This week we take a quick look at “Heliodorus Driven from
the Temple,” by the 19th century French artist Eugène Delacroix.
The painting is based on a story out of the book of
Maccabees. Some dude from the tribe of
Benjamin falls out with the high priest, so to get
revenge he tells the government that the Jewish temple has an unspeakable
amount of money stored away. The king
sends Heliodorus to collect some of it, but the priests in the temple are all
“But we don’t have much money really!
And anyway, none of your socialist taxes bullshit!” and they pray to
God, who sends a dude on a horse with two other guys to teach the everyone a
lesson by beating the crap out of the king’s messenger.
The story specifies that the horse “smote at Heliodorus with
his forefeet,” which normally I would think would be enough to smite the
sternum in half right into the chest cavity, but apparently flogging was also
deemed necessary.
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| Oh thanks, I was needing a ribcage readjustment! |
Note that the guy on the horse is simply described as
“terrible” with nice clothes, and the two other lackeys are just young,
beautiful men in comely apparel—you know, typical divine brawlers. I guess I personally would have sent
angels or some kind of supernatural creature with fire for arms or something,
if I were God and wanted to instill some fear in people, but I guess three guys
with a horse and some sticks were enough.
However, apparently Delacroix agreed with me and decided this wasn’t
fearsome enough, giving the horseman some wings to show he means business
(although why he needs the horse if he has wings is beyond me).
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| Uses a Segway to get from heavenly cloud to cloud. |
As for the floggers, it seems he interpreted them as either
being excellent gymnasts, or as having a pocket anti-gravity device.
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| 10 points from the Russian judge! |
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| Much more efficient to attack by jumping from the roof. |
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| Hey, boss, what should we do? Boss? Guess he's busy being frontally massaged by that horse. |
I've never hoped there was a heaven so much before I found out I could be a "divine brawler."
ReplyDeleteI know, right? I'm envisioning meeting St Peter at the gates and him saying, "Well, you can go on in...orrrr, you can step this way to be kitted out with ass-kicking duds and shiny 'WWJD' brass knuckles!"
DeleteThe brawlers attacking from the ceiling ... looks like we've unearthed the inspiration for every fight scene in Dragon Ball Z.
ReplyDeleteOoooh, you may be right! What this picture doesn't show us is that those guys midair just spent the last 20 minutes charging their superflog powers (Flogehogeha?).
DeleteThe flying people are my favorite. Hey if God can send a hourse to beat the crud out of poeple I'm sure making them fly is nothing.
ReplyDeleteI agree! It would have been awesome if the horse was flying, too.
ReplyDelete