However expiatory a production of the 'passion' is, is the associated self-righteousness really worth it?

And as action-packed as Luke's account is, (I think he had aspirations toward the stage himself. He wouldn't be the first doctor with a script in the drawer...) we suffer from a simple problem. We do not know what the Master Caterer (hmm, loaves, fishes... what? No drink? Or a band?) looked like.

None of his four biographers felt it necessary to give anyone a clue.

Nevermind that movie makers often ignore the appearance of someone that they are doing a biopic of,

even if there are extant photos of the person (you'd think a movie director would be aware of the existence of still photography... or books...),

or that they often exaggerate a propensity of fashion or an item of facial or boddled oddity to the point of parody, in the case of an actual person for whom we have no indications of what they looked like,

except for the obvious assumptions (sorry) that in this case the subject was

bipedal and male and circumcised, they have to, for better or worse, wing it!

I mean, that could be anyone from Danny DeVito (I'm making a guess, here) to Samuel L Jackson, doesn't it?

And outside the four Gospels (Paul was possibly in the neighbourhood when Christ was tossing temples, but he don't say nothing on the matter of appearance.)

all we have to look at are some depictions of a stylized nature (and admittedly puerile artistic sense) from about an hundred

and fifty years after his tenure was up. So, we are faced with not an interpretation or even an estimate of the appearance of the Son of Man during his First Coming,

but a deliberate choice from among the traditional European depictions found in paintings and statuary during the last thousand odd years, that, incidently, were paid for by, and influenced by the tastes of, people who would be surprised at how much easier it is for a camel to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it is for them to gain the Lord's favour with a bit of art.

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