Quote:
Originally Posted by alatar
With much trepidation I post in this ill-favoured thread of threads, yet not sure where else to post this little giblet.
In William Young's book, The Shack,, the main character, Mack, gets to meet with the triune Christian god in person. He is at first taken aback as God the Father is in the form of an African woman.
He - Mack - notes that he was expecting God to look more like "Gandalf."  |
It's odd that he should choose a woman to represent God the Father, since God is essentially masculine in relation to His Bride the Church.
Mack had evidently seen all the right Renaissance art.
The idea of long gray hair and beard denoting wisdom might come down to us from Greco-Roman images of classical philosophers, which the Renaissance artists used as sources. Of course, there are also plenty of references in the Old Testament to gray hair as a symbol of wisdom. Tolkien may have drawn on either of these traditions as he created Gandalf, the ultimate wizard - literally, the ultimate "wise man." I expect, if it's either, that it's the former.
Or, gray=wise could just be a universal archetype.