Getty Villa And New Testament {type) To Use As A Writing Model

The Greco-Roman antiquities of the Getty Villa in Malibu reveal lots of information about the New Testament environment and the status of art on Rome and Greece in the first century. From a first look, the images at Villa reveal a rich artistic era that was not just ornamental, but also liberal. The cutlery of that era is carefully done, with color and ace, to suggest that a society that was keen on beauty and ornaments, color and patterns, as well as a dedication to a nature concerted art. Other amazing statuettes include the head of Augustus, his constant flair, and hairstyle and a demeanor that pronounced legitimacy and new political conventions. Augustus’ leadership was characterized by liberal views and great concern for the welfare of the Romans, an aspect that helped in the spread of Christianity.
The statuette of Hercules, the Greek divine hero, presents the idea of a model human being in the Greek society. Hercules presents a perfect image of a man, regarding beauty and courage. His statuette compares with the New Testament in that; Christianity appreciated the strength in total contrast to what the Greek thought about it; not regarding body size, but humility and adherence to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christianity, in the New Testament, was based on laws and letters to churches (written by Paul) that were highly regulative and conservative. That makes the statuette of Hercules a very parallel representation of sexuality to the New Testament context.
The statuette of divinity paints a parallel idea with the proclamation of the New Testament that Jesus was the son of God, and he had left the Holy Spirit to guide his followers. While the New Testament dwelled on the idea of God as being divine and all powerful, the Greco-Roman people thought of divinity as having a physical representation, in the form of an image of Alexander the Great. It was common for people to associate rulers with divine powers in Roma and Greece at the time of the New Testament, making it even harder for disciples of Jesus Christ to sell the idea of God being beyond human.
The many statuettes of gods and goddesses reveal the polytheistic nature of the communities in that era and the views of the people about gods as different characters who oversaw various duties on the people. For instance, the statuette of a goddess (guessed to be Ceres or Juno), reveals a very liberal religious environment, one that had a replica of the earth in heaven. To the Christians of the New Testament, it must have been a very tough job selling the idea of one God who was all-powerful. Monotheism was a foreign idea in a society that knew polytheism as the absolute facts.
Using the images, one gets to understand the events of the New Testament, like martyrdom and the resistance that was staged against the disciples of Jesus Christ and other preachers like Paul. Maybe, rewinding time to the early days of Christianity, the opposition from the communities does not come out as a fight against the new religion, but just a resistance to an idea that seemed very foreign and weird. Perhaps, if Peter and Paul had packaged the concept of Jesus as God and savior as a character in the league of gods, the people might have appreciated him and made a statuette of him, in a celebration of acceptance of a new god. It means getting people to like Jesus in a society that worshiped beauty, and a wide variety of gods must have been a tough one.
In the New Testament era, the society comes out as very liberal, beautiful and deeply rooted in art and visual representations of ideas. Every image in the collection speaks about beauty and the different forms of beauty. Even in abstraction, like the statuette of the giant with a leg that looked like a snake, the society comes out as one that lived through beauty. It could be argued that the giant represents a third dimension of beauty; from the first two dimensions that were the male body and ornaments. Even girls were carved out in clear elegance, the one that would be expected with modern artists. The only difference would be the approach, as modern societies look upon the female body as the best idea of beauty, as opposed to the male body idea portrayed in the Greco-Roman antiquities.
In conclusion, if the Bible had included the aspects of culture in the New Testament, believers and followers would get a clearer picture of the environment around which the gospel was introduced. This understanding helps to reduce the obscurity of religion by offering a clear and concise idea about the context of biblical incidences. The combination of polytheism and secular cultures offered great intrigue about the lives of men and women in the first and second centuries.