Saturday, December 03, 2005

side-saddle dino ridder

i'm not exactly sure why, but this image has gripped me in an unusual way and plagued my mind ever since i found it last week. what is the embedded meaning? what does it say to you?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

did Jesus ride side-saddle on the colt when we rode into jerusalem? i think that all the artistic renderings i've ever seen show it that way...anyway, this particular picture makes me mad. in fact, all the images of Jesus that i grew up with in sunday school on the felt board, etc. were crap!

for example--the nativity scene. every one that i have seen would have you to believe that the sheperds and all their livestock and also the magi with their gifts and their camels arrived just as baby jesus popped out of mary. the funny thing is that with the magi in particular they didn't get to the scene until jesus was a toddler. it's all a crock and in my opinion counterproductive to teaching kids biblical stories...

i should make new and improved/more historically accurate felt board images for sunday school classes.

peace out.

elnellis said...

i think he's always renderd side-saddle because he's always depicted wearing a skirt. this illustration could only be better if he had a battle axe on his back. i'd love to join you on the felt board image update.

Anonymous said...

the whole skirt thing never crossed my mind--it makes sense though.
somebody said that Jesus probably looked more like Osama bin Laden than the way he's usually depicted in movies and in art, etc...
it's probably true.
he was also probably really short (like 5'2 to 5'5). that means that straddling a brontosauras would definitely have been out of the question...
not to be a 'dino-dork' but a little kid told me that there's no such thing as a brontosauras. the palientologists put together the bones they thought fitted together. however, in recent years they've had to backtrack and say that what they constructed came from a number of different dino's. the closest thing to a brontosauras is actually the brachiosauras. (that's this particular little kid's favorite dinosaur...that's why he knew so much about it.)

k-bye

Anonymous said...

I don't know about the side-saddle thing, but I am more confused by the scale of things in this image. First, weren't these creatures supposed to be stories tall? And second, is Jesus supposed to be holding a "baby" dino? A bit bizarre... a European Jesus hanging out with incorrectly sized dinos.
But really, my name is Ali (Hi) and I was directed to yor blog by Nate Barrett. I really have enjoyed your artwork and was wondering if you could email me back. I am assisting with "art curation" at the church that I go to (where Nate was before he left to gain a greater worldview). I was wondering if we might be able to use some of your images... we need some work that will cause people to think and connect with today, rather than 15th and 16th century art (not that there's anything wrong with that)! Thank you and congratulations on the birth of you baby!
Ali Watson - caliali4@hotmail.com

Anonymous said...

I have a feeling that the image is supposed to say: "Jesus loves the little children and the dinosaurs which he created somewhere within a 7-day time period."; however, I think that (regardless of the screwed up scale) the image could also say "the Word loves all of creation, even if hed did bring it into being through biological evolution; he breathed spirit into every living creature).

Anonymous said...

shoot . . . was my last posting a converstion killer?

I sometimes feel insecure about voicing the opinions that I hold because what I believe often does not gel with the prevailking evangelical sentiments or the evangelkical culture of which I am a part. Plus, when evangelicals find out that I am a Moody grad, they often assume that I am a politically and culturally consservative born-again Christian type and that what I believe is exactly what they hear being proclaimed over the redeemed airwaves from the likes of Chuch Swindoll. I am often reluctant to alienate myself, so I rarely discuss my reluctance to accept a scientifically and intellectually corrupt creationism, and I only slightly more often tell evangleicals that I didn't vote for Bush this time around, I voted for the green party.

I think that I also feel that raising my opinions will elicit immediate compbativeness as soon as a whiff of secularism enters the air. I can understand why some of my friends who don't believe in Christ were in the past unwilling to combat my argumentative assertions on the absoloute veracity of the evangelical way.

elnellis said...

way to stop the conversation pedro, coming out of the closet like that! :) joking of course.
but seriously- this debate is huge and i still don't know where i land because increasingly more and more mature believers (whom i respect) are moving away from the traditional evangelical model i was taught in sunday school and spent many years defending.
what i don't like is the us-vs.-them that usually comes out of a debate like this. the question i have is "where is God" and this of course is what both sides proclaim- "he's on our side." so rather than debate between the two sides, i'd rather affirm what we both know to be true: God as Creator. this seems to transcend both speculative positions and move away from us-them to "we"- that is always closer to the heart of the gospel as i have come to understand it... liberal and conservative are categories that don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive- the hybrid is always more creation friendly.

Anonymous said...

well put, Phnil.

Your words express the heart of my worldview.