There is more. Philo knew nothing of Jesus but a century after Philo's death, when Christians sought to historicise Jesus from preconceived notions of what the Saviour should be, they borrowed freely from Philo's work. The Christian apologist Justin Martyr simply manipulated "divine reason" in creating the landscape of Christian theology, see his statement below;

"I shall give you another testimony, my friends," said I, "from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning, a certain rational power from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos."

– Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, LXI – ("Wisdom is begotten of the father, as fire from fire."


If we then compare this statement of Philo : "Now the image of God is the Word, by which all the world was made." – Philo, "The Special Laws", I (81)

With that of the author of John 1:1.” In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

We have just seen Justin Martyr manipulate “God’s wisdom” into human form and we can deduce that the author of John has produced a combination of the opening phrase of Genesis with the ruminations of Philo's logos to produce the famous opening verse of his gospel. Naturally Philo did not intend for anyone to worship his Logos creation.

Now, let's be fair to Truth. Philo , being a hellenistic Jew, got that from Proverbs 8:22-30 and Genesis 1:28 (though i dont think he referenced it). Hence what I see John doing by Inspiration is going back to the Truth and clarifying it i.e. saying it as it should be said with respect to what had been written centuries before Philo was born. And Henry Martyn's quote there points ,more to that passage (and Psalm 104:30) than to Philo.

P.S. I realised that your source is history while mine is the Bible hence there was no point wasting time since you take yours as authentic and I take mine as so too. However, since you quoted my source rather incorrectly, I believe speaking up is in order.

Scholar8200:
Now, let's be fair to Truth. Philo , being a hellenistic Jew, got that from Proverbs 8:22-30 (though i dont think he referenced it).

I am familiar with this passage, and can't find any reference to the concept of a creating Logos there.

Scholar8200:
I realised that your source is history while mine is the Bible hence there was no point wasting time since you take yours as authentic and I take mine as so too.

I believe any honest and objective seeker of truth would not limit himself to the claims of a partial biased religious book. The claims of the bible are to be considered, but we can't limit ourselves to them, as they are obviously partisan and biased. Looking for other objective historical sources is what any honest mind would do.

LoJ:

I am familiar with this passage, and can't find any reference to the concept of a creating Logos there.

alright

Scholar8200:
Now, let's be fair to Truth. Philo , being a hellenistic Jew, got that from Proverbs 8:22-30 (though i dont think he referenced it). Hence what I see John doing by Inspiration is going back to the Truth and clarifying it i.e. saying it as it should be said with respect to what had been written centuries before Philo was born. And Henry Martyn's quote there points ,more to that passage than to Philo.

P.S. I realised that your source is history while mine is the Bible hence there was no point wasting time since you take yours as authentic and I take mine as so too. However, since you quoted my source rather incorrectly, I believe speaking up is in order.

I don’t understand why you say I quoted your source incorrectly. I quoted Philo who as you rightly surmised drew on the Wisdom of Solomon, with the emphasis on the word “Wisdom”. Being an eclectic philosopher, Philo drew on many philosophical sources including Hermes Trismegistus, here are the words of Philo again;

"And even if there be not as yet any one who is worthy to be called a son of God, nevertheless let him labour earnestly to be adorned according to his first-born word, the eldest of his angels, as the great archangel of many names; for he is called, the authority, and the name of God, and the Word, and man according to God's image, and he who sees Israel".

– Philo, "On the Confusion of Tongues," (146)

It is clear to see that Justin Martyr simply distilled the words of Philo by personalising “wisdom” and the author of John simply summarised the philosophical works of both Philo and *Justin Martyr*.

Sarassin:


I don’t understand why you say I quoted your source incorrectly. I quoted Philo who as you rightly surmised drew on the Wisdom of Solomon, with the emphasis on the word “Wisdom”. Being an eclectic philosopher, Philo drew on many philosophical sources including Hermes Trismegistus, here are the words of Philo again;

"And even if there be not as yet any one who is worthy to be called a son of God, nevertheless let him labour earnestly to be adorned according to his first-born word, the eldest of his angels, as the great archangel of many names; for he is called, the authority, and the name of God, and the Word, and man according to God's image, and he who sees Israel".

– Philo, "On the Confusion of Tongues," (146)

It is clear to see that Justin Martyr simply distilled the words of Philo by personalising “wisdom” and the author of John simply summarised the philosophical works of both Philo and Justin Martyr.

john died around 100 CE when Justin Martyr was born. How then is this possible?

Scholar8200:
john died around 100 CE when Justin Martyr was born. How then is this possible?

Actually historically the author of the Gospel of John is unknown, but I take your point, I should have written that the author of John drew his Christology from Philo and not included Justin Martyr.

And then, there was Seneca. At the same time Philo was laying the foundations of Christian theology in Alexandria, in Rome, another educated aristocrat, Seneca, was articulating the highly developed morality and ethics of Stoicism. They may even have met, Seneca took a long sojourn in Alexandria in 31 CE.

Lucius Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was a prodigious writer. His legacy includes satires, tragedies, several books on natural phenomena, and at least 124 insightful letters (Epistulae morales), a dozen essays on philosophy including tracts on the brevity of life, human destiny, clemency and virtue.

It just happens that the life of Seneca, like that of Philo, was contemporaneous with that of Jesus. Yet though Seneca wrote extensively on many subjects and people, nothing relating to Jesus ever caught his attention, he does not exhibit any awareness of the vast numbers of Christians, supposedly, punished for the fire that ravaged Rome in 64 CE.

Of the Stoic school, if there were ever templates for the Gospels written as plays to be read privately as opposed to being performed they were surely that of Seneca, his satires were legendary, his portrait of the death and deification of Hercules is compulsive. The absence of any reference to Jesus of Nazareth or even Christians by Seneca remains the single largest embarrassment with respect to the historicity of Jesus.

There was an attempt to rectify this in the 4th century, what emerged was a correspondence purporting to be friendly exchanges between the eminent Roman philosopher – at the height of his fame and political influence – and an unknown itinerant preacher we now call Paul.

Wow, thread quite interesting. Seeing & reading stuffs outside the bible

Why does Seneca record all manner of unusual natural phenomena in the seven books of his Quaestiones Naturales, including eclipses and earthquakes, but not mention the Star of Bethlehem, the pair of Judean earthquakes that were strong enough to split stones, or the hours of supernatural darkness that covered “all the land” – an event he would have witnessed first-hand?

How is it even possible that Philo with his deep rooted connections to the court of Herod would not have documented the actions of the murderous Herod The Great, in ordering the so-called Death of the Innocents, the act of infanticide of all male new-born under the age of two as recorded in the gospel of Matthew? Assuming such an act did in fact take place?

It is questions such as these that troubled the minds of early Christian thinkers eventually leading to pseudonymous writings, forgeries and interpolations into biblical and historical accounts.

It is clearly ridiculous to pretend that lack of historical corroboration of the spectacular Gospel events, let alone the New Testament’s own fundamental contradictions, does not constitute a fatal problem for the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is because on almost every criteria of historical verification available, there is little or no evidence of the historical Jesus and even where there is any at all, the evidence of the Gospels is not the best, but the very worst kind of evidence – a handful of biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown, second-hand witnesses.

A further problem of course are the anachronistic mistakes of the Gospels. Matthew is constantly correcting Mark’s errors about basic Judaism and Palestinian life and geography. Luke claims (1:1-4) to be the only gospel of many that provides an accurate account but this is simply not true, since Luke based his Gospel on that of Mark and perhaps Matthew, and because he writes much later in the century, he also lifts other details from real historians like Flavius Josephus. The collective gospel’s biography of Jesus simply does not hold up under scrutiny.

But was Mark even a biography in the first place? Mark tells us what he is doing right from the outset: he is writing a gospel, not a history or a biography (Mark 1:1). Mark’s entire Gospel has a symbolic, rather than historical, meaning. It is allegory, not history.

At the beginning of the Christian era, Alexandria, Egypt had become the main hub of Hellenistic thought. The large colony of Jews who made Alexandria their home became Hellenised in both language and culture, while still observing their Jewish faith.

It was natural that the arrival of such philosophical thoughts such as Platonism and Stoicism in Alexandria would eventually affect them. The greatest of the Alexandrian Jewish intellectuals was the aforementioned Philo. His work illustrates many of the most important elements of the synthesis of Platonism and Stoicism that came to dominate Hellenistic philosophy during and after his lifetime. He is the best example of how intellectual Jews of the Diaspora, isolated from Palestine and their native culture, allowed Hellenistic influences to shape their theology and philosophy.

We can’t speak of Philo without mentioning the influence of Alexandrian Judaism on such New Testament writings as John’s Gospel and the Book of Hebrews. We can also be fairly certain that Paul read the same philosophical tracts as Philo whilst formulating his celestial Jesus.

It is fair to state that even though Philo Judaeus had no knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, his philosophical didactics came to form the back-bone of modern Christian theology.

It is very true that the silence of Philo Judaeus on the life of Jesus of Nazareth is curious and for most sceptics it is a sure sign that Jesus did not exist. But such an assumption would be dangerous, Philo did not write about John the Baptist either and yet we know that the Baptist was an historical personage with a followership larger than that of Jesus, we have multiple attestments to that fact. Clearly in defence of the historical Jesus, there is more here than meets the eye.

As I previously wrote, Philo was an Alexandrian Jew of the diaspora with deep links to the court of Herod, his brother had in fact extended huge loans to Herod the great, with which Herod had embarked on huge construction projects, we have it on the authority of the Slavonic Josephus manuscript that Herod Archelaus had previously incarcerated John the Baptist around 4BCEfor gross impertinence, Philo must have been aware of these events but made no mention of them.

There is the possibility that because of the deep and personal relationship Philo had with the court of Herod, he simply chose not to record anything that could be interpreted as being detrimental or negative towards the Herodians. It could also explain why Philo does not mention the “massacre of the innocents”, although admittedly that event seems to be a false narrative based on the actual story of Herod murdering members of his own family.

If it were truly the case that Jesus was brought before the Sanhedrin and found guilty of blasphemy as charged, then it is unlikely Philo would record it since the Sanhedrin would largely be made up of the ruling Saduccee Herodian family. If we consider that Philo’s family were huge contributors to the cost of building the temple, would Philo record the fact that Jesus was found guilty in that hallowed chamber? Doubtful. Of course, the possibility exists that the account of Jesus before the Sanhedrin is spurious, why? Simply because if as stated, Jesus was found guilty of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin (Mark 14:53-65) then, not to put too fine a point on it, Jesus would never have made it to Pontius Pilate. The prescribed punishment for blasphemy was death by stoning, (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 1:4).

We know that the ability to impose capital punishment by the Sanhedrin was still in use at this time because much later the bible records the stoning of Stephen. The right of the Jewish Sanhedrin to impose capital punishment was later abrogated by the Romans.

The curious silence of Philo about the life of Jesus of Nazareth although baffling does not a priori demonstrate that Jesus was not historical.

History tells us that if we accept that Jesus of Nazareth lived, then we have to accept that there are no extant contemporary sources, and that there is a lack of secular sources anywhere close to the time of Jesus. And even if we accept the anonymous gospels as portraying history, then after removing the magic and miracles we are not left with much. In fact we are left with a small collection of un-remarkable stories that often bear strong similarity to other similar myths, or have very little historical plausibility themselves. We must then accept that gospel accounts and representation of his life are grossly inaccurate.

We have no accurate historical facts with respect to the birth of Jesus. The author of Matthew dates the birth of Jesus to the period around 6BCE -4BCE, the author of the gospel of Luke dates his birth to around 6CE, Josephus does not confirm the birth of Jesus, only the arrival time of Quirinius to Judea in consonance with Matthew’s dating. There is a real possibility that Matthew and Luke are both wrong. In this respect one is inclined to go with the author of the gospel of Mark who simply presents Jesus at the bank of the river Jordan.

It follows therefore that it is only by accepting the possibility of the inaccuracy of the gospel accounts that we are able to attempt to piece together the historical Jesus.

First century Palestine was awash with messiah’s mostly named Jesus. Roman records are packed full of other people named Jesus whom the Romans saw fit to have killed or crucified for the same apparent reason that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified for. Those records exist, but not one for a Jesus of Nazareth. These were all people who upset the Romans badly enough to get themselves killed; Jesus ben Sirach, Jesus ben Pandira, Jesus ben Ananias, Jesus ben Saphat, Jesus ben Gamala and Jesus ben Thebuth. Jesus ben Stada was a Judean agitator who gave the Romans a headache in the early years of the second century. He met his end in the town of Lydda (twenty five miles from Jerusalem) at the hands of a Roman crucifixion crew.

Jesus ben Ananias otherwise known as the “wailing Jesus” spent his days weeping and wailing that the destruction of the temple was imminent, people got so fed up of his doomsday sayings that they bundled him of the city gates where he remained still wailing until a huge rock fell on his head and killed him during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

We have Philo’s account of the hapless Carabas, who was dressed up in purple robes, mercilessly frazzled and referred to as the “King of the Jews”

Is it possible that a historic Jesus of Nazareth, an apocalyptic preacher in the manner of John the Baptist lived, was found guilty of sedition and then put to death in a career so short that his followers later embellished his exploits by conflating his teachings with the actions of other first century characters such as Carabas and other “Jesus’”? , I would say possibly.

Before thoroughly examining this possibility, it might be meaningful to establish what our earliest Christian source knew, and had to say about Jesus. I refer of course to the Apostle Paul.

I begin with a brief bio of Paul. The historicity of Paul is attested by the historian Josephus who begins his narrative by placing the young Herodian prince previously known as Saul present at the attempt on the life of James "the Just”, brother of Jesus at the steps of the temple of Jerusalem.

Most Christians know about the Tent maker originally named Saul who came from Tarsus, he was born circa 4CE he claimed to be a “Pharisee of Pharisees” from the “tribe of Benjamin” even though it seemed he had been a Sadducee enforcer whose pastime seemed to be persecuting Christian converts. Sometime between the death of Jesus and the outbreak of the war between Herod Antipas and Aretas in 37CE Paul reputedly undergoes a conversion to Christianity on the road to Damascus, citing Divine revelation he appoints himself “Apostle” to the gentiles.

According to the Book of Acts, in the year 58CE Paul has a final confrontation with James, Paul is attacked by Jewish mobs for bringing foreigners into the temple. Paul declares he is a Roman citizen by birth.

Between the years 58CE and 60CE Paul is placed under house arrest (Acts), he is eventually bound over for appeal to the emperor Nero. Between the years 60CE and 62CE Paul preaches unimpeded in Rome (Acts). He is never mentioned again the book of Acts.

The historian Josephus picks up the narrative of Saul in the year 62CE, James is tried by a kangaroo court and Saul is seen organising a riotous attack on the lower priests. In the year 64CE Rome is on fire and Nero blames the Christians.

According to Josephus, in the year 66CE war breaks out over the matter of foreign presence in the temple. Saul works unsuccessfully to bring the Romans into the city. He is sent to Corinth to report to Nero, we assume Nero did not like what Saul had to report, Saul was never heard from again, presumably executed at the instigation of Nero.

The objective is to establish what Paul actually knew and believed in his own words, about Jesus and by a process of deduction to arrive at an historical perspective of Jesus of Nazareth. This is in itself problematic, we cannot look at all the biblical traditions associated with Paul that have been put together uncritically. The reason being that of the 16 documents attributed to the Pauline corpus only seven letters are universally accepted as authentic by New Testament scholars, they are; Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. The disputed letters are 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus.

In addition, there is the Letter to the Hebrews, long attributed to Paul in popular tradition even though it is actually anonymous. Finally, we have the two volumes of Luke-Acts. These accounts of the life of Jesus and of the early church are usually considered to have been written by someone wishing to affirm the validity and the providential character of Paul.

Therefore for the purposes of our examination I find it useful to limit our discussion to the Pauline documents that have the earliest and widest critical acceptance as genuine.

In the first instance Paul hardly ever makes use of Jesus traditions in his writings.

We can learn almost nothing about Jesus’ life or teachings from Paul. If Paul were our only source we would know only that Jesus had been born as a Jewish male by natural conception. We would know that his death by crucifixion was of great significance to Paul, but we would not know any details about that event. We would know that Paul believed Jesus to have been experienced as still alive after his execution, and that Paul expected Jesus to re-appear as a divine being to punish the wicked and reward the righteous, but still we would have no narrative of the resurrection.

Throughout his writings it is taken for granted by Paul that Jesus is Jewish and his descent from Abraham is seen to have theological significance (Gal 3:14–16). Paul is aware of the name of Jesus but typically refers to Jesus as “Christ.” Paul records two passages that could be interpreted as a reference to the birth of Jesus (Gal 4:4; Rom 1:3). Both assume a normal human conception and birth. The phrase “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4) is a well-attested phrase for “human being,” occurring in Jewish literature as diverse as Job (14:1; 15:14; 25:4), the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran (IQS 11.20–21; 1QH 13.14; 18.12–13, 16) and Matthew (11:11). It cannot be read as excluding human paternity.

The earliest traditions describe Jesus as a teacher with a unique sense of personal authority. Paul makes virtually no appeal to Jesus as a teacher, or as an authoritative source of instruction. There are only three occasions that “the Lord” is invoked by Paul as the authority for an opinion (1 Cor 7:10; 9:14; 11:23–26). Paul invokes Christ as a divine authority figure, as the risen Lord, rather than as Jesus, the teacher of divine wisdom. Not surprisingly then, Paul’s writings do not draw upon any of the classic parables and aphorisms of Jesus. Even though these seem to have been characteristic and distinctive aspects of Jesus’ activity as a teacher they have left no trace in Paul’s tradition of the New Testament.

With respect to parables, Paul is silent on this core issue concerning the historical Jesus. There is no hint of the tradition that Jesus taught in parables in Paul’s writings, even though this seems to have been especially characteristic of Jesus’ ministry as a teacher. None of the classic parables (e.g. the Samaritan, the Prodigal son, the Shrewd Manager or the Corrupt Judge) seem to have left any mark on Paul’s work. And Paul never uses the genre of the parable himself.

Paul’s writings have nothing that alludes to Jesus’ struggle with the Jerusalem authorities (Mark 11:15,17). There is no hint of Jesus’ critique of the Temple, nor his threat to destroy the whole system of religious brokerage that was based upon it. Indeed, Paul’s views on submission to the civil authorities (Rom 13:1–7) run quite contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Had Jesus followed Paul’s advice there may have been no crucifixion.

More than once Paul refers to his own experience of the resurrected Jesus (1 Cor 15:8; Gal 1:12,16). There is no mention of an empty tomb. Unlike Mark, who seems to have created the empty tomb tradition, Paul’s descriptions of the risen Jesus do not have any narrative or legendary developments. Typical Pauline references to the resurrection are as follows: “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45), “but (he) lives by the power of God” (2 Cor 13:4), “designated Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4), “wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead” (1 Thess 1:10) and “God has highly exalted him” (Phil 2:9).

We can observe that Paul’s theological and religious focus was more on the exalted Lord who was expected to return from heaven in the near future as the Christ. We can further adduce that Paul has less knowledge of the historical Jesus than the gospel writers who were to write about the life and deeds of Jesus decades after Paul had appended his epistles.

On the physical appearance of Jesus of Nazareth

If we accept that a historical Jesus of Nazareth lived it quickly becomes apparent that many must have seen him, if we are to accept the historical assertions of the likes of Origen, Tertullian and Eusebius postulations that Jesus was flesh and blood, then he must have had distinct recognisable features, but the New Testament letters contain no physical descriptions of Jesus nor do any of the Gospels. It therefore begs the questions, what did Jesus look like and why did Gospel writers fail to record his physical appearance?

Most early Christian images of Jesus, whether painted on the walls of catacombs, carved in relief on sarcophagi or set in mosaic tiles, can be divided into two general types of portraits: the beautiful, youthful, long-haired Jesus and the older, bearded Jesus.

It is interesting that most of the earliest depictions of Jesus are of a youthful, Orpheus/Apollo-like deity. But after Christianity is placed under the protection of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, the images of Christ change dramatically and almost exclusively to the older bearded Christ.

We know that by the 8th Century CE edicts had been promulgated by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III, (726-729) banning the veneration or exhibition of holy images. In effect Leo III banned pictorial representations of the images of Jesus for worship throughout the empire. Let us take a look at what historical sources tell us about the physical likeness of the Messiah.

A physical description of Jesus does survive in the form of a copy of a letter purportedly sent by the Roman consul Lentulus to the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This document was discovered in a Monastery with copies of other ancient documents in 1421. Historians have historical verification that a certain Roman consul named Lentulus was in Judea at the time of Jesus' trial and crucifixion, his wealthy family is also mentioned by Josephus in his book Antiquities of the Jews.

In his letter Lentulus describes the condemned man named Jesus of Nazareth as having:

"......A noble and lively face, with fair and slightly wavy hair; black and strongly curving eyebrows, intense penetrating blue eyes and an expression of wondrous grace. His nose is rather long. His beard is almost blonde, although not very long. His hair is quite long, and has never seen a pair of scissors.....His neck is slightly inclined, so that he never appears to be bitter or arrogant. His tanned face is the colour of ripe corn and well proportioned. It gives the impression of gravity and wisdom, sweetness and good, and is completely lacking in any sign of anger....." (Letter of Publius Lentulus to Tiberius)

The letter is of course spurious, for various reasons we know that a Roman consul would not amongst other things, describe a Jew as a “son of God”, that being a sobriquet for the Emperor alone but as is often the case, the spurious letter tells a tale of its own.

There is no doubt that concerted efforts were made by Byzantine officials to depict Jesus in a particular vein, as a man of commanding majesty. But as we shall see, all was not as it seemed, Church father Tertullian and others were of the opinion that Jesus had little resemblance to that generally depicted, he states;

".....Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Thus spake even they who despised His outward form. His body did not reach even to human beauty, to say nothing of heavenly glory. Had the prophets given us no information whatever concerning His ignoble appearance, His very sufferings and the very contumely He endured bespeak it all. (Tertullian, De Carne Christi, Ch.9, 6)

Ephrem the Syrian (306-367CE), was a Syrian Christian deacon and a prolific Syrian-language hymnist and theologian of the 4th century. In his Hymns de ecclesia he states;

"God took human form and appeared in a form of three human ells; he came down to us small of stature."
An "ell" being approximately 18 inches.

Theodore of Mopuestia (ca. 350–428) was acclaimed in the late fourth and early-fifth centuries as the preeminent exegete of the School of Antioch as well as one of the most respected theologians of his day. His fame, however, was short-lived. Within a few years of his death, he was being denounced. In 553 his theological writings and person were condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople as impious and heretical. After the council, the Emperor Justinian ordered his entire literary output to be destroyed, very little of his works survived. In his hymn entitled "The King's Manifestation" preserved in Syriac he writes :

'Thy appearance O Christ, was smaller than that of the children of Jacob.'

Thus we begin to build a physical picture of Jesus

A hugely important piece of evidence, regarding the physical appearance of Jesus is glimpsed in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, in which the Apostle Thomas constantly appears as the twin-brother of Jesus so closely resembling him as to be mistaken for him.

'....... The Apostle lifted up his eyes and saw people raised up one upon another, that they might see him, and going up to lofty places. And the Apostle saith to them : ' " Ye men who are come to the assembly of the Messiah, men who wish to believe in Jesus, take unto yourselves an example from this, that if ye do not raise yourselves up, ye cannot see me, who am little." ' (acts of Thomas p.178)

Evidently the author of Luke agreed, “……..And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature……” (Luke 19:3) although the impression is easily formed that it is Zaccheus who is of a smaller stature. The same description applies to the verse of Matthew 11:11.

Ancient Nazoreans were indeed known to be much smaller than the rest of the population there is nothing incredible, in the statement that the Nazorean carpenter Jesus was not taller than three cubits. But there is more, the historical probability exists that Jesus suffered a form of deformity, here are my reasonings. Jesus stood at the lectern in the temple and read the following from the Book of Isaiah;

“God hath appointed me to carry glad tidings to the sufferers. He hath sent me to heal those of broken heart, to proclaim . . .recovering of sight to the blind “ (Isaiah 61:1)

And then with all eyes intent on him Jesus goes on to say “Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears,” he then curiously forestalls an objection which he anticipates on the lips of his audience by saying: ‘ Doubtless ye will say unto me this parable, " Physician, heal thyself." ‘(Luke 4:23)

The fact that Jesus foresees the retort as a certainty ('Doubtless ye will say') presupposes two things : first, that Jesus himself must have had some deformity which he might mockingly be called upon to heal; and secondly, that this deformity must have been visible to all, and so striking that the taunt would rise to the lips of all who looked upon the speaker.

Jesus has the last laugh however because when we consider the passage in Isaiah where the Servant of the Lord who 'shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high,' and at whom ' kings shall shut their mouths,' is said to have 'no form or comeliness,' crooked and shrivelled like 'a root in a dry ground,' ' a man of sorrow and acquainted with sickness, despised and rejected of men . . . smitten of God and afflicted, yet wounded for their transgressions.' (Isaiah 52)

It becomes apparent that the listeners of Jesus knew quite well that the crooked form of the speaker could not very well be quoted as an objection to his election as the Lord's Anointed.

Sarassin:
Ancient Nazoreans were indeed known to be much smaller than the rest of the population there is nothing incredible, in the statement that the Nazorean carpenter Jesus was not taller than three cubits. But there is more, the historical probability exists that Jesus suffered a form of deformity, here are my reasonings. Jesus stood at the lectern in the temple and read the following from the Book of Isaiah;

“God hath appointed me to carry glad tidings to the sufferers. He hath sent me to heal those of broken heart, to proclaim . . .recovering of sight to the blind “ (Isaiah 61:1)

And then with all eyes intent on him Jesus goes on to say “Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears,” he then curiously forestalls an objection which he anticipates on the lips of his audience by saying: ‘ Doubtless ye will say unto me this parable, " Physician, heal thyself." ‘(Luke 4:23)

The fact that Jesus foresees the retort as a certainty ('Doubtless ye will say') presupposes two things : first, that Jesus himself must have had some deformity which he might mockingly be called upon to heal; and secondly, that this deformity must have been visible to all, and so striking that the taunt would rise to the lips of all who looked upon the speaker.

Jesus has the last laugh however because when we consider the passage in Isaiah where the Servant of the Lord who 'shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high,' and at whom ' kings shall shut their mouths,' is said to have 'no form or comeliness,' crooked and shrivelled like 'a root in a dry ground,' ' a man of sorrow and acquainted with sickness, despised and rejected of men . . . smitten of God and afflicted, yet wounded for their transgressions.' (Isaiah 52)

It becomes apparent that the listeners of Jesus knew quite well that the crooked form of the speaker could not very well be quoted as an objection to his election as the Lord's Anointed.

Some Christians will take you to be devil sir @bold.

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adepeter26:

Some Christians will take you to be devil sir @bold.

I love your posts. Following

Thanks, you're probably right!

In my final submission on the physical appearance of Jesus we have the following;

In his reconstituted “Capture of Jerusalem” Josephus describes Jesus as;

"…a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked, with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair (but) having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazoreans, and with an undeveloped beard".

According to Irenaeus, Christ was described as weak, unattractive and afflicted:

"Some of them, moreover—[when they predicted that] as a weak and inglorious man, and as one who knew what it was to bear infirmity."

By now, the more astute biblical scholars on these pages should be acquainted with the obvious paradox of the descriptions of Jesus of Nazareth and that of none other than that of the Apostle Paul, a description of whom is given in The Acts of Paul and Thecla.

[Paul]…a man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked.

I began the treatise on the physical appearance of Jesus of Nazareth by asking the question, what did Jesus look like?

I have endeavoured to answer that question in the preceding posts. A key question still remains though, why did gospel writers fail to record a description? This may in part be due to the fact that none of the gospel writers wrote eye-witness accounts and the Apostle Paul who wrote the earliest accounts never actually met Jesus. Therefore we could surmise that no bona-fide descriptive account of Jesus circulated in biblical traditions. It would be doubtful if that is a tenable position to hold, we have good biblical descriptions of John the Baptist, going back even further we have those of the likes of David and his son Absalom, the Israelite Judge Samson and a host of others.

Given that there was no tradition forbidding a description of the Messiah (that was to come in the 8th Century CE) it is in fact a striking omission, but in my view deliberate. The portrait of Jesus I have reconstructed in my posts do not, of course, in the least correspond to the traditional idealized picture of the Nazarean Messiah, but this portrayal, taken from Josephus whose source was the description provided in the original arrest warrant executed by Pontius Pilate and preserved in the Commentarii of the original and authentic Acta Pilati is undoubtedly correct.

Gospel writers had to consider that it would be extremely dangerous to defend the historical descriptive claims of a personality who may in fact turn out to be quite different from what they previously imagined, what then? Not even our wildest imagination could have evoked quite such an unexpectedly strange figure of the Messiah.

Yet, as strange and bewildering as this small, bent, and homely figure emerging from behind the veil that pious delusion has managed to weave around it for centuries can be said to be, every detail agrees with the portrait of Jesus ' in the flesh ' which, although ignored by Paul was completely embraced by Tertullian with great affection. Tertullian in his arguments against Docetists who wished to spiritualise Jesus into a being of incorporeal substance considered evidence that Jesus was a man of 'flesh and blood ' to be invaluable, it is to Tertullian that we owe the phrase “humana substantia corporis” (The human bodily substance), and we see his express refusal to see in Jesus an angel, in view of this common nature.

In his arguments with the likes of Marcion his extravagant use of language goes as far as to write :

"The ignominy of the face (of Jesus) would roar (as a witness against the heretics) if it could"

It is thanks to the arguments of Tertullian against the likes of Marcion and other so-called heretics that we are able to confirm that the descriptions provided by Josephus and other commentators are indeed accurate.