Last night I listened to a BBC History program about The Early Jesus. It turns out that for the first hundreds of years Jesus was always depicted as a rollicking little happy-go-lucky fellow.
You could tell he enjoyed a good meal. He had blond, curly hair. Most of the time he had his mouth open in laughter. And, just like Harry Potter, he carried a wand. Whenever he was depicted performing a miracle, there he was pointing his magic stick. And this wasn't just one odd-ball book, painting or carving. Jolly Jesus was everywhere. He was also just a tad androgynous, meaning that he had a suggestion of man-boobs, but that could've just been because of his weight.
In any case, it took about a thousand years for Suffering Jesus to catch on. And the transition from Jolly Jesus to Suffering Jesus was one of the most successful character reimagings ever. Makes sense. A man who can remain placid in the face of Great Hardship is just more impressive than a pudgy chuckleberry with a magic stick and a god for his Dad. Most humans don't live the carefree life of a scion and bon vivant. Suffering Jesus is more relatable, as the media wonks might say.
Anyway, I had never heard of Jolly Jesus before. I wish he had stuck around. Imagine if when we were children the bibles and churches were full of pictures of a Jesus who looked a lot like merry Dom DeLouis holding a turkey leg in his left hand while with his right he pointed a wand with a lightning bolt shooting out of it at a jug of water while people stood by clapping because he'd just made them some wine. Or again, if he'd zapped Lazarus who was standing there with his hands up, saying, "Hey! I'm OK" as Jesus claps him on the back and gnaws on a fistful of cake.
In other words, maybe church wouldn't have been such a fvcking drag all the time.
And of course, most of the earliest Christians were born-and-raised by the Roman Empire, so they liked Fun Gods. They didn't want to sit around and listen to a sour Blessed One piss and moan. It'd be like listening to a rich guy complain about how the hangers fvcked up his gold foil wallpaper with too many bubbles and creases in one corner.
Me? I kinda like the way the Asian people did it. Their guy was lazy as fvck and spent most of his time sitting under a tree in the shade. "Holy Shit! These mangoes are really good. I mean, these are some damned good mangoes right here, son. Huh? What? Oh, well don't worry about your so-called death so much all the time! None of this is real anyway. You're getting all worked up about Nothing! Seriously, try one of these mangoes. They. are. delicious."
And thousands of years later a little bastard named Einstein (who got horny for his cousin sometimes) would declare (before the formulation of Quantum Mechanics): Matter doesn't exist. Only frequency. Time is an illusion, though I will admit it is an extremely persistent one. Most people thought he was crazy like a nut. But now that the math is out to nine decimal places in accuracy and in accordance with all experimental results, people say, "Well, OK. Still though . . ."
