Templar Edification

Our meditations upon the woodcuts of Gustave Doré, by which he illustrated the Grande Bible de Tours, reach the climax of Our Lord’s Passion with Luke 23:44-45— It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the  afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. By the standards of its day, the Jerusalem Temple was weird. The very idea that there ought to be but one Temple for an entire nation, for a dozen feuding federated Tribes, baffled most observers in the ancient world. Great cities could have scores of temples, of every deity and design, each housing a cultic image, a statue of the given god in glory. Some of these were wonders of the world: Zeus at Olympia, Artemis at Ephesus. Yet the Temple of the Hebrew God stood empty—empty!—just a big blank space with some cherubs set around it, and simple sacred box of acacia and gold (this latter being lost before the time of Christ). Here there would be one Temple, one...

 Our exploration of the woodcuts used to illustrate the classic Grande Bible de Tours, etched by renowned French artist Gustave Doré, continues the drama of Calvary with  Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” -Luke 23:34-35 Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. That verse still stuns me. I need to stop and put my Bible down to breathe. The Romans had made death into an art. Who else could come up with something like the poena cullei—sewing someone inside of a sack with wild beasts, then tossing them together into the Tiber so that the animals in panic would tear apart the man? Who else could have imagined, let alone planned and executed, the symphony of death played out within the Colosseum? No matter how bad you may think...

In our fourth woodcut from La Grande Bible de Tours, Gustave Doré illustrates John 19:18-19— There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the  middle. Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of  Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Pilate doesn’t care if you’re a god. But the common folk must have no king but Caesar. Jesus is arrested for blasphemy, yet the Romans have no dog within this fight. They care little for matters of Jewish Law. Religion, for them, is a complicated thing, yet so long as people pay their taxes and allow the trade to flow, Rome will let them worship as they like. This proves doubly true for Judea, as the Romans respect little so much as antiquity, and the Torah certainly boasts an impressive pedigree. Where others must offer their pinch of incense to Caesar, Judeans shall be allowed to sacrifice for the Emperor rather than to the Emperor. It’s a handy little loophole. But if there’s one thing ...

The third in our series of biblical woodcuts by Gustave Doré illustrates Matthew 27: 33-34— And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they  offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. Jerusalem in Jesus’ day had spilled beyond its borders, with settlements cropping up outside the fortified city wall. Golgotha—Calvary, in Latin, both names referring to “skull”—began as a limestone quarry on the west edge of the city. The Romans used a high outcropping or hill here as a site of public execution, with crucified victims on full display for those entering, leaving, or simply passing along the road. We don’t know how Golgotha earned its name. Legends abound. Some say that criminals were beheaded there, or that the hill looked rather like a skull, or even that it had been the burial site of Adam once upon a time. The Romans certainly didn’t care. They bored post-holes in the top to hold their crosses, crucif...

 The second in our series of biblical woodcuts by Gustave Doré takes as its subject Mark 15:21— They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it  was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Mark’s is the shortest and likely the oldest of the four canonical Christian Gospels, one that starts in "media res" [in the middle of things] and leaps breathlessly from each event in Jesus’ life to the next. The author’s conjunction of choice is “and immediately!” Were one so inclined, one could memorize Mark’s Gospel without overmuch effort and preach it on streetcorners. Such was probably Mark’s aim. Whereas John’s Gospel makes the point that Christ carried His own Cross, Mark clearly states that the Romans compelled an innocent passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the Cross for Him. This verse has the hallmarks of eyewitness testimony, pointing out Simon’s sons Alexander and Rufus as characters who presumably would’ve been familiar to ...

The first in our series of woodcuts, produced for Le Grande Bible de Tours by Gustave Doré, illustrates John 19:15— They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Christ stands tall and straight, with the willowy build so characteristic of Western artistic depictions of spiritual people, clearly denoted by His halo. The notion that gods, heroes, and occasionally kings emit a divine light about their heads dates back at least to ancient Sumer, and is found throughout Greek and Persian literature. Egyptian art would typically place the pharaoh’s head within the sun disk, identifying the ruler with Ra. When Caesar Augustus conquered Egypt for his personal possession, his image took on the pharaonic halo. Christian art thus could be construed as presenting Jesus as the true and rival Emperor, whose Kingdom is not of this world. Equally striking in the woodcut is the clear...