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Jesus Christ: Superstar or Superman: Jesus Christ?

Part I Part II

Is the Superman story a modern-day Messianic legend? A comic book, an animated movie, a Jewish temple, DaVinci, and the latest Superman movie all offer evidence. Is there a connection? Does our author simply have too much time on his hands? You decide.

My interest in this all started years ago. The comic book character Superman was killed by an alien villain, Doomsday. There was a lot of fanfare, and a funeral was attended by most of the other superheroes. But, low and behold, a few days later, Superman came back to life. The whole resurrection thing seemed a bit odd, but it wasn't too big of a deal. In addition to the comic book version, recently, an animated film of the same story was released.

Then, a few years later, I was jogging to Central Park in Manhattan when I passed the Temple Emanu-El. The building is beautiful! If you get a chance, go visit. But what captured my interest was the -El ending of the temple's name. It reminded me of Superman's name on his home planet of Krypton. His name there was Kal-El. I also remembered that the creators of Superman were Jewish. So, there were another couple of interesting loose connections.

Next, came the DaVinci Code. Both the book, and the movie called attention to Leonardo Davinci's Last Supper. In the picture below, you can see that Jesus is clothed in a red shirt and blue tunic, while John the Evangelist, (Mary Magdalene?), is clothed in a blue shirt and red tunic.



Now, look at the next two pictures. They are of Superboy and his best friend Mon-El. The color scheme is exactly the same! I'll delve into this more in a future post. Suffice it to say, we're not done with the DaVinci Code yet.


And finally came the connection that shed enough 'light' on this to begin to convince me! A few days ago, I was watching a trailer for Superman returns, in this trailer, Superman's father Jor-El can be heard saying:

"Even though you have been raised as a human being, you are not one of them."

And then, at the end of the trailer:

"They can be a great people Kal-El if they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son."

Wow!

Next: Superman: The DaVinci Connection!


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