Jesus and the Movies

Abstract

"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God", Mark wrote nearly fifty years after Jesus' death, beginning the first text in a palimpsest of mythology that has expanded for nearly 2000 years. Since Mark wrote his gospel, theologians, writers, artists, and, today, film directors, have recreated and idealized the life of Christ in their texts. With each new text, the historical Jesus has been idealized and used to communicate the cultural information of a particular time and place. Each new text is an intertext composed of previous texts and new individual and cultural embellishments. Previous texts are not obscured by new ones; instead they co-exist and add to the number of meanings that the myth is capable of communicating.