Jessica Price Profile picture
Dec 27, 2021 40 tweets 10 min read Read on X
Okay so

one of the things I learned while doing my parable-commentary-debunking website was that the oddest parable details were popular art subjects

Simon's Dinner Party in art, a thread
First up:

Pierre Subleyras, Christ at the House of Simon the Pharisee, c. 1737.
all these artists seem to imagine Shimon having a visiting rabbi over for dinner like it was a WILD party

love the serving boy right in the middle looking at the camera like "are you SEEING this shit?"
The young lady attending to Jesus's foot is in an attractive state of deshabille, and VERY focused
all the other women in the painting, even the servants, are, of course, side-eying her HARD
Except for this one maid who's like, got work to do and just CANNOT with these bitches

maybe it's a boy, honestly, can't tell
anyway, good effort, 6/10 unguents
next up we've got Bernardo Strozzi, Banquet at the House of Simon, c. 1630.
some very fun details in this one too, like this standoff between a cat and a dog, both ignoring the angry lady whose dinner they're presumably fighting over

also the judgy lady and even JUDGIER baby in the background, wow
We've got a fallen woman here who isn't so much attending to Jesus as IMAGINING attending to Jesus

can't tell whether she's awed or horrified at his bare feet, her expression could go either way honestly
Simon is all "I thought I told you not to bring any groupies to this party, Josh"
And Jesus is all "sorry bro she just showed up"
very nice, 11/10 silver platters purely for the cat and dog
next up, our first entry with anything resembling decent interior lighting

Paolo Veronese, The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee, 1570
More scuffling dogs and cats, LOVE IT
also a weird small child emerging from a tiny portal to Greek Narnia in the middle of the room that apparently no one else has noticed except maybe his nanny?
penitent lady is super into Jesus's feet
Jesus is all "yup, it's good to be the king"
old dude appears to be checking out Jesus's cleavage question mark
gotta be at least one judgy lady per painting, sorry, I don't make the rules
it has a cat, so I award it 11/10 hair-dried toes
okay next is

Luca Signorelli, Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee, c. 1490
I dunno, this one isn't nearly as fun and everyone looks like a cadaver
lady's putting some perfume along Jesus's part

honey it doesn't work, I've tried it, it makes your hair look greasy
Jesus seems super put-out about the whole thing
judgy dudes this time instead of judgy ladies
Simon's all hrmph hrmph my good fellow
I award it 3/10 anachronistic doublets, no cats, missed opportunity
Next up

Artus Wolffort, Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee, early 1600s
I love this one, look at this poor lady's face, she's been having A DAY
The guy next to Simon adjusting his glasses so he can take in this whole thing better, *chef kiss*
Weird monk dude lurking in the background, looking at the camera like he's on the Office
this dude, who's totally into what's going on here and hoping it's indicative of the direction this party is going
no cats, but we do have a doggo, A for effort
Jesus just sort of shrugging defensively, like what do you want me to do
Simon's I'm not mad, Josh, I'm just disappointed face
so much personality, 9/10 anachronistic headgear
runner-up

Claude Vignon, Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee, c.1635

weird tut-tut expression from Jesus, weird how Simon is so much more tan than the rest of them, I'm sure it's not Orientalist or anything, no doggos, 2/10
also runner-up

Phillipe de Champaigne, Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee, c.1656

cuddly lady, adorbs doggo, Simon can't be bothered, Jesus is all "look she just showed up" 6/10
there's like a million more, apparently EVERYONE painted this scene but I gotta sleep

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Oct 6, 2023
Yeah, the thing about diversity is it doesn’t mean any particular way of being is superior full stop. Different ways may do better in *some circumstances.*

Being different from the norm can feel superior because your way of being is *underutilized.*
The thing you learn if your brain doesn’t work like the standard, when you dig into how the world isn’t designed for you, and then apply what you’ve learned about yourself to observing other people?

There are no normies.
Everyone is a mosaic, and I don’t think there’s any one of us for whom every last piece fits the standard.

And if the ways in which you’re different are ones that are denigrated, it’s very tempting to view your difference as making you complex and deep where others are shallow.
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Oct 4, 2023
So, don’t take it from me: take it from someone with a PhD: the way we conceptualize “religion” means that the only religion that exists is Christianity (and *maybe* Islam). (Thanks, @maklelan !) (1/x)
This is why I generally use the term “tradition” or “culture” or “practice” when talking about Jewish stuff.

As I keep saying, the religious/secular distinction is a Christian framework, and it is—sometimes explicitly, sometimes unacknowledged—a tool of colonialism.
The idea that you can just pull out the “religion” module of a culture and replace it with a different one (if you’re doing Christian evangelism) or none at all (if you’re doing antitheist evangelism) is… not how cultures work.
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Oct 3, 2023
THIS.

IIRC correctly, there's a correlation between higher IQ and higher rates of depression and other unhappiness--as one of my therapists said, "it's harder for smart people to figure out to be happy."

But what if happiness is a form of intelligence?
Like, we have a habit, in our fiction, of characterizing happiness as foolishness or oblivious. Simple people are happy because they don't know better.

But identifying what *actually makes us happy* is an emotional intelligence challenge most of us fail.
And almost everything in life that we pursue is a proxy for happiness: we think love will make us happy, we think fame or recognition will make us happy, we think money will make us happy.

We sacrifice a lot of things that might make us happy to pursue happiness proxies.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 24, 2023
I’m hardly the first person to say this, but Luke’s gloss on the lost sheep parable that there’s more rejoicing over the repentant sinner than the 99 who didn’t stray has probably done more harm to the world than anything in the NT other than the Great Commission. So toxic.
Like imagine being a child abused by your youth pastor and hearing in essence that having abused you is PART of why he’s more spiritually valuable than you are.
After all, one needs to sin in order to repent. Combine that with the Christian idea that suffering is ennobling and not only is your abuser using your pain as a necessary component in his spiritual elevation, but he’s doing you a favor by giving you a chance to suffer nobly.
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Aug 8, 2023
So—and this is not about Jamie Foxx, I’m not touching that one other than to point out that you should prioritize listening to Black Jews over anyone else on it—let’s talk about why the figure/story of Judas is antisemitic by itself, and why that’s so invisible to most Christians
The reason some Jewish scholars have suggested that the story of Judas is a later, ahistorical, and intentionally antisemitic addition is that it *doesn’t actually make sense* in the story.
It certainly is dramatic and emotionally evocative—conspiracy! betrayal! tragic end for a guilty villain!—but if you actually *read the story,* it’s superfluous.
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Aug 7, 2023
The Kokobot thing is SO dark and like, I don't wanna be an AI doomer (there are some things that (human-supervised) AI can do better than humans without AI! we're just not doing much of that for some reason) but this is literally the only thread talking about this I found. (1/x)
And hey, it's from someone who follows me! That makes me feel sort of warm and fuzzy about the sort of people who follow me!

But also, wow, tweets in this thread have maybe one like each, which tells me very few people read it. So READ IT, and I'm going to elaborate on it.
So. Kokobot.

A mental health nonprofit decided to run a mental health experiment on users between the ages of 18 and 25 without their knowledge or consent, having a bot contact them if they were using "crisis-related language."

Beyond that, things start to get muddy
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