For how religion would shape my own moral beliefs, I tend to define religious texts like Bible or Qu’ran as wombs for artworks (for instance, Last Temptation of Christ or Jesus Christ Superstar the musical or Holy Mountain). I would study them—and you may tell that I’m diving into Christianity and Jesus lately—but I could barely relate to moral standards any of them carried. Quote the Divinity Command Theory we read about, since those authorities are not attractive to me, I find it hard to live as they command.

Basically, the way I see it,  most modern-day religions are generated around a human figure with artificial godhead that later would satiate the needs of a group of people. Quite a few Hindu religions would fall under their God Shiva and believed in regeneration to survive their current sufferings. Christianity in its early days, was based on Judaism yet satiate Jew’s needs at the time to combat Pharisees and Sadducees—at least that was the most straightforward outcome of praising a manlike divinity named Jesus. In this case, what Jesus said and done doesn’t matter anymore—he was more of a KOL that served as the role of a savior.

To further dive into how Christian Bible was presented in artworks and plays, the example I employed was Jesus Christ Superstar.

Despite its commercial success, which later even leaving huge impact even on theological groups, the musical has a few flaws in illustrating characters of its own as it progressed to be one of the signature work of both Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. One of the most controversial yet subtle change happening to the musical is the manner Jesus was portrayed. Accordingly, the original intention was to portrait Jesus as ‘a beautiful bisexual young man’ possessing the power of god meanwhile presenting carnal impact on his followers, namely Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene. This, sadly, was more or less neglected in future versions of the play. From the 73 movie shot in Israel substantiating Jesus with more theological values to later version of Jesus himself being a rock star—analogous to Judas in Superstar—and preaching out modern dilemmas and questioning some of out current moral standards, Jesus Christ Superstar has as a matter of fact been equipped with more mundane elements to satiate more mundane audience, those not interested in the tale of Jesus himself. I personally don’t pose too much negative regards to this evolving change, yet I find it interesting to explore some versions that do still possess the theological aspect to Jesus Christ Superstar.

There are two acts in the musical with the first one introducing all the characters in the play and the second one discussing their endings as well as questioning the audience how objective our history is. We as audience could easily pick out climaxes of each act: with the first act when Judas finally made up his mind to sell Jesus to Romans; and the second act being Jesus’ death including being crucified and finally died. What’s being neglecting, nevertheless, when we attempt to present Jesus Christ Superstar to a wider audience, is what’s called ‘the temple-cleansing’ scene.

Throughout most studies done on bible-related movies with Jesus being the main character, emphasis would always be posed on the temple-cleansing scene. Though actual discussion around this scene is barely depicted in actual texts from the New Testament, most directors of Jesus films regard this scene as the turning point of Jesus visit to Jerusalem; more eminently to the entire plot, this scene would be the last straw, supposingly, from Roman priests to made the decision to kill Jesus. From arrangement of songs, we could infer that Rice and Webber provide the priests the final straw, not the cleansing but the growing impact of Jesus to all his ‘half-witted fans’.

Varying from versions to versions, languages to languages, the song ‘The Temple’ posed emphasis not on theological and historical focus, but as a caricature of either corruption or hedonism. This was but a successful approach to adapt the play into a wider audience. There are some laudable remakes of this specific scene that I would cover in the forthcoming part of this passage.

Despite the shared irony aimed at commercialized US society, Essen 2010 was the most successful one, personally speaking. Direct imagery of Jesus himself attempted to pull up mobs in fat suits was without doubt an undeviating manner grotesquely screams at the elephant in the room. Later, when Jesus had cleansed the temple, the last shot on Xmas was the best part that almost tear me up with the tension this simple and commonplace word attains.

There’s also Frensburg 2010, in which the mob remained on stage from ‘tell me that I’m saved’ to later ‘The Temple’ and lastly ‘’poor poor man’. It was indeed a rather astute manner to keep the mob, substantiating how apt the crowds attitude altered from one another—to a completely opposite direction. Flensburg was the one using blood metaphors out of all JCS remakes—yet that does not result in any plainly bloody effect. By smearing Jesus’ white coat with blood and later forced him to stay in the air, I would say no more about how genius this is. (including Ichthys drew with his own blood from 39 slashes) Another eminent aspect to, well praise, this artwork is the lighting. Lights turned red in general as lust and sex began to appear among crowds—the same lighting as Mary Magdalene commenced her ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’—well, we would definitely interpret this lighting ‘error’ as another allusion to Mary’s profession as a prostitute.
Also—well certainly I love the Frensburg one so much—Jesus was carry a gun to alert the crowd and to dispel them, I would infer this to what’s been mentioned in John, where Jesus somehow miraculously got himself a whip of cords to get rid of the crowd. This whip of cords, kinda kinky, was however unused by Jesus but more of a  mere alert—the gun could be the modern version apparently. Moreover, if we take a look at the sounds the gun made, we could find it similar to ones made by whips.

This may seem slightly controversial to some, yet despite how gay Swedish Arena was, it was one of the most successful adaptions to present the first version of Jesus Christ Superstar. We definitely would see priests hanging around in the temple—as depicted in Last Temptation as well as King of Kings, Jesus himself had a rather intense conversation when he tried to drive people out from the temple—later turns out to be he himself fleeing from the temple. The fleeing part was alluded as well as we witness Jesus as a victim that stuck on the door but that could be just me.

Another metaphor worth noticing is how money were flying throughout the scene of the temple—accordingly, what Jesus saw in the temple was not only sex violence and alcohol abuses, but also moneychangers—a profession that had grown much more corrupted and was referred to later as licensed thieves (not sure if Judas was referring moneychangers as he scolded Jesus). As for the lyrics, Jesus referred the temple as a slaughterhouse, echoing sacrifices made yet unnecessary to God. What Jesus was preaching as the four gospels pointed out, was to pray instead of animal sacrifices. The idea behind this notion was similar to what some Buddhists(or Hindi) preached: what they worship is not God but their own desires.

That would probably be all of my rambles.