christ defends Jesus.
Jesus adult goes around preaching the gospel and doing miracles. Christ follows the twin Jesus and record everything he does.
While Jesus is pure, the twin Christ is a sinner, so sinner to frequent the prostitutes.
A stranger without a name helps Christ to organize everything, to form a church with governmental structures and istitutions.
Then the evil twin Christ betrays Jesus, who is crucified and dies, while the twin Christ presents himself as the risen Jesus.
So Jesus was not son of God and he not risen, but the resurrection as well as miracles are false.
This is the story, this is one of the most blasphemous novels, senseless and imaginative writings against Jesus and the Christian faith.
Now, an atheist who writes this novel very blasphemous against God, against Jesus, against the Holy Ghost, against Holy Family, the Christian faith,
it can happen, but now, this gospel very blasphemous is promoted by the Anglican Church!
The Church of England Newspaper defines the Pullman'novel , a magnificent book that ignites the debate.
Pullman, was inspired to write this very blasphemous novel against the Lord Jesu Christ and His Holy Name
by a most surprising figure, the Archbishop of Canerbury Dr Rowan Williams, ( according to the telegraph.co.uk).
The Archbishop Rowan is a Pullman'fan, and about the novel " The Goood Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ",
Dr Rowan says " A voice of sincere spiritual authority", ( according to The Guardian).
Pullman does not believe in Jesus, and not wonder what Jesus thinks of his cruel and blasphemous novel,
but even the Archbishop of Canterbury, he does not ask himself what do think Jesus.
So really amazing things happen, like a novel so foolish, useless, offensive and blasphemous, is accepted by the Anglican Church remains a mystery.
How the devil 'apostasy is sweeping the Christian world!

This apostasy was foretold;
2 Timothy 4: 3-4

For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity,

will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths.

2 Peter 2:1

There were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you,

who will introduce destructive heresies and even deny the Master who ransomed them, bringing swift destruction on themselves.

***************************************************************

Here's another slap against Jesus who died for us sinners, ungrateful.

However, these blasphemous novels are useless rubbish, do not serve to the Christian believer nor to the atheist,

or the believer of another faith, in their place would be better to read the Gospels true, not only for religion but also for culture.

*************************************************

The Bible warns us about the dangers of blasphemous works.

All we will one day stand before the true Lord Jesus Christ, the Judge of all the earth,

and not before a false Christ invented from the imagination of some atheist, agnostic, pagan or false Christian.

Our eternal destiny depends on the relationship we had with him the Lord Jesus Christ.

For the salvation we must believe in the Jesus Chist.

John 3: 35-36
The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.

John 8: 23-24

He said to them, "You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world.

That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins."

Matthew 10: 32-33

Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.

But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.

Mark 8: 38

Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

Mark 16: 16

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.

******************************************************************

The Lord Jesus Christ warns us about the dangers of blasphemous works.

Matthew 12: 30-32

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven,

either in this age or in the age to come.

Matthew 12: 36-37

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak.

By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."

*********************************************************

The Lord Jesus Christ will punish sinners.

Matthew 13: 40-43

Just as weeds are collected and burned (up) with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.



The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.



They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.



Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.

Matthew 16: 27

For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.

*******************************************************

The Lord Jesus Christ warns of false Christians.

Matthrew 7: 21-23

Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.


Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?'

Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'

*******************************************************

St. Paul warns those who make blasphemous works.

Galatians 1: 6-9

I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by (the) grace (of Christ) for a different gospel

(not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ.



But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach (to you) a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed!



As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed!

*********************************************************

Biblical quotations: The New American Bible

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/_INDEX.HTM



https://sites.google.com/site/antiblasphemycentral/



https://sites.google.com/site/antiblasphemycentral/Home/the-gospel-according-to-the-atheist-writer-philip-pullman

Blasphemy: A recent post (about Jesus' nomination to the highest court in the land and his subsequent defaming by the Republicans)

A recent post (about Jesus' nomination to the highest court in the land and his subsequent defaming by the Republicans) on the Daily Kos inspired satirist Andy Cobb to make the following video.

As Cobb says on his YouTube page:

"Did you ever love something someone had written on a blog so much you wanted to rush out make a video out of it? No? Well, you probably have a 'life.' Me, I was so taken with this bit by one 'Winsmith' that I felt compelled. Of course, there's no guarantee that no matter who Obama nominates, Boehner will pitch a fit, Bachmann will say something cra-zee, and Steele will make an asshat of himself. But, cm'on. What are the odds?"
Cobb added visuals and his own take to WinSmith's fake report for your viewing pleasure.


WATCH:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/20/jesus-christ-nominated-to_n_205864.html

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

BREAKING: Obama to nominate Jesus Christ to Supreme Court -- Republicans Announce Filibuster
by WinSmith
Share this on Twitter - BREAKING: Obama to nominate Jesus Christ to Supreme Court -- Republicans Announce Filibuster Fri May 01, 2009 at 10:01:42 AM PDT
In a breaking story still emerging, President Barack Obama has announced the nomination of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court to replace the retiring justice David Souter.

Republicans hastily called a press conference to announce outrage at the selection, and an immediate filibuster.

WinSmith's diary :: ::

Here was the initial story from the A.P.

Obama to nominate Jesus Christ to Replace Souter
Friday, May 1st, 1:22pm Ass-ociated Press

WASHINGTON -- In a hastily called West Wing press conference, President Barack Obama announced that he would be nominating Jesus Christ of Nazareth to replace the retiring David Souter on the Supreme Court. "I'm confident that I'd found a candidate known for wisdom, humility, affinity for all human beings, and a solid sense of justice," Obama said, with Jesus standing quietly next to him in meditative repose. "I'm also confident that I've found a candidate all congressmen, republicans and democrats, can agree would make a valuable addition to the court" Obama continued, as Jesus blessed the wine. Picking such a globally revered figure, and the founder of Christianity, was a bold move by Obama that some experts said would force republicans to offer their support. But by early afternoon, the republican response had yet to take shape.

You'd think nominating the globally respected philosopher, religious icon and founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, would go over well with republicans. You'd be wrong.

"This is yet another example of a liberal president nominating a liberal, without any consultation with the republican party on his selection." Newt Gingrich responded at a hastily called press conference from the bedside of his cancer ridden dying wife, whom he's divorcing. Convicted Felon Tom Delay agreed, continuing Gingrich's line of attack in a solo appearance on Meet The Press. "The President assumes that just because we invoke Jesus's name while justifying violent torture, starting horrible wars and letting millions of children go without health insurance, that we're an automatic vote for Jesus. Not this time, Mr. President!" Delay snapped. David Gregory followed up with questions about how his hair looked, then booked Delay for the next seven consecutive Meet the Presses

By the early afternoon, republican opposition to the nomination had begun to take shape, as Fox News unveiled a two hour special, Jesus Christ: What you Didn't Know.:

"What do we really know about this 'Jesus of Nazareth,' if that is his real name. Some say he spends time with prostitutes!" said Sean Hannity in the opening intro, which featured ominous music over still-frames of the young Jesus. "He's from the middle east. Could he have associations with terrorism that we don't yet know about?"

Later, on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly continued the argument. "I don't see how any patriotic American can support this nomination. The guy was a carpenter, gimmie a break! Who are we gonna nominate next? Harrison Ford? I call on all patriotic Americans to join me in this war on Christ!"

Eric Cantor responded by press release:

"I speak for all Jewish republicans in congress, currently only me, when I say that I am deeply troubled and concerned that Jesus Christ is so obviously and clearly Christian. Even his last name suggests a bias that our Supreme Court should not have. The republican party is not simply a party of white Christians, even though the liberal media wants you to believe that. There's also me. The white Jewish guy." Cantor's statement read.

And four hours later, Cantor released a second press release:

I have just been informed that Jesus Christ is actually Jewish. But I must remain opposed to this nomination. This is not because I'm a partisan hack who reflexively votes against anything done by the democrats, and then searches for a justification. It's because Jesus Christ has murky middle eastern origins, palls around with prostitutes, and may or may not have committed an act of terrorism at a Sunday pot luck dinner being held inside a church."

Head of the RNC, Michael Steele, then chimed in:

"I'm cool with it, bros. Jesus is my homeboy."

And again, two hours later:

"I soundly reject the nomination of this so-called "community organizer" to the Supreme Court, and never said otherwise. If you play my quotes back to show I'm a hypocrite, it won't matter, since the few remaining republican voters don't know how to use the internet."

By the evening, things had spun completely out of control, as Fox News began to "report" on so-called "Crucifixion Parties," in which right wing reactionary protesters marched with signs that read "Sit on my court? I'll nail you to it!" and "Judge not, lest ye be lynched!"

In his forty-third appearance on cable news, Bill Kristol had the following to say:

"People think the republican party doesn't want to work with democrats on this nomination. We do. Believe me, the last thing we want to do is filibuster. We just want a candidate who more reflects the core values of the republican party. Like Idi Amin. Or Pol Pot."

CNN's Wolf Blitzer summed up the debate with the following report on The Situation Room:

"The democrats argue they're nominating a figure that republicans have long invoked as the core of their world view, and that therefore it is ridiculous for republicans to filibuster. A republican press release, just issued to CNN, responds by saying, and I'm quoting, 'OINKY WINKY DINKY DOO!!' Is that gibberish or not? It's not for me to say. My hair is silver."

Tags: Recommended, Jesus Christ, Supreme Court, satire, snark (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions



http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/1/726798/-BREAKING:-Obama-to-nominate-Jesus-Christ-to-Supreme-CourtRepublicans-Announce-Filibuster

Scholars at the American Academy of Religion Discuss "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter"

Scholars at the American Academy of Religion Discuss "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter"
di Massimo Introvigne


Controversial Canadian movie Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, directed by Lee Gordon Demarbre, was shown to a capacity crowd of scholars at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in Toronto on November 23, 2002, and discussed in two different sessions.

For those who have not seen it, the movie is a bizarro crossover between blasphemous comedy and horror. It opens with vampires suspiciously operating in daily sunlight, inducing two priests to call in for help none less than Jesus Christ himself. The Lord agrees to intervene, performs a couple of miracles in order to prove that he is indeed the Son of God, gets an haircut and an ear piercing, and is attacked by a gang of atheists. He defeats them by showing a truly divine command of martial arts. Back to the apartement the local parish has prepared for him, he finds there Mary Magnum (i.e., obviously, Marry Magdalene), a curvaceous fighter who attacks him but is, however, on his side, and belongs to a secret organization of vampire hunters whose existence is known only to the Vatican (her business card, however, has an E-mail address at vatican.com, while – perhaps unbeknowst to the scriptwriter – the correct address should be vatican.va). Jesus and Mary prepare their stakes to battle the vampires, but the first encounter show that they are not that easy to get, even by hunters endowed with ultimate supernatural powers. In fact, a crazy doctor has discovered that replacing their undead skin with fresh skin taken from newly deceased lesbians make them immune to sunlight. They also have double agents among the Catholic clergy, ready to betray Jesus and his friends. Mary is turned into a vampire,and Jesus is left bleeding in a back alley. In a modern retelling of the Samaritan story, a policeman and a priest ignore him, and the only person who cares is a transexual prostitute.

At this stage, with the movie becoming increasingly bizarre, Jesus decided he needs help and enlists Santo, a well-known figure in the old Mexican wrestling movies (where, of course, he did fight vampires). Santos and Jesus trace the vampires back to a night club, where Santo falls in love with a lesbian. Both Santos and Jesus are captured by the vampires but in the final battle they defeat them. Jesus, now in his full power and glory, turns Mary back into a human being only to discover that she, too, has turned lesbian during her short existence as a vampire, whilst Santo’s love interest, also duly resurrected, is at least bisexual. The movie concludes with a Canadian version of the Sermon on the Mount in a park, so politically correct that Jesus tells the audience not to believe his words merely because of himself and to rather trust their own judgement.

This looks very much like a farce à la Monty Python, only much worse and calculate to enrage Christians (actually, during the show at the AAR some veiled female Moslem scholars did leave the room finding the movie blasphemous – Jesus Christ being obviously a prophet for Islam). It is a testament to the deeply secularized nature of English-speaking Canada that there has been, apparently, very few controversy. As a farce, the movie was a hit with the younger scholars at AAR but left the older more cold and perplexed.

In the sessions, some scholars suggested however that the movie is not perceived as a mere farce. According to Laurel Zwissler, from the University of Toronto, a sizeable portion of the viewers she surveyed did identify with Jesus Christ as superhero (although of course the comedy element could not be lost to anybody). Making Jesus Christ into a superhero (with limitations as well as superpowers) is a way to make him relevant again, Zwissler said, in a deeply secularized society such as modern-day Ontario. AAR scholars tried to interpret the movie’s theology. If there is one, it is obviously liberal, with Jesus Christ refusing to condemn homosexual as well as etherosexual prostitutes, and a transvestite cast in the role of the good Samaritan. The Sermon on the Mount would please the Jesus Seminar more than Jean Paul II (who, in fact, calls Jesus on his cell phone during the sermon in the movie; Jesus would only talk to him later, however, and we may only suspect what the conversation will be about). Mary Magdalene is duly sexy and feminist, with reminiscences (Zwissler said) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although she is much more similar to Joe Benitez’s The Magdalena, who in her own comic series battles vampires and is part of an unbroken chain of vampire hunters going back to the Magdalene of the Gospels. Zwissler did mention some comics, but they are those where Jesus Christ is portrayed as a vampire (taking to extremes the eucharistic metaphor in Dracula), whose message is reversed here by making Jesus Christ into a vampire hunter.

Discussions at the AAR prove that vampire themes are relevant to the religious scholars (another paper discussed several characters in the Buffy TV series and their relationships with evil), and that the movie has potential for generating theological discourse, but whether this is caught by the average viewer remains to be seen. Many will only see the farce, and as a farce the movie is blasphemous (although theologians in the AAR panels were quick to remember that blasphemy may be the mask for a secret prayer). Others would regard Demarbre’s Jesus as just a bit too much politically correct.


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Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
(Canada)


By KEN EISNER
Read other reviews about this film

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An Odessa Filmworks (Ottawa) production, with support from the City of Ottawa and the Independent Filmmakers' Cooperative of Ottawa. Produced, directed, edited by Lee Gordon Demarbre. Screenplay, Ian Driscoll.

With: Phil Caracas, Murielle Varhelyi, Maria Moulton, Ian Driscoll, Josh Grace, Jeff Mottet, Tim Devries, Tracy Lance, Erica Murton, Glen Jones, Jose Sanchez, Mike Funk, Lucky Ron, Johnny Vegas.


The Rideau river runs red in "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter," a cheeseball spoof proving that there's life in Ottawa, even if the undead do stalk the halls of Parliament. Grainy 16mm pic, which got an honorable mention at this year's Slamdance fest and will be offered in the Cannes market, is now being self-distribbed on alt-arthouse circuit, where it should build a small-but-religious following.
Canada's own Ed Wood, the multi-hatted Lee Gordon Demarbre, previously delivered campy "Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy." Here, he sends up Bible epics, Hammer horror pics, rock musicals and chopsocky cheapies in a tale that poses the Second Coming as an occasion for some serious ass-kicking. Jesus makes his comeback when some punked-out priests plead for help in warding off vampires that are draining the capital city of its finest lesbians.

The Son of God (Phil Caracas) survives an attack by snaggle-toothed suckers, including the svelte Maxine Shreck (Murielle Varhelyi), but his beard-and-sandals look doesn't: A red-suited Emma Peel type (Maria Moulton) assists in a makeover that leaves him looking like Scott Bakula on casual Friday. He then goes after the evildoers, eventually calling upon a masked Mexican-wrestling star to make things right.

Fundamentalists may be offended by the plot description of a kick-ass Jesus who uses kung-fu to wipe out lesbian vampires. But for most others, including religious people, the film is too silly to offend.

Although pic contains virtually no religious or social commentary, Demarbre is nothing if not ambitious; his big musical numbers feature actual choreography, and he goes in for the occasional gory spectacle and slapstick gag -- all done on a budget that would barely buy matzos for a Passover party.

More than one option(Person) Jose Sanchez
Driver, Layout Artist, Makeup
(Person) Jose Sanchez
Actor
(Person) Jose Luis Sanchez
(Person) Jose Sanchez
Sound
(Person) Jose Sanchez
(Person) Jose Sanchez

More than one option(Person) Ed Wood
(Person) Edward D Wood Jr

Camera (color, 16mm), Demarbre; music, Grahan Collins, Hammerheads, others; production designer, Josh Grace; set decorator, Cort Dewan; costume designer, Zoe Ashby, Karen Fries; sound, Petr Maur; choreographer, Ken Godmere; assistant director, Mark Pollesel. Reviewed on videocassette at Victoria Film Festival, Feb. 10, 2002. (Also in Slamdance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival -- market.) Running time: 85 MIN.




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Date in print: Sun., May 12, 2002,
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117917701.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0

The Gospel According to the Son is a 1999 novel by Norman Mailer-Blasphmous

The Gospel According to the Son is a 1999 novel by Norman Mailer.
April 24, 1997
Yes, His New Book Is Biblical, but Don't Call Him God
By BRUCE WEBER
There is an old joke Norman Mailer is particularly fond of about a man who is complaining to God. The man whines: ''You're not treating me fairly, God. Why not? Why don't you treat me fairly?''

''And the thunder comes down from heaven,'' Mr. Mailer said, anticipating the punch line with a boyish grin. ''And God says, 'Because you bug me.' ''

Mr. Mailer told the joke this week to help explain his own religious beliefs -- and the God in his new book, ''The Gospel According to the Son.''

''I've always been religious,'' he said. ''I just have a God that's a little different from others. It's not because I'm special. It's just that it's the only thing that makes sense for me: the notion I have of an imperfect God doing the best that He or She can do. I've found it immensely useful as a religion, because self-pity used to be one of my vices.''

Hence the joke.

This is a powerful God indeed if He (or She) is responsible for transforming Mr. Mailer from a self-pitying sort. Now 74, he is, of course, among the most ambitious, hubristic, audacious writers (and New Yorkers) of the past half century.

In his journalistic and novelistic narratives, he has presumed to enter the minds of contemporary killers and ancient Egyptians, not to mention Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald and Pablo Picasso, among others. At the same time, he has led a public life of a celebrity-like nature, an odd type of self-aggrandizement for a serious writer. He has had six wives and has eight children. Among his famous forays into the headlines: a stabbing attack of his second wife, Adele, in 1960; an unsuccessful run for Mayor of New York in 1969; his involvement, in 1982, with Jack Henry Abbott, a writer whose release from prison he helped secure and who subsequently killed a waiter in the East Village.

So should anybody be surprised at his latest venture, in which he purports to retell what the writer Fulton Oursler called ''The Greatest Story Ever Told''? That is the story of Jesus Christ, of course, which Mr. Mailer has set about narrating by the Son of God himself. Finally, the true story of the virgin birth, loaves and fishes, walking on water, the raising of Lazarus, the resurrection, not to mention a coming of age story in which a young man comes to understand his demanding Dad.

All this, from a Brooklyn Jew, may be the very embodiment of chutzpah, which Mr. Mailer acknowledges as a ''vulgar and endearing'' quality that is ''very much a part of New York.'' And though he is rounder, more like a snowman than he was in his more physically pugnacious days, Mr. Mailer maintains his clear-eyed combative quality, his ease with self-defense.

''What people don't understand is the power of a novelist,'' he said. ''It doesn't surprise them at all if a surgeon can pull off a marvelous cure, if he cuts into a place in the heart that's never been cut before. They think if a guy's been a professional for 30 or 40 years, he should be good. Well, I've been a novelist for 50 years. I should be good. I should be able to try things that other people can't try.

''What people think is the largest dare of all I think was the only sensible thing to do, and that was writing in the first person. The negative side was obvious. 'How dare Norman Mailer! Vanity is vanity, hubris is hubris, but this is passing the point of no return,' and so forth and so on. So let me just assure the New York world -- the rest of America will never believe me -- that I do not think of myself as Jesus Christ.''

The new book, he said, was in part a celebration of Jesus Christ as a radical with a conscience. ''Not as radical as Judas,'' said Mr. Mailer, who portrays Judas Iscariot as an unforgiving zealot who betrays Jesus for having a wavering, very human faith. ''But radical enough for me.''

Sitting in the Brooklyn Heights apartment where he has lived since 1961, he lamented the demise of his view across the East River to lower Manhattan.

''It's gotten awful,'' he said. Once, he recalled, it was an urbanscape slowly ascending from the Battery shore north to a nest of spired skyscrapers, ''like foothills rising into mountains.'' He waved a dismissive hand. ''Now it's all these flattops.''

His scorn for the profile of the financial district was not irrelevant to his new book; his Jesus is fiercely disturbed by greed, by the elevation of worldly goods above spiritual concerns.

''Jesus saw the horror of money,'' Mr. Mailer said. ''As I was reading the New Testament, I realized in a funny way that the message that Jesus had, the animosity he felt toward money, the sense that Mammon was scourging the world, is so applicable today. It's significant that at the end of the cold war, a huge greed, a huge passion to destroy the safety net in America came into being. There's something terribly ugly in capitalism, and what's happened now in America is all our values are being leached out by the immense appetite for money.''

''The Gospel According to the Son'' is Mr. Mailer's 30th book, and by his standards, it is, at 242 pages, brief. Un-Maileresque, as well, is its language and tone, which is largely without the rambling, muscular sentences and grandiosity of personal pronouncement that have pleased or outraged his readers over the years. Instead, the voice of the book is muted, almost quiet, consciously suggesting the formally archaic sound of the King James Bible, the voice of a man struggling with his power and his conscience for the proper measure of humility.

''Each day I came to understand a little more of why the Lord has chosen me,'' Mr. Mailer wrote. ''I could see how my Father's patience would be tried with His creation. We consumed His charity and kept repeating our sins.''

In other words, Mr. Mailer's Christ sounds more like traditional Christ than traditional Mailer.

Church officials have not weighed in on the book as yet -- ''We don't have a comment at this time,'' said the Rev. Paul Keenan, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York -- though reviewers have. Publishers Weekly lauded the book as ''some sort of literary miracle,'' but in spite of Mr. Mailer's concessions to the style and point of view of the Son of God, many other critics were not persuaded to forgive the author his trespasses.

''It seems trite to dump on Mailer for having such a manifestly batty idea as retelling the story of Jesus with the son as first-person narrator,'' David Gates wrote in Newsweek. ''When Mailer's gone wrong before, it's either by overreaching or plotting. In this book he does both.''

Mr. Mailer actually wanted the book published anonymously, but with an announcement that the author's identity would be revealed three months after publication, so that it could be reviewed without his baggage. Mr. Mailer said the plan was rejected by Random House, however, after the storm caused by a previous Anonymous, Joe Klein, who had lied to keep his authorship of the Random House book, ''Primary Colors,'' secret. (Jason Epstein, Mr. Mailer's editor, said that was not the reason. ''It just didn't make any sense to me,'' Mr. Epstein said of keeping Mr. Mailer anonymous.)

''The book will get a fair share of bad reviews,'' Mr. Mailer said, ''but that I take for granted. I call a fair share between 65 percent and 75 percent bad reviews.''

He added: ''There's an irritation factor I'm presuming. The 'How dare he!' It's very much present in literary people.''

In spite of his seasoned shrug, Mr. Mailer said he was angry at The New York Times, not so much for publishing a negative review, by Michiko Kakutani, but for doing so weeks before the official publication date. Such a treatment of his work, he said, unfairly sets the tone for reviews to come, and he was doubly upset because he has made this complaint to The Times before.

John Darnton, The Times's culture editor, said that although the review was published early, the book was already in bookstores, and that Random House, which was already advertising the book, had called The Times to acknowledge that the book was ahead of schedule.

Mr. Mailer said one reason he wrote the book was that after re-reading the New Testament, he was struck by how insufficient it was as literature.

''I found Jesus in the New Testament to be not available,'' he said, ''not present as a human being very much. The lines in the New Testament are exceptional, the great lines, and Jesus comes alive as a God with the great lines, but as a man he doesn't come alive at all.''

''The narrative has become the spiritual or psychological keel of Western civilization,'' he continued, ''and no one really knows it because no one goes near the story. It is the greatest story ever told, and I thought there are easily 100 novelists in the world who could have done a better job, and I'm one of them, so I thought, I'm going to do this.''

(Actually, asked a bit later to rate himself, Mr. Mailer said he was one of the top five novelists in America, naming as the others Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike and one other person whom he would not name ''so that all manner of men and women don't get angry.'')

This kind of talk raises a number of questions, among which would be this: After the greatest story ever told, what is there to do for an encore?

Mr. Mailer laughed. He could not say, really.

''Talking about what you're going to do, in my case, has proved a very bad idea,'' he said. ''Years ago I promised to hit the longest ball in the history of American letters, and on and on.'' Nonetheless, he does know what his next book is.

Next year, 50 years after the publication of his first novel, ''The Naked and the Dead,'' Mr. Mailer will turn 75. ''Those are two nice numbers,'' he said. ''They commemorate each other somehow.''

Random House will commemorate them by publishing a Mailer retrospective volume, maybe 1,500 pages of Mr. Mailer's own selections of his best writing, ''provided he delivers it on time,'' Mr. Epstein said.

Perfect. What could be more appropriate after a fresh look at God's work than a fresh look at his own?

Photo: Norman Mailer says Christ never comes alive as a person in the New Testament. He tried to remedy that in his new book. (Edward Keating/The New York Times) Chart/Photo: ''First Person Singular'' From ''The Gospel According to the Son,'' by Norman Mailer (Random House, 1997): In my dream on this night, I heard one angel say: ''For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Whoever believes in Him shall have everlasting life. For God did not send His son to condemn the world but to save it.'' How I hoped that the angel spoke truth! For then I would be like a light sent into the world. Yet men seemed to love darkness more than light. I awoke, then, in confusion. For I did not know whether I was here to save the world or to be condemned by the world. Each night I heard a command in my sleep, but the voice was my own; it was there to tell me that I must leave these lands where people waited to touch my garment an go instead among the proud of Jerusalem: I must enter the halls of the Great Temple, even if my days would then be numbered by the fingers on one hand. (pg. B1)

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/24/nyregion/yes-his-new-book-is-biblical-but-don-t-call-him-god.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2





The Gospel According to the Son

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In the two millennia since Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their separate biographies of Jesus, only a handful of other authors have attempted renditions--Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and D. H. Lawrence have tried their hands at it; scholars E. P. Sanders and Raymond Brown have produced academic treatises on the historical Jesus. Perhaps the best-known fictional account of the life of Jesus is Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ, which explores the Son of Man's all-too-human side. Norman Mailer joins these ranks with The Gospel According to the Son.
Not content to chronicle Jesus' life in the form of an apocryphal gospel, Mailer has the chutzpah to crawl inside his title character's head and tell the story from the first-person point of view. Here we get the Prince of Peace's personal account of his temptation by Satan, his three-year ministry, and his agony on the cross. Mailer presents an entirely new kind of passion play, one that remains faithful to the shape of Jesus' life as outlined in the gospels, while daring to imagine the inner life of this most elusive historical figure. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This novel is exactly what it sounds like: the gospel story retold from Christ's point of view. Although Mailer treats his New Testament sources with respect, Jesus turns out to be just the sort of character one would expect to find in a Norman Mailer novel. He is embarrassed by his Jewish mother and complains that God the Father barely speaks to him. He questions his success in healing the sick and struggles with his growing celebrity. Worse, he waffles on crucial issues like voluntary poverty, alienating Judas and other hardcore revolutionaries. Of particular interest is the central role Mailer assigns to Satan. Jesus believes that God and Satan are equally matched and that neither one will ever get the upper hand. In short, Mailer has concocted a profoundly heretical "gnostic" gospel. The problem is that few readers will have much interest in Mailer's theology, and, taken simply as a novel, the book leaves much to be desired. Recommended mainly for comprehensive collections of Mailer's work.
-?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-According-Son-Novel/dp/0345434080







Mailer, the Great I Am

Norman Mailer's latest work is a life of Christ - told in the first person. If the reaction he hopes for is outrage, he's right. But if he thinks he's original, he's much mistaken. By Boyd Tonkin



In the days before New York taxis were piloted by Russians or Koreans, a critic waggishly remarked that Norman Mailer wrote the sort of books that cab drivers would write - if they could write. He had a point. It was 49 years ago that the Brooklyn bruiser (now 73) launched a career full of affronts and outrages with his wartime epic The Naked and the Dead. Since then, his fiction and non-fiction has punched its way from Hollywood to the CIA the Apollo moonshots to Lee Harvey Oswald. Even Picasso (the subject of a recent prurient slice of biography) has more than his fair share of cabbie appeal.

Now, thanks to a brief note in the spring catalogue from Random House, New York, we know that Mailer has picked the toughest bout of the lot. The forthcoming Gospel According to the Son - at 225 pages, a mere telegram by his standards - consists of a first-person narrative by Jesus in a tone its author describes as "neither pious nor satirical". Already, the holy warriors are loading their biggest guns. And Mailer will no doubt relish every skirmish. He used to hang out with boxing champs, and once unwisely joined a bar-room brawl while in the company of a peaceable heavyweight. "I reckon that fighters should stick to fightin'", the boxer gently counselled him, "and writers should stick to writin'." Some hope.

More than 200 hundred years ago, the Enlightenment brought historical study of Bible stories out of the shadows of heresy. Probably the first version of Christ's life published from a non-dogmatic viewpoint came from the scholar Reimarus (1694-1768). Since then, authors have been tempted by the chance to wed these extraordinary tales to the secular forms of the novel, the biography and (during this century) the cinema. Creative minds would let their imagination play over Moses, or Joseph, or even Jesus, and the fury of the orthodox would fall on them - right up to the bemused councils who banned Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Thanks to the tricky doctrine of the Trinity, dramatisations of the Son have proved more troublesome than versions of the Father. And the Old Testament itself abounds with startling scenes of God Behaving Badly. It's hard to think of any post-Biblical Almighty who acts with less conventional pomp than the riddling old grouch who answers Job out of the whirlwind like a sulky retired builder ("Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"). Since then, the Ancient of Days has turned up in many semi-comic guises. They stretch from the tetchy gaffer of the medieval mystery plays (memorably acted by Brian Glover in Bill Bryden's National Theatre cycle) to the wiseacre in golfing garb played by veteran comic George Burns in Carl Reiner's 1977 film Oh God!

But as Mailer will discover, with the Second Person of the Trinity, the routine scarcely ever alters. In their introduction to a new Oxford World's Classics edition of the King James Bible, Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett recall the "instant scandal and controversy" caused in 1846 by the English translation of a book that painted a portrait of Jesus that, though sympathetic, "was wholly human and non-supernatural". The work was David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus and the translator was a young intellectual called Mary Ann Evans. She would soon adopt a prudent male pen-name: George Eliot. At this period, the Cambridge theology examiners could still show just what they thought of all this new-fangled sceptical scholarship by asking candidates (as they did in 1848) to "Give the date of the Deluge" . The correct answer? 2348 BC, of course.

Strauss's version of Jesus probably moved further away from church dogma than the Nikos Kazantzakis novel that Martin Scorsese adapted in his Last Temptation of Christ. In theological terms, the sexual and domestic fantasies that landed Scorsese's 1988 film in hellishly hot water merely confirmed that Christ was entirely human as well as entirely divine. Christian orthodoxy has accepted that point since the fourth century AD at least.

Oddly, none of the instant reactions to the news of Mailer's book has registered that a comparable novel already exists. In 1991, the distinguished Portuguese writer Jose Saramago (tipped several times for the Nobel Prize) published his Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Although framed as a third- person narrative, Saramago's take on The Greatest Story Ever Told aims, like Mailer, to escape both piety and mockery to achieve a fully-fledged and challenging reality.

Saramago echoes Kazantzakis and Scorsese as his Jesus, in the years before his ministry, sets up house with Mary Magdalene. (The notion of a long- term liaison with the Magdalene has deep roots in ancient heresy and also turns up in Barbara Thiering's interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls - Jesus the Man.) Saramago's Gospel doesn't stand alone in recent literature. The Four Wise Men by French novelist Michel Tournier poses questions of history and belief in a spirit that rises above dogma and debunking. Clearly, the US clergy and laity who will agitate against Mailer know little and care less about what goes on among writers of decadent Catholic Europe.

So Mailer joins a long roll-call of seekers, doubters and dreamers. With the New Testament, modern research has stimulated fresh tellings of the ancient tales by paying attention to the Gospels as an ill-matched set of contradictory tales. Here, after all, are four sketchy narratives mostly composed from hearsay during the second half of the first century AD, and written in the low-status Koine Greek of Eastern Mediterranean ports - the equivalent of Estuary English, if you like.

We now know (as does Mailer) that the four narratives that made it into the Christian canon were far from unique. In 1946, at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, the so-called "Gnostic" gospels came to light. These were the holy texts used by isolated communities who mixed knowledge of Jesus's teaching with elements of Platonic and Oriental creeds. They include the Gospel of Truth, the Everlasting Gospel, the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas - which has curious parallels with Mailer's project, as it contains the sayings of Jesus without any intervening narrative.

It's worth reflecting that the sheer number of these separate stories tends to disprove the view (now revived by A N Wilson's life of Paul) that Jesus in his time rated as one small-time Jewish apocalyptic preacher among a hundred others. For a minor-league Galilean exorcist, he seems to have had a pretty busy press agent. He even appears in the great history of his age composed by the ambiguously pro-Roman Jewish leader Joseph Ben David (Flavius Josephus) - though most scholars now think that these passages were snuck into Josephus' text by later Christian apologists.

Whatever ecclesiastical flak Mailer has to catch, he is unlikely to finish up in court for his pains. The US Constitution, remember, was devised by a clique of deistical freemasons who just about believed in God but certainly didn't think that fighting over Him was any sort of pastime for a gentleman. Here, the common law of blasphemy still protects, not faith in general and not Christianity in particular, but merely "the formulas of the Church of England as by laws established" . Under that law, Gay News editor Denis Lemon went to jail in the 1970s for publishing a poetic fantasy about Christ on the cross by James Kirkup. And, within the past few months, film director Nigel Wingrove has lost his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the refusal to certificate his erotic video about Saint Teresa of Avila, Visions of Ecstasy.

So Mailer's future foes may have more of a chance to (as it were) nail him in Britain than the States. Whatever the fate of the Son's Gospel, it seems a shame that critics aren't prepared to wait for the tale before they curse the teller. After all, what sort of scurrilous film about the life of Christ would you expect from a promiscuously gay Marxist atheist who was eventually murdered by a rent-boy? What we got (thank heavens) was Pier Paolo Pasolini's intensely beautiful and moving Gospel According to Saint Matthew, a work so luminously reverent that it could push Professor Richard Dawkins straight into the nearest pew. "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Now who was it who said that?



http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/mailer-the-great-i-am-1280646.html





The Gospel According to the Son
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Gospel According to the Son is a 1999 novel by Norman Mailer. It purports to be the story of Jesus Christ, told autobiographically. [1]



The novel employs first person story-telling, employing the perspective of Jesus. It stays nearly entirely true to the text of the four canonical gospels. Jesus tells his own story, from his birth to a teen-aged virgin named Mary to his execution by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. Just as in the gospels, he is resurrected from the dead, and ascends to heaven.



Critical reception

Critical response to Mailer's novel was mixed. Jack Miles, writing for Commonweal, found the book "a quiet, sweet, almost wan little book, a kindly offering from a New York Jew to his wife's Bible Belt family." He noted that there was "something undeniably impressive about the restraint" of the style that Mailer undertook in composing the novel. He concluded that the novel was neither one of Mailer's best works, nor would it stand out amongst the bibliography of books inspired by the life of Christ, but that it had received unfairly harsh reviews from other critics.[2]

Critics such as Reynolds Price, writing for the New York Times, pointed to a "lack of inventiveness", based upon the fact that Mailer took so few liberties with the biblical text.

David Gelernter, writing for the National Review, cited the "sheer arrogance" of the very premise of Mailer's book. Yet he went on to agree with Miles that much of the criticism of the book had been "unfair." Gelernter called the book "strikingly orthodox" in its basic view of the character of Christ.[3]

Mailer had largely anticipated some of the savage reviews he would receive for the book. He noted in an interview with Bruce Weber of the New York Times, "The book will get a fair share of bad reviews, but that I take for granted. I call a fair share between 65 percent and 75 percent bad reviews."[4]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_According_to_the_Son

Jesus sent to the electric chair and not the Cross

Thursday, April 09, 2009
Jesus sent to the electric chair and not the Cross



Frankreich: Proteste gegen Jesus auf elektrischem Stuhl « DiePresse.com

France: Protests against Jesus in electric chair

A sculpture by British artist Paul Fryer shows Jesus in the electric chair. It is on display in the French town of Gap. The Bishop of Gap defends the work of art.

Crown of thorns, long hair, beard, a wound in the side, arms, feet and hands pierced, a downward sloping head: A picture of Jesus which can be seen in every church. But the sculpture "Pieta" by British artist Paul Fryer shows Jesus in this well known pose not on the Cross, but in the electric chair. Since the weekend the artwork can be seen in the Cathedral of Gap in the French Alps - and has guaranteed controversy, reported Kathpress. Bishop Jean-Michel di Falco has already received protest letters against the sculpture, the Paris newspaper Le Figaro reports.

Bishop: The sculpture is not scandalous

Di Falco, however, is a proponent of the "Pieta". If Jesus had been sentenced today, he would have to reckon with the electric chair or other barbaric methods of execution, says the bishop. Scandalous is therefore "not Jesus in the electric chair, but the indifference to his crucifixion."

The artwork belongs to the collection of the French entrepreneur François Pinault, who loaned it to the Diocese of Gap for Holy Week. Whether the work is then to be shown in a museum or a church is not yet decided, the TV station "France3" reported.
Cathcon: the same Bishop criticised the Pope over condoms so no wonder he ventures on the path of fideism where the historical reality represented by the wood of the Cross no longer matters in our Redemption.

http://cathcon.blogspot.com/2009/04/jesus-sent-to-electric-chair-and-not.html
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New Testament professor D.A. Carson on the scandal of the cross (Cross and Christian Ministry):

What would you think if a woman came to work wearing earrings stamped with an image of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima?

What would you think of a church buidling adorned with a fresco of the massed graves at Auschwitz?

Both visions are grotesque. They are not only intrinsically abhorrent, but they are shocking because of powerful cultural associations.

The same sort of shocked horror was associated with the cross and crucifixion in the first century. Apart from the emperor’ explicit sanction, no Roman citizen could be put to death by this means. Crucifixion was reserved for slaves, aliens, barbarians. Many thought it was not something to be talked about in polite company. Quite apart from the wretched torture inflicted on those who were executed by hanging from a cross, the cultural associations conjured up images of evil, corruption, abysmal rejection.

Yet today, crosses adorn our buildings and letterheads, grace our bishops, shine from lapels, and dangle from our ears–and no one is scandalized. It is this cultural distance from the first century that makes it so hard for us to feel the compelling irony of 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

____________________________________





http://oneresolve.wordpress.com/

BLASPHEMOUS AMERICAN JESUS

BLASPHEMOUS AMERICAN JESUS
THE TRUE JESUS CHRIST IS ONLY IN THE GOSPEL-THE NEW TESTAMENT-NO IN THE FANTASY INVENTED BY MATTHEW VAUGH-MARK MILLAR

the returned Christ on earth is in Acts 1:11
Remember Galatians 1: 6-9

http://groups.google.com/group/anti-blasphemy-central?hl=it

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Mark Millar - Telling the Revelation in 'American Jesus'
Matt Brady

Newsarama.com Matt Brady

newsarama.com Wed Mar 25, 5:13 pm ET
The Book of Revelation will be told in comics.


For Mark Millar, the creator behind such eyebrow-raising projects as Wanted, Kick-Ass, War Heroes, Marvel's Civil War, Ultimates and soon Ultimate Avengers, calling something American Jesus isn't that big of a deal.


American Jesus is the larger name of Millar's re-telling of The Book of Revelation from the Bible, set in contemporary times. Both the returned Jesus and the Anti-Christ grow up in a world where at least one of them can more easily reconcile his powers with the notion that he may be a mutant, rather than a supernatural being whose presence signifies the beginning of the end of everything.


The first installment of the three part story, Chosen was originally published in 2004 by Dark Horse, and this week, is being released in a new trade paperback collection bearing the name American Jesus - from Image Comics.


We spoke with Millar about the larger project and the first installment that's now available.


Newsarama: Mark, take us back to the start here on what was originally published as Chosen - what was the spark of the story?


Mark Millar: The American Jesus idea hit me a few of years back. When I was a kid, I read the Bible like everyone else, and I sort of hoped that the ending would happen in my lifetime. The Book of Revelation is just really cool - all the old stuff with the sandals just sounded less exciting than the returning Jesus versus the Beast at the end of time. I think everyone who reads it kind of assumes that it's going to happen in their lifetime, so just as a kid, it sounded great. So the idea has been percolating in me for a long time, and has actually appeared in a couple of projects that I've done over the years.


I think it came to a head with me when I started thinking about the first volume, Chosen, and it crystallized into a very linear story - a story about what it would be like to be Jesus in the present day, growing up with television, movies and everything that kids these days grow up with. And I also thought it would be interesting to show the Anti-Christ as well, but not in a slasher-film kind of way, but rather just showing a kid growing up who knows that he's got to be the bad guy in this big battle and terrible stuff; and then - of course, you have to have them meet. If you look at it that way - it's God versus Satan. It's probably the world's most famous story, and yet, it's rarely, if ever dramatized.


As a kid, I remember watching a copy of The Final Conflict - the last Omen movie - and being so upset that it wasn't the big fight with Jesus. But back then, I suppose it would be too controversial to do something like that. But now, luckily we're in these crazy times where you can get away with anything, so God versus Satan gets a telling in American Jesus.


NRAMA: Speaking of these crazy times - when this miniseries originally came out, and even recently with the FULL first issue up on Newsarama, there's not a hue and cry that at one time you would have expected to greet such a project. Were you surprised that this didn't make the evening news with a story about how comics are attacking religion and someone needs to take a look at them for the children's sake?


MM: Oh no, not at all. I wrote the thing with the purpose in mind of not offending Christians because I am one. I'm a practicing Catholic, which is incredibly unusual in the entertainment industry. I've always found it the cheapest of cheap shots to go for Christianity. I just think there are so many positive things about it, so why go for the negatives?


To me, Christianity has always been a very relaxed thing. Growing up with it in the West of Scotland may be very different than it is in some parts of America, but generally it's very tolerant and people are very nice, and will go out of their way to help people less fortunate than they are. So it's always been a very positive thing in my life.


I always cringe slightly when I see writers going after Christianity and especially the Catholic Church. It's like the secret handshake of the bad writer. It's like making Hitler your villain in a story - it's so easy. Find something new to say. It's not brave or particularly clever anymore. I think it was brave 400 years ago when you'd still get burned at the stake for it, and even brave 40 or 50 years ago, when attitudes were different and people would get it trouble or be ostracized for it, but now, my God, it's probably more shocking to be a Catholic than to be a Satanist.


And if you read the story, there's nothing in it that can be held up and waved by Bill O'Reilly as the latest threat to society and Western Civilization. If anything, this is a bookend to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. That's the story of the crucifixion, and this is the story of his return. The thing I liked about The Passion was that the people who went nuts about it were the religious groups - the people that are normally campaigning against movies. So I thought, wouldn't it be nice to tap into that and do something that's just pretty straight from the Bible and give it a modern spin and just tell a good story.


The thing is, I think it will get some more notice, and probably be held up a little. At some point soon, there will be some movie news, and when it becomes a movie thing instead of a comic thing, it will hit the mainstream a little more and hit a much wider audience.


NRAMA: It's harder to ignore when it's a movie retelling of revelation, rather than a comic book...


MM: [laughs] That's right. The thing is, we've got it pretty sweet in comics. Probably 99% of the time, nobody notices us. We have our regular audience, and they're a very intelligent audience, and we write things for them. So it's going to be interesting when it starts to reach a wider audience. I'm finding this with Kick-Ass as well - something like Hit Girl in that story - a ten year-old girl that's swearing and killing people. In comics that can kind of get by without much of a fuss, but when that starts to reach more of the mainstream...I think there might be something of a fuss made. Thye same thing will probably happen with American Jesus.


NRAMA: You had a title change and a publisher change - what went into that?


MM: Chosen was always going to be the first part of a trilogy. American Jesus was the trilogy, and Chosen was always part one of that. This is one guy's side of it all, and in book two, we'll see the other guy's side of it all. So this is something that I've planned on for ages, but unfortunately, between things like Civil War, Ultimates, Wolverine, Fantastic Four and other things, I've had so much less time for my creator-owned stuff that I'd planned.

I think I originally planned for the first part to come out in 2004 and the rest to come out in 2005-2006. So, as much as my books are usually late...this is four years later than I wanted, so it's nice to finally get this back on track and have it come out.

NRAMA: What brought you over to Image Comic from Dark Horse for the collection and the subsequent parts of the story?

MM: Probably [Image partner] Robert Kirkman. He's been on this fanatical campaign to get everyone over to Image, and I just admired that fanaticism. He was telling me, ages back, that I could be reaching a whole new audience with Image and making twice as much as I did at Marvel, and all the other things that a Scottish person wants to hear, so, being like Scrooge McDuck, I gave it a try to see what it would be like. I do have to say though, ICON [Marvel's creator-owned imprint and home to Kick-Ass] is great - the deal we have with Kick-Ass is one that took us way beyond our wildest expectations, so I was hesitant, but I like Robert, and I like the Image guys, and War Heroes was already over there, so I figured we'd give it a try and see how it goes.

NRAMA: Does this mean that you're looking at Image as more of a home now?

MM: I'll still do the vast majority of my work at Marvel, but I'm also very much aware of the fact that ICON exists because Image exists. If Image didn't exist, I doubt Marvel would have the slightest interest in doing something like ICON, and DC probably wouldn't be doing so much creator-owned projects under their imprints either. All of these things started after Image because creators started doing their own material. So I think Image is a very important thing in the industry to support - and also, people do very well over there - there are some guys at Image who are making much more than the biggest creators at Marvel and DC. So it makes real sense to have Image around.

NRAMA: Getting back to the story, in writing American Jesus, which is, as you've said, a telling of the Book of Revelation, were you typing with the Bible open beside you, matching up imagery and characters as you went, or is this a broader-brush adaptation that hits on the larger beats of the story?

MM: Not really. I was familiar enough with the source material in the same way that most comic book writers are familiar with Amazing Spider-Man #1-#125 or something like that. I spent a lot of my childhood reading the Bible and going to Catholic School, so the material that I was drawing from was familiar to me, and I never had to open the Bible to check references or anything.

Also, I met with a friend of mine who's a priest who is, certainly one of Scotland's, if not one of the world's foremost authorities on the Apocalypse....I just love the idea that there's someone out there who is an authority on the Apocalypse!

NRAMA: It's always good to have his number within reach...

MM: [laughs] Yes, exactly! He gets called out for some very interesting things. I was tormenting myself on this, trying to figure out how literal I should be, because when you look at some of this stuff, it's quite esoteric and doesn't lend itself to the natural three act structure that most stories have - not to mention that there's no real conclusion other than "God wins." There are no beats or real flow within the story. So I wasn't sure how much I should show in my story - should I show the Seven Heads and the Seven Seals and all of that? And my friend said to just take the basic idea of it and do my own thing. It was great advice that was very liberating as well. So I've taken the very broad strokes and am taking my own interpretation of it, and that works much better in terms of story structure because of that. So sometimes going back to the original source can bind you a little bit.

NRAMA: Going back to the whole conflict and controversy side of things, have you ever considered the flipside - that is, that once this hits the mainstream, you're embraced by the Left Behind audience and the Christian readership that is into End Times prophecy and find this to be appealing to them?

MM: I'd be comfortable with that, actually. I was going through the states a few months back, and all the places everyone said I would hate - all the flyover states - they were the ones that I liked the best. I mean, I'm a left-leaning Scot, and I'm comfortable with conservative Americans. I think America, especially during the Bush years, and even now, sees itself split into two groups, and I feel comfortable in both of them. The Left Behind audience is an audience that I understand because they embrace material that I'm interested in, so if they pick up the book, great. As I said, I don't think there's anything in it that they would hate - this is more of a straightforward story without the violence that usually makes it into my other books.

NRAMA: As you said, you're a Christian raised in the church and with the Bible. Was there any trepidation when you decided to take on this story? Revelation is obviously widely open to interpretation, but there are warnings to those who would willingly misinterpret it or use t to lead those of faith astray - not that that's every stopped any number of individuals form interpreting it freely according to their agenda or time period... Was there any conflict between your faith and the story you were looking to tell?

MM: Not at all. Like I said, the Christianity I grew up with wasn't fire and brimstone, just as it isn't for most people. It was a very loving, community thing. So the idea of doing your own interpretation of the Book of Revelation is something that my old neighbors would be interested in reading. It's not something that anyone would judge you for. I think if you did something horrible or deliberately offensive, then yeah, there would be a problem, but I don't think there's anything wrong with telling it as a story, no different than The Passion or any of the Old Testament books that were turned into movies.

It's quite interesting to me that the most exciting of all the books in the Bible is the one that's never been dramatized. We know Moses, we know Jesus' story, but this is the big one. Maybe the budget hasn't been there when it comes to film, or that it's difficult to tell - it's short, and quite esoteric. It's more like a trailer for a story. The way I describe it is if the Old Testament is Star Wars, the New Testament is Empire Strikes Back, and Revelation is just the trailer for the next one - something that shows you the coolest stuff is yet to come.

NRAMA: The Return of the Jesus...

MM: (laughs) That's it! You think he's dead, but he's back! That's when it all gets really exciting, when he comes back for the big fight! I mean, the New Testament without Revelation is like Han Solo still frozen in the carbonite.

NRAMA: So what's the plan from here? You're very busy, but with this now out in a trade, I'm assuming that there's a timeline for the next two installments?

MM: Yeah, definitely - we're going to run them starting later in the year with Book Two, and then Book Three early next year so all three books will be out before the movie. The movie will comprise all three books, and will be one big two and a half hour film - and there should be news about the movie coming soon.

Related:

Read the first FULL issue of American Jesus right here at Newsaram

Read the first FULL issue of War Heroes right here on Newsarama


Original Story: Mark Millar - Telling the Revelation in 'American Jesus'
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Matthew Vaughn Adapting Mark Millar's American Jesus
March 26, 2009
by Alex Billington


"They really are adapting everything aren't they," Dan Hacker said on Twitter after I first mentioned this news. British filmmaker

Matthew Vaughn will team up again with comic book author Mark Millar to adapt Millar's American Jesus comic book series. The story centers on the return of Christ in the modern world, leading to a final confrontation with the Antichrist in a bid to save humanity. Vaughn is already planning to start this up in the summer after finishing Kick-Ass, which doesn't have a distributor yet and was independently financed. American Jesus will be developed the same way, independently, by Millar.

Mark Millar's "American Jesus" follows a twelve-year-old boy who suddenly discovers he's the returned Jesus Christ. He can turn water into wine, make the crippled walk and perhaps even raise the dead. How will he deal with the destiny to lead the world in a conflict thousands of years in the making?

American Jesus, made with artist Peter Gross, originally appeared as a three-issue miniseries in 2006 with the title "Chosen." When Millar decided to continue the story as a trilogy of miniseries, the overarching title became "American Jesus." The second installment is subtitled "The Resurrection" and is due out in the fall. If you're interested in picking this up, the actual trade paperback collecting the first mini-series is out later this week (pre-order it on Amazon), so wait until then to buy it. I'm not at all familiar with the series, so I'm curious if it's really interesting enough to stand up to the likes of Millar's Kick-Ass or Wanted. Thoughts?

Discover More: Movie News, Opinions



http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/03/26/matthew-vaughn-adapting-mark-millars-american-jesus/

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Millar Resurrects "Chosen" As "American Jesus"
by Kiel Phegley, Staff Writer
More from this Author
Sun, September 28th, 2008 at 8:58AM PST

Updated: Sun, September 28th, 2008 at 4:15PM PST

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On a run from one creator-owned project to the next, Mark Millar is looking backwards a bit for his next independent launch — specifically, the writer behind "Wanted," “War Heroes” and "Kick-Ass" will be reviving he and Peter Gross' 2004 series "Chosen" at Image Comics with a new trade paperback volume retitled "American Jesus Volume 1: Chosen" in January followed by two follow up mini series, the first of which holds the appropriate subhead "The Second Coming." The announcement came during Baltimore Comic-Con Sunday morning.

"The whole thing was always planned as a nine-issue series, and it was going to be made up of three trilogies so I could get three #1s out of it," laughed the Scottish scribe while talking with CBR News earlier this week. "I've always got an eye on sales, so I wanted to get three #1s. Plus, with it being a biblical thing, a trilogy seemed to make sense. We even ended the first one on a cliffhanger."

Originally published as a three-issue series from Dark Horse as part of Millar's initial push of creator-owned Millarworld titles, the series followed the story of 12-year-old Jodie Christianson, who while growing up a regular Midwestern kid in the mid '80s discovers that he is, in fact, the returned Christ on earth. Millar and Gross will reteam for the two follow up volumes, as the writer explained "we own this 100% together, the same as John Romita, Jr. and I on 'Kick-Ass' or Tony Harris and I on 'War Heroes' or J.G. Jones and I on 'Wanted.' Anything I do on creator-owned books, we split it right down the middle, which is the only fair thing to do because they're putting as much work into it as I am."

Millar also explained that he's always intended to have a unifying title for the proposed trilogy. "The series itself was always going to be called 'American Jesus.' My idea for it was always 'The American Jesus Trilogy.' That was one of the original titles I came up with. The other one was 'Bible 2' saying it was the sequel to the Bible, but I thought that might come off as a bit facetious. I could get shot saying that. But I looked at it as 'The Bible sold a lot of copies, and it would be quite nice if there was a sequel.'

"So my plan was to just finish the story, and I've just been so busy at Marvel for three years with 'Civil War' and 'Ultimates' and 'Fantastic Four' and 'Old Man Logan' and everything. Just one project after another stopped me from getting to this. And it was slightly frustrating."

The inability to find time for "American Jesus" in his schedule was doubly frustrating for Millar as it was also lined up for a feature film adaptation around the same time as he made a deal for he and J.G. Jones' "Wanted."

"About three years ago, we first started talking to someone about doing the movie," he said. "We talked to Sony Screen Gems. They wanted to make it, and they made us a nice offer and everything, but then something happened where I looked at it and it didn't feel like a movie. Because I was trying to get as much money out of the studios as possible, I saw it as three movies like 'Lord of the Rings' — one big movie split over three pictures. But when I really looked at it, the three issues of 'Chosen' is one hour of a movie. Maybe even 50 minutes. So that's when I pulled the plug on Sony Screen Gems, when I realized we're better [completing the full nine issues] and it's at the most one movie [as it stands].

"Matthew Vaughan, who's directing 'Kick-Ass' right now, wanted to do 'Chosen' next, and I said, 'Let's do ‘Kick-Ass’ just now, and we'll come back to ‘Chosen’ later once I've figured out the next six issues because there's a lot of ways it could still go at the moment.'"

As for what kind of story would dictate enough plot and characterization (along with what can be assumed is a healthy amount of social commentary given Millar's past work), Millar held back on giving too many details just yet. "I don't want to spoil the ending of 'Chosen' for anybody who hasn't read that, but the second volume is about the adult Jesus in the modern day walking around in the world of Guantanamo Bay and conservative Republicans running Americans who don't have that much in common with a 2000-year old Judean idea of what Christianity is. It's Jesus in the modern world, and they crucified him last time, so it's kind of updating that for the modern world."

Now discuss this story in CBR's Image Comics forum.

Keywords: american jesus, mark millar, peter gross, image comics, chosen



http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18237



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Chosen Review
Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick! Minus the Pogo Stick, of course.
by Hilary Goldstein

November 3, 2005 - Blasphemy. That's the first thought many will have spying the cover to Mark Millar's Chosen. Few writers would have the balls to write a modern-day tale about the returned spirit of Jesus Christ, but Millar does so expertly. In the hands of a lesser writer, Chosen could have been a heavy-handed strike for or against Christianity. Chosen is not a bash on religion any more than Mike Carey's Lucifer is a commendation of Satan. Check your reservations and don't be so quick to pass this book on the shelf.

Jodie Christianson is your typical twelve-year-old boy, enthralled with comic books and Star Wars. When an 18-wheeler spins off a bridge and right on Jodie's head his world takes a drastic change. Unharmed, Jodie emerges from the wreck with incredible knowledge and the ability to perform miracles. But he's no Jesus of olden days. Jodie grew up with American pop-culture. He swears, he "self-dates" and he's not particularly religious. Welcome to the New World, Christ.

The three issues collected in the new trade follow Jodie as he, his family and his town come to grips with the return of the Savior. At heart, Jodie is still a kid, even with his newfound knowledge, and acts in ways you'd never encounter in the Bible. Though much of the town begins to idolize Jodie, a few remain skeptical. And therein lies the great danger for the would-be-Christ. Can he -- and should he -- convert his flock, especially at such a young age? Should he perform miracles in broad daylight? Isn't it about time he went on Oprah?

Everything leads perfectly into a big, surprising twist at the end of the book. Millar came up with the twist first and worked the story backwards, allowing him to plant subtle clues throughout the story. There are some stories that survive solely on the twist and it's true that Chosen would not be quite as great if not for Millar's clever take. That said, Chosen can (and should) be re-read with a completely new perspective and remains incredibly fresh. It's almost like reading a brand new story.

The last third of the Chosen trade includes a cover gallery, a very informative conversation between Millar and artist Peter Gross, a few pages of script and a very funny e-mail exchange between Millar and Dark Horse. Usually this level of good DVD-style bonuses come only with expensive hardcover editions, so this is a welcome addition to an affordable softcover.

Chosen
Written by: Mark Millar
Drawn by: Peter Gross
Publisher: Dark Horse
Genre: Action
Price: $9.95
Suggested Age: 16+
Release Date: November 2, 2005

Learn more about IGN Comics' rating system.
Rating: Must Read



Though the cover and subject matter may be inflammatory, Millar does not take any cheap shots at religion. There is a very specific story Millar set out to tell. This isn't a grand allegory or a thesis on faith. It's a story that would have fit perfectly into the Vertigo line, especially with Books of Magics' Peter Gross providing excellent pencils. If Sandman, Lucifer and Hellblazer are your cup of tea, then you might as well pour yourself some Chosen while you're at it.



http://comics.ign.com/articles/664/664097p1.html

Sacha Baron Cohen's black Jesus to shock America

Sacha Baron Cohen's black Jesus to shock America
Sacha Baron Cohen is preparing to shock America with his latest film, which is said to contain a black model called Jesus wearing a loincloth and a crown of thorns.

Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion journalist, is already well known for storming runways at designers' shows Photo: AP
The comedian, who has been sued by several people who featured in his film Borat, will be ready for similar reactions after the release of the big-screen debut of his character Bruno.

The title character, a gay Austrian fashion journalist, is already well known for storming runways at designers' shows and aiming to embarrass industry figures in interviews. Clips of his work have become cult favourites on YouTube.

And it is thought that the film version will see Bruno in more outrageous form.

As well as the Jesus character, it is rumoured that Bruno and his boyfriend, Diesel, adopt an orphaned African baby boy called David and parade the child around fashion shows. It is thought the joke is aimed at Madonna, who adopted a Malawian baby called David Banda.

A source reported to have seen the film in a test screening told The Sun: "Sacha has really gone for the shock tactics this time. The characters were created deliberately to wind up certain sections of society and Jesus is one of them.

"It won't be the first time Sacha has landed himself in hot water," the source reportedly added. "The water might be a little hotter this time round, though. Religion isn't always the best place to poke fun."



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4206901/Sacha-Baron-Cohens-black-Jesus-to-shock-America.html


BIOGRAPHY


Sacha Noam Baron Cohen,born 13 October 1971 is an English comedian, writer and Golden Globe-winning actor most noted for his comic characters Ali G (an inner city youth chav from suburban Staines), Borat (a Kazakh reporter), and Bruno (a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter). In his routine, he typically conducts interviews with respected figures while posing as one of his characters for comic effect. His interviewees believe that the ostensible interviews are sincere and legitimate. His work has been recognized with several Emmy nominations, an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

After the release of the Borat film, he announced that, because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he would retire Borat and Ali G.




Family
Baron Cohen, the youngest of three sons, was born in Hammersmith, London, England, to a Jewish family. His mother, Daniella (née Weiser), teaches at a school of movement and was born in Israel, and his father, Gerald Baron Cohen, was originally from Wales. Baron Cohen's paternal grandfather was born in Pontypridd and his maternal grandmother, who now lives in Haifa, Israel, was an acclaimed ballet dancer from Germany.His paternal great grandfather was born in Kaunas. His brother Erran Baron Cohen, a composer and trumpet player, contributed to the "Borat" film with the song "O Kazakhstan". Sacha Baron Cohen's cousin Simon Baron-Cohen is a leading researcher in the study of autism spectrum disorders (including Asperger syndrome).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacha_Baron_Cohen

TOO BLASPHEMOUS: Homosexuals sodomize image of Jesus Christ

LA VOZ DE AZTLAN
Los Angeles, Alta California
November 13, 2008

LOS(T) ANGELES: Homosexuals sodomize image of Jesus Christ
Angry over the approval of a California constitutional amendment (Proposition 8) by voters that defines marriage to be only between a man and a women, homosexuals and lesbians have been taking to the streets and besieging churches and temples of worship throughout the state.

One church that has taken the brunt of the attacks has been the historic Mormon Temple of Los Angeles. Last Thursday night, over 2,000 angry homosexuals and lesbians surrounded the Mormon Temple and got on top of the walls to shout obscenities. Many were carrying abominable signs and posters. One particular sign depicted Jesus Christ being sodomized by a homosexual and with the words "Jesus Faggot" written across it. (See photograph at right).

The homosexuals and lesbians have said that they will now be targeting churches in the Mexican-American and Black communities. Blacks and Latinos voted overwhelmingly to approve the constitutional amendment that protects the sanctity of holy matrimony and children. This threat has worried authorities that the situation could get out of control and ignite into major violence. The threat has been answered with strong warnings by organized youth groups. One Black youth said to the LA Times that the so called "gays" are asking for major trouble. Another Latino youth said, "It may be time to send the homosexuals back into the closet."

Today, the besieged Mormon Temple of Los Angeles and another in Salt Lake City received letters with fake Anthrax. It now appears that the sodomites are resorting to terrorism to advance their agenda, The Mormon Temple of Los Angeles had to be evacuated before a hazardous materials team determined the envelope's contents was fake Anthrax , said FBI spokesman Jason Pack.

The temple in Salt Lake City received a similar envelope and its contents spilled onto a secretary's hand. The incident forced the shutdown of the temple for an hour until the FBI determined that the powder was also fake Anthrax, said Salt Lake City Fire Department spokesman Scott Freitag.

It now appears that the issue of sodomite marriages may be headed back to the California Supreme Court. Californians had already approved an initiative that prohibited same-sex marriages (Proposition 22 on March 7, 2000) but it was struck down by the state Supreme Court earlier this year. Below is a photograph of the seven member Supreme Court and how they voted.



http://www.aztlan.net/homosexuals_sodomize_jesus_christ.htm

THE BLASPHEMOUS JACK BLACK AS JESUS

Jack Black as Jesus
09/12/08 | Posted by MattPage

School of Rock star Jack Black has appeared playing Jesus in an internet film. Prop 8 - The Musical was written by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray) as a protest against a new piece of Californian legislation limiting gay rights. Black appears to a bunch of evangelical Christians (played by John C. Reilly and West Wing's Allison Janney) and points out that they seem to pick and choose which parts of the Bible they follow. Jesus goes on to suggest that they should pick the bits that talk about love and not those that are about hate.The film gained an incredible 1.2 million hits in its first day, and reached the 2.5 million mark within just 5 days.

Jack Black
Black’s not the first, seemingly unlikely, comedian to play Jesus. Back in 1999 Will Ferrell had a brief cameo as Jesus in Superstar, and Steve Coogan also starred as school teacher playing Jesus in Hamlet 2 due for release in the UK in February next year (it was released in the US back in August). All of which got me thinking about various actors who would make a really good, or a really bad Jesus. Who do you think would portray a really good/bad film Jesus and why?





http://www.rejesus.co.uk/blog/post/jack_black_as_jesus/

BLASPHEMY-STATUE OF JESUS WITH AN ERECTION

Christian sues gallery for featuring statue of Jesus with an erection


Representatives for a gallery in Gateshead appeared in court yesterday charged with outraging public decency, after featuring a statue of Jesus with an erection.

The artwork was part of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art's September 2007-January 2008 exhibition Gone, Yet Still, by the controversial Chinese artist Terence Koh, which featured dozens of plaster figures including Mickey Mouse and ET - all in some state of arousal.

Lawyers for Emily Mapfuwa, a 40-year-old Christian who was offended by the artwork, launched a private prosecution against the gallery for outraging public decency and causing harassment, alarm and distress to the public. Mapfuwa, of Brentwood, Essex, argues the Baltic would not have dared depict the prophet Muhammad in such a way.

She complained in writing to Northumbria police earlier this year, asking for an investigation, and was informed in May that there was no case to answer.

But the Christian Legal Centre - an organisation that aims to "promote and protect the biblical freedoms of Christian believers in the United Kingdom" - agreed to pay her legal costs. The CLC also funded the case brought by Stephen Green against the BBC over Jerry Springer - The Opera. A CLC spokesman said Mapfuwa believed in freedom of expression, but "this statue served no other purpose than to offend Christians and to denigrate Christ".

At Gateshead magistrates court yesterday, a solicitor for The Baltic Flour Mills Visual Arts Trust, the charitable body which runs the Baltic, indicated a plea of not guilty. The case was adjourned until September 23. Mapfuwa intends to cite a case from 1990 in which an artist and shop owhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/03/religion.art?gusrc=rss&feed=artanddesignner in London were convicted of outraging public decency over showing a sculpture made of foetuses.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/03/religion.art?gusrc=rss&feed=artanddesign

BLASPHEMY-JESUS IN GAY ORGY PICTURES

l
Outrage over Alfred Hrdlicka's gay Jesus

By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin


Pictures depicting Jesus being fondled and the Apostles groping each
other have caused outrage after they were displayed in a museum
attached to
Vienna's Roman Catholic Cathedral.


The museum has been forced to remove the most controversial picture,
in which the Apostles engage in what the artist describes as a
"homosexual
orgy".


a.. The exhibition, entitled "Religion, Flesh and Power" featured
works from sculptor and artist Alfred Hrdlicka, who turned 80 this
year and
is widely feted in his native Austria.


It quickly began attracting criticism from Catholic groups after
opening last week, some of which described the pictures as
"blasphemous".


The website Gloria TV, whose catch line is "the more Catholic the
better", produced a graphic video of the exhibition, condemning it for
being
"supported by the Church".


Some local media have likened the controversy to the bitter argument
over the cartoon portrayal of Islam's prophet Mohammed, which led to
protests and violence around the world.
Vienna's archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, has now ordered
the "homosexual orgy" picture, entitled Leonardo's Last Supper, to be
taken
down.


"This has nothing to do with censorship", said the Cardinal, adding
that it was removed with "reverence for the sacred".


But other pictures which have proved also controversial, including
one
showing Christ being fondled while on the cross, are still on
display.


Bernhard Boehler, the museum curator, has insisted that despite the
criticism, the exhibition is serving its purpose by encouraging
debate.


"We think Hrdlicka is entitled to represent people in this carnal,
drastic way," he said. "People can imagine what they want to."


According to notes accompanying the exhibition, Mr Hrdlicka's work
focuses on the carnality of religion, and on the search for "God as a
human
experience".


http://www.groupsrv.com/religion/about289177.html




Vienna Cardinal Regrets Erotic Last Supper ArtThe cardinal told the
museum to take down the picture, ˝a homosexual orgy˝ of the Apostles
as Hrdlicka describes it.
Reuters Vienna's Roman Catholic cardinal said on Wednesday that he
regrets the exhibition of a homoerotic version of Christ's Last Supper
in a museum linked to his diocese.
The controversial work was exhibited in Vienna's Cathedral Museum as
part of a retrospective honouring Austria's renowned artist Alfred
Hrdlicka, who recently turned 80.

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, archbishop of Vienna, said he had
backed the exhibition without knowing the detailed contents.


"I obviously would not have agreed to have blasphemous or pornographic
works exhibited. I therefore explicitly regret that a work of this
kind was exhibited without my knowledge," the cardinal said in a
statement.


The cardinal told the museum to take down the picture, "a homosexual
orgy" of the Apostles as Hrdlicka describes it, just over a week after
the display opened, after some visitors complained and it provoked a
fierce uproar on Catholic websites.


Protest has continued over the picture 'Leonardo's Last Supper,
restored by Pier Paolo Pasolini' which showed cavorting Apostles
lounging on the dining table and masturbating each other. It was
supposed to be a highlight of the display.


"In some of (the pictures) he oversteps the essential threshold of
respect for the sacred," the cardinal said, adding that the museum
does not identify with all of the works.


But he also defended Hrdlicka as one of Austria's most notable living
artists who deserved such a retrospective.


"Hrdlicka...probably more than any other living artist, has devoted
himself to the suffering and downtrodden human being and has appealed
for "compassion" with the "Passion," he said.


The museum has said it did not set out to offend people but has
defended Hrdlicka's work and the decision to display the controversial
versions of biblical imagery.


Schoenborn, a former student of Pope Benedict who edited the Catholic
Church's official catechism in the 1990s, maintains that art inspired
by the Bible should be celebrated.


"I still hold the opinion that we must welcome the fact that artists
who do not share our faith, or are still searching for belief, occupy
themselves so intensively with biblical subjects," he said.


http://www.javno.com/en/bestseller/clanak.php?id=139046