Christlogical review of the movies Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell - Essay Example

In this book it was described “how the Christian church dares appeal to a Jesus who never existed, to a mandate he never issued, and to a claim that he was God’s son, whom he never presumed for himself”. As Christianity began to spread from its original home and started spreading beyond Judaism into the Hellenistic world of the great Roman Empire, the main challenge became finding a way to express its faith in the thought categories of the Greco-Roman world. Gradually, Hellenistic philosophy proved to be helpful in this context but at the same time it represented a threat as it was a language of a very different culture.

The greatest challenge confronted by church at this time was to adopt a new philosophical culture without simply “Hellenizing” its faith (Rausch, “Who is Jesus?: An introduction to Christology”). Since the inception of cinema as a medium of art many great movies were made that relates historical Jesus with our daily life. Two such all time great movies are ‘Godspell’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, that to a great extent emerges as a true weapon for the quest of real and true historical Jesus behind the gospels and the doctrines of church.

Cinema is a strong medium to reach a lot of people at once. This paper presents the discourse that Jesus is everyman and how the impact of this saint can be felt through these movies. The directors of the movies through their plot, character presentation and setting displays that by deviating biblical facts, they actually bring Jesus close to common man and thereby his magic can be felt more strongly which can be perceived through the Christological review of both the films. Released in 1973, the film ‘Godspell’ is based on the Off-Broadway musical Godspell of John Michael Tebelak.

With the backdrop of modern New York along with its excellent star cast, the film received positive response both from critics as well as general