{"id":20214,"date":"2014-02-11T09:54:48","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T14:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=20214"},"modified":"2014-02-11T09:54:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T14:54:48","slug":"man-of-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/02\/man-of-steel.html","title":{"rendered":"Man of Steel"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I watched Man of Steel a few weeks ago, and enjoyed its different version of various characters\u2019 stories. It had slipped my mind that here had been so much buzz prior to and immediately after its release, about <a href=\"http:\/\/scotteriology.wordpress.com\/2013\/06\/06\/jesus-the-original-superhero\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">its promotion to churches<\/a>. The actual religious imagery did not seem more prominent than in other versions of Superman, and so the promotion of the movie to churches ought to be considered clever marketing rather than an indication of a substantive difference.<\/p>\n<p>SPOILERS: Here are some of the more explicit points of intersection with religious themes: Jor-El\u2019s father does actually say that his son will be \u201ca god\u201d to the people of the world where he sends him. And if \u201cEl\u201d has resonances of divinity for those who know Hebrew, it is a family name and a subset of the Kryptonian race. Kal-El differs from other members of his race precisely in not having been \u201cintelligently designed.\u201d And there are hints that humanity is an offshoot of the Kryptonian race, since the Kryptonians had scouted out our planet long before.<\/p>\n<p>On a related note, I actually had a student write in an assignment last semester in my Religion and Science Fiction class,\u00a0\u201cAs you can see, Superman and Jesus have several things in common.\u00a0They are both from planets other than Earth,\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Have you watched Man of Steel? What did you think of it?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-21519\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/02\/Man-of-Steel-Concept-Art-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"586\"><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched Man of Steel a few weeks ago, and enjoyed its different version of various characters\u2019 stories. It had slipped my mind that here had been so much buzz prior to and immediately after its release, about its promotion to churches. The actual religious imagery did not seem more prominent than in other versions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":21519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[3834,6290,7755,12072,12383],"class_list":["post-20214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-general-zod","tag-krypton","tag-movie","tag-superman","tag-terraforming"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Man of Steel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I watched Man of Steel a few weeks ago, and enjoyed its different version of various characters&#039; stories. It had slipped my mind that here had been so\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/02\/man-of-steel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Man of Steel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I watched Man of Steel a few weeks ago, and enjoyed its different version of various characters&#039; stories. It had slipped my mind that here had been so\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/02\/man-of-steel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-02-11T14:54:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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