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Jesus: Truth Or Myth?

First century historian Josephus recorded Jesus’s description in a work called “Capture of Jerusalem.” Josephus’s description of Jesus is: “a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small in stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked, with a long face, long nose, meeting eyebrows, and with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard.”

There is no hard evidence to prove this is Jesus’s description or, if it is, that it’s accurate, but many scholars believe it is authentic.

https://www.express.co.uk/comment/e...tion-Easter-is-turin-shroud-real-Christianity
I never knew that he was hunchbacked. I guess that was more common back then.
Here's what some scholars think he may have looked like:
1711956475046.png

Or this:
1711956549275.png
 
I'm not so sure that Jesus being presented to us - in a propagandistic/Public Relations manner so familiar to artful secular presentations in Cinema, photography generally etc etc - as being beautiful makes as much difference as assumed. Particularly as ideals of beauty change and have changed so frequently, down the centuries. Religious art, especially Christian art, varies far more than one might expect - it's certainly not all saccharine, chocolate-box beauty and grace (as seen in, say, a sterile and earnestly bland Madonna painting by Murillo), any more than it is as grotesque and insultingly didactic as a Grünewald Crucifixion. In truth, one of the most effective pieces of Christian art I've seen is a rough-looking Rembrandt etching of Christ's preaching being completely ignored by a playing child and, indeed, by most of the evidently self-involved adult crowd. So much for charisma, dazzling appearances, and the assumed import of his Message...

So does it matter how he is shown, let alone how he may have appeared? I'm not even convinced that the question of his existence or non-existence matters so much; what matters to us is, really, how we interpret such a possible life. And what those interpretations - belief or denial or whatever - reveal about ourselves.
 
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I'm not so sure that Jesus being presented to us - in a propagandistic/Public Relations manner so familiar to artful secular presentations in Cinema, photography generally etc etc - as being beautiful makes as much difference as assumed. Particularly as ideals of beauty change and have changed so frequently, down the centuries. Religious art, especially Christian art, varies far more than one might expect - it's certainly not all saccharine, chocolate-box beauty and grace (as seen in, say, a sterile and earnestly bland Madonna painting by Murillo), any more than it is as grotesque and insultingly didactic as a Grünewald Crucifixion. In truth, one of the most effective pieces of Christian art I've seen is a rough-looking Rembrandt etching of Christ's preaching being completely ignored by a playing child and, indeed, by most of the evidently self-involved adult crowd. So much for charisma, dazzling appearances, and the assumed import of his Message...

So does it matter how he is shown, let alone how he may have appeared? I'm not even convinced that the question of his existence or non-existence matters so much; what matters to us is, really, how we interpret such a possible life. And what those interpretations - belief or denial or whatever - reveal about ourselves.
Well, yes, all true, but it also depends on what concerns you. If you're a Christian trying to get to know Christ more by analysing his earliest depictions, then perhaps, focus more on his message. Maybe even more than the question of his literal existence, focus on his message. Probably. A person's relationship with their god is their own business, of course.

If you're interested in history, including art history and how religion and art feed into one another, regardless of your personal beliefs, then there's much of interest to be gleaned from things like how Christ has been depicted in different cultural contexts. I'm a bit rusty on these things, but I know there are early depictions of Jesus as a swarthy, dark haired, dark eyed gentleman, as one might expect a man of his heritage to be. But there are more recent depictions of a fair Jesus. At some point that must have made sense to someone, and others ran with it. That's something I find interesting. There are obvious reasons why it makes no sense, but they're not as important as that your saviour be depicted conforming to your culture's ideals of beauty. While that may seem shallow, in a sense it's the opposite, using an artistic representation of the physical to reflect the beauty of the spiritual.

I'm a bit rusty on this but I'm sure I've heard somewhere that some of our earliest representations of Jesus depict him as a beardless youth with curly blond hair, somewhat in the manner of Alexander the Great or Apollo. This is also interesting, but I've no idea where I heard that, and therefore can't verify it.

However, I'm pretty sure the very earliest depiction we have is a graffito of a man worshipping a donkey headed man on a cross, which was specifically intended as a jokey insult to a specific Christian guy. We can read from that that the one guy in a group of people who has crazy beliefs is someone mocked behind his back in any period of history.
 
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It would be a bugger to nail him to the cross if he was hunchbacked, though...
I've never read Josephus, but I wouldn't read too much into his descriptions of Jesus without doing some research. I know much of what has been passed down to us is suspected of having been changed by Christian copyists. Obviously, we don't have original documents from Josephus. We have later copies of copies written for a Christian audience. So, it's quite possible they gave people the hunchbacked dwarf Jesus they wanted.

You might well ask why. Well, there was, and still is among apologists, a strong urge to prove Jesus's messiah-hood by showing him to be prophesied. Today, one of the strongest arguments for the veracity of scripture is the lists of things prophesied in the Old Testament that came to pass in the New Testament. Many of them are laughable; either are not described as prophecies, and are two vaguely similar events, or only a couple of lines seem accurate while the surrounding lines are completely inaccurate. But, whatever. Isaiah has this to say, which is generally considered to be referring to Jesus himself, as far as i can tell;

Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men;

(Isaiah 52.:13-52:14)

For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.

(Isaiah 53:2-53:4)
 
Along similar(ish) lines as Pete's initial post: part of the Easter/Sacred Triduum services is a mini-drama, played-out by priest and 'Readers' and congregation, of Pilate's interview of Jesus. In this, it became ever more clear to me how the whole thing has been made palatable to a Gentile readership: Pilate is airily philosophical (in a shallow, not profound way), gives Jesus the benefit of the doubt, and leaves Jesus's fate to be decided by bloodthirsty and scheming Jewish people. Pilate even has a gift for dubious exposition, and so tells 'us' about a tradition of releasing a prisoner at the whim of the mob - a tradition that, in reality, very likely never existed.

Granted that this isn't the same as the clear policy of beautifying or 'Westernising' Jesus in art but it's surely in the same spirit; that of marketing/promotion.
 
I've never read Josephus, but I wouldn't read too much into his descriptions of Jesus without doing some research.
I first read, many years ago, that there was a Roman record of Jesus when he was on their wanted list, and it was this that described him as a short hunchback.
I couldn’t find a reference to that Roman record online, just the Josephus blurb.
 
I've never read Josephus, but I wouldn't read too much into his descriptions of Jesus without doing some research. I know much of what has been passed down to us is suspected of having been changed by Christian copyists. Obviously, we don't have original documents from Josephus. We have later copies of copies written for a Christian audience. So, it's quite possible they gave people the hunchbacked dwarf Jesus they wanted.

You might well ask why. Well, there was, and still is among apologists, a strong urge to prove Jesus's messiah-hood by showing him to be prophesied. Today, one of the strongest arguments for the veracity of scripture is the lists of things prophesied in the Old Testament that came to pass in the New Testament. Many of them are laughable; either are not described as prophecies, and are two vaguely similar events, or only a couple of lines seem accurate while the surrounding lines are completely inaccurate. But, whatever. Isaiah has this to say, which is generally considered to be referring to Jesus himself, as far as i can tell;

Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men;

(Isaiah 52.:13-52:14)

For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.

(Isaiah 53:2-53:4)
I've always taken the view he was either a conflation of various unknown zealots or just totally fictional, tbh. The whole thing is too problematic in terms of just hard, cold textual analysis.
 
I've always taken the view he was either a conflation of various unknown zealots or just totally fictional, tbh. The whole thing is too problematic in terms of just hard, cold textual analysis.
I was led to believe that the Dead Sea scrolls contain material closer to the real teachings of Christ, and that is the reason why many of them have been kept under wraps. Again, that was a long time ago and current thinking may have changed.
 
I was led to believe that the Dead Sea scrolls contain material closer to the real teachings of Christ, and that is the reason why many of them have been kept under wraps. Again, that was a long time ago and current thinking may have changed.
In the wake of the Holy Blood & the Holy Grail furore, I bought Michael Baigent's The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception and was outraged by the...er...deception.

Having read books like that, I find it a pity that such apocrypha are hidden away - for me, they make an already fascinating story even more fascinating.
 
Israel claims the Dead Sea Scrolls were parts of the Old Testament plus commentary about the daily life at the same time these scrolls were written, plus commentary on mysticism.

Israel claims there was no reference to Jesus in the scrolls because the scrolls were written before Jesus started to preach.
 
This thread brought back to mind a book called Judas My Brother, recommended to me by a much older colleague back in the eighties. He knew of my Fortean interests and suggested I would enjoy the book which is a book of fiction.
Back then it was out of print (published in the late 60’s) and I couldn’t find a copy, but this thread got me searching and I found a first edition hardback, in good condition, on https://www.abebooks.co.uk/ for 20 quid plus 6 quid postage and packaging. Ordered and hopefully delivered in a few days time.

When I get around to reading it I may post a report.
 
Israel claims the Dead Sea Scrolls were parts of the Old Testament plus commentary about the daily life at the same time these scrolls were written, plus commentary on mysticism.

Israel claims there was no reference to Jesus in the scrolls because the scrolls were written before Jesus started to preach.
Are they still mostly under wraps or have any been translated and released?

(Personally I have as much faith in the Israeli government speaking the truth as I do Putin and his bunch of crooks)
 
According to Wikipedia all scrolls except one have been published.

The problem with the one that is not translated is because the researchers are dealing with small fragments, but the researchers are still determined to complete.
 
Not a few of Paul's letters read between the lines like variations upon 'Please stop fighting amongst yourselves' and 'People with more authority and legitimacy than me don't like what I'm doing'.
 
Well, yes, all true, but it also depends on what concerns you. If you're a Christian trying to get to know Christ more by analysing his earliest depictions, then perhaps, focus more on his message. Maybe even more than the question of his literal existence, focus on his message. Probably. A person's relationship with their god is their own business, of course.

If you're interested in history, including art history and how religion and art feed into one another, regardless of your personal beliefs, then there's much of interest to be gleaned from things like how Christ has been depicted in different cultural contexts. I'm a bit rusty on these things, but I know there are early depictions of Jesus as a swarthy, dark haired, dark eyed gentleman, as one might expect a man of his heritage to be. But there are more recent depictions of a fair Jesus. At some point that must have made sense to someone, and others ran with it. That's something I find interesting. There are obvious reasons why it makes no sense, but they're not as important as that your saviour be depicted conforming to your culture's ideals of beauty. While that may seem shallow, in a sense it's the opposite, using an artistic representation of the physical to reflect the beauty of the spiritual.

I'm a bit rusty on this but I'm sure I've heard somewhere that some of our earliest representations of Jesus depict him as a beardless youth with curly blond hair, somewhat in the manner of Alexander the Great or Apollo. This is also interesting, but I've no idea where I heard that, and therefore can't verify it.

However, I'm pretty sure the very earliest depiction we have is a graffito of a man worshipping a donkey headed man on a cross, which was specifically intended as a jokey insult to a specific Christian guy. We can read from that that the one guy in a group of people who has crazy beliefs is someone mocked behind his back in any period of history.

There is a lot of overlap between some of the earlier Byzantine depictions of Christ Pantocrator and Apollo.

new-ravenna-7.jpg
 
It's really the ideas that count, not his appearance.
I'm sure I read somewhere though that the original Hebrews were fair haired and blue eyed.
 
!!!

'This is just one of the hundreds – thousands, probably – of alternative versions of Christianity that teemed in the centuries following Jesus’s life and death. Take the Ophites, who believed that Christ had appeared on Earth in the form of a serpent. They celebrated mass by encouraging a snake to crawl over the altar on which loaves had been placed, consecrating them in the process. Another sect from the first century AD believed that King Herod rather than Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting for. In Ethiopia, meanwhile, Pontius Pilate was looked on as far more than a Roman middle manager with a tendency to dither. He is revered there as a saint to this day.'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/29/heresy-by-catherine-nixey-review-book-of-revelations
 
I was led to believe that the Dead Sea scrolls contain material closer to the real teachings of Christ, and that is the reason why many of them have been kept under wraps. Again, that was a long time ago and current thinking may have changed.
I have a vague memory of them being closer to the time but maybe still decades after..?
 
Strap yourselves in. Carpetbagger takes us on a tour of the Creationism museum who are doing their best to deal with the 'but what about dinosaurs?' question.

 
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Strap yourselves in. Carpetbagger takes us on a tour of the Creationism museum who are doing their best to deal with the 'but what about dinosaurs?' question.

I'll watch with interest. Gutsick Gibbon's explorations of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter were fascinating, hilarious (to someone with a genuine interest in natural history) and terrifying (to someone with a genuine interest in humans not being wack jobs).

EDIT to change 'Crestion' to 'Creation'. What the hell did I type for my phone's predictive text to spit out 'Crestion'?
 
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