Unusual Ideas That Claim Biblical Support
We get innumerable requests for 'pictures' of Biblical characters
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People ask our BELIEVE Religious Information Source web-site
for 'pictures' of the Stone Tablets that the Ten Commandments
were on, pictures of Moses, of Jonah, of Isaiah, of many of the thousands
of people mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible. We also get
many requests for pictures of Joseph or Mary or Mary Magdalene or Matthew
or Paul or Peter or Jesus.
Please realize the time periods and the technologies. Photography
was only developed after about 1850 AD, and modern art techniques
regarding painting generally developed after about 1400 AD with the
Renaissance painters. True, there WERE paintings earlier than that,
and sculptures, but generally they had relatively short "lifetimes"
and skill levels were often limited.
Some very crude cave paintings have been found that are many, many thousands
of years old, but they tended to be preserved because of the constant
environment in caves. Normally, rain, wind, sun, vandalism, war and
general deterioration has caused virtually all artwork that was created
before about 1000 AD to have disintegrated by now. Only a very few
paintings exist that are as old as about 400 AD (20 generations after
Jesus). In general, the cloth or other backing material has decayed,
either from natural aging, weathering or vandalism or war.
Essentially, this means that ANY painting that depicts ANY figure from
the Bible was painted by an artist who relied on general information about
an individual, and upon his own "artistic license".
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A very few statues have endured from Greek and Roman times.
They tend to be statues of famous Greek or Roman leaders. Essentially
no statues exist from that era of anyone else, so the relatively unknown
individuals who wrote or are mentioned in the Bible are generally not
represented in statuary. In addition to this, any statues that Jews
or early Christians might have made were primary targets for destruction by
the countless enemies that have wanted to exterminate Jews and Christians
over the centuries. So, even whatever statues might have been made by
devout individuals have generally been destroyed. VERY occasionally,
some hidden cache of artifacts are found in a cave or other secret place,
which includes such important artwork as well as other items.
The point being made here is that ALL of the thousands of paintings
and drawings of Jesus and everyone else in the Bible, are NOT based
on accurate information! The vast majority of features in all such
paintings are exclusively the result of the creativity of the specific
artist. There IS the possibility that an artist was Divinely inspired,
to create accurate paintings in such a situation, but there would be
no possible way to document that. So, the impressive ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome, which includes a multitude of very realistic-seeming
paintings of Biblical characters, is essentially entirely a work of
the creativity and imagination of Michelangelo.
Ditto, for Christian music
Virtually ALL of the Christian music you are familiar with was composed
within the past 100 years! A VERY few songs and hymns were composed
in the prior couple centuries. Except for the Psalms of the Bible,
essentially no Christian music seems to have existed, except for Gregorian
chants, before around 1600 AD. And, even though Gregorian chants
probably began around 600 AD, no method of writing down the music
existed until around 900 AD, so even those chants are not certain before
about that time.
There are people who claim that Jesus was gay!
They claim that the Bible establishes that Jesus was never intimate
with any woman, and since He was human, He had human desires, and so
therefore He was gay! Rather unbelievable logic, or lack thereof!
This presentation was first placed on the Internet in January 2002.
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C Johnson, Pastor
A Christ Walk Church