Abstract:

There has been a growing interest among biblical scholars in exploring the intersections of history, film and fiction in the person of Jesus and the impact of cinematic portrayals of the Christ figure within popular culture and contemporary faith communities. Little attention has been paid, however, to cinematic depictions of Jesus as a boy, this despite a parallel growing interest among scholars in the insights of children’s and childhood studies and their applications to biblical texts. In this paper I will bring these various lenses together in an analysis of Luke’s story of the boy Jesus in the temple as dramatized in three popular Jesus films: Jesus of Nazareth (1977), The Jesus Film (1979), and Jesus (1999). I will show how each film negotiated its theological and historical interests – imagining Jesus as both divine child and first-century Jewish boy – in light of varying social constructs of children and childhood in the last quarter of the twentieth century.