Some people of faith will have a strong reaction to today’s “B.C.” comic strip. So will some who are faithless.
The strip by Johnny Hart uses Jewish and Christian symbols and biblical quotations attributed to Jesus to mark the Christian holy day, Easter, which is today, and the Jewish celebration of Passover, which began April 7.
In a statement released by Creators Syndicate, Hart said the strip was intended to pay tribute to both Christians and Jews in a week that is holy to both.
Nonetheless, the strip stirred controversy even before it appeared.
The Jewish Defense League received an advance copy of the strip and released a statement denouncing the comic as “highly crude, insulting and an example of outright Jew-hatred.”
Other organizations and individuals weighed in to denounce or defend it. And newspapers began getting calls asking them not to run the strip.
The strip, inside today’s Courier-Journal comics section, is a reflection by Hart’s peg-legged caveman character, Wiley, entitled: “The Bible: A Book of Sevens!”
In Jewish tradition, the number seven has special meaning, signifying perfection, completion or the whole of a thing, according to Cruden’s Complete Concordance. For example, The Temple Menorah in synagogues has seven branches and is considered “one of the oldest and most sacred of Jewish symbols,” according to Rabbi Stanley Miles of Temple Shalom in Jefferson County.
The menorah is a symbol of the Jewish people, said Russell Fuller, professor of Old Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
After giving several examples of “sevens” used in the Bible, Hart uses a Temple Menorah in seven frames of his strip with seven quotations from Jesus, drawn from various New Testament accounts of his final activities and death.
The menorah is lighted as he begins, but one branch is extinguished in each frame. Finally, all that remains is the Christian symbol of an empty cross and a wavering path leading to three symbols Christians associate with Easter, a cave (suggesting Jesus’ tomb, found empty on the first Easter morning), and wine and bread, elements of the Christian rite of communion. The comic ends with Jesus’ words used in the communion ritual, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
To some, seeing the menorah turned into a cross suggests Judaism being replaced by Christianity, a suggestion viewed very differently by some Christians and Jews.
If the menorah is a symbol of Old Testament religion, the cartoon suggests that Christ’s death was completing and perfecting the Old Testament story, Fuller said when the cartoon was described to him.
“As a Christian, I’m not offended by what he’s done,” Fuller said. “. . . It sounds like he’s doing a pretty good job.”
Fuller said some Jewish scholars would not take offense at the comic and that others would.
He was right.
“I see absolutely nothing wrong with Hart’s message,” wrote Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, editor in chief of Jewish World Review.com. “Hart’s message is exactly the opposite of what he is being accused of. . . . The message contained is one of love, not hate. I believe Hart is preaching that, despite Christianity being the majority religion in this nation, members of other faiths need not worry as they must in other lands.”
In Louisville, the cartoon circulated among members of the Kentuckiana Interfaith Council, said its president, Sara Wagner, who is also associate executive director of the Jewish Community Federation.
“Everybody I’ve heard from certainly has indicated that they were offended,” she said.
“It really, really is sad,” Miles said. “It also goes against the mainstream of Jewish-Christian relations.
“. . . I see that as a slap in the face to Judaism,” he said.
The Jewish Community Federation asked The Courier-Journal to run a statement by Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, denouncing the cartoon as “insensitive and offensive.” And Miles suggested that The Courier-Journal issue a disclaimer.
The Courier-Journal is running Foxman’s statement in today’s Forum section (see facing page).
Holding the comic out of today’s paper was not considered. Sunday comics are printed in advance out of state without any Courier-Journal editor seeing them first. By the time the newspaper got the first call complaining about the Easter “B.C.,” the comic section was already being stuffed with advertising, inserted into the other sections of the Sunday paper and loaded on trucks.
The newspaper also has a long tradition of not censoring individual comics. If editors decide that a strip is consistently poor, they simply don’t renew the contract to buy it.
That puts comics, which have a long tradition of commenting on ticklish social issues, in a class by themselves. Virtually all other columns in the paper get edited — and, sometimes, held out.
We regularly run comics with offensive sexual and ethnic stereotypes, comics dealing with difficult social issues, comics that lampoon those in business and politics.
Hart says the Easter “B.C.” was intended to be benign. He says his symbols for Passover and Resurrection proclaim the same message: “Victory over death!”
“I regret if some people misunderstood the strip, and it hurt their feelings,” he wrote. “I abhor the so-called ‘Replacement Theology.’ This is a holy week for both Christians and Jews, and my intent, as always, was to pay tribute to both.”
He signed the statement, “In His name, Johnny Hart.”
