The official portrait of Jesus

@DonnaML. That's what I remember from our teacher of Catechism. I was a teenager, by that time. Hope someone chime in this important fact.

 

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I would not trust the Catechism on Jewish tradition! There's nothing in the Torah on the subject of long hair in men, let alone the first son thing.

 

The face on the Shroud of Turin has always reminded me of the portraits of Christ on some of the anonymous Byzantine folles. When radiocarbon dating was done on the Shroud in 1988, the result was a date between 1260 and 1390.

[edit] The apostle Paul, writing 2 or 3 decades after the ministry of Jesus, states that "nature itself" (ἡ φύσις αὐτὴ) teaches that long hair on men is a "disgrace" (ἀτιμία, 1 Corinthians 11:14). While he never met Jesus in the flesh, it seems unlikely that Paul would have commented this way if he thought his Lord wore long hair.

 

Not saying that there isn't something to these observations. However, we also have to keep in mind that these interpretations and rules of thumb were derived by scholastic institutions during a time of extreme eurocentrism, which undoubtedly was influenced by race to some degree.

They had the choice of accepted that, at times, dark skinned men ruled over the origins of Western Society, or they could come up with an alternative explanation as to why the depictions showed the men with dark skin. Unfortunately, there was a strong cultural pressure to do the latter.

Hell, as pointless as it would be to debate what Jesus actually would have looked like, the one thing that we could say for sure is that he wouldn't have been white.

 

There's remarkably little known about him outside of the Bible, but why to doubt the account of roman historian Tacitus, writing c.115 AD, that the group known as the Christians had a leader who was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate ?

 

I think it's more likely than not that he existed -- there were a number of self-proclaimed Messianic figures around that time -- but there's nothing about him in any record or document written during his lifetime, or otherwise consisting of primary evidence.

 

But the same depictions would indicate that those dark-skinned (or reddish-brown skinned) men had very fair-skinned wives. What does that tell us? That evidence hardly requires coming up with a strained "alternative explanation," unless you think the men all found wives in a population entirely different from their own!

 

I always liked this one

 

But what exactly do we need evidence of? To say there's a historical Jesus is just to say that the figure in the bible - the Christian leader who died on the cross - was a real person, not just a totally fictitious character. Tacitus seems to deliver all the confirmation we need, that the leader of the Christians was indeed killed.

By understanding the time period we can help fill in the blanks between this minimalist "yes, there was someone" and Biblical fact+myth. As I recall there is some contemporary Christian apologist who ruefully commented on other contemporary wonder workers performing more impressive feats than Jesus; so, while not enough to have historians writing about it, this is at least another link between the myth and the historical figure.

 

For risk off opening a can of worms...
Basically any ancient image of jesus, including the Dura Europas image shows the man as light, if not white.
For the next 2 thousand years he’s almost always depicted light skinned regardless regional origin of the artwork.

seems the brown Jesus argument is only within the last few decades.

The 3rd century was closer to Jesus time than the 21st, so if they depicted him light, I would imagine that’s probably pretty accurate

 

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Unless of course if they were from lower social and economic families. Then those women and children probably were more exposed to the elements like the rest of peasantry going about their day-to-day existence.

 

I was raised Catholic on my mom's side & went to parochial school. Never heard of what 7Calbrey is talking about.
BTW, my 1st wife was Jewish and I went to services with her many times. Never heard that Torah thing about Jesus had long hair because he was the eldest child. Jewish tradition to distinguish the eldest boys in society. I do know all Orthodox boys grow out payots, though.

 

I don't doubt the authenticity of Tacitus' account, as compared to those of Josephus for instance. But, I don't really see it as proof of existence. First of all, the text was written nearly 100 years after Jesus would have died. And, it doesn't provide any information that wouldn't have been common knowledge with respect to the foundational beliefs of the religion.

For instance, Tacitus could have obtained this much knowledge of Jesus' existence in a 5 second conversation:

Tacitus: "Hey, what are Christians?"
Some person: "They are a religious group whose assumed messiah was crucified by Pontius Pilate"

Unless Tacitus had access to some since lost, reliable source of information, then what Tacitus wrote is of no more value in definitively concluding Jesus' existence than if a person wrote those words today. It is all hearsay.

But, like Donna said:

And, a lot of these would-be messiahs were crucified. So, we know that a Jesus-like person definitely existed, but we don't need Tacitus to make that determination.

The question is: Did a guy named Jesus with parents named Joseph and Mary and brothers and sisters named blah blah, born in Bethlehem on January 1st year 0, whose family fled from Herod to Egypt, who was baptized by John the Baptist, who gathered followers and disciples named blah blah, who gave the Sermon on the Mount, etc, etc, etc,.......actually exist?

The answer is: Maybe, but we don't know for sure.

 

Did Jesus actually exist or is he a legend?
The overwhelming majority of historians, regardless of their personal religious affiliations if any, think Jesus actually existed. The gospels were written down in the late 1st c., only 50 or 60 years after Jesus' trial and crucifixion in Jerusalem. Tacitus already mentions Christians in Rome under Claudius and Nero, at a time when many people who were in Jerusalem at the time of the alleged Jesus' public execution were still alive. Christian beliefs were soon a matter of controversy among Pagans and Jews and we know their arguments, but no opponent to Christianity ever questioned the very existence of Jesus or said his crucifixion was fake news.
The New Testament is a compilation of books that are historical sources like any other ones. There are also early mentions of Jesus in Pagan sources like Tacitus and Jewish talmudic sources. I do not even mention Josephus, for his mention of Jesus could have been a later Christian interpolation. The historicity of Pontius Pilatus has been dramatically confirmed by an inscription found in Caesarea (which shows that he was prefect, not procurator). There are no more reasons to doubt Jesus' historicity than for Socrates, Vercingetorix or Themistocles.

In 1827 in France a named Jean-Baptiste Pérès published a little pamphlet proving that Napoleon did not actually exist, that it was just a solar myth: "As if Napoleon never existed or Grand Erratum, source of an infinite number of errata as noted in the history of the 19th century". Well... quite convincing !

 

I don't think this is the question. First of all nobody ever pretended Jesus was born on January 1st year 0 because there was never a year 0, but 12/31/1 BC was followed by 1/1/1 AD.

 

To me that's a different question - you're really asking how much of the biblical biography of "Jesus" (was Yeshua even his real name?) can be verified and how much of it either has to be taken at face value, or rejected as backfilling of unknown detail (or some combination of the two).

It seems pretty obvious that outside of the Bible we know essentially nothing about Jesus, other than this reference to a nameless leader "Christus" who was executed by the romans. Perhaps his followers knew and recorded some of his life story, but other aspects such as the date of his birth, etc, appear unknown. Other "biographical" aspects such as his virgin birth are obviously traditional embellishment (or in that case maybe just a mistranslation that the church chose to own!).

As an old boss of mine was fond of saying, "it is what it is". Can we prove aspects of the biblical story that are likely mythical - no, and we shouldn't expect to. Can we prove that an important part of the origin story of Christianity - the death of their then leader, "Christ" - has some basis in historical reality? Yes, it seems so (and it would be rather odd if it didn't).

 

Who are you referring to? I don't think Jesus was executed for claiming to be a messiah, but rather just as someone who was leader of a group that was proving troublesome to the romans.

Other contemporary "miracle workers" such as Apollonia of Tyana were well tolerated, famous even. He's even on a coin!

 

Three comments:

I think that if Jesus existed his detractors amongst the Pharisees could easily rile up the Romans by claiming that Jesus thought he was the messiah and they could rid themselves of the problem caused by this growing sect.

Also, with the regard to the messianic times in general, the Essenes believed that the messiah was at hand who would be both a temporal leader and a spiritual one.

Remember also that the Bible as it is was not codified until the 4th century, and the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon decided which books would be kept and which would be tossed as out as heretical. One could argue that Gnosticism with its alternative books, some of which featured Christ as a teacher but neglected to mention the Crucifixion, was a whole different and competing tradition.

Apparently the person or persons possessing the Naq Hammadi Codex felt the books had to be hidden to avoid sanction by religious authorities such as Athanasius of Alexandria.

 

Paul personally knew Jesus' brother, James, and Jesus' best friend, Simon (nicknamed "the rock," Peter). That's plenty close to being a primary source. It's ridiculous to think Jesus didn't exist at all.