I had more than my fair share of what some would refer to as ‘God-botherer’ books, because I had a lovely Godmother who sometimes managed to drag me and my brother away from ‘Bonanza’ and off to church, instead of letting us engage in slack-jawed appreciation of 70’s Sunday morning TV.
Perfection
But sadly, the Christian books available to kids back in my day were often like this one here. A puke-fest of pop-up perfect angelic Jesus (and of course, Jesus was white. And blonde. Yeah, right.)
These stories also contain some wonderful poetic license. For example, little Jesus was naffed off that this clumsy donkey stood on the Messiah’s clay pigeons. So he clapped his hands and turned them into real life birdies (a blatant abuse of his holy powers if you ask me … and I mean … I thought he was meant to be perfect!) And apparently the real reason that Rosemary bushes have blue flowers is because the Virgin Mary always hung her washing on them, and everyone knows that Mary’s colour is blue. So, from that day on, the Rosemary bush decided that it would bear blue flowers. Hmm.
Cartoon JC
Then, if you were particularly unlucky, as you got older, you might be presented with the ‘cartoon/graphic novel’ version of Jesus’ life. This one here, isn’t actually quite so bad. I mean, at least it quotes verbatim from the Gospels (rather than making up a load of tosh, like the pop-up book). So, when I felt that it was important for my son’s moral aptitude to learn the entire Bible off by heart and he refused (little heathen that he is) at least he bothered with reading this version. Still, it is interesting to observe that this particular book belonged to my brother – and he ended up becoming a Muslim. So, I’m sure that some folk might interpret this to say that cartoon versions of Jesus’ life are best avoided, what with their sinister sub-texts and frivolous nature. I wonder what will befall my son? Perhaps he’ll create his own religion and I’ll get to be mother of a dodgy cult leader. And I’ll have no one to blame but myself.
Books AND Art
But going back to the subject of ‘what Jesus might have been like as a child’ – take a look at this; not a book, but a medieval painting by Simone Martini in 1342. It tells us of a scene in Christ’s life called ‘The Disputation’ – this is when Jesus goes missing during the Passover feast celebrations and his parents have to walk all the way back to Jerusalem in order to look for him. He is eventually found in the Temple, preaching to the Elders. And the Bible tells us that he actually had the bare-faced cheek to say to his parents; “Like…Durrrr! Like, where else was I gonna be? Other than in me father’s house – yeh?!” Or something along those lines.
Hundreds of artists have attempted a representation of The Disputation. But I can’t help but feel that this is one of the most realistic illustrations of the incident. There’s Mary, trying to be calm, reasoning with the lad as to why they were so worried, explaining that Joseph’s getting on a bit now and his blood pressure suffers whenever Jesus does this sort of thing. There’s Joseph looking angry, going; “Oi! Listen to your mother! Enough is enough! If you ever go walkies again, you can kiss goodbye to your iPhone!” And there’s Jesus, arms folded, looking ever so slightly stroppy and you just …. KNOW that he’s thinking “Whatever! Wish they’d shut up. I was only, like, giving a lecture on my new interpretations of the Mosaic Law. I was hardly, like, mugging old ladies for a jar of Frankincense like what all me mates do …”
Anyway. Thankfully, the slushy kids’ Godly-books didn’t completely turn me to the dark side (although I am sure that some would disagree!)