Guest post: Once you’ve cut the surly bonds of reality
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What Jesus had.
Hang on. “Evidence” based on “Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion” is from images created centuries after the event being depicted, interpreted through the lens of gender-theoretical wishful thinking invented centuries later still. That is a helluva long chain of evidence, but then if you’re a gender studies “scholar” you can just make shit up as you go along, without the tedious burden of proof. Assertion is sufficient; it’s self ID for “evidence.”
But maybe there’s more to it than we’re giving credit for; perhaps one of these artists came into posession of a contemporaneous, eyewitness sketch made on Golgotha? We already know that depictions of The Last Supper are notoriously fraught with controversy. It should come as no surprise that The Crucifixion should engender similar conflicts. We must keep an open mind. I am open to persuasion.
We’d find the most tenuous, shallowest, most superficial similarities and connections, ultimately generating readings that directly opposed the straightforward interpretation of the text. Or turned everything into sex, because we were teenagers.
Yes, I could see how an over-Butlered man might get excited about the idea that the thrust of a spear could open a neo-vagina in the body of a brave and stunning, marginalized, spiritual being, who was born into, and trapped within, a vessel of human flesh, destined and condemned to be invalidated and mis-gendered, fated to submit to the scorn, hatred, and genital inspections of the world. It almost writes itself. Christ in the image of Trans. Now that’s centering! Too bad they didn’t stick the landing, though. For this hypothesis to be truly persuasive, along with the abdominal “wound-vaginas,” the depictions of Christ on the Cross should have featured Their Crown of Thorns sitting atop blue hair.
I’ve always found it quaint how some people, astronomers, theologians, or civilians, go to the trouble of coming up with an actual astronomical phenomenon upon which the Star of Bethlehem might have been based, a planetary conjunction or comet being favourites. But in order to hang the tale (which is in Matthew only) on one of these bright objects that actually do appear in the night sky, they have to throw out other aspects of the story, like how it led the magi, and then stood still over the place where Jesus was. There are no astronomical phenomena that behave in this manner. You can either have your “scientific” validation, or you can have your miracle. You can’t have both. One vitiates the other. (Never mind the magi were supposed to be “from the East”, yet they had seen the star “in the East”, which would suggest that magi from Mesopotamia, say, should have been heading towards India, rather than Palestine. It’s postmodern geography. Whatever.) This “Jesus was trans” idea sounds like more of the same, without the sort of tenuous constraints of the “astronomy” appealed to in the Star of Bethlehem story. Once you’ve cut the surly bonds of reality, you can let your ravings imagination soar freely.
Didn’t you know all geography is relative?
It is, of course, but not in that sense. You could move east to Palestine, but only if you are west of it. What makes up east and west is relative to where you are; for instance, to go to Omaha, I would travel east. Someone living in Des Moines would travel west.
So, once you recognize the relativity of geography, then all of it comes up for grabs, right?
The motherfucker was circumcised. Luke says so.
My text for today is Isiah 38.8: “Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.”
When you are a god, you can do whatever you like; particularly if you are a ‘jealous god’ who has got rid of all his rivals. So it would be no big deal for God to suspend every law of nature wherever and whenever he chose; in the sky but not down here below, in Palestine but not in Egypt, in Omaha but not Des Moines.
God has a handbrake for the Earth’s rotation, and also a reverse gear; accessible of course only to Him, (and please mind your manners when addressing Him.)
Newton schmooton; Einstein schmeinstein.
Nice comment YNnB. I was too busy spluttering about some numpty thinking a stab wound supposedly looking slightly vagina like qualified a person as being trans to think of anything coherent to say. Of course we could interpret all history’s stab wound victims as trans. Then again, we could just say that it’s a weird and deeply inappropriate visual analogy that is the product of a disturbed mind that views female anatomy in a very negative way.
Why refer to vulva as “vagina”?
Good point, we’ll argued. I found images of several medieval illustrations. One depicted the ‘birth’ of the Holy Spirit from the wound. Arguably vulvaesque. Some were arguably variations of an isolated gaping wound that might be interpreted as female sex organs and because of the particular depiction you’d go with vagina given the lack of exterior features. Then there were the paintings of Christ with a freaking stab wound with nothing sexual about it unless you have a more deranged mind than I have. Frankly I think the tossers’ whole argument is too silly to do more than mock and YNnB has done a fine job.
Total ignorance of female anatomy. Rising from improperly taught Biology (or, to assume at least some teachers are competent, because they are – improperly learned Biology). Too much popular culture. Fear of comprehensive sex ed (at least half the school board candidates in our recent election were fighting against CRT and CSE – fortunately, only one of them won. The other three we elected were more interested in important things like teacher pay and retention, quality of the curriculum, and student lunches).
It’s easier to be ignorant than to educate yourself. It might be safer in at least some areas and regions.