In Search of the Hysterical Jesus

Bible_Student777

You might like this. It arrived in my email yesterday:

Merry Christmas one and all! The Christmas season brings to mind visions of the Baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (A manger is a feeding-trough for farm animals by the way, and I know darn well most of you didn't know that! So don't tell me you did! ) If one looks closely at most Christmas displays, one discovers that the Baby Jesus bears an uncanny resemblance to a forty-watt soft-white light bulb. Amazing! But is this historically accurate? Was Christ's "Thomas-Edison nature" responsible for the warm seasonal glow that we call a nimbus, or halo? Halo!

The historical facts of the matter is that 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all Christians who have ever lived, and an even higher percentage of those alive today, would be disgusted and repulsed by the physical attributes of the historical Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was not the tall, lithe, fair-skinned, glowingly clean slightly effeminate Caucasian male that sacred art depicts him to be. He was a first century Jewish male, and a first century Jewish male is something that we know a teensy weensy bit about.
1. Jews wiped their fannies with what literally translates as "crap-stick." There was no toilet paper back then folks. No "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!" Paper was expensive, far too expensive to wipe one's derriere with. So, the Jews--and other peoples too--used a shit-stick. With no dainty bidet to keep their bottoms clean and odor-free, we can rest assured that Jesus was a fragrant fellow, as were all Jews of the time (As are the Bedouins of today, who use either a crap-stick or the towel on their heads!)

2. There was no deodorant, and perfume was a bit beyond the reach of the everyday working person. Recall the "oil of spikenard" that Mary Magdalene used to anoint Jesus with was worth a years wage!

3. Jewish people didn't take baths. They washed their face, feet, and hands in a ritual manner daily, but the whole body rarely was bathed. It probably had something to do with THE LACK OF MODERN PLUMBING AND HEATING! HELLO! To heat up that much water took a lot of work, too much work when one was expending about SIX THOUSAND CALORIIES A DAY JUST TO STAY ALIVE!

4. Clothes were infrequently washed, on a "this really reeks!" basis for the same reasons as number three, above.

Now, lets observe some other interesting facets of the first century Jewish male. While Roman men averaged about five feet four inches, Jewish men averaged just a bit over five feet. Slightly taller than Danny DeVito who is five feet tall. In modern society, a male of four feet eleven inches or below is considered a midget or dwarf. So, by today's standards, Jewish men were just slightly taller than tall midgets. They were normal-sized to themselves of course, but if Jesus were to walk into First Baptist Church on Cracker Street of today, his tiny stature would shock and dismay his worshippers. To make things worse, the Old Slavonic version of the works of Josephus gives the height of Jesus as four and a half feet! A shorty even by the standards of his own time! (This is one of the major reasons I consider the Shroud of Turin to be a clever fraud. The man of the shroud is anywhere from 5-11 to 6-2, a towering GIANT for the time period! Judas would NOT have had to kiss such a giant to point him out to the Romans! "He's the giant Jew for Christ's sake!" is all he would have had to say!)

Also, Semitic peoples of that period--as well as actual pure-blooded Semitic peoples of today--are dark skinned, burnt even darker by the sun. Pay attention to films and videos of modern Bedouins for a clue to the hue of the skin of Jesus. To your average racist Billy-Bob Bible-toter of today, Jesus would be a big-time hackle-raiser for sure, and he would probably be lynched by them for being a "darkie." At the very least, he would be responsible for a mass exodus of ignorant redneck white folks from the Christian religion!

Jesus was a "tekton" which is universally mistranslated as "carpenter" in all but one English Bible version. Tekton means "artisan" a worker in stone, iron, and wood. This was hard work in an age of hard work! Being a tekton was back breaking body-destroying labor. We can hardly begin to grasp just how hard merely keeping alive was at that time, let alone making one's living in such an arduous fashion. So, Jesus the effeminate wus is also definitely fictional.

So, if you're still with me, the real Jesus was very short (Possibly even a midget by today's standards, and very short even for his own time), stinky, dirty, and nearly black. He was thin and hard as a rock from heavy labor with wiry muscles. He spoke Aramaic, a close cognate of Hebrew. GIBBERISH to your modern American "Jesus" worshipper who believes Jesus and the apostles spoke King James English! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Jesus of history--even as a baby--bore no resemblance to the "Jesus" of the imagination. Nor to the "Jesus" reported in near death experiences: A tall effeminate white guy, all sparkling clean and deodorant fresh. To make matters even more unpalatable for the modern religious American, the Old Slavonic version of Josephus reports that Jesus was balding, had a patchy beard, a unibrow, and a hump on his back! In fact, Victor Hugo based the character of Quasimodo on the description of Jesus given in the Old Slavonic version of Josephus! Truly, He had "No form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2) But, religious folks being what they are--disinterested in facts, disinterested in reality--prefer their white-bread Hollywood Jesus to the genuine article. Rather than worship Jesus if confronted by The Real Deal, they'd hold their nose and get away from him ASAP, being repulsed not merely by his odor and unkempt appearance, but by his tiny stature and very dark skin. His incomprehensible "babble"--definitely NOT King James English--would have them running for cover or their rifles.

Your average "Jesus" worshipper has always worshipped a Jesus made IN THEIR OWN IMAGE AND LIKENESS, bearing no relationship to actual factual historical reality.

Tis the season to be jolly, FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA!

Hortensia

yeah that was interesting and I like the pun in your heading

kifoy

I remember National Geographic had a programme on this subject some time ago, where they rebuilt and "put skin on" an old scull they had found from that time period, to give an image of how Jesus might have looked like. Nowhere near the squeaky clean, white man you see in the illustrations, that's for sure.

I think it was this one, at least I recognize the first picture there:
Real Face Of Jesus: December 2002 Cover Story

I think this topic is really cool

kifoy

Bible_Student777

dinah

Loved it! Quite a far stretch from how he is depicted in American churches. I also loved the scripture in Isaiah that warned us he wouldn't be handsome.

Face it though, in our culture, nobody will listen to you if you are a short, ugly, black dude.

People in the south kill me. They think God HIMSELF wrote the bible in the King James Version! No other version will do! They quote the bible with all the "thee" and "thou" you can handle. And what's with the "ith" on the end of every word????!!!!

All I can say is when He comes back--he ain't gonna look like Ted Nugent.

Satanus

When he was raised, bodily to heaven, the vacuum of space must have blasted off some of that grime. When he descends onto the mount of olives, the lightening like light eminating from him hide what's left ;)

S

kifoy

Bible_Student777: Yes, that's the one

DInah:

I also loved the scripture in Isaiah that warned us he wouldn't be handsome.

Where in Isaiah was that?

But why it is such a "shocking" news to some that Jesus looked like his fellow people, is a mystery to me

I wonder what the ordinary JW would think if The Watchtower started to present Jesus like the image above?

kifoy

BurnTheShips

I am trying to see the point of this thread.

Why do you think it would matter to a Christian what Jesus looked like at all?

If he had lived a hard life as a Tekton, been burned by the sun, had to deal with the sanitary realities of his day, was stooped from hard labor by the time he was 30, it only reinforces my view of a humble, suffering servant and elevates him.

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

Burn--of the don't judge a man by his appearances class

Witness 007

Your Jesus sounds like me on a bad day...except I wear tracksuit pants and dirty slippers.

yodastar

I know this is an old post but after reading it I googled what the actual appearance of Jesus might have been like.

Why? Because I grew up in a racist religion with white people who accepted other skin types but subtly inferred that white was the proper colour. Disgraceful. I wanted to know what history had to say about the 'messiah'.

Its amazing that a so called inspired faith would only offer the pictures of a white Jesus in it's written info. Really?

I know it harks back to Russell and of that era but if they could not be truthful about quite an important fact and portrayal then how can they be truthful about everything else? They can't and I think they made it all up.

In Search of the Hysterical Jesus

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