Before we tell the story, let's take a look at a painting, which I think everyone knows.
Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper", where Jesus and his disciples ate together at the end. Jesus said: Some of you have betrayed me. The scene in the painting is the uproar of the disciples after hearing the words of Jesus.
Judas betrayed Jesus, and Jesus was arrested by the Jewish priests and finally crucified and died.
Our story today begins with the 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" directed by Mel Gibson. The film tells the story of the last 12 hours of Jesus' crucifixion in Jerusalem after his arrest.
Why was Jesus arrested?
It is necessary to explain the background at that time. Jerusalem was originally the capital of the kingdom of Israel established by the Jews (David seized Jerusalem in the 11th century BC to establish the kingdom), and was conquered by the Babylonian kingdom hundreds of years later. After a few decades, the Persian Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonian kingdom and liberated the Jews. Jews return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and after a few hundred years, the Romans occupied Jerusalem and turned it into a province of the Roman Empire. The story in the film takes place in the city of Jerusalem, which was ruled by the Romans and inhabited by Jews. The religion of the Jewish people is Judaism, the belief in God.
In 4 AD, an Israelites were born. This man was called Jesus. He preached everywhere and finally came to Jerusalem. With his talent (eloquence, professional training and various superpowers), he soon had believers in Jerusalem. The Twelve Apostles in Fincher's paintings, and their influence is growing. Jesus' words and deeds completely offended the Jewish priests. What did Jesus say? He said that I am the Son of God and the "Savior" prophesied in the Bible. If you believe in me, you believe in God, and if you believe in me, you can go to heaven. Crucially, Jesus also founded his own religion, "Christianity."
Is this still great? Doesn't this mean that you, Jesus, are God's spokesman? You are the Son of God, and you are also God? All you need to do is go to heaven and believe in you? So what do we need priests for? This is a blatant challenge to the dominance of Judaism.
The Jewish priesthood was about to arrest Jesus, but the priests only heard of him, and no one had seen Jesus, so they bribed Jesus' disciple Judas to identify Jesus. At the beginning of the film, one night, soldiers hold torches to arrest Jesus in the deep forest. The filming of this scene is very good. The strength of the light and shadow in the picture and the strange soundtrack create a serene and tense atmosphere. This feeling of light, shadow and tension is also vividly expressed in the Italian painter Caravaggio's "Jesus Arrested".
In the picture, a soldier in armor is holding Jesus with one hand, and Judas is identifying Jesus by kissing, and the conflict is about to break out. The subsequent story, according to the record of the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, "The Arrest of Jesus" in the "New Testament": "Simon Peter took a sword; cut off, cut off his right ear".
After Jesus was arrested, he was tortured along the way and was quickly brought before the priests for questioning. After some twists and turns, Jesus was brought before Pilate, the governor of Jerusalem at that time. Under the anger of the priests and the Jews, Pilate had to sentence Jesus to flogging, crucifixion and death. In the movie, the pain of Jesus is really spared no effort to express, the picture of whipping is terrible, it is definitely a restricted level. After the flogging, Jesus wore a crown of thorns and carried his own crucifixion to the place of execution. The Flemish painter Memling's "Jesus Goes to the Crucifixion" tells this story.
Jesus was also tortured in various ways during his journey to the crucifixion. His followers cried all the way, and the Virgin Mary was even more grief-stricken. The last few Roman soldiers nailed Jesus to the cross, I couldn't bear to watch it, it was really cruel. The visual impact of the picture and the epic soundtrack are extremely shocking, and I can't help but wonder, why did Jesus suffer so much? The Holy Redemption by the Florentine painter Mantegna depicts the scene of Jesus being crucified. From the angle of the picture, Jesus appears at the top of the picture, and the blue sky behind it seems to imply that he is the Son of God.
After Jesus died, his disciples continued to preach. These stories were later written into the "Gospel of John", after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire (the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan to confirm the legality of Christianity in the 3rd century AD, and then became the state religion of the Roman Empire), showing the suffering of Jesus. The paintings are endless. The following painting is a representative painting of the Middle Ages. The author cannot be verified. It is about the Virgin mourning Christ. Medieval paintings, flat and not vivid, were mainly to promote biblical stories. Painting was used because there were many illiterate people at that time who could not read the Bible, and there was no printing press or internet. It was impossible for everyone to read the Bible. It was enough to spread the Bible stories through simple painting.
Before the Renaissance, European religious paintings were almost all such flat paintings. It was not until a man appeared who incorporated a new technique into his painting that greatly changed the viewing quality of European painting. That is Masaccio, the founder of perspective. The "Last Supper", "Jesus Going to the Crucifixion" and "The Divine Salvation" shown above are all based on this "perspective" to have a three-dimensional feeling. On the basis of perspective, Caravaggio's "Jesus Arrested" has carried forward the contrast of light and dark to form a unique light and shadow effect, just like the picture frozen in a movie, which has the kind of gripping tension. Speaking of Masaccio, he created the fresco "Holy Trinity" between 1425 and 1427, which became an epoch-making work.
In the center of the picture is Jesus, and behind Jesus is God. The three-dimensional depth of the painting influenced later Renaissance painting. "Perspective" was widely used in the Renaissance. Raphael, one of the three masters of the Renaissance, his "School of Athens" is a masterpiece of perspective. Don't say anything more, just look at the painting.
From paintings to movies, it's all about the crucifixion of Jesus. A religious story, why do I have to tell a religious story, in fact, I have no religious beliefs, nor is it to promote Christianity. The rise of "humanism" from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the rise of Barklow architecture from the Reformation of Martin Luther to the Counter-Reformation, the separation of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism from Christianity in Europe, Russia, and America spilled evil and In the fire of civilization, people feel the power of faith.
However, China is a country without religious beliefs, is this worth it? the answer is negative. Religious belief is ultimately a set of values, the values of the universe, the world, and life. As long as we have our own set of values and stick to them.
In the society, there are certain rules for doing things, which are called values for individuals, and a group of people with similar values are called "Dao complicity". The source of values is philosophy or a logical self-consistent theoretical system. , the metaphysical thing is the influence of personal experience and the people around, of course, the formation of a person's values is often both. Now is an era of multiple values. What kind of values are correct? From a personal point of view, this is indeed a question that is not very worth discussing. If the correct standard is established, it is equivalent to suppressing thinking, which is really a disaster. The important thing is to choose among the multiple values that you identify with and stick to it. There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of wealth. Confucius said that it would be shameful for someone to pursue poverty if the country is governed properly ("The state has the right, and it is shameful to be poor and humble").
This year's best-selling book "A Brief History of the Future", author Yuval Harari put forward a point in the book, humanism is the religion of the modern world, and liberalism is the best humanism to experience. And dataism will be the new religion of the future.
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