Posted by Runshouse21 at nytgate1.nytimes.com on February 23, 2004 at 09:17:30:
"The consistent trend has been to make him more human, to move away from the remote, Godlike Christ, so as to render a Jesus that his followers could identify with. Caravaggio did it for Italians in the 17th century with a suffering, peasant Jesus, and the filmmaker Kevin Smith reflected the contemporary "Jesus is my best friend" mentality by introducing a smiling "Buddy Christ" in his 1999 theological romp, "Dogma.""