Soundings from the Rubbish Stream: Irish images of the crucified Jesus falsely claimed to be the crucified Krishna.

The Rubbish Stream: A wide flowing river of nonsense about comparative religion based in misunderstandings and wrong ideas Europeans had in the 18th century, before the texts and even the langages needed to understand other people's religions were available or understood. Eventually languages were learned, texts studied and old misunderstandings jettisoned and replaced with right ones, except in certain circles that just kept uncriticaly reasserting the old, long debunked misunderstandings, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.

PICTURES FALSELY PUT FORWARD AS REPRESENTING KRISHNA CRUCIFIED

If you do a Google image search for Krishna crucfied, you will be presented with several pictures that are actually older images of Jesus crucified.   In this post we feature two of them and show where they actually came from.

Example I: The image below, often erroneously said to represent the crucified Krishna, is actually a bronze Irish crucifix reported on in the 19^th century.

 

This is a sort of image that was extremely common not only in Ireland but also throughout Europe. Below is a similar one from France dated to the 13^th century and currently in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, MO (right). {1}

 

Example II:  The  picture below, though often claimed to represent Krishna crucified, is actually a drawing of the 12^th century AD Celtic Market Cross at Tuam, Country Galway, Ireland, portraying Jesus crucified.

Below is an old photograph of it, with a detail revealing its proximity to the Ulster Bank.{2}  

Here then are the two side by side:

The cross still exists, but was moved in 1992 from the square to St. Mary’s Cathedral in the same city.{3}.

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Notes

1. For several other examples, see http://huntmuseum.com/collection.aspx and then select from the menus as follows:  All Object Types: “Religious/Ritual Equipment,”   All Materials: “Metal” Key word in Title: “Corpus,” Key word in Description: “Crucifix Figure.”  Or if you would prefer to go directly to the crucifixes most similar to the one claimed as Krishna here, simply enter in the Registration Number for each as follows: CG064, CG 066, CG 068, HCM 040, HCM 046, HCM 047.

2. T. H. Mason’s photo reproduced from Arthur Kingsley Porter, The Crosses and Culture of Ireland (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press / London: Oxford University Press, 1931), pl. 194.

3. See further, Maggie McEnchroe Williams, “Constructing the Market Cross at Tuam: The Role of Cultural Patriotism in the Study of Irish High Crosses,” in  From Ireland Coming: Irish Art from the Early Christian to the Late Gothic Period and Its European Context  (ed. Colum Hourihane; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 141-60.