Man of Sorrows

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Among the passages in the Hebrew Bible that have been identified by Christians as prefigurations of the Messiah, the Man of Sorrows of Isaiah 53 is paramount.

The iconic image that is identified as the "Man of Sorrows" typically portrays the dead body of Jesus, with prominent wounds to his hands and side, crowned with the Crown of Thorns, and usually attended to by angels or relatives. Other times the image shows a living Jesus with the crown of thorns before crucifixion, similar to the Ecce Homo image.

Contents 1 Isaiah 2 In art 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Isaiah

The passage survives in three versions, from three autonomous and parallel manuscript traditions: the Masoretic text that is the most familiar one, the Septuagint text, and the Qumran community's Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dated ca 100 BC.

The "Man of Sorrows" passage of Isaiah 53 is a selected text that usually omits those characteristics of the human scapegoat for the sins of Israel that are not applicable directly to Jesus, or that can only be applied through tortuous applications of allegory, such as "he is as a root in a thirsty land: he has no form nor comeliness; and we saw him, but he had no form nor beauty. But his form was ignoble, and inferior to that of the children of men." (Septuagint version)

Much of the meaningfulness of Joseph of Arimathea's role (q.v. for discussion) hinges upon the words of Isaiah 53:9, "He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth."

[edit] In art

The image developed from the Byzantine epitaphios image, which possibly dates back to the 8th century. A miraculous icon of it appears to have been brought to the major pilgrimage church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome in the 12th century, of which only copies now survive. By the 13th century it was becoming common in the West as an andachtsbilder for contemplation, in sculpture, painting and manuscripts. It continued to grow in popularity, and develop iconographical complexity, until well after the Renaissance, but "the Man of Sorrows in its many artistic forms is the most precise visual expression of the piety of the later Middle Ages, which took its character from mystical contemplation rather than from theological speculation".^[1]

[edit] See also

• Arma Christi
• Man of Sorrows (Maarten van Heemskerck)

The outlaw quartet in "O Brother: Where Art Thou?" (2000) by Joel and Ethan Cohen lambaste fundamentalism of Southern Crackers with double innuendos for the hit single: "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" [1] imdb.org.

[edit] References