n Matthew Robert Anderson
Life of Brian: A worthy historical legacy How Monty Python star Terry Jones gave the world what is one of the best – and most accurate – movies about the life and death of Jesus
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ans of the Monty Python comedy troupe marked the death of founding member Terry Jones on January 21 by posting dozens of scenes on social media featuring the actor, writer and director. Among the favourites is Jones, playing Mandy, the mother of Brian Cohen. Brian (Graham Chapman) is a hapless young man, born on the same day as Jesus in the stable next door, and forever doomed to be mistaken for a messiah. In one scene, Jones, as Brian’s mother, leans out the window and scolds the crowd: “He’s not the messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.” Monty Python’s Life of Brian was Jones’s directorial debut. When the parody came out in 1979, it was met with protests by Christian groups, charges of blasphemy and outright bans in Ireland and Norway. Jones and the other Pythons, however, soon saw the movie outlast its critics. Jones was a passionate and published amateur historian. Scholars of the Bible have long known that beneath the slapstick, Life of Brian made valuable points about the historical Jesus. Brian’s story
20 ColdType | April 2020 | www.coldtype.net
showed how Jesus – directly referenced only twice – was also a first-century, late Second-Temple Jew who can best be understood within the context of his own time and society. Woven into Life of Brian’s cheeky humour were cutting-edge observations on ancient RomanJudean politics, alongside biting commentary about the danger of mass movements and the inherent weakness of any faith or ideology that refuses to think critically. King’s College London hosted an international conference in 2014 that examined the film as an example of how the Biblical accounts of Jesus have been and continue to be read, heard and valued by different groups. The gathering resulted in the fascinating study Jesus and Brian, edited by historical Jesus scholar Joan E. Taylor. Selections from Life of Brian feature regularly in my Theology in Film courses at Concordia University, in Montreal. My students are religiously diverse, and almost all were born a quarter century after the movie’s release. Yet it consistently rates among their favourite class films.
Life of Brian is a perfect introduction to how a seemingly irreverent parody of “Jesus biopics” (films about the historical Jesus) can lack the budget, first-century languages and special effects of, for instance, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, yet still be more historically accurate. Here is how Terry Jones bequeathed the world what is still one of the best Jesus movies.
1. Diversity of expressions of Judaism – Life of Brian writers knew ancient Jewish authors like Philo and Josephus. When Brian stumbles into a speakers’ corner which includes the “really boring prophet”, Jones is noting first-century messiah figures but also underlining the diversity of expressions of Judaism in the turbulent decades before the destruction of the Jewish Temple in the year 70. While mocking British politics of the day, the scene where members of the People’s Front of Judea take umbrage at being mistaken for the Judean People’s Front simultaneously parodies very real ancient intra-ethnic tensions preceding the disastrous Jewish war against Rome.
