In Temptation, as Jesus walks away from the cross, the crowd are left blithe fully ignorant and still cheering at a Jesus they think, or so it seems, is still left on the cross. In the Gnostic Scriptures, many gospels have the crowds also duped, standing watching while the real Christ, the aeon son of man, stands by laughing at their ignorance. And while in Scorsese's film, no one replaces Jesuus on the cross, the basic element remains the same: in the end, Jesus was not crucified, but rather taken away, an simukacrum left in order to trick the crowds, leading to today's overwhelming belief (and that of the synoptic gospels') that Jesus was, in fact, killed.
AuthorWill's Brainstorming Blog for his 2014-15 Essay Collection on World Religions in Film Archives
March 2015
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