Something that resonated with me in class today (1/28/2010) was the resemblance of Viracocha to our stereotypical view of what Jesus was like when he was on earth. Viracocha was described as "a man of medium height, white and dressed in a white robe like an alb secured round the waist, and that he carried a staff and a book in his hands." Now I don't know about everyone else, but to me this sounds extremely similar to what we think of as Jesus: A guy with shoulder length brown hair, white (even though he was actually from the mid east), often wearing a white robe with a rope for a belt, often times seen with a walking staff and the book was most likely symbolism for the bible.
So what causes these similarities? I searched through the wonders of Wikipedia to find the reason (or at least some supplemental information) for these happenings. Turns out wikipedia has more info on the moralistic qualities rather than physical so this post is going to take a bit of a left turn. So off we go!
According to wikipedia, a Christ Figure is a literary element that is common in many stories. Such a figure should display more than one (but not necessarily all) of the following qualities: 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. Often times the Christ Figure is also a martyr. I think Viracocha kinda met some of these qualities but wikipedia had a loooong list of stories that follow this pattern including To Kill A Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings, The Green Mile, and, my personal favorite, Harry Potter!
If you want to see a full list of these stories/movies, you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_figure .
If you delve a bit deeper into the mythologies end of the christ figure you'll find that throughout the millenia hundreds of thousands of cultures in various parts of the world all see to portray characters not only similar to Jesus but also to God himself. The list of similarities between the traditional Judea/christian God and Ra, Buddha, Zues, etc is uncanny. Here is an example, it doesn't quite detail the similarites between the gods but you find many other sites that do with a quick google search. http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm
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ReplyDeleteOh no, I'm so sorry, I must have typed into the wrong window. :(
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant to post was this:
"It is rather eerie how often he shows up. Even today when I was illustrating Inanna-Ishtar, my subconscious put a scroll and rod in her hands and a whitish dress along with a halo like crown."