In our Gospels as Literature class last year we came up with various Jesus’ for each Gospel. I am talking about all the Gospels, mate, from the Canonical ones to the less popular but wildly fantastic noncanonical Gospels, such as the crazy docetic Gospel of Peter, which was the most popular Gospel for a long while, and the E! expose of Jesus’ childhood that is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
The Gospel of Mark was dubbed Comic Book Jesus because of its “and then” narrative style. Just about ever paragraph opens with και. Jesus doesn’t say much in the Gospel of Mark - he is just constantly going and doing things. Poof! he is over there; poof!, he is over here - look at Him go. If you have ever read a comic book - kinda the way the narrative is told there as well.
Given this, imagine my surprise coupled with delight when I came across Manga Messiah sitting at the bookstore this evening. Lets just say I had to change my pants. (Because I spilled my drink on them - what?) I actually found Comic Booked Jesus. I was to become the envy of all my friends - both of them were going to think this was seriously cool.
Anyway, I have only browsed through it quickly since I brought it, but I gotta say that I love it. It is definitely done in manga style, with Peter’s purple hair and overly obvious spelling out of facial expressions. Maybe I will give it a real review later - right now I am too pumped up.
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At Barnes and Noble up here in the Northland (KC, MO), that book isn’t in the comic book section but in the Christianity section, not too far from Piper if I recall.
It was close to the the Piper section?
I went to MOVIE GALLERY tonight and there was a movie that caught my eye. It just came out and it is called “The Color of the Cross.” The picture on the movie is of a black man. That’s right…Jesus is black. The details of the back cover said that the death of Jesus was based on racial issues. Jesus the black man died because of race.
ps
Maybe we could, in light of recent discussions, try to find a way that Jesus was a woman too (sarcastic tones here). I don’t get why everyone wants to make Jesus like them. We all know that he was a middle-class white guy.
Piper up here in the Northland is in both the more devotional books by guys like Billy Graham, and academic sections dealing with more academic issues. This was in the more academic section where there were a lot of books on the gnostic texts and liberal Christian theology. If I remember right, this book wasn’t too far from Piper’s books in the academic section