Hollywood Jesus

3D

When you read a book or head to the movies do you sometimes feel that you’ve heard the story somewhere before? For many hundreds of years writers have been drawing inspiration from the greatest story ever told.

Parallels have been seen in everything from Shakespeare to Harry Potter. There is rich symbolism in the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and many others.

A Christ figure, also known as a Christ-Image is a literary technique that the author uses to draw allusions between their characters and the biblical Jesus Christ. More loosely, the Christ Figure is a spiritual or prophetic character who parallels Jesus, or other spiritual or prophetic figures.

In general, a character should display more than one correspondence with the story of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible. For instance, the character might display one or more of the following traits: performance of miracles, manifestation of divine qualities, healing others, display loving kindness and forgiveness, fight for justice, being guided by the spirit of the character’s father, death and resurrection. Christ figures are often martyrs, sacrificing themselves for causes larger than themselves. – Wiki

My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98five Sonshine FM is Rev Dr Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.

Today we talked about Christ figures in our books and movies. You can hear what Ross had to say by clicking the play button on the audio player below.



Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading Hollywood Jesus? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.

About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He previously worked in radio for about 25 years but these days he spends his time at Compassion Australia, working towards releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.

The views he expresses here are his own.

View all posts

Join the conversation