The Carpenter's Son
Description
The Carpenter’s Son
(son of a religious fanatic)
Jesus — The Carpenter’s Son. 15 BC. Harsh times. People walked around in rags, their only possession — a single donkey, and even that could barely walk.
But on the other hand, not knowing what a shower, a toilet, or an orthopedic mattress was, they didn’t dream of anything better.
True unity with nature. Fruit trees all around. All natural, no pesticides, no GMOs.
You know, those times aren’t that different from how people live now, if you think about a 30-year mortgage, a car loan, and store prices. And for having different religious views, people are still persecuted, just like Joseph was back then. Only now it’s the other way around: fans of Jesus and Joseph are the ones persecuting people with different views.
So two thousand years later, a person still has nothing. And they’re still not free. They live in an unecological concrete box that doesn’t belong to them, and they pay tribute every month (taxes, bills).
But in a properly chosen cave, there’s always the same microclimate — not too cold, not too hot — and you don’t have to pay anyone. I once watched a video about modern cave people. An entire village in Australia lives in underground caves. And their apartments looked really good — modern and comfortable. But let’s get back to the times when the Carpenter’s Son lived.
Back then, people weren’t attached to anything. They lived in structures made of stones and sticks, huts of clay and straw. You could build such a house in a couple of days, or, even simpler, move into a cave you found. And if you got bored or a passing pack of wolves kicked you out — no problem. You could hit the road again, wherever your eyes take you, sleep under a log, and tomorrow build a new house made of shit and sticks — until the first rain. No building permits required. Live wherever you want.
The main thing is to be ready for anything and understand that even from this house, someone stronger can kick you out. But at least you have complete freedom of movement. No fixed address — and no one would even call you a homeless person.
A Typical Teenager Jesus
After fifteen years of wandering, Jesus finally got a house. But Joseph is still afraid that other religious fanatics from the rival camp will find them, so he bricked up all the windows. And the young Jesus can’t watch the girl from the neighboring cave taking a shower in the open air.
Yeah, he was once just a regular boy with typical teenage traits: rebellion against parents, sexual attraction, and curiosity. Perhaps Jesus was an atheist and asked the right questions, to which the religious fanatic Joseph answered evasively or just changed the subject.
Yeah, some things don’t change even after two thousand years. Joseph forced Jesus to pray for any reason and ask for forgiveness. Still no change here. People still get on their knees, ask for forgiveness, pray, and then go kill again and commit other atrocities. Such a vicious cycle. And everyone’s fine with it.
At the very beginning of the film, guards burn babies after learning that God sent his offspring to Earth. So it turns out: if they had found him, there would be no religion now? No wars for two thousand years, no Christianization of Europe. Or something completely different would have happened. People would still be praying to Greek gods?
But it’s not just Joseph fighting for Jesus’s soul—the Devil is in the mix too. This leads to a fascinating thought: if the Devil had managed to turn Jesus to his side, the religion we know today might have been entirely different. I wonder what that would look like today? Instead of familiar churches, we’d see gothic castles with gargoyles, houses of lust and debauchery, and frescoes of the Devil in every home instead of holy imagery.
Waiting for the Crucifixion
There’s a very comic scene in the film: in exchange for food and shelter, Joseph agrees to restore a devil totem. Back then, he was a god for the majority. What can you do, money is needed, and Joseph agrees to work for the “enemy camp,” sacrificing his principles. All for the Son of God. For Jesus. So that later, in his name, thousands and millions of people who refused to accept Christianity would be destroyed.
“The Carpenter’s Son” is shot originally, on a low budget, without bias, and beautifully. It doesn’t claim historical accuracy, unlike the Bible and the film “The Passion of the Christ,” directed by religious fanatic Mel Gibson.
“The Carpenter’s Son” is a prequel to the Bible. It tells about the so-called “lost years” of Jesus, which the ancient scripture somehow omits. A hundred authors who wrote it considered these years uninteresting for the reader, so they skipped almost thirty years of Jesus’s life and immediately moved to what they thought was the most interesting part — betrayal and crucifixion.
Why not supplement the Bible with a new chapter — the screenplay of “The Carpenter’s Son“? It would work fine as a modern edition. Considering that in ancient times there was no culture of writing and this hodgepodge of plots was passed down orally for 1600 years, this screenplay wouldn’t spoil it at all.
Fans of this epic fantasy are already tired of waiting for a continuation of the story, even in prequel format. And they’ve been waiting for a sequel for not just one hundred years. Most of them have already died without ever finding out how the story ends. So “Game of Thrones” fans are lucky with their long wait for George R.R. Martin’s new book.
But if part of society still isn’t ready to accept the Bible as a work of fiction, it still needs to be updated, rewritten, modernized.
Yeah, Kevin Smith already offered a new edition in 1999 with his film “Dogma.” And it worked out. The film has many fans.
The problem is that the Bible was created from the very beginning not as a historical document, but as an instrument of control. If in the Dark Ages people could believe what was written there due to their lack of education, now the Bible is perceived as cringe, written in a hurry for the enslavement of the masses. Which, in essence, it is. And that’s its only purpose.
The Bible is a manual for slave management.
Although, of course, it wasn’t written in a hurry, but rather the opposite.
Events described in the Old Testament were recorded only 300-500 years after they supposedly happened. And the final edition appeared 700-1000 years later. It’s like if in the year 3000 you recorded the history of World War II based on stories from your great-grandparents. And this is called holy scripture? It’s just laughable!
And one more thing: if all religious fanatics hate “The Carpenter’s Son” and downrate it on all possible resources, that in itself is a mark of quality.
After or before watching “The Carpenter’s Son,” I recommend watching the film “Spotlight” (2015), with the amazing Michael Keaton in the lead role. These films are completely different in genre and not connected plot-wise at all, but the second one will give you an understanding of how organized religion reacts to any criticism — whether it’s a journalistic investigation about pedophilia in the church or an artistic reimagining of biblical myths.
The hatred of religious fanatics toward “The Carpenter’s Son” is not an indicator of the film’s quality, but proof of intolerance to a different opinion.
