The NSFW Bible

‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’

The follower of Jesus named Thomas, who saw his teacher tortured to death, refuses to believe the news of his return.

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side,” he says, “I will not believe.”

“Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus tells him. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Don’t stand so *close* to me

The Gospel of John tells of the meeting between Mary Magdalene and the resurrected Jesus at his empty tomb. Jesus utters the enigmatic words “Noli me tangere” – the Latin version of the Greek “mê mou haptou”. It means something like “do not touch me” or “do not hold on to me”.  Some scholars consider it the most difficult verse of the fourth gospel. The meaning you choose implies different things about the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Does she try to hold him? Was she actually holding him and told to back off? Has she embraced him in the past? Does she now have to prepare for a new relationship with the resurrected son of God? The identification of Mary Magdalene as converted prostitute (never stated or even implied in the actual gospels) has definitely shaped artistic renderings of the “noli me tangere” motif.

'with blood almost all things are cleansed'

Descent of Christ into limbo

One of the four extant parts of an altarpiece produced around 1475 by Bartolomé Bermejo, a painter known for his unidealized depictions, as here, with the wrinkled flesh, scrawny limbs, shriveled genitalia, and the piles of demon shit underfoot.

‘Do you not fear God?’

You get a glimpse of the hell awaiting sinners – and the resurrected Jesus rescuing souls – in this crucifixion scene detail. The oil-on-panel painting was made in France before 1450, possibly by the artist André d'Ypres. It’s in the Getty Museum.

The man on the cross with the oddly serene expression is one of two convicts crucified alongside Jesus, the one who thinks he’s going to heaven. The other mocks Jesus: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39-43).

‘put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit’

The story of Jesus journeying to an underworld or antechamber to Hell is not told in the bible, but in the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus. After his death on the cross, Jesus descends into the underworld, shatters the gates to Hell, seizes Satan and binds him in chains until the second coming. He raises up to heaven all the prophets and saints who’ve been imprisoned in limbo. This Harrowing of Hell story was amplified via publications such as the Golden Legend compiled by Jacobus da Varagine in the 13th century.

A couple of passages in Peter supposedly refer to the Harrowing of Hell:

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. [Peter 3:18-20]

For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.[Peter 4:6]

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged…

…by a dude in a Speedo?

Flagellation (detail)

Luca Signorelli made this tempera-on-panel painting around 1485 for the confraternity of the Raccomandati at Santa Maria del Mercato in Fabriano, a religious brotherhood whose members were known for practicing self-flagellation. Whatever the artist intended, or his patrons perceived back then, it’s hard for modern eyes to ignore the erotic gay energy. “Called by one critic ‘the master of the buttocks,’ Signorelli lavishes attention on the contours and textures of the male body—in particular, its muscles, skin, and hair,” scholar John G. Champagne observes:

What is disturbing about the flagellation scene portrayed in the Brera standard is its allure. Like all forms of sexuality, masochism is coded; Signorelli’s scene has all the marks of an S/M scenario, from the highly theatricalized poses of the torturers to the fetish-wear of the loincloths on both Christ and his torturers to the fully-dressed figures watching the scene unfold to the proscenium arch that frames the action as theater. We are presented the male bodies via a gaze loving in its attentiveness.

‘Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged‘

La Flagelación

st. michael defeating satan

from the hours of marguerite d'orléans, france, 15th c.

Berthe Brincour, 1879-1947

Salome, n/d, gouache on paper, 114x119 cm

Harrowing of Hell