The Extraordinary Work of Balage Baloge
I wanted to highlight the extraordinary artistic work of Balage Baloge and his contributions to our visualization of the ancient Roman World of Jesus and early Christianity. I first encountered his work in the wonderful volume by John Crossan and Jonathan Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts. There one finds dozens of his striking color reconstructions of ancient scenes and cities such as Caesarea, Tiberius, Jerusalem, Capernaum, and Nazareth. I found his work meticulously accurate in terms of our historical texts and our archaeological sources, while at the same time breathtakingly beautiful in layout, composition, and imagination. You can see a nice collection of some of these works, relating to Jesus, on the Discovery Web site feature: The Land of Jesus. It is an interactive feature and truly one of the most fascinating things one can find on the Web in terms of putting you back in the time of Jesus.
When I was writing The Jesus Dynasty I contacted Balage and asked him if I could commission him to do seven special color paintings for me, specifically designed to illustrate aspects of the book that I wanted to include:
Drawing of Sepphoris as viewed from Nazareth
Aerial Shot of Herod’s Sepphoris
Herod’s Jerusalem looking East to the Mt of Olives showing the Herodian Palace Grounds
The “Jesus Hideout” in Jordan at Wadi el-Yabis
Jesus Before Caiaphus in the Priestly Mansion
Jesus Before Pilate’s Judgment Seat at the Praetorium
Jesus Crucified on the Mt of Olives
The results were amazing, really breathtaking, when one looks at the originals in full resolution. Unfortunately, due to printing costs, only two appeared in color in the hardcover edition, as part of the front and back inside covers, and the rest were B&W and rather small on the page, in the text of the book itself. In the paperback all of them appear, but in B&W, and also rather small. If we ever publish a “Deluxe Illustrated” edition of The Jesus Dynasty, they will surely be included in full color plates.
Balage Baloge was born in Budapest, Hungary where he attended art school. He immigrated to the United States in 1989 and lives in Baltimore. Although his artistic work is wide ranging, as one can see from browsing his Balage4Art Web site, he has become especially fascinated with ancient history, the Bible and archaeology. He lived in Israel for a number of years and began working with archaeologists and scholars to recreate the ancient past. In addition to The Jesus Dynasty and Excavating Jesus he has done illustrations for The World of the Old Testament, The World of the New Testament, and A Guide to Jerusalem.
Here is a nice color version of one of the paintings he did for me, showing Jesus and his little band of disciples hiding out in Wadi el-Yabis (Wadi Cherith in the Bible) in Jordan, the last winter of his life, based on the account in the gospel of John (chapter 12, “Last Days of Jesus” in The Jesus Dynasty).
